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138: How to Navigate the Intersection of Art and Entrepreneurship: Interview with Steph Halligan

Many people believe that if they were to make a living from their creative work, the art itself would suffer. That getting paid somehow cheapens their craft, when in reality, they have finally received validation.

Instead thinking of art and entrepreneurship as opposing forces, consider, perhaps, that they are two sides of the same coin. Rather than competing with one another, your creativity and career are intertwined.

Sometimes, as in the case of this week’s guest on The Portfolio Life, you might pursue a shadow career and rediscover a lost creative passion that breathes new life into your vocation, or reveals a new path entirely.

Listen in as motivational cartoonist and writer, Steph Halligan, and I talk about losing and finding your artistic self, hidden benefits of daily creative habits, and how to reconcile the tension between art and entrepreneurship.

Listen to the podcast

To listen to the show, click the player below (If you’re reading this via email, please click here).

Show highlights

In this episode, Stephanie and I discuss:

How drawing a student loan debt monster led to new opportunities
The progression of quitting your day job
Why self-confidence and creative frequency are interrelated
What it feels like to be an artist and an entrepreneur
Letting your fans celebrate and support you
Packaging your creative work into products people care about
The importance of environment and changing elements that influence the creative process to get unstuck

Quotes and takeaways

“The beauty of doing something every day is you build up a portfolio of work.” —Steph Halligan
“If you give, you are allowed to receive.” —Steph Halligan
Create products people want. Start a dialog with your audience.
If you help enough people there will be people lined up to give you money.
When money becomes the chief concern, it doesn’t always lead to the best art.

Resources

Art to Self notes and book
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer
Amanda Palmer’s TED Talk

Do you think getting paid compromises your craft? How do you navigate the tension between art and entrepreneurship? Share in the comments

Click here to download a free PDF of the complete interview transcript or scroll down to read it below.

EPISODE 138

“SH: As I started adding the cartoons, it started building this confidence inside me that I had something of value to offer to the world that was beyond whatever job I had.”

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:41.2] JG: Well Stephanie, welcome to the show.

[0:00:44.3] SH: Thanks for having me.

[0:00:46.7] JG: You call yourself a motivational cartoonist?

[0:00:49.5] SH: That’s right.

[0:00:50.5] JG: What does that mean?

[0:00:52.6] SH: I’m a cartoonist, and an author, and a writer, and so those are all titles I use too, but I landed on motivational cartoonist. One, because I had a motivational speaker actually tell me that’s what I do. He said, “You’re like, a motivational cartoonist.” I was like, “Yeah. That’s actually a perfect way to describe what I do.”

Why I love the phrase so much is because I’ve taken my medium of choice, my craft, which is drawing and writing, and I use it to inspire and infuse a little positivity in the world, and help people make people feel better about where they are in life. That’s where the phrase motivational cartoonist comes from.

[0:01:35.8] JG: Have you always been an artist? Have you always been drawing, or is this something you came to later in life?

[0:01:42.4] SH: Yeah, I would say that I was born to draw, and then I lost it for like 20 years, and then I came back to it. Yeah. If you would ask friends and family, and anyone who was around me as a kid, I was meant to be a cartoonist. It was something I did as a little child. I was illustrating and writing books even before I could properly write. and then I would just write scribbly words. and I wanted to grow up to be like a Looney Tunes animator or a Disney animator.

Then there was that kind of period of in between time when I was probably starting in high school, and then definitely in college, when my mind shifted over to, “Okay, what do I practically, really want to do in life and make money from?” Art just really fell by the wayside, so there was a period in my life where I maybe, I would say a year or two years in college, when I wasn’t actively drawing or creating any sort of artwork, just because I was trying to figure things out, what my career ladder was and my major. I picked up cartooning regularly, maybe about two years ago.

[0:02:52.5] JG: Really?

[0:02:53.5] SH: Yeah. It was a large piece of me that was missing for a while, and I’m really happy I got it back, that’s for sure.

[0:03:00.9] JG: I want to talk about this project, arttoself.com, but before we talk about that, this is a new thing, you know? Being this motivational cartoonist. What did life and work look like before two years ago?

[0:03:15.5] SH: Yeah, I had graduated from college. I had graduated with a lot of student debt, which is not very uncommon nowadays. I ended up going into this field of financial literacy. I was working in a nonprofit, and I was helping teach college students and low income families about ways to save money, and especially for college. My career path really looked, it was involved in this kind of personal finance field.

It was a topic I cared about a lot, because I felt very personally affected by student loans, and I even started a blog around personal finance and my own kind of student loan payoff journey. My professional life was starting to make sense after college, I was putting pieces together, and realized I was building this kind of unique skill set in putting my career ladder up against the wall of financial literacy, and personal finance, and a topic I sincerely cared about,

And as I was blogging, too, about my student loan journey and personal finance journey. I could tell maybe four years after graduating, maybe even three, that something was kind of missing, it felt really good to be able to share my story with the world, and I loved writing blog posts and being able to put them out there, know that even just friends and family were reading my point of view.

Then I had that kind of hunger for something else, and I couldn’t even name it. I think at the time I couldn’t even tell you, “It’s cartoons,” or “it’s drawing,” but it just felt like that creative piece of me didn’t have a place to go. The writing was helping, the blogging. There was something else that was not quite syncing up with what I was doing, and it was when I was still in a nine to five job that I took my personal finance blog and I actually started drawing cartoons on it, because there was something there that I thought would be interesting if I maybe drew about my student loan journey, and I started drawing this student loan debt monster.

I drew myself as a super hero that was trying to pay off student loans, and that was the first little experiment of mine to find out, “Okay, what is my creative outlet that I really want? Drawing comes naturally. What if I did the crazy thing of adding this to my personal finance website and see where it goes?”

That was the moment where that moment of experimenting kind of clicked into place, where I remembered that cartooning was that thing in my blood, and finding a place for it, and putting it out into the world, even if it was about student debt or something like that. It started exercising that muscle again when — something in me kind of came back to life that had been almost ignored and kind of atrophied for the better part of a decade and a half.

[0:06:12.1] JG: Isn’t it interesting that you didn’t realize this was the thing that you were supposed to do until you did it, and then you’re like yeah, this has been here all along.

[0:06:22.3] SH: Yeah.

[0:06:22.5] JG: I love that, that’s really interesting.

[0:06:24.5] SH: It was so funny. I remember telling my mom, I was like, “Hey mom, I’m going to start adding cartoons to my personal finance site,” and she was like, “Of course.” Excuse me? She’s like, “Yeah, that’s what you’re meant to do in life.” I was like god, I should have just asked my mom, maybe a couple of years ago, and this search would have been so much easier.

[0:06:44.6] JG: Yeah, that’s hilarious. Writing was that way for me, I wouldn’t have said, “Yeah, I was meant to be a writer” when I was 16 or 21 or whatever. In fact, I wanted to be a rock star. At whatever it was, 27, 28 when I started writing, I was like, yeah. I guess it’s like that Steve Jobs speech that everybody quotes about connecting the dots.

You look back and you go, yeah, totally makes sense. It’s fascinating. Personal finance blog. You and I ran into each other, I think we’ve seen each other twice now at FinCon, which is a financial blogging conference, and like just like the craziest party I’ve ever seen. It’s just wild.

[0:07:24.4] SH: For people, yeah.

[0:07:25.6] JG: It is. You’ve got like people that are like arguing about which credit cards give you the best cash back bonus, sort of…

[0:07:34.2] SH: That’s right, yeah.

[0:07:36.0] JG: Then there’s like a dance party, and all things in between. When you were doing this financial blogging thing, what was life like at that point? Were you a full-time blogger? Was this something that you were doing on the side while doing the nonprofit thing? Help me better understand that.

[0:07:50.8] SH: Yeah, I had my blog for about two years, and once I started adding cartoons to it, a funny thing started happening. At the time I added cartoons to my personal finance blog, which is about two years ago, I was working at a startup that was focused on financial literacy, and as I started adding the cartoons, it started building this confidence inside me that I had something of value to offer to offer to the world that was beyond whatever job I had.

I could just really — I could map out the trajectory, which is like the frequency in which Steph draws cartoons, like, the higher her self-confidence is. At that point, I started shifting mentally to really thinking about venturing out on my own. Not just from the cartoon perspective, but I had built this unique skillset around financial literacy curriculum development, and I was drawing cartoons about financial literacy and personal finance.

I took that kind of that combination of confidence and the unique kind of skillset, and I started shopping around to see what life might be like if I decided to quit my job. I asked an old employer of mine, I asked some potential freelance clients, and just to see, if I ended up stepping out on my own, what would be the appetite for some of the work that I do, and I got some responses from the nonprofit world.

They were like, “Yeah, come work on a project about personal finance with us,” and I got responses from other people who were like, “We want you to be a freelance writer, we’d love to add cartoons to our site.” It was a — the transition away from my nine to five job wasn’t jumping directly to I am a full-blown motivational cartoonist, and cartoons are what I do, and that’s everything.

It was the kind of next iteration of that, which is, “I’m now going to work for myself, but it’s still going to be around this financial literacy skillset, and at the same time, now that I have this space and time to draw more, and think about what I want to do in life, I’m going to explore my art a little bit more.”

[0:10:05.5] JG: Yeah. That’s cool. Tell me about this project arttoself.com. These are daily motivational drawings?

[0:10:15.2] SH: Yeah. Art to Self, it’s one of the best things that I’ve done with my life, which is commit to drawing cartoons every day and sharing them with the world. One side of the coin, it’s a very selfish project that holds me accountable to doing art, and then at the same time, it has just been amazing to see how people have connected with my cartoons.

Because these “cartoon notes” as I call them, they’re motivational in the sense that there is a funny doodle with a quote, something that’s inspirational, or something to help you deal with the low days, especially if you’re trying to start your own business, and something to keep you going on the high moments.

It’s also a place for me to share really vulnerably about the moments that I’m experiencing, both as an entrepreneur and as a creative person, because that self-doubt and that self-criticism comes up very frequently, and I don’t think it ever goes away. So being able to share that with the world, and do it in kind of a lighthearted way with cartoons, has been so important to me personally, but it’s also just been fantastic to see the number of people who responded, who really resonate with the same things that I’m going through, and really appreciate that I’ve turned it into something lighthearted like a cartoon.

[0:11:38.6] JG: Yeah. It’s great. I’m looking at one right now and it’s cool, there’s these little drawings, and then you’ve got these little notes associated with these drawings that are just about your process. People say, “I don’t have enough time,” you’ve got this little doodle that says you make time. Then there’s this little sort of note from yourself to yourself.

[0:11:58.9] SH: Exactly.

[0:11:59.8] JG: I love that. There’s just something powerful, it seems to me, about not being a guru. At least in this day and age, with social media, and the internet, and I saw somebody Facebook this tongue in cheek thing and it was like, “You know what Snapchat needs more of is people giving life and career advice.”

[0:12:18.9] SH: Yeah.

[0:12:19.7] JG: I was like yeah, I just wish somebody would tell me to hustle more.

[0:12:22.8] SH: Right, yeah.

[0:12:24.4] JG: I think it’s really refreshing when you’re just like sharing your own journey, and saying, “here’s where I’m at, here’s what I need right now,” and it’s just a little bit less arrogant, I think.

[0:12:34.9] SH: Yeah. That’s the reason I started Art to Self, which was it came off, it was a spin off the phrase, you know, note to self. I needed sticky notes in my room that were like, note to self, stop beating yourself up. Note to self, you’re doing okay, you’ll get there, and so yeah. It really is the messages that I need to hear, and it’s not the Instagram sunset with a person doing yoga on the beach that’s like, “keep going,” because for me, what was the two parts that are so important is, one, a cartoon and a visual lighthearted reminder that kind of makes you laugh at yourself for the situation a bit.

The second is me writing the notes, and they’re shorter notes, they’re like 150 words, but to say yeah, keep going, but here’s what I’m going through, because I hit a wall and I didn’t feel like drawing today. Here’s the kind of reality and vulnerability behind it, because like you were just saying, I don’t want to contribute to any sort of false guru-dom that’s out there, and kind of show myself as someone who has it all together.

Because every day I’m learning and growing, and there are many days when I have imposter syndrome, and don’t feel like I have it all together. I think that can be almost more valuable to people who are dealing with those kind of struggles or moments, just to be able to relate and connect on that.

[0:13:58.9] JG: Yeah, do you ever look at your own notes and go yeah, I need to remember that.

[0:14:03.8] SH: Yes, my gosh. Funny story was, a couple of months ago, last December, I came out with my first book, because the beauty of doing something every single day is halfway through the year last year, I was like, “Oh my gosh, I have so many cartoons and notes. I’m going to make this a book,” and everyone was asking for a book.

Even though the book content was done, putting together a book and putting it out on the world is still a scary process, and it was a learning process, because there’s a lot of formatting technical stuff, especially if you’re trying to self-publish. I’d be sitting in my book, editing it and working on a cartoon, the two cartoons that just kept coming up all the time to me was “love the process,” and I’d be sitting there editing the note called “love the process.”

I’m like, okay, fine, I’ll love the process. Or I have a note that — it says, “what if it’s already perfect?” and it’s a bunch of scribbles and erase marks and stuff. I would just be editing it, and my gosh, what if this note is already perfect? Okay, Art to Self, I get it. What if it’s already perfect? My notes definitely come back around to me, and I’m not alone, I’m sure, in having to like relearn the same lesson in life over and over again. I definitely revisit the old ones.

[0:15:21.1] JG: Yeah, the reason I ask that question is I was looking at your website, looking at the book, you go to arttoself.com/book, there is a picture of Steph reading her own book, looking quite amused, and I was like, “I would probably do that. I’d go back and go, yeah.” It’s interesting as a writer, I mean, I think people take for granted that you remember this stuff that you put in books, and people are always — like, not always, but occasionally saying, “Hey, I liked it when you said this thing.” I’m like what? I said that?

[0:15:50.0] SH: There we go.

[0:15:51.0] JG: That’s pretty good.

[0:15:52.8] SH: Yeah, that was pretty smart of me, yeah. The other thing, too, that’s so funny is I’ve had people read the book and tell me how much like, you know, I love the cartoon that you wrote about taking the leap to a new adventure, and I was like, “I have not written a cartoon about that. I am so happy you got the message you needed out of my book, but you’ve made something up,” and I’m glad. I love when people take the book and make it their own, and I also just have to laugh when someone tells me about a cartoon they loved that I actually haven’t drawn. They apparently got the message they needed somehow, the work that I was doing.

[0:16:28.5] JG: It’s like a subconscious thing. It’s a very Meta thing if you think about it. You’re doing these art notes to yourself, and then somebody reads it, and then they subconsciously get the message, and then they do a note to themselves, without realizing that you didn’t write that.

[0:16:43.3] SH: Exactly. Yeah, it can get like a very — it’s a very meta process sometimes, especially Art to Self. There’s so many layers.

Click here to download a free PDF of the complete interview transcript or scroll down to continue reading it below.

[0:16:50.5] JG: Yeah, I love it. I love the four sections of this book: You are Here, You’re Enough, Embrace the Messiness, and Live Bolder. Let’s fast forward to present, and we’re talking about starting these different projects, and in most recently Art to Self, and you know, talking with a real live cartoonist, I was thinking motivational cartoonist. I don’t know if you’ve ever done a cartoon about that, but I just envisioned Chris Farley, motivational speaker, living at a van down by the river.

[0:17:19.1] SH: That’s right. Yeah, how do you get your life back on the right track? Yeah, exactly.

[0:17:24.0] JG: If you haven’t done that yet, you should probably do that. Picture of a van in a river.

[0:17:27.9] SH: I love that, I love it.

[0:17:29.5] JG: Anyway, I’ll own the copyright to that, but you’re welcome. I’ll license it to you. Let’s talk about business? Let’s talk about money, and marketing, and these things that you know, a lot of artists are uncomfortable with. I recall a conversation that we were having back in Portland during World Domination Summit almost a year ago, and we were talking about this, we were talking about the tension between having an entrepreneurial mind, or awareness of the fact that if you want to work for yourself, you’ve got to pay bills and manage financial things, which I’ve never loved.

But I realize it’s kind of an important thing to being a human being. Yet, art in some ways just kind of feels like a gift. It feels like Art to Self is a gift. Every day you get up and you draw something, and you share it with people for free, it is a gift, and in fact, you could just go look at all the cartoons. Somebody doesn’t have to buy the book, and yet, I bet that many people who have read your blog and signed up for your newsletter, out of appreciation for your work, said, “I want to do this. I want to support this.”

So it’s an interesting dichotomy, and I’m just curious, where do you sit on that spectrum? Are you comfortable with the business stuff? You did the financial blogging thing. What does it feel like to be an artist and also to be an entrepreneur?

[0:18:55.5] SH: Yeah, I would say, the spectrum is starting to shift, especially in the last couple of months, and it’s this pendulum swing for sure, but for me, I think there were two specific mindsets that I needed to be okay with. It’s a very recent, let’s say in the last six months, mindset for me. One is, the idea that if you give, you are allowed to receive, and it seems so obvious but like you said, Art to Self is a very giving brand.

I’m saying, “Hey, free cartoons and motivation in your inbox every day, all you have to do is sign up, and I’m going to just give.” The first year I did it, it was really hard to monetize that or to add any sort of request with my audience on top of it, because it felt altruistic. It felt like asking for money would be out of integrity.

It was a slow process to shift over to asking for things. Like for example, I ask for donations and I say, Art to Self is an act of love, and if it resonates with you, I would love support to keep this newsletter running. A number of people who have donated, either the quantity of people has been amazing, or the monetary amount has been amazing.

People have done monthly subscriptions or one-time donations that have just blown me away, and so offering that outlet was a big step for me, and then now shifting to product mode, and now I’m creating — I have Art to Self: the Book, I just came out with a children’s book last week, and I’m going to be creating a coloring book and a cartoon mindfulness guide. I’m realizing that because I have this brand that’s giving, and I’m sharing my work all the time, people want that tangible thing they can hold onto, and whenever I release a product now, it’s like everyone’s celebrating with me, and it’s just a wonderful feeling.

That giving/receiving mindset is what I think was the first piece, and the second big mindset that I had to take on was being okay with making money in a different capacity while I built up Art to Self.

I still have a couple of financial literacy clients. I do some cartoon and animation work for them, but there is a part of me that is still 100% pure money-making business over here, while Art to Self can take the time it needs to develop products and continue to grow my audience, so we can grow into an income stream that I’m not forcing to be the end all, be all money maker at the moment.

Actually, it was very helpful to read Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Big Magic, in which she describes, “I would go home and write, and then I would waitress. Those two lives were separate, until it didn’t have to be,” and so not putting that pressure on my brand. As impatient as I was to get Art to Self to the place where this is my full-time money maker, I don’t want to put in any sort of undue pressure on the brand while I’m still working to build it, and offer products that people love, and continue to make money.

This is the year of Art to Self, in which I’m going to do that, where it becomes that full-time thing and at the same time it’s just my job to exercise patience and make sure that I’ve got some money coming in from other things in the meantime so that I can support this growth.

[0:22:26.3] JG: Do you subscribe to the idea that if you make money off of a passion it can kill the passion? What do you think about that?

[0:22:36.7] SH: I used to think that. I think that was the first struggle I had, again, about that giving and receiving. I do remember moments of impatience and frustration. About nine months into Art to Self, I had this amazing audience that I’d built, and it had been that giving and giving brand, and I just got so angry like, “Art to Self, why are you not making money? Where is the money and why isn’t this happening?” and so for a couple of weeks, I tested out some really weird monetization strategies.

Like selling prints, and maybe t-shirts, and how about mugs, and just trying to squeeze dollars out of it is what it felt like, and I realized that I had hit a line that was my integrity line that I crossed, but also it wasn’t going to work. I knew not only did I not feel good selling that way, but it was not going to work, and it actually hadn’t made me the money I needed. So I realized that one, I needed to commit to drawing the cartoons that I need to hear and I need to read. If I can stay fast on that line, I know that the message will always resonate with people.

Then on the side, create products that people want, and always creating this dialogue between myself and my audience and saying, “Okay, this is what I am working on next, what do you guys think?” Or for example, this children’s book I came out with, it was a long story of an illustrated story I had on my blog, and I asked people what they thought. Should I make it book?

It was a resounding yes, so the integrity of my work is important, because it’s what people resonate with, so I just have to make sure that I’m not creating a cartoon because it’s going to look good on Facebook or something, and I am creating the message that I need to hear, and then separately, looking at how I can package this into products that people care about and that people are willing to buy.

[0:24:36.1] JG: Interesting. So the creative process for you isn’t commercial? Like you are creating the thing that you think people need, or that you need for yourself, and you hope other people share that need, but then once it’s made, you go into business mode. Am I hearing you right?

[0:24:51.8] SH: Yeah, that’s a great way of putting it, which is almost like the packaging and the presentation, that’s what’s the business side of things. But the cartoons themselves are the free creative outlet for me, and so I can come up with Art to Self: the Book comes out of this collection of a hundred of my best cartoons last year. So I know the cartoons have hit home, and I was creatively in line when I drew them and created them, and it took the editing formatting, business-y marketing side of me to make that book real. So yeah, it’s definitely a two-step process for me.

[0:25:30.0] JG: Yeah, it does seem like when money becomes a chief concern, how you’re going to maximize your profit, that doesn’t necessarily always lead to the best art. When you’re writing something, or drawing something, or creating something, I don’t care if it makes money. The irony is that stuff can really resonate with people, and sometimes makes the money.

[0:25:50.8] SH: Yeah, absolutely, and I am a big advocate of keeping those hats separate, so that I could put on a hat at a different time and be like, “All right CEO marketing hat needs to be on right now, but first thing in the morning, it’s like doodle hat.” It’s drawing, it’s writing, it’s creating the thing, because that is the fuel and the fire that needs to keep burning, and it’s the thing that has built this lovely audience that I care about so much.

And then separately, carving out time, like for me working on my mindfulness guide this afternoon. It was creative time, and writing and drawing, and then deciding how to package it was a separate activity.

[0:26:30.9] JG: I really hope you have a doodle hat. Like a fedora.

[0:26:33.3] SH: Oh my gosh, now I think I need one. One that’s physical.

[0:26:36.8] JG: I think that would be cool. I don’t know what’s your creative rhythms are like, but moving around and changing locations for me when I feel stuck can be really important, and I love the idea that literally you put on a doodle hat in the morning.

[0:26:51.0] SH: That’s too funny. I should have to make a cartoon out of that one too. See? The ideas keep coming, this is what’s so great about being a human and learning lessons and stuff. So yeah, I love that idea.

[0:27:02.9] JG: So if you were talking to an artist, and I don’t know if you have these conversations like I do, I live in Nashville around a lot of musicians, there’s also a lot of writers and just creatives in general, and I hear this, what I believe is a limiting belief, which is you can’t make money as a writer, or as an artist, or as a whatever, and I really appreciate, Steph, you being transparent about the diverse revenue streams, about doing client work, but also doing creative work, and then even figuring out the discipline of how do I monetize this in a way that doesn’t undermine my own values, and voice, and making peace with all of that, which I love.

That’s the idea of this show, The Portfolio Life is the life of a creative professional, and really of anybody these days. You’re going to have multiple things, lots of different gigs and stuff, whether or not you’re a freelancer or not. I mean, that’s just the way we live our lives, and I actually have been talking about this idea for a couple of years now, and basically lying about it in my heart, because what I thought I really wanted to do was just write all the time.

And just recently while working on this book, I realized, you don’t want to do that. That would be hell. You would drive yourself crazy. You like the business stuff. You like the marketing stuff, and you also like the creative stuff. It’s just that when one overtakes the other thing, it starts to feel fake and flimsy to me. Anyway, I appreciate you sharing that. I also made peace with that as of this week.

[0:28:40.1] SH: Ha, good. I’m glad I am not the only one, because I totally feel the same way with this am I being invigorated by my work, and part of that is that’s the question I just always have to ask myself, and if part of that means my revenue equation is consulting work, which I actually enjoy, and it’s using a different part of my brain, it keeps things fresh and it makes me feel appreciative for the moments I do get to sit down and write and draw.

I just have to be in charge of lighting the fire under my butt to make sure that Art to Self grows into what I want it to be, so that I am not resting on income coming in from a different source. So that, I think, is the challenge for me, at least at the moment, which is okay, even though I am feeling supported by other revenue streams, I still need to give Art to Self the love and care, and like what you were saying, if I did Art to Self full-time at this moment, I think I would go crazy.

I think the cartoons would suffer, and I think I wouldn’t be as intellectually stimulated and fulfilled. My curiosity wouldn’t be as fulfilled, I think, if I was just doing it full-time. So I am really happy that I am not the only one who feels that, and I think it is a myth of you have to do this all a 100% this way, and you should live and breathe your medium of choice. That could be exhausting, so yeah I am all for that kind of balance.

[0:30:07.1] JG: Yeah, and I think maybe it works for some people, but for a lot of us, heading towards this idealistic voice of an artist that says like, “you should be suffering and you should be doing your work 12 hours a day,” like I read this biography of Van Gogh one time, and it talked about how when Van Gogh lived in the South of France, he would get up early in the morning, he would take his easels out into a field, and he would just paint in the heat of summer until he has like a heat stroke.

And then he painted tons of paintings. He did multiple paintings in a day sometimes, and then he’d carry them home at sunset, and if you are not doing that, you’re not a real artist, and yeah, I think that what we’re seeing these days is a different kind of artist emerge, and it is exciting for me to hear folks like you give yourself permission, because if anything, it validates my own journey. I am curious. Say somebody comes to you and says, “Well, you can’t make money doing this,” or “I want to make a living as an artist,” what kind of advice would you give them?

[0:31:12.6] SH: So I would go back to two years ago when I started doing personal finance cartoons, and I got a chance to speak with an entrepreneur friend of mine, Noah Kagan. I was down in Austin, and he’s a very successful online entrepreneur, and we were talking and he asked me what my ideal day would be like. I would be like, “Oh, creating cartoons in the morning,” and I outlined all the creative stuff I would want to do. He’s like, “So it’s not writing about personal finance, and it’s not making an e-guide about how to get out of student loan debt?”

I’m like, “No, it’s not” he’s like, “It’s cartoons” I’m like, “Yes it is,” and he said, “In the next 72 hours, before you leave Austin, you have to sell a cartoon.” I stopped and said, “What?” and he was like, “You need to put up a PayPal link, email your list of personal finance like readers” who weren’t on my list, because they liked the cartoons, but they weren’t there as an artist, or like a creative who wanted to be inspired. They were there for personal finance advice.

But he challenged me to put up a “buy here” button and say, “I have three cartoon prints for sale, first come, first serve.” Now, I didn’t even have the prints printed, and I didn’t even know what I was going to do when somebody bought one. He really pushed me to test can I sell my cartoons for money, and it was the first time ever that I put that equation together. That my cartoons could equal money, and it was the first time the rubber hit the road and I actually sent a PayPal link out to my list, and people bought.

I had two prints sell, and for me, it was the first moment that I made money off of my art to a group of people that thinks of social media, even if you don’t have an email list, being able to put it out on Facebook and just say, “I have this one print or a couple of things I’m selling. First come first serve. Here’s the link.” And it worked. And from that moment on, I knew that my only job was to test the things that worked, and to create art that I cared about.

But then consistently put it out into the world in ways that it’s for sale, because if it’s not, no one is going to — well, I have a few people ask me to create things, and buy things, and offer to do that but usually, you have to just create the opportunity for somebody to actually purchase and buy your work. So doing that for the first time is the most important step, and you would just be surprised what kind of doors it will unlock for you mentally, and it was a really significant moment for me.

[0:34:02.8] JG: Yeah, so be honest about what your ideal day and schedule looks like, and if you are not doing anything associated with that that’s going to get you there, maybe change something, and then make sure you can actually sell something.

[0:34:17.5] SH: Yeah, exactly, and I think it was Amanda Palmer’s book, The Art of Asking that I read, where she said, “At least 10% of the population is looking for a way to contribute to and pay for art,” and she said that, and I was like, “Oh interesting”. People just want a way to do that, because her musical campaign is — she had one of the biggest Kickstarters ever. All of her fans really rallied around the idea of supporting her work, and she’s like, “You just need to give them the opportunity to actually give you the money.”

And that was also a big ah-ha for me, which is like okay, I just need to create those ways in which people can pay for what really resonates with them.

[0:34:58.2] JG: Yeah, I think it was Amanda Palmer, I am paraphrasing here, but I like on her TED Talk where she says something to the effect of “you don’t have to ask people to pay you, you have to let them.”

[0:35:08.8] SH: Yes.

[0:35:09.9] JG: And that is so true. If you’ve done what you’ve done, Steph, which is be generous, give more than you take, build a community, and it’s not everybody, right? But it’s enough people. If you help enough people, literally there will be people lining up, ready to give you money. It’s amazing.

[0:35:24.5] SH: Yeah, and it is, I think, that giving mentality, and then saying what’s available. Here is a book, a children’s book, a coloring book, you know, guides, things like that. It feels really authentic, and like you said, the amount of people who are either one lining up to buy and they can’t wait to buy my next thing, or people emailing me going, “I love the book, what’s next? I want to buy it,” and giving me ideas of what to sell next.

I’m like, “Well, this is a great feeling.” It feels very much like I’m going to let you buy the things that you want. There’s no pressure, but I know that if you care about the art that I do, you’ll love and you’ll be so willing to buy the things that I create.

[0:36:06.8] JG: Yeah, I love that. I totally agree, and I remember when I started my blog, and people are telling me — and I don’t know if you went through this or not — but people are telling me, “You could monetize the blog,” and I was logging into my Word Press dashboard looking for the switch. Where do I click monetize, where money starts to — yeah, and I realize oh, I have to find out what people want and then actually let them buy it. But literally, after that first year of blogging every day, and I love that you’ve done that too, people started emailing me saying, “Can I buy something? Can I support you in some way?”

It’s a really beautiful exchange when you do it right, and like you said, I think you have to be careful that you don’t get too greedy. That it doesn’t become just about “how do I make stuff so that I can make money,” but I love that your story encourages folks who have a creative gift to share with the world that you can do it in a way where you can actually make a living.

That feels generous, and at the same time you can continue to give. I love what Chris Guillebeau says. I think he does this every time he releases some sort of product. People go, “Oh, I don’t have the hundreds of dollars to spend on this course,” or even a book or whatever, and he goes, “Well, you know the blog is always free.” We forget that. Like, “Oh yeah,” like if you are paying to host something and design it, you’re spending time, that is a generous act, and it is just a fun time to be alive, where artists can be generous, but they can also make a living, and it doesn’t have to be either or.

I don’t know about you, but that’s always my fear is I’m going to come across greedy, or I am not — because it’s actually not fun. What’s fun is to make stuff, and it’s great to get paid so I can make more stuff. It’s not fun to go, “I’m going to make this thing, and I hope it makes me rich.” That’s not as fun as going, “I’m going to make this thing, and I hope it’s amazing and really cool and people like it.”

[0:38:02.9] SH: Yeah exactly, and for me, I know that by nature I swing towards the other side, where I am worried that I’ll come across greedy. Like, “Oh, I just want to create art for art’s sake and I want to give and give and give.” So I know by nature that I’m not going to be pushing that, even if it feels like I’m marketing too much. It’s probably just right, or even not enough, and so I think as an artist just being conscientious of — I had a blogger friend tell me this once.

I was worried that I felt like I was spamming people about my book. I was like, “My book’s coming out.” I was talking to her, and she was like, “You think about your book 24/7 on your end. Nobody else, people think about it maybe 30 seconds when they open their inbox.” She was like, “You’re really like, blowing up how much you think you’re bothering people by it, because by nature, you’re giving and your whole brand is giving.” For me, that is a nice reminder that even when I feel a little squishy about a marketing stuff, that by nature I’m a giving artist, and so I am usually going to be pretty safe in doing that.

[0:39:08.7] JG: And to be honest, I think that’s what has made you so successful is the giving side of it, and I have benefited from that gift. I know lots of people listening to this as well. I hope everybody listening to it goes to arttoself.com/book and picks up a copy of your book. It’s a funny, inspiring, beautiful book, and I am grateful for your time, Steph. Thanks for being here.

[0:39:31.6] SH: Great, thanks for having me.

SH: It started exercising that muscle again when something in me came back to life that had been almost ignored

[END]

Click here to download a free PDF of the complete interview transcript.

Why Every Writer Needs an Email List

Every writer needs an email list. It’s just that simple. If you aspire to publish a book and actually sell copies some day, you need people paying attention to your work. And the best way to do that is with an email list.

So many writers don’t get the attention they deserve, and this frustrates me. Their messages fade into oblivion before they even have the chance to be heard.

Why is this? Because many writers neglect the single-most important tool to their success:

The email list.

Email is king. It is, hands down, the best way to build an engaged audience, sell a product, or create excitement around your next big project. Without one, you will struggle to get the traction your message deserves and leave your fate up to chance.

Free resource: Need help setting up and using an email list? Watch this free webinar this week.
The biggest “social network” in the world

Why is email so powerful?

Because email is personal. It’s a friendlier medium than blogging or even social media. When people see your email in their inbox along with all their other friends, this builds trust.
Because you own your email list. With Twitter and Facebook and other channels, you have to go through the “middleman” to access your audience. But with email, your message is delivered straight to your readers. You don’t need anyone’s permission.
Because email is private. When you start a conversation in someone’s inbox, they feel like they can be themselves and share whatever they may be struggling with, what they want, or questions they have. I love the rapport this builds with readers.

Nearly every person in the world has an email address. With nearly 3.9 billion accounts in the world (according to Radicati), three-quarters of which are consumer accounts, email is by far the biggest marketing channel in the world. That number is projected to reach 4.9 billion in 2017.

That means email outnumbers all the users on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and every other social media channel combined. That makes it the world’s largest social network. If you haven’t tapped into the power of email marketing, then you’re missing out on an incredible opportunity to engage with the people who want to hear from you.

Email is not dead

But wait a second. Isn’t email dead? Maybe you’ve heard this, that people don’t read email anymore or that it’s better to use Facebook or Snapchat these days. But if you’ve believed these claims, then I have bad news for you: you’ve been duped.

““Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” —EmailTweet thisTweet

If email is dead, then why does every social network ask for an email address before you can create an account? Why do most people still check email first thing in the morning? Because email is still the most popular way for people to communicate online.

Every day, people check their inboxes (often multiple times per day). They sit in front of a screen, glued to Outlook or Gmail, refreshing until they get that gratification of knowing someone else in the world cares about them.

Certainly, the way people communicate online is changing and some may not be reading or using email as much as they did a decade ago. But email is not dead — it is very much alive and well. And being almost as old as the Internet itself, it’s not going away anytime soon.

In spite of these false claims of its death, email continues to stick around, outlasting many of the marketing fads that have come and gone. Email still plays a critical role in a most people’s lives. As Barry Gill from the Harvard Business Review says:

Email is not dead, it’s just evolving. It’s becoming a searchable archive, a manager’s accountability source, a document courier. And for all the love social media get, e-mail is still workers’ most effective collaboration tool.

According to a recent study, email is still an important part of many people’s work lives, with the average person spending up to 50% of their time in the inbox. Here are some other interesting facts about email:

The average worker receives 11,680 emails per year with an average of 32 per day.
42% of all email in a person’s inbox is considered essential or critical.
Email is still considered by most to be the best collaboration tool for teams and individuals.
People use email for more than sending messages: 76% use it to exchange documents and 50% to archive important messages.

If you’ve been avoiding building your email list because it seems like an outdated technology, it’s time to face the facts. Email isn’t going anywhere. And if you’re a writer, you need one.

Why every writer needs an email list

I was talking to my publisher the other day about marketing strategies for my next book, and do you know the first question they asked was? It was: How big is your email list?” 

They didn’t ask, “How many RSS subscribers do you have?” or “How many ‘hits’ does your blog get?” They asked about my email list: the most important asset an author has in their toolbox.

My friend Tim Grahl, the book launch expert, tested this in his book marketing agency and found that email was nearly 100 times more effective than social media in selling an author’s book.

“Email is nearly 100 times more effective than social media for authors.Tweet thisTweet

I’ve personally seen this myself with a recent book launch where the book sold 15,500 copies in the first two weeks of the launch. Do you know how many of those were sold via social media? About 500. And the other 15,00? Well, that was all thanks to email.

As a writer, I get more “mileage” out of my newsletter than any other platform, including my blog. When I send an email to my list, I often get hundreds of replies, far more engagement than a blog post gets. If I send a link to my email list, people click it. If I ask a question, people answer. If I talk about my new book, people buy it.

Of course, this doesn’t just apply to writers. Musicians use email to get word out about their next tour. Retailers use it to share special deals and drive sales. And of course, authors use it to announce news of their next book.

It’s all about the list. And if you don’t have one, you’re in trouble.

How to quickly build and grow an email list

So, you need an email list. I hope that’s clear by now. But how do you get started? 6Here’s what you need to do:

Get a good email marketing service. This means more than just Outlook or Apple Mail. You need a way to send one message to lots of people all at once. For this, I recommend ConvertKit. It’s affordable and easy to get started.
Create a signup form on your website. It needs to be obvious and not hideously ugly. If your website doesn’t have a clear opt-in form, then you’re missing out on a lot. If you don’t have a self-hosted blog yet, watch this 8-minute tutorial on how to get started.
Offer something for free. This can be an eBook or a free article series or whatever your readers find valuable. It’s a way to reward subscribers with something other than just your regular content.
Start emailing your list something new once a week. Don’t overcommit to a frequency like once a day or even a few times a week. Start small and be consistent. A weekly newsletter is plenty. What should you send? Whatever you want. For many, just a short message or article is a great way to begin. Your main goal is to add value and be helpful, so that people continue to read and pay attention. If you make it about them, they’ll make it about you.
Ask readers to share. If you do a good job of adding value, people will want to share your stuff. But it doesn’t hurt to ask them once in a while to tell their friends. For this I like using clicktotweet.com and have readers send their friends and followers to my newsletter signup form.

Don’t forget: Always be generous

And then, what? Once you have the right tools and start building your list, where do you go from there?

Hopefully, forward. Instead of seeing your email list as “yours,” what if it was theirs, something you shared with your community — something you stewarded instead of hoarded?

When people give you permission to talk to them, you have a great opportunity and an important responsibility. You can choose to invite or interrupt. To exchange ideas or blast out information. To give or take. As marketing expert Seth Godin says:

If your email promotion is a taking, not a giving, I think you should rethink it. If you still want to take the time and attention and trust of your 4,000 closest friends, think hard about what that means for the connections you’ve built over the years. There are few promotional emergencies that are worth trading your reputation for.

It all comes down to trust. If you build it, they will, indeed, come.

But maybe this all sounds confusing and you aren’t quite sure where to start. I totally get that. It was for me, too. This stuff can be complicated, and sometimes you need someone to hold you by the hand and walk you through what it takes to build an email list and use this tool to grow your readership.

That’s why I’m partnering with the folks at ConvertKit this week to offer a free webinar on how to start using email marketing to grow your following, sell your books, and turn pro. You’ll learn how to set up an email and use simple automation tools that will help you focus on your writing and let the email list do the hard work.

Click here to register for free.

Interested in finding out more about building and managing an email list? Check out this free email marketing webinar to get started. Click the link to register.

Do you have an email list? Share in the comments.

Discover a Secret Well of Endless Writing Ideas

Note: This is a guest post from Todd Brison. He is an author who has been featured on CNBC, Apple News, and Inc. Magazine. You can find Todd and get some exclusive resources on his blog.

Nobody has to tell you what to write on week one of your new blog.

On week one, you are fueled by ideas and adrenaline and coffee grinds. Surely you are The Chosen One. The Muse came down from her holy mountain and selected you to be her vessel. You write with passion to the mere mortals among you.

On week one, you are unstoppable.

Then week two comes, and life isn’t quite as zippidy-doo-da.

Week three brings a heavy dose of writer’s block, self-doubt and (wait for it) reality.

If you hang in there until week six, you are a shriveling mess. What made you think you could write long-term? How could you be so foolish?

It would be nice if you could get your hands on an infinite source of ideas. What if there was a place where potential readers fall in line to ask relevant questions on any topic you want to write about?

Welcome, my friends, to Quora.

What is Quora?

Quora is a writer’s best friend. The thing is, almost nobody is using it well. Best of all, it’s free. The only thing you’ll be spending on Quora is a lot of time. But the return on that time is definitely worth the cost.

As a writer, you must have a process for coming up with ideas. I have a daily offline practice for this, but Quora is my 2nd favorite.

Quora is a place where people get tailored answers to specific questions on almost any topic. Anyone can ask a question on Quora, and anyone can answer. Much like other social media sites, the best work rises to the top via an upvote system.

Here’s the link to the site. You can jump right in if you want, but I recommend sticking around. I’ve been obsessed with Quora for over a year. I’ve written 110 posts there (most of them in the last few months), and I want to give you a few tips I’ve picked up along the way.

In this post, I’ll walk through how to use this site to find ideas for your audience, and also get your work found by some of the world’s biggest publications.

I’ve used Quora to:

Test ideas that, with a little tweaking, have become staples of my work
Get over a million views from a very targeted audience
Be published in Inc. Magazine and Apple News
Put a big footprint on another social platform (which is helping me look like I’m everywhere at once)

All those benefits pale in comparison to this one: when you know how to use Quora correctly, you will never wonder what to write about again.

If that sounds good to you, let’s get started:

Step 1 — Register on the right foot

The first (hopefully obvious) step is to sign up for Quora and follow the subjects you write about.

Let’s pretend you run a film blog. You talk about everything from the opinionated — greatest movies of all time —  to the technical — how to get the perfect shot for your scene. Quora makes you select 10 topics you are interested in, so knock that out first.

After you get past this part, Quora will ask you what topics you know about so they can give you the best questions to answer.

First, select the topics with the largest amount of followers (“Movies,” in this example). You should also take a look at more targeted topics with a medium amount of followers.

The reason for this is simple — you want to be a part of the big conversations AND the smaller ones. The large communities give you the opportunity for more visibility. The smaller ones allow for deeper connections.

In this scenario, you would definitely want your voice heard in the biggest category — “Movies.” After a further search, you might also find section like “Independent Film.” With 70,000 followers you access a sizable but very focused audience.

Quora is full of small, tight communities around specialized knowledge. The more you know about an obscure topic, the better your chance of making real impact in that area.

Once you choose whether to add your Facebook friends (or not), Quora will create your personalized feed.

Pro tip: Okay, only picking the topics to write about in the onboarding is the laziest way to do it.

As you move into step 2 and start to get familiar with Quora, make sure to keep an eye on the topics listed above all questions. These will show you what else you might be able to write about.

Always be looking for more topics to follow and write about.The deeper you get, the greater your opportunity.

Step 2 — Lurk like a pro

I’d recommend taking a while to read the questions and answers. Quora is still pretty fresh, which means the community is still very wary of people who are coming to sell them things. Pitch too aggressively, and you will get eaten alive.

Study everything, especially the most popular answers. Usually they have:

A well thought out point (300–750 words or so)
A picture
Some kind of humor (especially sarcasm)
A list of some kind or another

The key to success in Quora is to become one of them. Read the top answers and get comfortable.

As you scroll, also recognize how answers appear in the feed. Just because you’re here to source ideas doesn’t mean you shouldn’t avoid making waves on Quora itself.

Take a look at the picture below:

Both these pieces of are laid out pretty similarly. There’s profile of the writer, the question, a picture, and then the start of an answer.

But in this case, the cropping of the picture made 10,000 upvotes worth of difference! Who would want to click on a black square combined with a forehead?

In order to master Quora, it helps to think like a user.

Pro tip: As you browse, take a look at how the best answers are formatted.

Quora is unique because it only offers three types of formatting: bold, italics, and quote type. Robbed of the usual size and font changes you can use on your blog, you’ll have to get creative to keep your answers from looking like a grey wall of text.

Using the tilda (~), the less than (>), or the caps lock button (HELLO) are all acceptable methods of formatting.

For optimal formatting in action, check out this answer.

Step 3 — Answer questions to make your mark

Don’t waste your time with the newest questions (at least not yet), go find the most popular ones.

What you’re looking here is the amount of followers a question has. This is where we run into Quora’s unique mechanic:

People follow questions, not answers or people. That means your writing has just as much a chance of reaching people as someone with thousands of followers.

The best part? Even if a question been answered hundreds of times, everyone following the question will get an email when a new answer is posted (unless they’ve opted out).

So by simply answering a question, you send a direct email to a stranger with your content. What other social platform offers that kind of power?

Put answers on the popular questions first and watch the views roll in. Once you’ve got down the culture and the atmosphere of Quora, move along to the newer questions and try to be the first one in on a potentially hot question.

Pro tip: Okay, I thought this might be a little-known tactic, but I didn’t know HOW scarce until I researched this post.

Every topic on Quora has a topics page. If you take a look at that topics page, there’s a very small button under the header that says “Topics FAQ.”

These are the questions topic moderators have considered to be most representative of the topic. They are always pinned to the page and always going to be seen if a person comes to that part of the topic.

But look at this — almost nobody is answering them!

If I were writing on a specialized topic like movies, I would definitely try to write comprehensive, long, helpful answers on every single one of these FAQs. In my mind, it’s a no-brainer.

Step 4 — Take your answers to write posts on your site

Fair warning: Quora alone typically doesn’t lead to Internet fame.

I have to confess, when I first started answering questions on Quora in late 2015, I stopped almost immediately.

I wasn’t getting any traffic back to my website even though I had plenty of links to do so. I wrote it off and moved along.

Thank goodness I got a chance to overcome this shortsightedness.

Quora acts like a walled garden in most cases. Once you’re in, you don’t normally click things to go somewhere else. It does, however, give you a clue about what is resonating with your audience.

If you don’t have that many followers yet, it doesn’t matter how many upvotes you’re getting. What you’re looking for here is percentage of upvotes. If you see a few early upvotes (even if only 15 people have seen your answer) that’s a good indication the idea is resonating.

Here’s a prime example of how that could work.

I stumbled across this question one day:

I can’t find the right career, which upsets me. I’m a 25- year-old introvert with too many interests yet too much ambition. What do I do?

I knocked out an answer pretty quickly on my phone. Although the answer was pretty well thought out, I didn’t edit or format it very much. Look at the stats on the bottom of this question.

Only 9 upvotes. This post is a flop! Right?

Let’s look again.

Right at 1,000 views. Honestly, that’s not many. Half of this views and all of those 9 upvotes came in the first 24 hours. This tells me the idea itself is not flawed. It just hasn’t had enough eyeballs on it.

I re-wrote the first couple sentences, expanded on a few more of the thoughts, and published to Medium, where it launched over the 500 recommends mark (a big milestone).

I have a much larger following on Medium than Quora, so that accounts for a bit of the boost, but still — since you can give your work a fresh boost through another channel for no extra effort, why wouldn’t you?

And if it’s really working on Quora, it will likely work elsewhere too. I wrote an answer on my phone riding to a hotel which did quite well on Quora, and then EXPLODED on Medium. To this day, it is my most popular post.

Take a look at the side-by-side comparison here. Notice I didn’t just copy and paste each post, but have put thought into the introduction of each one.

You can see the all the changes I’ve made (which aren’t many) right here:

The Quora answer
The Medium post

Pro tip: Okay, I almost feel guilty for admitting this one. Immediately after my guilt, though, I feel hesitation. This trick is SO easy, I almost want to keep it for myself.

But I love you too much to do that.

When you are trying to grab the attention of a world scrolling through their feeds at a million miles per hour, writing a good headline is 95% of your job. No kidding, If I spend an hour writing a post, it often takes me 20 to 30 minutes to pick the right headline.

Sourcing ideas from Quora removes that problem. How? When you find a question on Quora that’s worth answering, and it’s followed by a lot of people, your headline writes itself.

Scroll back up and look at the two stories I transferred from Quora to Medium. The headlines are very similar to the questions themselves.

It’s almost like cheating.

Step 5 — Bring your existing work into Quora

In addition to using Quora to source content to pull out, you can also bring in work you’ve done on another medium.

Like I mentioned earlier, make sure you tweak what you’ve said a little bit to answer the question asked directly. This is a great way to increase the impact of work you are already proud of.If you are afraid to recycle old content (like I was), ask yourself this question:

“Has every single person who could learn something from this post gotten a chance to see it yet?”

For me, the answer was a resounding NO. I finally got over the hump, and posted an answer to a question from a blog post I had written over a year ago.

The result?

Nearly half a million views, thousands of upvotes, over 100 comments. Oh, and one request from a Quora editor to republish the work on Inc. Magazine’s website.

Not half bad for work I had completely forgotten about.

A final thought

Hopefully by now, I don’t have to convince you Quora is an excellent way to further your impact, source ideas, and grow deeper roots into your niche.

Still, I can’t help but leave you with one last thing. The other day, I was scrolling through my feed looking for questions when I saw this post:

“That’s odd,” I thought. “This post is dated November 2012. Wonder why I’m seeing it in my feed in 2016…”

Sometimes, I am not very smart. A few days later, though, I was offered a chance to understand what was going on with this post:

Again, a post from 2012.

This time, I got it.

I’m seeing this post because Quora’s algorithm gives readers the best content possible, no matter when it was written. (For the record, Medium is starting to do the same thing).

When you publish a post on your personal blog, it’s gone in an instant. On Quora, new readers can discover your best work by chance, even if it’s months or years old.

So, we’ve got a platform which offers you:

Infinite ideas
A chance to connect with targeted readers
Direct emails to those readers with your writing
Free recycling of your old work to new people

Knowing all those things, I only have one question left:

What are you waiting for?

Never run out of ideas

To tell you the truth, even if Quora disappeared off the face of the planet today, I would not run out of things to write about.

Why? Because coming up with infinite ideas is a mindset, not a tactic.

For a deeper look into this mindset, sign up for my email list and get a copy of my free eBook — The Ultimate Guide to Infinite Ideas.

Where do you get your creative ideas? What inspires your writing? Share in the comments.

137: The Most Important Decision Facing Creatives Today: Interview with Richard Florida

Anyone who has has bought or sold a home knows the three rules of real estate: location, location, location. As it turns out, realtors can teach us creatives a valuable lesson.

In the last 20 years we’ve gone from flip phones and no global Internet access to smartphones and wifi hotspots in our pockets. With the rate of technological innovation and the ability to work from anywhere doing anything, we can live wherever we want, right?

Not so, according to bestselling author, University of Toronto professor, and urban studies theorist, Richard Florida.

This week on The Portfolio Life, Richard and I talk about the power of place and why geography matters so much, especially to those in the creative class. Listen in as we discuss why you can live in fewer places than ever, and the lifecycle of migration to and from iconic metropolitan areas.

Listen to the podcast

To listen to the show, click the player below (If you’re reading this via email, please click here).

Show highlights

In this episode, Richard and I discuss:

How to know if you’re a member of the creative class
What people want from work beyond a paycheck
Why “cool” matters and what it really means to creatives
The role of city leaders in developing communities that attract creative talent
Why you can’t live and work from just anywhere with wifi
How to take socio-economical information and practically use it
Why cities with higher inequality have greater opportunity for creatives

Quotes and takeaways

“When a place gets boring even the rich people leave.” –Jane Jacobs
“Don’t sacrifice your passions for money, it’s always a mistake.” –Richard Florida
Choosing where you life is the most important decision because all your other choices flow from it.
The creative class has the opportunity, ability, and responsibility to do something about the bigger issues in society.
Not all places are created equal.

“The creative class has the opportunity, ability & responsibility to do something about the bigger issues in society.Tweet thisTweet
Resources

The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida
Who’s Your City? by Richard Florida
CreativeClass.com

Why do you live where you live? Given the option, where would you move to do the work you love? Share in the comments

Click here to download a free PDF of the complete interview transcript or scroll down to read it below.

Episode 137

RF: Realizing that the place you choose to live — whether you make a conscious choice or not, you’re making a choice — has a critical effect on your ability to do everything in your life.

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:21.9] JG: Have you ever wondered what makes some people successful and other people not? This is a question that has bugged me for a long, long time. Because everybody has a different opinion about it. Some say it’s all about luck. Others say hard work, you just have to hustle through it, and yet my guest on this week’s episode of The Portfolio Life says it’s something entirely different. Place.

Professor Richard Florida is the author of The Rise of The Creative Class and a number of other books that have come after it that all deal with this idea of the geography of creativity and why certain talented individuals are attracted to certain places in the world and in a certain country over others. This explains all kinds of interesting thing about why certain economies emerge and why some people become so much better than their peers by hanging around with other people who are doing interesting work.

It’s a pretty interesting thing yet it’s something that I have suspected for a long time. He takes a fascinating scientific approach to it that I love hearing about. I hope that this episode encourages you and even challenges you that success is within your grasp if you’re willing to make a few important changes, which professor Florida talks about.

So, without further ado, here’s my chat with Richard Florida.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:01:35.8] JG: Well, professor Florida, thanks for taking the time to chat with me today?

[0:01:39.9] RF: Oh, it’s great to be with you Jeff.

[0:01:41.6] JG: I want to talk about something that I hope you’re not tired of talking about, which is this term the “creative class”.

[0:01:47.1] RF: No, I’m not tired of talking about it, I kind of like it.

[0:01:50.6] JG: Yeah, well I want to talk about what’s changed since you wrote The Rise of The Creative Class, but before we get to that, what is the creative class, just in a brief definition?

[0:02:00.9] RF: You know, before I wrote the original book in 2002, people talked about “knowledge workers” or “think workers”. Or economists, they had a term they called “human capital”, that’s what we were, we were human capital. The way they typically define that is whether you had a college degree or not. If you had a college degree, you were a human capital or a knowledge worker and if not, you were somebody else.

So I thought back into lots of things I had read by classical economist and I thought the way our society was shaping up, it wasn’t just our education who determined what we do and who we are, it’s the kind of jobs we do. So, I went back to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, they have data on over 800 actual occupations, actual jobs and I identified people that do work that requires their knowledge, their mental skill, their cognitive skill and their creativity.

Creativity in fact I think is what makes us all human. You see it every little bot and girl, it’s something we share. So that would include the typical knowledge worker, the business professional, the management worker, it would include the science and technology worker, the engineer or the scientist, the person who works in a high tech startup at Silicon Valley Company. But it also includes artist and musicians and people work in entertainment and media and writers and journalist and all that sort of thing.

Initially, I was kind of skeptical and I really was. So we did two things: one, we look at the share of people who do this kind of work across every city in the metropolitan area in the United States and we actually traced it back to 1,900. We couldn’t do that for every city in metro but we can do it for the country as a whole. When the statistics came back, I was shocked. More than a third of us in the United States were involved in this kind of work where as a century ago in the year 1,900, less than 5% of us did this kind of work.

But when I looked across cities and metros, there were some places where less than 15% of people did this kind of work and other places were nearly 50% of people did this work. So I was like, “Oh my god, this is much bigger than I think,” and just for folks listening in, my view was, if the blue collar worker and the man in the grey flannel suit and the organization man was the kind of typical worker of my father’s era, this creative class worker, this person who works with their mind and their creativity, this scientist, this business professional, this manager was really the kind of worker and class of our time.

[0:04:14.6] JG: So how do you know if you’re a member of the creative class? Is everybody now a member of the creative class?

[0:04:18.8] RF: Well, I write them a personal note in the mail and they pick it up and then they know they’re officially in. I don’t think people know. I think one of the reasons the book became so popular and a bestseller is because people said, “Oh yeah.” I didn’t expect that, I was writing a social science tone, with lots of statistics and data, but people picked up the book and said, you know, they told me this. That they never happened to me. I’ve written many other books.

“Oh, you’ve described me, that’s the way I am,” and I think the reason I did that is because I was just out in the field talking to people and kind of looking at them and talking with what their motivations and desire and passions were. So, I think increasingly though, people have come to see and one of the things I wrote in the book is that it’s not just what we do, we kind of share a similar set of values.

The creative class is more purpose driven, it’s more meaning driven. Money is important but it’s not the only thing. I looked at what people want in work; what they want in work is not just a big salary and stock options. Yeah, that was on the list, but that was more like your fifth or 10th. What they wanted was a great environment to work in, great peers, great coworkers to work with, to work on great challenging projects, to have flexibility to do their work. To be able to dress the way they want. So all of these things became really important to people in the work they do.

[0:05:30.7] JG: Yeah, you told the story that I thought was fascinating, you were on the campus of the university and you ran into a tech company I think, if I’m remembering correctly, and they were just sort of hanging out on the quad or something. And what you — I think this was actually in Pittsburg — and what you realized was all of this students, this graduates who were sought after for employees for this different companies that we’re trying to get them to come work for them, they were leaving Pittsburg, which one time and still today, in many ways has a lot of industry there. They were moving to places like Austin because it was cooler, not just because they’re getting paid better, better employment opportunities but because the environment of the city was more appealing to them in terms of their lifestyle. Am I remembering that story correctly?

[0:06:17.1] RF: Yeah, I’ve actually became friends with the guy who I profile, it was the guy with the earrings. He’s made quite a migration, he’s moved to a few places and actually back in Austin now to become one of the leading designers in the world. Yeah, I think what Pittsburg was really interesting for me because I moved there to be part of the economic revival of the city. I was hired to run a research center at the Carnegie University which is key to that revival to help work with the mayors, to work with city officials, the universities. Heck, my students took over many of the leading positions in economic development and technology transfer.

You know, what we were doing wasn’t working and I tell the story in that book, when I went off to do a sabbatical at Harvard, I learned that one of our big tech companies was moving to Boston. Not because Boston gave it financial incentives or bribes or tax incentives but because the people they needed to do the work. So I came back, and the story you described, I asked my students you know, “How many of you want to stay in Pittsburg?” and not a hand went up.

What I found is, even though I thought Pittsburg was a great city with great architecture, great neighborhoods, great industrial feel if you will, great universities, they wanted to go to places like Austin or New York or san Francisco, or Seattle, I could go on. There are self-evident places — Boston — that had this kind of more up to date outlook, that were more diverse, more open minded, more to do, more young people, more fun, more energy was the word they used, you know? I was puzzled over this, “What do they mean more energy?”

But as I dug into it, what they really were saying is “a place that’s open to my skill and ability”. It’s not just a fun place, it’s not just a place with coffee shops and latte bars. Not just a place with great music, it’s not just a place that values gay people and women and young people. It’s a place where I can make a difference, where I don’t have to be a middle aged white man that everything about this city says it’s open to talent and ability, not gender or race or ethnicity. So that’s what they were seeing and we were witnessing in this country a great migration and it’s still continuing.

With anything, it’s gotten more of this creative class people to a really, a couple of dozen, maybe 20 metropolitan areas, and again, what places like Pittsburg have bounced back, what places like Detroit or building themselves fine little creative clusters. We really still see this migration to these 20 or so places that have fully grown creative economy. That’s been my work, it’s trying to tell people, on the one hand, where you choose to live is really important — I wrote a book on this called, Who’s Your City? — where you choose to live is really the most important decision you’ll make.

And it’s how city leaders, business leaders, and mayors, you’ve got to get with this thing and it’s not just about building a convention center and a couple of stadiums and giving business tax rates. You’ve got to make yourself an exciting place and I call it “quality of place”, not quality of life. You’ve got to have a place people want to come to.

Click here to download a free PDF of the complete interview transcript or scroll down to continue reading it below.

[0:08:56.4] JG: Can you elaborate a little bit more on that? You talk a lot about the power of place in your book and in your work and why geography matters so much. In fact, you cited that study where you realized that not all places are creatively equal, where some places have more of these creative clusters than others. Why is place so important? Especially if I want to do creative work or I want to do something innovative in my career, why is moving to one city over another an important decision and how do I make that choice?

[0:09:25.3] RF: Well it’s so puzzling, you would think, with the internet and technology and cellphones, smart phones, you could live anywhere you want. In fact, you can live fewer places than ever — there’s a couple of reasons you know? One is because your professional network, your ability to get work, especially if you’re not working for a big company. If increasingly you’re working as a freelancer or shifting jobs because companies aren’t loyal to you anymore, the place you live is where your professional network is and where the people who do your work.

The second thing is, many of this industries themselves are concentrated, you want to be in movies, you pretty much have to go to LA. If you want to be in finance and investment, I guess you go work for Warren Buffett, right? But other than that, you’ve got to be in New York or London. If you want to do music, there are a few more places; you can go to LA or you can go to Nashville, you can go to New York, but there aren’t a lot of places. So in many of these fields, the opportunity set is pretty constrained.

Then I think, the other thing is, what I talk about in my book is, you want to find friends, there are a lot more people like you in a big city like New York or LA or Chicago or even San Francisco or Boston. If you want to get married, you’ve got to go with the boys and I heard that in my research, “Yeah I moved to XYZ and it was fine but I had no friends. My work was great, I worked for this interesting company,” and what happens if you get laid off? Where do you go to work? There’s no other jobs, you’ve got to move.

So I think for all those reasons that in my book I call it quality of place and of course that means having a great job market. I called it “a thick labor market”. Having a great market to meet other people, I called it “a thick mating market” and then having all the other things people like to do, places to go out, places to do things, places to meet your friends and I said this, not just a lot of bars. You know one of the things that really stuck me is when I asked young people, they said, “You know we can’t afford the recovery time.” They want things that are more interesting to do to wind down rather than just go get obliterated.

So I think all of those things make for an interesting city. One of the things that’s happened since I have written the book, which is really surprising to me is the amount of young skilled creative class people who have poured back into the inner city. I think yeah, I saw the glimmer of that trend, but you look at what is happening from cities from Los Angeles, to New York, to Chicago, to even Detroit and Miami, the number of young people moving into formerly dilapidated industrial zones and remaking them is quite shocking actually and lots of others have studied this.

I think what they’re finding is that young people want to be around vibrant exciting places where they don’t have to drive, where they can spend more time doing the things they love, where they can be around other people and have interesting things to do and that’s part of being a creative person. You can’t turn it off, you want creative stimuli around you. So I think all of those things mean that we’re not only working differently, we’re living differently as well.

[0:12:09.1] JG: I spoke to somebody who is talking about places that have historically been creative hotbeds, hotbeds of creativity like New York City, and that over time this person observed that these places become more and more expensive to live. New York is a great example, San Francisco, and then what happens is the places that were made interesting and I guess the creative by artists, those same places tend to push those people out because they’re expensive places to live. Have you seen anything like that with your research?

[0:12:38.2] RF: Well, we should talk about in about a year and I’d like to come back. It’s what my new book is a large part about. So I am working on a new book now which is just about done. It’s going to come out right about a year from this conversation. A couple of things; Jane Jacobs who was my mentor at the greatest Urbanist, late urbanist now, she’d be approaching 100 years of age if she was still alive. When I met her after I wrote — so she lived a little bit longer than when I wrote Rise of the Creative Class.

When I saw her last, she said something very interesting to me, “When a place gets boring even the rich people leave,” and what she meant by that is, the artists and creatives cultivate a neighborhood and then it becomes more status oriented and attracts professional people and then yuppies and then the super rich. Then it becomes boring and even they leave and it goes to recycle. I think we’re seeing that. I don’t think we’re seeing that in lots of places.

So I think we’re seeing it in Manhattan and obviously there’s been a lot of — Patty Smith has said it’s terrible and David Byrne from The Talking Head said it’s terrible and Moby said, “With that I moved to LA.” We are seeing parts in LA although what we’re seeing is a nest of migration of artists into downtown LA, which is very interesting and we’re seeing it in London and in tech, we’re certainly seeing it in San Francisco because San Francisco has now displaced the Silicon Valley as the number one center of venture capital, the downtown neighborhoods of San Francisco.

What’s happened of course is we have this competition for limited space. We have the art galleries and the artist and the tech companies and the rich people and the yuppies and they all want to live in the same very small number of neighborhoods. What’s generally been happening though, aside from a movement of artists from New York to LA, what we tend to be seeing is that people are spreading out in those areas. So they’re moving from Brooklyn and Brooklyn is becoming more expensive and they’re moving to Queens or they’re moving to Jersey City. Or some people are moving out to Hudson New York.

So I think in London the same thing but I do think it’s an issue and many people in my field say the big part of the problem is that we’ve not built enough urban housing. That we’ve been building suburban housing and we’re limiting the development, we have too many lands use resurrections that limit the development of urban housing and too many people don’t want more housing. So it pushes the prices up. But it is a very real issue and it’s an issue that is really reared his head in the past several years. That said, I think it is still having a limited effect. It hasn’t really caused New York or London to tumble down. They are still ranked as premier creative centers, but I think that’s now reaching a tipping point.

[0:14:59.9] JG: So what are — this is super interesting and I’m just wondering, what’s the practical implications of all of this? You write in The Rise of the Creative Class that it’s time for the creative class to grow up and take responsibility but first, we have to recognize who we are and you talk a lot about that in the book. And I often talk to people who want to do creative work, want to write books, or make music, or whatever and they’ll list these long lines of excuses or reasons why they can’t succeed because they don’t live in this place or they can’t just up and move their family across the country, or across the globe. And I’m just wondering, how do you respond to that? How do we take this very interesting sociological information and make practical use of it?

[0:15:42.6] RF: Well I would encourage people to buy my book, Who’s Your City, or just go my website at creativeclass.com and take our place finder decision tool that we have built for precisely this reason. We built a simple decision tool. Every one of my students do an assignment on it to think about where they’re going to live and not only move after graduation but make their career. But I think there’s a couple of things.

One, I think realizing that the place you choose to live — whether you make a conscious choice or not, you’re making a choice — has a critical effect on your ability to do everything in your life, to pursue your career, your work, your love life, to educate your children, all of that. So just be aware of it like the way you are choosing your career. We have tons of dating sites and advice on marriage and tons of advice on career. We don’t have any advice, and I argue, I think choosing the place you live is more important because all of those other choices flow from it. So that’s number one.

Number two, I think don’t sacrifice your passion for money. It’s always a mistake. I talk to students almost every month who say, “I got this great job in consulting or finance and I am miserable.” Clay Christiansen at Harvard teaches a whole course now on your life strategy because he found that so many of the super successful people from Harvard Business School go off and make a lot of money and they’re miserable. Their marriages blow up, their lives blow up, their wives or husbands or kids don’t love them because they’ve not thought about the breadth of what makes a meaningful life. So I think if you’re a creative person, you’re naturally inclined to find meaning and purpose in your life and that’s what you should do.

And then thirdly and I think this is the big wake up call for all of us. I said in that book, the creative class should wakeup, should stop just pursuing their own passion and renovating their own little town house or their lovely country farm home or loft, and thinking with their friends in their little neighborhood, they could make urban tribe, make a great life, that there are bigger issues in society. And I think now in the United States when we see the rise of, not necessarily Donald Trump, but we’ve seen the rise of what happens in a backlash of angry people being left behind and my research shows this, those of us in the creative clash are doing pretty well.

Even when we take housing to account, we have a lot of money left over to spend on other things. It may not seem that way, but compared to people who work in factories or people who work in these low end service jobs, they’re the ones getting pushed out of these expensive cities. They’re the ones falling into poverty and despair. They’re the ones seeing opportunity dry up for their kids. So it’s not surprising to me that they are finding these more fringe political movements to be part of and express their anger. That means we no longer have an America which is a whole society but an America which is two or three societies.

So in that sense, the good news Jeff is I think young people get this and I think young people that I teach and young people around the country are saying “It’s not just enough for me to do well. I’ve got to be committed to a society to do well. I’ve to make sure that my society is more inclusive.” So I think that’s why we’re heading and I hope this is just a blip this split divided society, and I certainly know mayors, not our national politicians but mayors, republican and democrat all over this country are working to build more inclusive societies with more opportunity for all.

And the last thing I will say on that note, if you want opportunity and if you want to go to a city that provides opportunity, believe it or not, the cities with the highest level of — this sounds paradoxical, but the cities with the highest level of inequality, the cities that even have the most divisions are often have the most mobility. The cities like New York or LA or San Francisco, may be expensive and they may come up as having high inequality, but even for lower income people, working people, they have more opportunity. Because a bigger and better labor markets. So I think for all of those reasons, it maybe time where it looks like, “Oh we have to grow up, and we should but I think I’m optimistic looking for the long run.”

[0:19:16.8] JG: Wow, so great. Thanks for your time Richard.

[0:19:18.9] RF: Hey thank you Jeff. It’s a pleasure being with you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:19:28.0] JG: Well there you go, that was my conversation with Richard Florida. I hope it challenged you. It certainly challenged me to think a little bit differently about not just having how to make creative work to succeed but rather where and who I need to help that work grow and spread and at the same time, I didn’t feel like just because I’ve lived in a certain city that I was somehow doomed to fail. So hopefully you felt the same.

A big special thanks to Professor Richard Florida for taking some time to chat with us and thank you for listening. I hope this helps you take the next step in building your portfolio. Thanks and have a great day.

RF: Not just what we do, we share a similar set of values. The creative class is more purpose driven, it’s more meaning driven. Money is important, but it’s not the only thing.

Click here to download a free PDF of the complete interview transcript.

Don’t Take the Leap, Build a Bridge to Your Dreams

My freshman year of college, I had a crush on a girl named Lane. With curly hair and a sweet smile, Lane was cute. She was also two years older than me.

Since I had just broken up with my girlfriend, I was eager to get back in the game of dating, and Lane seemed to be the perfect girl. When I told my friends I was going to ask her out, they asked how I was going to do it.

“I thought I’d just call her,” I said.

“What?!” my friend Doug exclaimed. He was always the romantic. “Jeff, are you kidding me? You’ve got to sweep this girl off her feet. Go big or go home, man.”

So I did what any college male with a guitar in the corner of his dorm room would do: I wrote Lane a song. At ninety seconds of pure lyrical delight, it was the essence of romance and took me only a few days to write.

One Saturday afternoon, I picked up the phone and called Lane’s number.

Three rings, and then a click.

“Hello?” a voice answered. It was her.

I slammed the phone against the receiver, grabbed my guitar, and stepped outside, shutting the door behind me. Because now I knew Lane was home. Racing across campus with guitar strap slung over my shoulder, I ran to her dorm.

Catching my breath in the lobby, I waited for someone to let me in, then walked straight to her door and knocked.

The door opened. And I stepped into a room full of people.

Going for broke

About half a dozen people were sitting around Lane’s living room, chatting as college students tend to do on a Saturday afternoon. As soon as I entered the room, they all turned to me. Lane smiled nervously and looked at me. I didn’t say a word.

Swinging the guitar from behind my back, I pulled it up to my chest and began to play. For the next one and a half minutes, I serenaded Lane, trying my best to ignore the onlookers.

The song finished with the on-key line: “Will you go to the dance with me?”

When I resolved with that final strum of the C chord, I looked at Lane, waiting for her answer.

She looked at me. I looked back at her. And everyone else looked at us.

And I waited.

Taking a deep breath, I grinned at her with fake confidence. This was the moment I had been waiting for, what I had been working up to for weeks now. I had, as my friends suggested, gone big, laying all my cards on the table. Now it was up to her.

Lane opened her mouth and let out two soul-crushing words: “I… can’t.”

My head dropped in defeat.

“I’m sorry.”

Shoulders slumped, I nodded, pretending to understand. But then I did something even worse: I didn’t leave!

Instead of excusing myself, I sat down in the middle of the room and tried to blend in. As if somehow that would be less embarrassing than just playing a song in front of a bunch of people, getting rejected by a girl, and then leaving.

I attempted to join the conversations, only to be greeted by looks of curiosity. But I played it cool: “What, that? That thing I just did? Oh, I do that every Saturday. In fact, I have three more gigs lined up today! This is just another stop on the College Dormitory Rejection Tour.”

Unable to bear the awkwardness any longer, I finally got up, walked across the room, and excused myself. Lane rushed to the door to see me out, walking with me through the hallway. “Well, thanks for my song!” she said sweetly.

Through gritted teeth, I mustered in the most sarcastic voice possible, “Oh, my pleasure. I aim to entertain.” And I left.

The truth about the leap

After that incident, it would be a long time before I would ever do something so audacious for a girl again. But looking back now, I understand how it happened the way it did.

Why did Lane shut me down? Probably because I had uttered a total of one hundred words to her in the previous year we had known each other. In my mind, I had built up the fantasy of a relationship without ever sharing the vision with her.

I think we do the same thing with our dreams.

First, we flirt with them from afar.

Then we fantasize, imagining what life will be like when we are united with what we love, without ever doing any real work. We wait, building up courage, and save all our passion for the big day when we will abandon everything and go for it.

And finally, we take the leap.

Sometimes, though, we don’t make it to the other side. We fall on our faces. Doing our best to pick ourselves up, we dust ourselves off and try again.

But if this happens enough, we begin to tell ourselves a familiar story. We remind ourselves that the world is a cold, cruel place, and maybe there’s no room in it for my dream. We get disillusioned and make the worst mistake you can make with a calling: we save all our energy for the leap instead of building a bridge.

The problem with how we chase our passions is that reality doesn’t always conform to how things appear in our minds. Lane said no because she didn’t know me. And as much as I would have liked to think differently, I didn’t really know her.

Relationships take time, as do dreams. They’re full of routines and unexciting work that make them unfit for a movie script but appropriate for real life.

For nearly a decade, I did this with my passion for writing. I dreamed of it, talked about it, even made “plans” for when luck would come my way and I’d be able to do what I love for a living. All along, though, I was kidding myself, believing the myth of the leap, which was the very thing holding me back from my dream.

When it comes to chasing a dream, don’t take a leap. Don’t go all in. Not yet, anyway. Take your time and build a bridge.

It takes longer and doesn’t look particularly “sexy” but this is the way to build things that last — not by taking a giant leap but by building a bridge.

“Build a bridge before you take a leap.Tweet thisTweet
Dreaming done right

A year and a half after moving to Burundi, the second poorest country in Africa, Ben and Kristy Carlsons turned their love for coffee into a business. They wanted to help as many people as possible, and they saw the potential for Long Miles Coffee to be something significant. So they went all in.

Committed to providing fair prices to farmers and inspired by Benjamin Zander’s words that “money follows contribution,” they decided to make a go for it with the business. They didn’t know everything before taking that step, but they trusted that things would come together.

“I’m not saying everyone should run out and quit their jobs,” Kristy wrote me. “I am saying that some risks are worth taking and that as we take them, opportunities often open up.”

And so far, it has worked out.

Just the other day, I was at a coffee shop and saw some of their coffee on the shelf. Apparently, things are really starting to take off for them. By no means did they play it safe, but neither did they risk everything as we sometimes think we must in order to chase a dream.

As part of writing my fourth book The Art of Work in which their story appears, I asked Kristy how long her “leap” took. She told me ten years.

Ten years! That’s not quite a leap. If it is, they were moving in slow motion, like one of the characters jumping from building to building in the Matrix. But this is how you chase your dreams. Slowly and intentionally. Sometimes, amazing things happen suddenly. I’m not saying that won’t happen. But don’t count on it. Count on the work being hard and long, and learn to love the work.

That’s the best advice I can give.

“Count on the work being hard and long, and learn to love the work.Tweet thisTweet

At one point during our interview process, I made the mistake of suggesting the Carlsons made the leap due to a sense of being called to something great, which Kristy Carlson corrected me:

I think placing words like ‘greatness’ near us makes it seem as if we are not your average human beings, and we really are. Any person could move in the direction that we did if it seemed like the right fit for them, even if it’s just one small step at a time.

What is your big dream? How can you build a bridge to it before you take a leap? Share in the comments.

136: When Your Cartooning Side Hustle Overtakes Your Day Job: Interview with Adam Walker Cleaveland

As children, many of us dreamed of becoming artists, writers, or photographers. Unfortunately, this creative bent was often lost at school or in front of a computer screen. But what if you could rediscover your passion and unlock a new calling?

This week’s guest on The Portfolio Life, was always drawing as a kid. He took calligraphy classes and even attended a young authors’ conference while writing and illustrating books in elementary school.

However, this all stopped the moment his family got a computer and the Internet. While he dove into web design in high school and college, he became disconnected from tactile art for years into adulthood.

Listen in as Adam Walker Cleveland and I talk about his journey through full-time ministry and how rediscovering a childhood passion for cartooning led to growing an international audience and selling over $63,000 worth of art in one month.

Listen to the podcast

To listen to the show, click the player below (If you’re reading this via email, please click here).

Show highlights

In this episode, Adam and I discuss:

If getting paid for your art rob you of the joy found in making it
Hiding in a confessional instead of a cubicle
Drawing sketchnotes to go along with sermons as a Presbyterian minister
How one Instagram post from an influencer resulted in $5,000 worth of pre-orders overnight for his first product
Which services and systems Adam uses to fulfill orders
Why adult coloring books have grown so popular
The insurmountable challenge of trying to do everything
How art is both a business and a calling

Takeaways

The life of a solopreneur can be really exhausting.
Just because you’re good at something, doesn’t mean you should start a business.
Get help early on. It doesn’t make sense for you to do everything.
Sometimes work and play overlap.
It’s not uncommon to have one view when you get started and experience a pivot as you gain momentum.

Resources

Adam’s Illustrated Children’s Ministry
078: Use Sketchnotes to Deliberately Capture Meaningful Ideas: Interview with Mike Rohde
The Mom Creative
The E-myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
Startup vs. Lifestyle Business with Fizzle’s Corbett Barr

What was your favorite art form as a kid? When was the last time you created something for the joy of it? Share in the comments

Click here to download a free PDF of the complete interview transcript or scroll down to read it below.

Episode 136

AWC: The freedom that you desire by becoming an entrepreneur and starting your own business, you lose that almost as soon as you get it.

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:18.7] JG: Welcome to The Portfolio Life, I’m Jeff Goins and this is a show that helps you pursue work that matters, make a difference with your art and discover your true voice. I’m your host and I want to help you find, develop, and live out your own creative calling so that you too can live a portfolio life.

So let’s get started.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:37.0] JG: So, I was just reading this blogpost on your blog, Becoming a Solopreneur. In the past year, some stuff has changed for you?

[0:00:43.8] AWC: Yeah.

[0:00:44.4] JG: Tell me about it.

[0:00:45.8] AWC: We moved to Illinois at the north shore for a job that I took at a Presbyterian church up here and it was one of those jobs where everything looks good initially and then there are some things that happen along the way that leads you to believe, “Oh, that’s what they were looking for actually.”

[0:01:06.4] JG: Which sadly seem to happen a lot with churches.

[0:01:09.8] AWC: Oh yeah, it’s not a new story. It’s not a very unique story, but it’s happened, it’s part of mine and so in the midst of being here, I and I just kind of — it was a rough patch both professionally and emotionally and in the midst of all that I kind of got back into art, got back into drawing and that had begun a little bit previously and I know you’ve had Mike Rody on your podcast.

Mike and I have known each other just online for about 10 years, we just met a couple of weeks ago for lunch for the first time. But I got into sketch noting for a lot of the same reasons that Mike did in terms of just like, you know, I was always the guy at conferences, sitting in the front row with my laptop taking copious notes that I never looked at again.

So I got into sketch noting and then probably about six months after moving here to Chicago, I’m a Presbyterian minister so part of the Chicago Presbytery, and the Chicago Presbytery was offering something that is pretty unique. They were offering this clergy self-care grants and so you could apply for a thousand dollars to basically do whatever you wanted just to kind of take care of yourself.

So I ended up getting one of those and deciding that I just wanted to get into drawing more. I took a couple of online classes and then I just bought just a ton of art supplies with the rest of the money and began finding ways to incorporate that into my ministry as working with children and the youth. Eventually one Sunday I was getting ready to do a children’s sermon, a children’s moment in our church and I have always hated those.

I think they’re often just done so poorly in churches and so I wanted to give them something that morning as I was telling them this bible story and so I just kind of quickly drew a picture and photocopied it off, card stock paper, cut them up and then gave them to the kids and so I started doing that whenever I was telling these stories, I would just draw this little kind of simple sketch doodle style illustration to go with it.

I was getting a lot of nice feedback from parents, they were sharing that kids were sticking them up on their refrigerators and they were talking about the stories throughout the week and they really appreciated them and whenever I posted them on Facebook, occasionally somebody would say, “Hey, that’s cool, I’d give you a buck for that.”

So kind of in the midst of all that, I ended up quitting my job last June, spent the summer with a friend kind of doing some coaching, figuring out what to do and we kept coming back to this art and to these children’s moments. I know you’re also familiar with the crew over at Fizzle and upon this coach of mine is recommendation, I joined up with Fizzle, started learning the language of minimum viable product and all this kind of stuff and realized that I had — there was a problem that I was providing a solution for in this illustrations that were making these children’s moments more engaging.

Eventually in September I launched a website, started growing my email list and had that minimum viable product that people were giving me a dollar, $2, $5, for. What I was doing was just creating this illustrations of bible stories for Sunday mornings for pastors and church workers to use. I think I made like $250 bucks just from these dollar, $2 illustrations in a couple of weeks and then I started planning for the fall and what I was going to be doing for advent and Christmas.

And in the midst of all that, just had a lot of good conversations with people along the way, Matthew Paul Turner was someone who reached out to me and was interested in the work that I was doing and talked to some friends and kind of everything sort of blew up in a good way. I think it was first week of November, I had been making this coloring poster designs and then mailing them out to a few folks to kind of just see what they thought and see if their kids liked them and Matthew’s wife, Jessica Turner, she runs the Mom Creative website, she took a picture of her two of her kids coloring this giant coloring poster and posted it on Instagram.

I was at that time, I was doing kind of a part time job with working with kids and I was about an hour and a half away from heading up to starting that shift that afternoon and all of a sudden I started seeing stuff on her Instagram page on this picture and people were just saying, “Where can I get these? I want to buy these now. Where are they?” I was planning on doing, kind of like a limited run of this posters and what I just realized, “Holy crap, I need to capitalize on this now.”

I didn’t have anything planned at that point, set in stone. I quickly, in the span of about an hour and a half, I put some graphics together, signed up on Gumroad, set up a pre-order thing on Gumroad and got some preorder setup for coloring posters and I think by the next morning we were at like $5,000 in preorders for the posters and then…

[0:06:40.8] JG: They’re talking about it, but how did they find out about it? Did you email folks at this point to let them know that preorders were available?

[0:06:51.7] AWC: At this point we were at — I knew early on that this was a niche that was underserved or what because the email list grew rather quickly I mean. I’m not a superstar by any means, but I’ve been very active online and social media. I’ve started blogging in 2003 and I’m only realizing now how much I have not used that to my advantage and not taken advantage of growing that community of people.

It quickly grew so by that point we probably had a thousand on the email list, I was experimenting with some Facebook ads. One kind of took on a life of its own and ended up getting shared like three or 400 times and so it just kind of made the rounds. Anyway, that was just — that was going to be the little added side bonus to the main stuff that I was going to be doing for advent and Christmas and that sort of became the biggest money maker.

So I still put together this resources for churches and then a family resources of coloring sheets and devotionals and advent activities. Anyway, so we did all of that. I had no idea what I was doing, I was working with — I was getting this posters printed at Staples and they were working with me and they were giving me a deal, I didn’t know any better and they were great at the time and the post office lost like 30 of my poster tubes that I shipped out. It was kind of a nightmare but it was also really exciting.

So we kind of finished that first kind of big push with about $30,000 in revenue, which for being like two months in, that was pretty exciting. So we ran another one. We ended up selling about 200 poster sets for Christmas, we did it again for lent and holy week, which is just now kind of ending up, ending this week of course with Easter on Sunday but we sold 400 poster sets during lent and even more of the family devotions and so and church materials.

So it’s continued to grow, we did about $63,000 in revenue in about a month with the lent sales. I mean, it’s been overwhelming, it’s been — I don’t ship with the post office anymore. Nothing against USPS, but things are a little more streamlined for me now. I just found a new printer who is just going to cut my costs a ton and…

[0:09:35.2] JG: You’re still doing all the fulfillments? When you get 400 orders, you’re like rolling those into tubes or something and shipping them?

[0:09:44.1] AWC: Oh god no, thankfully. I tried doing about 25 posters, they’re getting collated and rolled and so staples did all that and my new printer will do all that. Staples has a production center out in Elgin. They were printing collating, rolling, putting in tubes, taping the tubes, putting the tubes in boxes and shipping me the tubes. So for the lack, we got that process down a little better, they shipped them directly to my house.

I got a couple of Task Rabbit people to come over and slap labels on all of them and then had UPS come and just pick them all up in one pick up, which was in the post that I wrote. Or maybe it was a photo that was used in fizzle podcast about kind of part of my story. Which is like me just looking totally frazzled, with this big thing of poster tubes behind me, in front of the post office and they’re like sticking out of this cart in every which way and it was just kind of a disaster but I’ve learned a lot.

[0:10:48.8] JG: Yeah, well that’s how you learn. As you get overwhelmed then you figure out how to do things right and do things wrong. It’s fascinating, this started out like this illustrated children’s moments project right? Now it’s turned into, it sounds to me, like seasonal resources for churches and ministries for families and churches of any age.

[0:11:14.6] AWC: Right and it’s funny, certainly also not an uncommon thing, to have a vision for what you want to start with. Initially, September I was like, “I’m just going to do this illustrations for Sunday morning’s, I’m going to work my way up to like a subscription service for people to sign up for and they can just get them in their email every week and then very quickly, we kind of in January, did a name change from illustrated children’s moments to illustrated children’s ministry and just kind of tried to broadened it beyond just those individual kind of moments that I was initially talking about.

It’s also, I mean, I have churches that are buying them for inter-generational activities, I have college groups, youth groups, I’ve had a few retirement communities who have bought the posters because their residents just love being together and just talking in coloring.

Click here to download a free PDF of the complete interview transcript or scroll down to continue reading it below.

[0:12:05.3] JG: What do you think it is about this newer, I don’t want to call it a fad, but trend of adult coloring books? What is it about that?

[0:12:15.7] AWC: You’re speaking to the part of me, the voice inside my head that’s saying, “Hey man, this is just a fad, you’re just riding this wave, it’s going to pass and then what are you going to do?” But, you know, it’s interesting, I don’t know what it was that just all of a sudden kind of spurred it on, just kind of really kicked it into high gear. I think there’s a lot of talk about it being very therapeutic and meditative and certainly kind of when I first started creating these patterns and zen tangles and doodles that sort of turned into this coloring sheets, I was not in a great place emotionally and mentally.

And to be able to just sort of turn my brain off and just go like kind of just get into the art and just lose myself in that. I certainly found that to be a very therapeutic thing for myself so I think that’s some component of it. I think too, people just — I’ve seen some book stores and art galleries that are doing like you know, “wine and coloring nights” and people come in together and…

[0:13:23.3] JG: You drink enough wine and you get pretty artistic.

[0:13:25.9] AWC: Yeah, totally. I mean, there’s something about that that just the community that fosters to just — and I think we’re just also just ridiculously busy and stressed to be able to just sit down and, “Okay, I am just going to color this and not really worry about anything else right now, and spend time doing this. I just think it’s a cool thing.

[0:13:49.6] JG: It reminded me of this date night that my wife and I did years ago when we went into one of those drink and paint studios. I don’t know what they’re called, but you bring your own bottle of wine and you can drink and paint. We were painting some, like you had an instructor teaching you how to paint and you were painting replica of some famous painting, it was like a van Gogh go and they were this six ladies there and they were just like, they had like six bottles of wine there I think.

They were just having a good old time and the more wine they drank, the more impressionistic the art became. You could tell, they were just having a blast and there’s something, I think you’re right, like about everybody’s wound so tightly this days and everybody’s so busy and art is this release. It’s this way to make sense of things and just decompress and turn on another part of your brain that’s not necessarily about performance as much as it’s about connecting with whatever you’re doing in the moment.

What’s fascinating about it is this turned into, very quickly, a profitable business for you. I want to talk a little bit more about that but I’d love to go back little bit. You wrote in this blog post in December of 2015, “I’m not a formally trained artist and I didn’t really think people would be too interested in buying my stuff.”

So my question is, was art always something that you were interested in or was it — I mean, I hear you saying “personally, emotionally, things weren’t great” and so this was a form of therapy, form of self-care for you. But was there any sort of — how much was creativity and creative work a part of your life before this?

[0:15:37.5] AWC: Yeah, it’s funny, as I have gone back to think about that. It was always a part of my life growing up. I was visiting my parents last summer and my mom just keeps everything. What I found were, I found these bank stubs, these little bank receipts that she would get from going to the bank from when I was like — from 1983, like when I was three years old and they had little pictures of monkeys drawn on the back and just little random things that I drew.

I was always drawing as a kid, calligraphy classes with my mom. We had all these, I don’t’ know if they still do them, but they were called “young author’s conferences”. I used to write books and illustrate the books in elementary school and I realized that all of that stopped the moment that we got the internet and we got our first computer.

[0:16:28.8] JG: Wow.

[0:16:29.0] AWC: I immediately jumped right in to web design when I was freshman and high school like in ’94, I had my own website. I didn’t want to call it a home page because I thought everybody was calling them like their home page so I called them my house site. Adam B. Cleveland’s house site. Just being totally counter cultural. I had that site up until the time when I first started my blog in 2003.

Of course it had gone through lots of different iterations, but I realized that my — and I got into graphic design and web design and did that throughout seminary to kid of help pay for life. But I realized, I really did just kind of stopped drawing once I kind of got onto the computer. So it’s been interesting. When I first got back into art, there were a couple of weeks in a row where I would come home from work, have dinner, I have a four year old son, we’d get him to bed and then I would just draw.

My laptop stayed in my bag for a couple of weeks in a row like I just didn’t get it out when I was at home, which is totally unlike — my wife and I are, after everything, after the kids were in bed, we were generally sitting on the sofa with our laptops watching TV. That was a shift for me.

[0:17:49.0] JG: Isn’t it amazing what the rhythm of life is like for you now with running a business? I used to think, I had to do that. Like, I couldn’t keep up with everything if I didn’t come home, bring my laptop inside after working eight or nine hours a day at the office and then work two, three, four hours at night after kids went to bed or after dinner or whatever.

I just started leaving my bag in my car. Sometimes I’d leave the laptop at the office and I’d be like, “Well, can’t work tonight because it’s at the office and it’s five minutes away, I’m too lazy to go get it.” Just like not doing that, I’d come back to work the next day and I’d be refreshed and ready and things still got done on time. I had my evenings back, it was a really amazing feeling. I think it’s funny how a lot of us live our lives and how work invades everything.

You did write this thing that I thought was interesting, I want to kind of come to full circle to the present now. You said, “I found that the life of a solopreneur can be really exhausting,” which is true. You’re an illustrator, designer, marketer, administrator, shipper, packer, errand runner, dreamer, financial person, and more.

[0:18:57.6] AWC: Right.

[0:19:00.3] JG: Michael Gerber talks about this in the E-myth how most people who are good at something, the entrepreneurial myth, the E Myth is that you’re good at this therefore you start a business. But what nobody realizes until you started a business is just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean that you should necessarily run a business because there’s this whole other skill set managing all these things that you mentioned here that aren’t drawing, you know?

[0:19:23.0] AWC: Yes.

[0:19:24.6] JG: So I’m curious because I had a similar experience where the initial thrill of it was like, “Holy cow this changes my life.” I had a ministry job working at a non-profit and I was making about $30,000 a year, you mentioned that first launch. I had a similar experience where I was like, “Oh I just made what I typically make in a year in a week. This is crazy,” and I thought, “This is too good to be true,” and it was Adam. It was way to be good to be true.

No, I mean there’s all these responsibility that follows that especially if you want to continue running the business and even growing it and in the short term, it’s really exciting. In the long term. There are I think some challenging implications about it and I always find it fascinating when creative people especially start getting rewarded for their creativity and then they start to become business people.

And I am wondering how you’re — you are in the thick of that right now where you’re probably feeling the pressure, you’ve got what now I imagine is a six figure business or more this year and I would guess, I’m not trying to speak this onto you, but there’s going to be more pressure and stress and how are you dealing with that?

[0:20:36.8] AWC: Man, that’s a great question. The funny piece about the money is that it did, as soon as those pre-orders went and I have the Gumroad app on my phone and I just like to watching it.

[0:20:47.9] JG: Oh yeah, it’s addictive.

[0:20:48.6] AWC: Oh it’s so addictive.

[0:20:49.9] JG: I used to lie in bed at night with E Junkie, I was selling a $5 eBook and I was getting three sales a minute and my wife was pregnant and I am trying to pay for this kid that we’re going to have. Every minute I am refreshing my iPhone, it’s lik 10:30 at night, it’s crazy.

[0:21:07.9] AWC: Yeah and the other part for me is, I am getting super excited about this and I tell my wife, Sarah, I was like, “Hey Sarah, check this out. We got this and now we got this,” and eventually she was like, “Okay, that’s great. I’m really happy for you. Why don’t you tell me how much money is actually going to be going into our checking account after your expenses, after taxes.” So even the six figure income is a little misleading sometimes.

Yeah, I think a couple of things come to mind. One I think one of the many entrepreneur podcasts I don’t even remember which one it was now, one of the things that I remember hearing early on was — and I think even you we’d talked about it at some point on one of your shows — but the need to get help early on Because there’s, at least in the beginning, there’s like all of a sudden, “Oh there’s all this money and wow, this money can all be for me if I just do everything myself.” But that’s not fun.

[0:22:05.9] JG: Totally not fun.

[0:22:06.7] AWC: It’s not necessarily doable, depending on how the business scales and all of that. So I think that was one thing that I just knew early on. I needed to — after my first poster run I was like, “There’s no way I’m doing that again by myself and so luckily for me, I knew a young mom at the church that I was working at and just reached out to her and said, “Hey I just need some help with this labels. I need somebody to keep track of the orders that are coming in.”

So we met up at a coffee shop to talk about that and she’s like, “You know, I have a marketing business degree. I could do other things,” and I was like, “Okay, this is awesome let’s talk about this,” and so she now is, I think her official title is Operations Guru but she runs a lot of the customer service email now and working with UPS to figure out shipping details and so she’s doing a lot of the administrative stuff and she’s excited to learn other things as well.

So she’s going to be stepping into doing some social media work with Pinterest especially and figuring out how to best work that into our workflow. So that’s been amazing, to have someone who can just be like, “Hey I can do that, you don’t have to do that.”

[0:23:18.3] JG: It’s a wonderful phrase.

[0:23:20.6] AWC: Oh, it’s so nice. The other thing that I remember, I think it was Corbett Barr, I think it was on a Fizzle Podcast where, and I am not sure the exact terminology but I think he was talking about like your business ecosystem or your operating system that you have as a business and that you need to figure out what that’s going to be even when you’re just existing in the solopreneur world. So, am I going to set up a business culture where I am doing everything and I am working all the time?

Well if that’s the case, then it’s nice that I am not having to deal with some issues that I did working in Parish ministry, but that just means that the freedom that you desire by becoming an entrepreneur and starting your own business, you lose that almost as soon as you get it. So that’s been a piece that I have been trying to figure out and so I am able to ask my admin person to take on more stuff now, which is just amazing. I am bringing in additional help in contracting some stuff out. Realizing that I don’t need to do it all and it doesn’t make sense at all for me to do it all. So yeah, I’m definitely still learning a ton.

[0:24:28.2] JG: I think it was Seth Godin in one of his recent books where there was a section called The World’s Worst Boss, and then in that section it was just, “that would be you” and it’s true. You would not work for a boss that treated you the way that you do in terms of, “Man I’m working 12, 14 hours a day not being around my family, doing stuff that isn’t even on my job description”. That’s how we treat ourselves as self-employed entrepreneurs.

I think there’s actually something beneficial about doing that in the early days, because I worked for a very entrepreneurial guy who is really my first job working for him in a ministry, a non-profit and he had this probably at the time $10 million organization and had over a hundred staff people and I just noticed he just delegated everything to the point that I was like, “What do you do?” And I didn’t get it for a while, and then I started going through pictures and seeing him sitting in his garage with 500 envelopes that he was licking and putting stamps on to raise support for the ministry.

That was 25 years ago and so I was like, “Oh okay, yeah you can do whatever you want now because you did all this at one point” there’s something really good about at least to a certain degree knowing how everything in your business works, to some degree. Like, “I did some version of that marketing or fulfillment or whatever and now I’m not doing that because I’m not good at that and you do a better job at it or whatever but I know how that works. I understand the people who are working with me, what they’re having to deal with on some level.” I think that’s really an important process.

[0:26:12.7] AWC: Oh yeah, totally.

[0:26:13.8] JG: It makes you more empathetic. So one of the things that I hear from creative entrepreneurs is they become successful as entrepreneurs that they don’t have any more time to create, what has that been like for you?

[0:26:26.8] AWC: Man, you’re just getting every question that I am dealing with right now.

[0:26:31.0] JG: Well I deal with these things too, Adam, so this is just me. You know, we’re just venting to each other.

[0:26:35.8] AWC: Yeah and that was really one of my big fears as I even just thought about going into this because since art was being such a fun and therapeutic and just an exciting new thing for me, I would go home and every night I was sketching. I had my watercolors out on the kitchen table and my wife didn’t like that but I always tried to clean up. But it was so fun for me, I was like, “Okay if I start doing this to make money, am I going to lose that joy?”

I think about a month ago or so, I did realize that I haven’t done any watercolor stuff in months. It’s been a long time since I just sat down purposefully to make something or to draw something that I didn’t have in the back of my mind but wasn’t going to be used for something in the business. So part of what I have not figured out yet but I’m aware of and want to be working on is to find time to be like, “Hey, I’m just going to make this and I am not even going to sell it. I’m not even going to give it away as a freebie on my email list. I’m just going to make it because I want to make it.”

And sometimes those things do overlap like I just recently got an iPad Pro and so I have been playing around with the pencil and just having some real fun with making some stuff and as I am doing it, I am in the moment. I am just enjoying it. I’m not thinking about the business, but then when I am done, it’s like, “Oh well this could just be a cool coloring sheet that I can just give out as a freebie for something.” It’s done, I enjoyed doing it and now it can serve two purposes. So there’s definitely overlap there but finding the time to really just create just for me that’s hard. That’s hard to do.

[0:28:21.0] JG: Yeah, I love that idea of having projects that are just for you, just for fun. You’re not going to monetize them necessarily, and like you said, this might turn into something but in the moment, this isn’t about business. This is just about making something. It seems really important of the process. I was talking to the author, John Greene, a while back who is this bestselling author, a big YouTube sensation and before he became a writer he was in seminary to become an episcopal priest.

And I asked him about faith and I asked him about ministry and I said, you know, he’s probably one of the bestselling authors alive today. Sold millions of young adult novels, and I said, “Do you think of what you do as ministry now, because you basically left ministry to go pursue this career?” We hear all of these stories. You and I, especially coming from faith traditions, have heard this a lot especially within the confines of religious institutions which is “person leaves successful career to go be a missionary somewhere”.

And that’s sort of lauded as the biggest sacrifice. What’s fascinating for me over the past few years basically doing the opposite is I have heard lots of stories of people doing that where they realized that they weren’t hiding in a cubicle somewhere. They were hiding in a pew, in a confession box. What is that called, a confession box?

[0:29:47.6] AWC: Confession booth.

[0:29:48.7] JG: Booth. The box is for the pets, like when the pets want to confess, they come to the box. But yeah, they were hiding from their calling in ministry. I know that none of this was necessarily by design and you’re still early on into it, I am just curious how you think about the work that you’re doing, it’s a business and in how you think about ministry and what that means to you these days?

Because some people go, “Oh it’s just business and that I am using these funds to do good or whatever, or just make a nice living,” and then other people see their business as their ministry. There’s a ministry component of what you’re doing just in the sense that you’re working with I imagine a lot of ministries or some of your clients and customers. I’m just curious what do you think about that now?

[0:30:33.8] AWC: Yeah, I have served, worked in four different churches and there’s been good experiences and typical church crap in all of them. But I think I’ve always had a sense that I don’t feel like the traditional church pastor who’s going to take a church and stay there for 20 years and baptize and marry and bury people.

Part of it is this feels like I am doing something more along the lines of what I have always envisioned of doing something different. Still connected to ministry, but something a little bit more outside the box, a little more creative. The irony of all of this is that like I have never liked children’s ministry.

[0:31:16.8] JG: And this is what you have done, primarily?

[0:31:19.6] AWC: Well I have primarily done youth ministry, but I was in charge of the children’s ministry at one of the churches that I worked at and I just hated it. I hated coming up with a curriculum, I didn’t really like the kids, I mean some of that has changed now that I actually have my own and I think everybody likes their kid maybe a little more than other people’s kids. But it’s just so ironic that now, I am all in on this thing, which is certainly much broader than children’s ministry.

But like I am going to these children’s ministry conferences and these are my people now whereas they weren’t before and so it’s definitely a business, it definitely feels like a business and I definitely having to do a lot more stuff with money and numbers and figuring out all the details and products and shipping and printing and all of that. But there are times — one of the cool things about coming out with some of the seasonal stuff is that for each of the products that’s come out, we’ve had a hashtag associated with it.

So it was an illustrated advent or hashtag an illustrated lent and I haven’t had to do a whole lot in terms of like, “Hey, don’t forget to use the hashtag and share your pictures.” Like people have just naturally been really pretty active in sharing photos and sharing stories, and so I think for me, when I get on Instagram and search the hashtag or when I am on Facebook and I search and I see these pictures of these little toddlers sitting with older adults around the table coloring.

Or see pictures of kids at home with their families sitting around the table coloring and doing a devotional together during advent, just to know that the impact that I am able to have now is far greater than I did just being a parish minister, which is nothing wrong with that and I enjoyed a lot of aspects of that when I was doing it. But I mean there are people in Ireland and England and Australia and New Zealand and Canada who are using the materials.

I think there was one maybe Utah or Nevada, I have one state where nobody has bought anything yet but other than that, people across the country and churches are using these materials to provide really fun, creative, intergenerational experiences for their faith communities and to know that a significant role of that is really satisfying and it’s helpful. It’s just a great way to know that I may not be serving a church but I am still a pastor and I am still doing ministry.

[0:33:59.4] JG: Yeah, no that is really cool. I think it’s a great story and it’s inspiring to me and I often get questions from people going, “Is it possible to do what you’ve done?” Which I made a similar transition three years ago which feels way longer than everybody hears or that much but people say this like, “Is it possible to build a blog today, or to build an online business doing what you do today?” And you did this months ago, and so I just love the hope of that story and I appreciate you sharing a little bit with me about it.

[0:34:32.9] AWC: Yeah, you bet.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:34:40.8] JG: Hey guys, thanks for listening to The Portfolio Life. You can find the show notes for this episode and others at goinswriter.com. If you enjoyed the show, you can leave a review at iTunes so more people can find it and my ego doesn’t die a slow tragic death. I appreciate the time you take to listen to the show. I’d love to connect with you on Twitter, you can find me @jeffgoins. You can also email me at jeff@goinswriter.com with tips, ideas, feedback, compliments on my hair.

Anyway, thanks for listening. I look forward to talking to you in the next episode. Now go build your portfolio.

JG: Everybody’s wound so tightly these days. Everybody is so busy and art is this release. It’s this way to make sense of things and just decompress, and turn in another part of your brain that’s not necessarily about performance as much as it’s about connecting with whatever you’re doing in the moment.

Click here to download a free PDF of the complete interview transcript.

The Secret to Developing a Regular Writing Habit

This is the year you become a writer. And what do writers do? They write, of course.

Photo Credit: HaoJan via Compfight cc

There’s nothing mystical or magical about it. You just have to show up and do the work: place butt in chair, fingers on keys, and start typing.

And this is where most people fail. They never actually write a word. They talk about writing, think about writing, even read about writing. But they do not write.

Bonus: Join my free, 31-day writing challenge and get a daily writing prompt for the next month. Click here to sign up.
How writing (really) happens

You told yourself last year was going to be different, that you were actually going to do NaNoWriMo this time. That you were going to work on that book or get back into blogging.

But none of that happened. Why? Because you attempted too much. You tried to eat the whole elephant in one bite. And that never works when it comes to writing.

Here’s what I know about writing: It happens in small bites. Step by step. One little chunk at a time.

You don’t write a whole book. You write sentences that turn into paragraphs. And paragraphs turn into sections that, then, turn into chapters.

In other words, it all begins with words.

You don’t control the outcome, just the process

I’m in the middle of writing my next book right now, and it’s scaring me to death. It feels so important, so audacious, that I’m locking up, completely paralyzed.

I don’t want to mess this up (it’s supposed to be the best thing I’ve written so far). And because of that fear I’m having trouble starting. So what do I do?

Do I try to write the whole thing in one sitting or keep fixating over the book concept? Do I continue obsessing over getting the table of contents just right or worry about what critics will think of this sentence or that paragraph?

No. I just get up and write my 500 words. Turns out, that’s all writing really is — showing up. Not worrying about the outcome, just honoring the process. (You may tweet that.)

This is all writing really is: showing up. Not worrying about the outcome, just honoring the process. https://t.co/eSVkNnNlRf

— Jeff Goins (@JeffGoins) January 1, 2014

Join the 31-day challenge

500 words is short enough that you can usually find time to do it daily, and it’s long enough that if you stick to a schedule, you’ll have something substantial in no time.

It takes me anywhere from 30-60 minutes to write 500 words. And if I keep up with that pace, I’ve got a book in 90 days. That’s my plan for finishing my next book: 500 words per day, every day, until it’s done. And I want you to join me.

If you’ve ever wanted to develop a daily writing habit or need help getting back on the horse, then you’ll want to get in on this.

My 500 Words is a 31-day challenge designed to help you develop a daily writing habit and become a better writer.

For 31 days, we’ll be writing 500 words a day. These won’t be great words, but they will be written. We’re not trying to reach perfection; we’re just trying to get more ideas out of our heads and onto paper.

And if you want to be part of this, we can keep each other company.

The rules

Write 500 words per day, every day for 31 days.
You can write more if you want, but 500 words is the minimum.
Don’t edit. Just write.
If you miss a day, pick up where you left off. Don’t make up for lost days.
Encourage, don’t criticize (unless explicitly invited to do so).
Blogging counts, but email does not.
All of this is totally free.

How it works

Leave a comment at the end of this post, saying you’re “in.”
Add your blog to the linkup on the My 500 Words Page, if you’re a blogger.
Write every day, and record your progress (I’ll be using Lift).
Join the Facebook group for extra accountability and encouragement. You can also follow along via Twitter with the hash tag #my500words.
Sign up for the free challenge to get writing prompts and nudges sent to you via email.

To get started with the My 500 Words challenge and jump-start your writing habit sign up for free by clicking here.

So… are you in? What will you be writing this month? Share in the comments.

17 New Year’s Resolutions for Writers

As a writer, I am only as good as my self-discipline. Over the years, I’ve learned that without daily habits, I might as well call it quits. If you’re in the habit of making New Year’s Resolutions, consider adding some of these to your list.

Measure activity, not results. As a writer, your job is to share your truth, not worry about the outcome of your work. The first goal of a writer is to sit down and do the work, no matter how scary or hard it may be. When you do this, you almost always create something better and more honest than worrying about “what will people think?” So, write what moves you and leave the results to the readers.
Tell the truth. No matter what, regardless of what is at stake, we must create something that is true, both to us and to the world. That means not only to be honest but to true to oneself. If something feels wrong, don’t do it. Your gut is the only thing that separates you from a robot. Try to trust it and be wary of the quick and easy route that leads to success (it doesn’t).
Write what scares you. There is something powerful about leaning into fear and doing the thing that petrifies you. Nothing stirs the emotions of a reader like writing “from the heart,” as they say. Don’t hold back now. This is the year where you show all your scars, and maybe people will thank you for it. Regardless, you will be sharing your truth and that is enough.
Don’t take yourself so seriously. I am guilty of this myself, but the truth is some of the best writing in history has a sense of humor. There’s nothing wrong with making the reader laugh. If all you’re writing is the facts, then you’re a reporter, not a writer. Which is fine, unless you want to create something that tests the boundaries of the status quo, something that goes beyond “just the facts.” In which case, you had better be funny.
Try a new genre. Are you a business advice writer? Try memoir. A novelist? Consider journalism. Whatever you are comfortable with will ultimately cause what you create to stagnate, unless you infuse it with some novelty. Honor your calling as a creative and test the boundaries a little. Push yourself and see how you grow. As for me, I’m trying my hand at fiction.
Write when you don’t feel like it. Professional writers don’t just write when inspiration strikes them. They offer themselves no excuses and do the work, no matter what. You need to do the same. Show up every day, without fail, as often as you can. When you don’t feel like it, do it anyway. This is how you will develop the discipline that turns you from an amateur into a pro. If you do this, you’ll do what so few are able to do. You will turn your passion into a habit.
Do your research. It’s not enough to just “write what you know.” You have to expand what you know. Read a book or two, for crying out loud. Don’t merely pontificate. Tell us something we haven’t heard before, something we won’t hear unless you take some time to ask important questions like “why?” and “how?”
Rewrite until it hurts. Let’s face it. Nobody is brilliant on the first draft. And the second one after that usually sucks, too. This is okay — it’s normal, even — because this is a marathon, not a sprint. Don’t consider yourself done until you’ve put in at least several hours and a few drafts in to whatever piece you’re working on. Remember: all good writing is rewriting. Everything else is just prologue.
Shut up. Take some time and listen — to what people are saying, to what you’re reading, and to what you’re writing. It’s all trying to teach you something. Pay attention, shut that big mouth of yours, and open your ears once in a while. Learn from your surroundings, then use it all to make your writing better.
Read widely. This isn’t just research, it’s practice — honing your craft by studying the masters who came before you. Pick a book that didn’t just pop up on your Amazon list; read a classic or something that has nothing to do with your field. We base our careers on words, so the best thing you can do is absorb as many of them as possible from as many different sources as you can.
Fast from social media. Get off Twitter or Instagram and spend a few hours a week writing. Not your platform or your growing contingent of Internet followers, but the the thing that really matters: the writing. No one will thank you for this, which is precisely why it’s important. You will feel better, and the work will improve (promise). So, take a brief break — at least a week — from the noise and focus just on the work.
Break a rule. Write in an unusual voice or depart from a norm. Stop using commas. Get rid of all adverbs. Do something that causes others, maybe even yourself, to feel uncomfortable. Don’t worry; this isn’t a new style — it’s just an experiment. In the discomfort, we grow. So, mess with the status quo, and see what happens. It could be good, really good. Or maybe not. Regardless, you’ll learn something.
Publish something. An eBook, a manifesto, a full-length book. If you’ve never put your work out into the world in the form of a publish book, it’s time. Nothing grows a writer like shipping. Yes, it’s hard and scary and you probably aren’t ready. But do it anyway. Enough with the works in progress and plans to publish “someday.” It’s time. You’ve got this.
Make money. You heard me. Set a goal to actually earn some income from your writing this year. I remember the first year I set this goal — it changed my life. Our son was born, and seven months later, I was making plans to quit my job and become a full-time writer. Amazing things happen when you set a goal, chart a course, and stick to it.
Start a blog. Blogging is an essential craft for the modern writer. It helps you practice in public, get discovered, and build your fanbase. It’s fun, too. For a step-by-step tutorial on how to get a blog started, read my “how to launch a blog” page.
Meet other writers. You can’t succeed alone. We all need the help of others who are in the trenches with us. Set a goal to grab coffee with another writer at least once a month. If there are no other writers in your town, then hop on Skype and talk online. Don’t try to go this alone; the writing journey is a long and lonely one unless you have friends to share it with. For more on this, you can read my post on networking.
Quit stalling and get writing! Quit reading this post or re-checking your email for the fifth time today. Turn your phone to silent and unplug from the world for an hour. Just write. It’s the simplest, hardest, scariest thing for a writer to do. Not to think about writing or talk about writing, but to actually write.

Of course, resolutions aren’t what make a year new. They’re a formality. The real trick is not setting the goal but having the resolve to do it. Once you start moving in a direction, you don’t have just a plan or a goal. You have a habit.

And that changes everything.

What are you resolving to do different this New Year? Share in the comments.

135: 3 Elements of a Writing Habit that Lasts

Writers write. It doesn’t seem that complicated, but most of us struggle with consistency in our craft. It plagues the best of us. So why does a writing habit matter?

A writing habit is a characteristic that separates the amateurs from the professionals. In spite of its difficulty, or perhaps because of it, consistent creation is what makes you a pro. You can clearly distinguish the real writers from the pretenders not only by the work they produce, but by the practice that goes into it.

This week on The Portfolio Life, Andy and I talk about some tricks, targets, and tools to help you write more consistently. We all struggle with this stuff, so maybe this episode will help you get unstuck and start creating.

Listen in as we discuss how to move past your excuses and write better in less time on a more frequent basis.

Listen to the podcast

To listen to the show, click the player below (If you’re reading this via email, please click here).

Show highlights

In this episode, we talk about:

The first job of any aspiring writer
How quantity leads to quality
What it takes to become faster and better at writing
The three steps I follow whenever I’m writing anything
My favorite writing app

Quotes and takeaways

It is better to write more than less, especially when you’re beginning.
Pick just one tool. Not 37.
The more you can not think, the better you’re going to write.

Resources

ByWord
How Tiny Goals Changed My Life And Made Me a Real Writer
How to Get Your Writing Done Every Day: The Three-Bucket System
My 500 Words Writing Challenge
My best selling book, The Art of Work , is on sale this week for only $1.99.

Are you willing to commit to writing 500 words a day? Which writing tool do you recommend the most to other writers? Share in the comments

Click here to download a PDF of the full transcript or scroll down to read it below.

EPISODE 135

JG: The more you can not think, the better and faster you’re going to write.

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:17.0] AT: Welcome to the Portfolio Life Podcast with Jeff Goins. I’m your host Andy Traub. Jeff believes that every creative should live a portfolio life, a life full of pursuing work that matters, making a difference with your art, and discovering your true voice. Jeff’s committed to helping you find, develop, and live out your unique world view so that you too can live a portfolio life.

Writers write. It doesn’t seem that complicated, and yet you still struggle with the daily habit of writing. How can you build the habit and what tools can you use to assist you? Well today, Jeff has some simple, practical advice if you want to get past your excuses and write consistently.

Here is my conversation with Jeff Goins.

[EPISODE]

[0:01:04.3] AT: Jeff Goins, how are you today my friend?

[0:01:08.3] JG: Doing great Andy, how are you?

[0:01:09.5] AT: I am really, really good and I’m excited to talk about today’s topic because those who are listening — you who are listening right now, whatever you’re doing, wherever you are — you at some level consider yourself a writer in some way, whatever that fiction, nonfiction, you haven’t started writing, you’ve been writing for a long time and today we’re going to talk about how to write more consistently and what are actually tricks but what are some targets and maybe some tools to just writing more consistently.

This is a problem that I think is a lifelong battle, it’s like gravity, it just never grows away. So, Jeff, if it’s okay I want to start with something that I don’t know if you would consider this your most successful teaching but it’s got to be one of your most popular and that’s the idea of writing 500 words a day, right?

[0:02:01.0] JG: Yeah.

[0:02:01.7] AT: Break that down, because this is the next question people always ask, “Are you talking about publishing those 500 words? Where do I put them?” What is the idea of 500 words, what does that require?

[0:02:11.8] JG: The idea is that when you start out as a writer, you aren’t that good and most writers are self-editors and so they write a little bit, they delete a little bit, they write a little bit, they delete a little bit and this is not how you become a great writer. I think the first job of an aspiring writer is to learn how to get words down on a page, and I believe that quality follows frequency. That’s really, it’s a byproduct of quantity and so the more you write, the better you write.

I do think that there can be a threshold to that where if you write so fast, you’re not really thinking through what you’re writing. But as a general rule, it’s better to write more than is to write less, at very least when you’re first beginning. I’ve been writing professionally now for at least five or six years and a decade before that on more of an amateur basis, and I could tell you, there was a line in the sand between me being an amateur and me being a pro. The one defining characteristic that separated my professional years, i.e. when my writing was getting acknowledged by lots of people, I was getting paid for my content and I was able to make a living writing.

Versus when I was just thinking about being a writer, keeping a blog sometimes when I felt like it, and writing pieces of books and saving them on my hard drive. The one defining characteristic that separated those two different seasons of my career were how consistent I was in writing every day. So, as you know Andy, I had this conversation years ago with a friend who asked me what my dream was, I said, I didn’t know and he said, “Well I thought it would be to be a writer.” I said, “Yeah, I guess I’d like to be a writer someday,” and he said, “Jeff, you don’t have to want to be a writer, you are a writer, you just need to write.”

The next day, I got up at five Am and I started writing and I wrote about 500 words a day consistently for the next year and by the end of that year, I had over 10,000 email subscribers, I had a growing blog, I had a publisher who had reached out to me asking me if I wanted to publish a book. I was on my way to becoming a professional writer. And then the year after that was the year we had our son, I started trying to find ways to make money writing. I published two books, replaced my income, then ended up tripling our household income and quit my job at the end of that year.

So it took about two years, but if I could trace it all back to one activity, it is the habit of daily writing. Why 500 words? Because it is enough. I mean, really, for me it was kind of a fairly arbitrary number in the sense that I was writing and publishing an article every single day seven days a week, for a year. I was doing this because I didn’t want to hide and I knew if I wrote something, it didn’t have to share it, I might not finish it. So there was this consequence of if I didn’t do my work, people would know because they wouldn’t see it, right?

So I was practicing in public, I was sharing almost every word that I was writing, not because I thought they were all stellar but because what mattered to be the most at that time was developing the habit. So I did it for the practice, and when I asked Seth Godin, to this day, he blogs daily. “Why do you do this?” He says, “I do it for the practice.” That’s an idea that I really got from him and I love that idea that if you’re putting your work out there every day then you can’t hide. Now, I no longer do that but I’m still writing 500 words a day for books and blog post and articles and various things.

I was writing 500 words a day because that is enough that you could turn it into a blog post or whatever or it’s enough that if you do it every day for the next 90 days, you’re going to have a 45,000 word manuscript. When I got my first book deal, I did what I’ve been doing for a year, writing 500 words a day every day and I did that with my first book, Wrecked, and I had a three month deadline. So I wrote 500 words a day and by the end of it I had a 40,000 word manuscript and we edited it and all of that but that became the book.

So it’s a small enough increment that you can typically do it in less than an hour, I could write about 500 words in 15 to 30 minutes now, but it is a big enough number that if you do it every day consistently over time, it will get you something. It’s small enough that you could do it every day I think. It’s big enough that if you do it consistently, it will lead to something substantial.

[0:07:04.2] AT: Right, it’s worth doing.

[0:07:05.2] JG: Like a book or a blog with 10,000 readers or what have you.

[0:07:08.9] AT: So it’s like that story about the person walking down the ocean shore and they throw out a starfish back and they say, “You’re really making a difference, I made a difference to that one.” It’s like that but it’s actually making a difference. I make a joke of it, but also, I mean, how long does it take, I have a couple of questions here in a row. How long does it take for you now on a good day, on a crummy day but on a good day, maybe an average day to write 500 words?

[0:07:36.2] JG: It takes about 15 minutes. I’ve become a faster, better writer because of this habit and so I have a goal and a deadline like I’ll just sit down, like in a subject, that’s the hardest thing for me. This is why I created the three bucket system, which we’ve talked about another episode, that’s why I separate ideas, drafts and then edits.

When I sit down to draft something, I just pull an idea out of my idea bucket and I go, “Okay, let’s go,” and I get 500 words in 15 minutes.

[0:08:04.6] AT: The next part of that though is, how much of those words do you have an expectation will be useable?

[0:08:10.8] JG: Probably 80%. I mean, like I’m getting the essence of the idea down and then I’m going back and chipping away at it and then as I chip away down to the essence, I kind of add back to it. How I write is I write a bunch out and then I kind of cut it back then I add a little bit more to it and that’s those kind of three sweeps; one is to get it down, the second is to get all of the clutter out and then the third is to really kind of crystalize and clarify the idea. At that point I’ve got a pretty decent draft.

Click here to download a PDF of the full transcript or scroll down to continue reading below.

[0:08:44.3] AT: All right, let me ask a more technical question, which is what are ways that we can help ourselves wth calendar reminders? Are there certain apps that you would use or programs that would help us see our progress. Just give us some tools that we can use to make this just a little easier to succeed?

[0:09:04.6] JG: Sure and I think it begins with a few things. One, pick a number. It doesn’t have to be 500. It could be whatever you want but I recommend 500 and so that’s the first thing. You just pick a number. My friend, Shaunta Grimes picks a time allotment. So it’s either amount of time or amount of words. Don’t do both because then you’re going, “Well where do I stop?” have a very clear understanding of I’m going to write until “blank”.

In the case of Shaunta, she writes for 10 minutes and this is a really interesting strategy. She talks about the importance of tiny goals and how, she did a guest post for me one time called “how tiny goals helped me become a writer” I think and basically what she’s doing is she’s tricking her brain. When she says, “I’m only going to write for 10 minutes,” that is such a small increment of time to ignore it like what else are you going to do in 10 minutes?

You’re going to check on Facebook or something. Can you go for a walk? Can you eat lunch? Can you call a friend? You can’t do anything in 10 minutes so you might as well write because it’s such a small increment of time that it’s not worth procrastinating whereas if I say, “I’m going to write for an hour” or two hours, I will delay that for as long as I can if I’m going to write 10,000 words. It’s so overwhelming that I’m going to push it off.

Whereas 10 minutes I can’t push it off so it’s a small enough increment of time that you’re just going to do it now. But then what ends up happening as I said, you trick your brain and with Shaunta she says, “Most days I write more than 10 minutes”. So I am just telling myself I am just going to write for 10 minutes but on the days when I can only write 10 minutes, I don’t beat myself up about that. I go, “Okay well that was your goal” so you do it.

So pick a small enough goal whatever it is, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 500 words. For me it’s 500 words because I know I’d rather work to the word count than the time amount because I waste the time right? Whereas if I write 500 words in 10 minutes, I just did it faster and that’s me knowing myself and going, “I want to do things efficiently, quickly and then move on to the next thing”.

So pick a number then pick a time, time of day. Beginning of the day, end of day, whatever, have a time that you can reserve specifically for writing. When I first started, that was five to 7 AM every morning. Now that my life has changed a little bit, I’ve got more free time during the day. I don’t have a day job. I like getting up with my kids and spending some time with them, having breakfast that sort of thing. Most days I’m writing from at least nine to 11 AM but I’ve got time blocked out to get my 500 words down and if I mess around for an hour and 45 minutes and then on those last 15 minutes I write 500 words.

[0:11:36.0] AT: They’re good.

[0:11:36.5] JG: I celebrate that, right? So I’ve got some grace and then lastly, pick a tool. One tool not 37, whatever it might be. When I just want to write something, I’m looking at my desktop right now. I’ve got Microsoft Word, which I am editing a book on. I’ve got Scrivener which I use…

[0:11:55.7] AT: Now let me pause real quick, I heard someone say, it might have been Hyatt actually but the Microsoft Word has improved dramatically.

[0:12:03.1] JG: It has. I swore it off at one point.

[0:12:06.4] AT: So you and billions of other people. I want to pause because I don’t want people to go, “What? Microsoft Word? Jeff must not be thinking right” No, I have heard from very reliable sources that it’s better.

[0:12:19.6] JG: It’s better. So I’ve got Word, I’ve got Scrivener, I’ve got Text Edit, I’ve probably got a dozen word processors on my computer. When I have an idea, when I have something that I want to write, I always pull up in the same app and it is an app called Byword. It is a minimalistic text editing tool and all it shows me is the text, no formatting. I can’t italicize or do anything. It uses mark down which is a coding language which is kind of cool.

But the bottom line is it’s minimal formatting. All I see is a big blank screen and a blinking cursor and the word count. So have a tool. It could be Evernote, it could be whatever it doesn’t matter. There’s lots of great tools. If you need to pick one, I recommend Byword. I think it’s only available for Mac. I’m not sure that there’s a PC version.

[0:13:09.8] AT: Yep, you’re right.

[0:13:10.9] JG: But you could use Word or Evernote or any number of other tools. iA Writer is another one. I like something that’s minimalistic so I can just sit down and write and just get the words down. So yeah, those are the three things that I would have. I would have a number, some kind of goal. I would have a time, when you’re going to do it that isn’t going to compete with other activities and again, know yourself, know your schedule, know when that time is.

Try to be consistent with that not because you’re the most consistent person in the world but because if you make that decision ahead of time, there’s not the stress of, “When am I going to find time to write today?” because that’s writing time and then lastly, pick one tool because the goal here is to think very little about it. To sit down, open up the thing and just start writing and the more you cannot think, the better and faster you’re going to write.

[0:14:03.0] AT: Absolutely. I want to echo or wrap up here but I want to echo the Byword endorsement. If you are going to write a very robust book, Scrivener can definitely be a good place because they have these writing targets but it’s just more complicated. I think it’s worth it but if we’re trying to just get into the daily writing habit, certainly you could use Scrivener, but sometimes using Scrivener for daily writing habits is like driving a Land Rover or a Hummer to the supermarket.

It will get you there but it’s an overkill, right? But the Byword, it does have apps for your phone, for all your I devices as well as Mac and if you save it to Dropbox then you can pick up your writing wherever you are, so you can start and stop. I do a lot of it for its minimalism. You had mentioned mark down, I don’t have mark down open when I write mine. But I actually had something I made called the productive writer’s guide and I went through eight different programs.

Including Google Docs, why not use Google Docs? It’s all backed up in the Cloud or Evernote and I love Evernote. I’m a huge Evernote fan, but for just undistracted writing Byword wins and one of the main reasons it wins is because I encourage people to write when you’re not on the internet. You can turn your internet off, I don’t know if people knew this or not, you can turn your WiFi off and you probably should and Byword will still work.

And it’s because it’s not a distraction that’s why I never tell people to write in Google Docs because you’re just one click away from Gmail and that’s a dangerous hole you’re going to fall into, right?

[0:15:37.0] JG: Right, yeah.

[0:15:37.3] AT: You’re never coming back but I love your endorsement of Byword and I do encourage people to go pick it up and it’s not a free tool. It’s just worth every penny and more, right? So definitely check that out in the App Store. Great recommendation, great other tips you have given us and I encourage you all to go out there and just start to build a habit. Put those things in place; a number, a time, a length of time and start that writing habit. As Jeff said, it really is the line in the sand, the beginning point of when he really turned pro. So Jeff thanks for that recommendation today.

[0:16:12.5] JG: Yeah, you bet and I would add one bonus resource to it, which is if you need some accountability which we all do, I would encourage you to check out My 500 Words. It is a free online writing community where you get 31 daily writing prompts to get your going and I think if you can write 500 words a day for about a month, you’re on your way to having a regular writing habits. We also have a free Facebook group with thousands of writers.

So they just post their daily writing count or either their daily word count and get encouragement feedback, not a place to endlessly promote blog posts or whatever. Just a place to get encouragement accountability for your writing and you can find more about that at my500words.com, 500 is the numerals, 500, my500words.com.

[0:16:59.4] AT: Awesome, thanks again Jeff.

[0:17:01.0] JG: Yeah, thank you.

[END OF EPISODE]

[0:17:09.1] AT: So are you willing to commit to writing 500 words a day and are you going to invest in Byword to help you write in a distraction free environment? Well, let us know by going to goinswriter.com/135. Or you can message Jeff on Twitter @jeffgoins. We appreciate the time you take to listen to our show. I’m Andy Traub, and on behalf of Jeff Goins, thank you for spending some time with us.

Now go build your portfolio.

The first job of an aspiring writer is to learn how to get words down on a page and I believe that quality follows frequency.

Click here to download a free PDF of the complete transcript.

The Best Christmas Gift a Writer Can Receive

This time of year is filled with joy, hope, and eggnog. We gather with loved ones to exchange presents, but the best gift a writer can receive won’t be sitting under a tree.

For years, I dreamed of becoming a writer, and it seemed the one thing I needed most to make this happen was the thing I had the greatest lack of. 

Time. I needed more hours in the day to work on my book, to write on my blog, and even think about what I would write in the first place. But this is a gift no one can give. 

There is no more time. Time is the one thing we never have and never own. Time has us. It is always moving forward and carrying us along with it. We are beholden to its whims — we are slaves to time.

“Time is the one thing we never have and never own. Time has us.Tweet thisTweet

I wish I could tell you to give yourself more time. But I can’t. That would be a lie. All I can say is to try to see the time that is already there.

The best gift you can give yourself this year is the gift of appreciating and using the time you have.

Time is like love. Sometimes, we fail to notice it until it’s too late. We keep wanting more of it and feel starved by the lack of it. But then something happens — a loved one dies or a friend moves away — and we realized we had more of something than we ever thought we did. 

So, this is my Christmas wish for you: to find more time in the day to do your work. To write just a little more. To work on that side business. To recognize the gift you already have.

Here are a few strategies for finding more time:

1. Do an honest audit of your week

Write down everything you do each day and ask yourself, “Was this necessary?” and, “Did this have to take so long?”

I am often embarrassed by how long I take doing simple tasks, like brushing my teeth or taking a shower. Why is this? Because I let myself get interrupted. I tell myself that texting someone or checking my email three times in five minutes is somehow more productive, when in fact it’s getting in the way.

If I would just say “no” temporarily to certain tasks and instead be fully attentive to whatever I’m working on at the time, each thing wouldn’t take nearly as long. Intentionally tracking my time has helped reveal the truth about how much time I actually have.

Time is like money. If you don’t track it, you’ll always run out.

“Time is like money. If you don’t track it, you’ll always run out.Tweet thisTweet
2. Start setting tiny goals

My friend Shaunta taught me this when she told me that she started setting a goal of writing for only ten minutes a day.

“It’s such a short amount of time,” she told me, “that it’s silly to put it off. I might as well just do it and move on with my day.”

But something interesting happens when she does this: many days, she ends up writing more than ten minutes.

The tiny goal is just a way to trick her brain into starting an activity she might otherwise procrastinate. But on the days when she only writes ten minutes, she celebrates the achievement and moves on.

Even writing for as little as ten minutes a day can lead to a tremendous amount of output. Small amounts of effort add up over time. 

3. Learn to work faster

Some writers say things like, “I am a slow writer,” and I think that’s interesting.

Do runners say they are slow runners? Are some people slow eaters? The obvious answer is yes. But anyone can improve their performance in any activity.

So, whether you’re winning races or not, you can probably improve the speed of your running. 

Speaking from experience, you can certainly learn to eat faster. When I was a traveling musician and sometimes only had five minutes to scarf down a large meal, my band and I learned the art of quick consumption.

The same is true of writing and all creative work: you can get faster. And the faster you get, the better you will become.

How? By practicing. And as you do this, you just might see the quality of your work increase with the speed.

Appreciate the gift you already have

As my friend Shauna Niequist once wrote in the foreword to one of my books, “What we have is time. And what we do with it is waste it.”

But we don’t have to do that. We can learn to appreciate the gift of time we already have and learn how to better use it. We can become stewards of our time, taking better care of this nonrenewable resource we all have access to.

As we do this, we just might be able to better share our gifts with the world.

Do you have “enough” time to write? How can you give yourself the gift of time this year? Share in the comments.