Failure, Motivation, And What To Do When You Want To Give Up | With Andy J. Pizza

[00:00:00] This is the six figure creative podcast episode 197.

Welcome back to another episode of the six figure creative podcast. I am your host and I am back fresh from my vacation to Cancun. And I'm really, really refreshed. I don't know about anyone else listening, right. But if I go too long without a vacation, like a real relaxation vacation, then I get, I get really stressed out and I find myself really struggling with creativity.

I can't get things done at a high enough level to make me happy, which makes me even more frustrated, which makes me more apt to make mistakes and not be good at what I do. And so I get more frustrated myself and just like this downward spiral. And when I go on trips like this, like my wife and I spent two weeks in Cancun.

We only had one day of [00:01:00] adventure where we visited, I think one of the seven wonders of the world, I think chips and pizza, if I'm saying that right, which is like these cool Mayan ruins pyramid things, and you could Tampa. But the rest of the time, we just laid by the pool at the JW, Marriott and Cancun.

Every other night, we'd walk to a fancy dinner along the, uh, hotel strip, most of the nights or the other nights we would we'd get room service, or we would, um, you know, when the hotel restaurants, but most of the time we spent by the pool and read a lot. And I'm, I feel so recharged. So, so ready to get back to.

And, uh, and just get back at it. We had one snafu, the jet blue. This is my public shaming of jet blue, emailed us at 1:00 AM while we were sleeping. The day we were supposed to supposed to leave saying our flight was canceled. So we were just stranded in Cancun. So I had to scramble to book last minute, flights, same day Delta came and saved the day.

And so I'm back safe and sound happy. Uh, a little bit fatter than when I left. Cause we ate terribly and ready to get back at this today. So speaking of today, the [00:02:00] podcast for this week, I am pulling from the backlog. I like to do this from time to time on what I think is a gem from this podcast. This is one that has set in the archives of our, of our vault for almost three years now.

I don't think anyone who regularly listen to this podcast has heard this episode recently. And so I think this needs to come up. Now, this is our interview that we did on episode 67 with Andy J pizza, where we talked about motivating. How to get ourselves motivated. And I think after the last two years we've been through as a community, we have 20, 20, 20, 21, all of the toll that took us on us as creatives.

I think it's really easy to lose our way as first motivation. Like we can, we can meander through these like dark valleys for too long, without the eye on the bigger picture for what we should be doing. And so we lose motivation. Either flail around and get nothing done that we wanted to actually accomplish, which I feel like is kind of what I've done the last year or so, or we lose motivation and just give up and go on to something else that ultimately doesn't [00:03:00] fulfill us either.

So I think there's this interview with it. I recently read, listened to was fascinating. Um, because energy pizza is such a brilliant guy. We, we really like, if you don't already listen to the creative pep-talk podcast, you're missing. Andy is like the NTR yang or, or whatever, the, whatever the phrasing is there.

I'm, I'm, I'm an ignorant Southern boy, but basically like we're, we're very tactical very much like by the numbers very much like do this and then do this. And he's very much in touch with the emotions side. And we talk about that a little bit in the intro of this podcast, but like, it's just something that this podcast has never really had is like the fuels, the side of things.

And like, and before you turn this off, cause we have. Analytical left brain people that are like really pushed off by that, give this episode a chance because man, I had so many ahas recently when I really listened to this episode that made my brain like do this whole thing where I'm like reassessing everything that I'm doing right now and how I'm doing it.

Because this beyond motivation is actually about like reorientating yourself to make sure you're actually going [00:04:00] towards the right objective. And I feel like if you are, if you feel stagnant in your life or your business or anything you're doing, this is, this is an episode for you. Whether you have just not seen the progress you want, or you feel like you are.

Going the direction you want. I don't know. I don't know how to say it other than just, just listen to this episode. Like Andy does such a great job of helping people like me, who is not a super emotional person. I'm just very medium. I don't have highs. I don't have lows. I'm just, I'm just doing my Brian thing all the time.

And some of you are like that. Some of you are very like bi-polar highs, highs, low lows. And if, whether, whether you're like me or you're the bipolar type, this episode is incredible. I honestly think it is. So listen to this episode, enjoy it. And I think. I apologize to you for keeping this in our, in our vault for too damn long.

Here is our interview with Andy J pizza of the creative pep talk.

I'd say one of the biggest things we've avoided on the podcast. And some of that, Chris and I are both equally terrible at [00:05:00] is motivating people. We're both like very tactical, very logical, and that lends itself well to telling you what to do being we're very prescriptive.

sure. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

We're very, like, we tell you what you should do, but we're not great at motivating you to actually get stuff done.

And that's the type of motivation too. I feel motivated when I feel like I have a good plan, but I also am very touchy feely, so I'm very getting into the emotions.

And Chris and I don't, we're very out of touch with our emotions. So I figured we'd get someone on the podcast. Who's a professional.

do I need to cry? I can do it

can cry.

all by the end of the episode. I'll try to get there. Yeah.

Well, when I did the episode on imposter syndrome, sort of the monologue thing that was 14 minutes long, that was just me doing an impersonation of Andy. So we had a good response to that. So I said, let's bring in the real thing.

Yeah.

Let's actually dive into this episode because I think motivation is something that eludes people and I've actually been quoted on this podcast to say, fuck motivation.

[00:06:00] Yeah, lots of people feel that way.

I always say habit and routine. Trump's motivation, but that doesn't mean motivation doesn't have its place. So in your podcast, you have, how many episodes are you on now?

Two 20.

Yeah. And you're in the like hundreds of thousands or millions of downloads. You're huge. You're in order of magnitude, bigger than us and, and definitely command more respect in the industry than we do.

I'd never thought about commanding, but thanks. Hey, I appreciate it. Thanks. I'll take it. I'll avoid the self-deprecation that is like desperately trying to break free of my mouth, but yeah.

Yeah, we need motivation as creative pod-casters to both get to your level, but also our listeners need maybe a little pep talk, a little motivation and, and I think you have a really good idea of in any creative field, audio engineers are no exclusion to create a fields. Auto engineers are mixing engineers and mastering engineers are no different in our struggles and motivation than some of this, an illustrator or someone that's a graphic designer, which I think a lot of your listeners.

Yeah, 100.

[00:07:00] What are some of the common things that you see that hold people back from fulfilling what they set themselves out to?

I think the number one thing that holds people back is the fixed mindset. I would say this is the overarching narrative in my podcast is trying to get people to switch from the fixed mindset to the growth mindset. Because I think in creativity, there's a lot of toxic creative mythology. Like we clung on to these ideas that were kind of passed down from people in the last generation and generation before that.

And they're things like, you know, the idea of talent or the idea of the muse or whatever, but it's all these things that are really essentially fixed mindset. They're things you either have, or you don't have. And that's one of the reasons why, you know, this thing about you shaping with the idea of motivation.

That totally goes in line with what I'm talking about, because if you're a slave to your emotions, if you're a slave to, I don't feel like doing it today, I don't feel like I've got it today. That's fixed mindset.

Can you quickly go over what fixed mindset [00:08:00] is versus growth mindset.

Absolutely. So there's a book called mindset by Dr. Carol, the whack. It came out, I don't know, 10 years ago or something, but it's essentially this idea of, do you believe your skills, talents, IQ, whatever capabilities have the ability to grow, or are they a set fixed thing? I think the. Story from the book that summarizes the idea of the fixed versus the growth mindset is they tested kids and they gave them these challenges, like these word puzzles and the kids that had the fixed mindset.

If it was a challenge, they instantly shut down. And the reason why is because they were told that if they did well on a test, they were smart. Not that they worked hard. But it wasn't about effort. It was about their fixed nature. You are smart. So if you crush a test, you're smart. And if you fail at a test, you're dumb.

And if you have the fixed mindset that can't change. [00:09:00] And so the same goes for the kids that have the growth mindset when they got to channel. They were like, Ooh, yeah, challenge. This will be fun because challenges are fun. And so to me, there's this thing in creativity where it's so much about talent. If this idea of when you feel like you've got it, you'll put in the word.

But when, as soon as you feel like you don't have it, like maybe I don't have it, you instantly want to shut down and not do it at all. If it's pass or fail, it's final. Right. But what if putting in the work is what allows you to have it? Right? So that's my whole thing is that it's the journey that takes you there rather than figuring it out is something that you do at the end of a journey, not the start of one.

Does that make.

I personally love this as someone who like got A's B's C's D's F's all through.

Yeah, full spectrum.

Pokemon collect them all. Like I got the full spectrum of grades. I [00:10:00] feel like I was the true embodiment of the growth mindset. I went from that to like, where I found my stride. I eventually got over my fixed mindset that you naturally grow up with in schools, especially at my age, that was kind of the mindset back then.

And I've gotten to what I've done now, and I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but that's just like mindset wise. A ton. So it makes sense. It's easy to understand on the outside looking in, but whenever you are actually going through this, how do you get past the emotional tug? Because I've seen it time and time again in my self, in the past, not as much anymore, but definitely in people, in my surroundings where they set their mind to a task.

I see this in my students as well, to set their mind to a task that they set a goal for themselves. They hit that roadblock. And like you said, that. They cannot face rejection or failure. And if they see themselves hitting a roadblock and having any sort of struggle to get past that roadblock to get to their goal, if they see anything that could hold them back, they'd rather give up and crumble than to face the potential that they're not good enough yet.

And that's a tough pill to swallow.

That's the problem with the fixed mindset is if you're [00:11:00] not good enough, now you will never be good enough. That's the problem is that if you fail today, you're a failure. That's not a step in the journey. So basically it's not all this. Like a simplification is it's like 228 episodes of ammo to crush that Fang that fear.

And it's basically find all of these different mental gymnastics that help you break through that. I'll give you an example of one of my favorites, one of my most popular episodes. And I'm going to have to send you the link because I can't remember what number.

It will be in our show notes. If you go to the six figure home studio.com/ 78, that slash seven eight, there will be a link to this specific episode in the.

There you go. Yeah, this is, I talk about Goonies and the show called the curse of Oak island where they're like searching for real treasure. It's on history channel. And I say, you know, every time you hit trouble, What's your mindset say about trouble. What it should say is this is a booby trap. And what does a booby trap mean?

When the people on [00:12:00] Oak island are digging and they find a booby trap, they don't think, oh no, we got trouble. They think there must be treasure.

Yeah. You know, you're close to something because you've hit the.

Yes. And so there's this idea. I say, you know, in the creative world, if there is a paved road to this success, and there are, is a giant, you know, millions of cottage industries alongside it to make it easy to go on this road. And it's just, you know, basically art school, whatever, you know, all this money is being made off you on this road.

You know, the treasurer is not at the end of that road.

Oh,

It's alongside the road now, right now, if you go in and it's a fricking wilderness, and you're just one out your meat and tigers and booby traps and all this crap, you're like, there's something good at the end of this. And so I say on the Oak island show, every time they hit a booby trap, instead of being discouraged, they look at each other in like it's Oak [00:13:00] island.

What did you expect? Like, that's exactly what we're looking for. And so I say, when you hit trouble, instead of being like, oh man, I suck. I'm never going to win. You say it's art. What would you expect? That's what this is, that's what you're doing here. And so just basically it's 228 versions of that, of like, how do you trick yourself into seeing adversity and obstacles as opportunities rather than defeat?

And that's for me, I have such a bad fixed mindset and have had my entire life that I've just had to search out and develop these tactical ways of getting around that kind of defeated mentality.

Man. That's so good. That makes me so mad at all. My elementary school teachers,

Yeah. Yeah, man.

they're like relished being like you're a good one year at good one. You're a bad one. You need drugs?

Yeah, absolutely.

Uh,

Which is funny, like give the battle on drugs and then he grows up to be a drug addict.

look at me now, Mrs. Newton. [00:14:00]

Yeah, I think that's mainly what my podcast is about. And then, yeah, it's very tactical and practical too, but again, those are just tools to get you to unlock the growth mindset.

Ah, man, I freaking love that.

I can talk more if you want me to, or we can switch gears or something.

No, I want to hear more about this because I think that this is.

well, it's reframing what he just said. There is reframing the issue. You hit a roadblock, you think bad, bad, bad. I should stop. You're flipping that problem in your head to be like, oh, that's a sign that I'm probably on to something great. And I should.

Yeah, I think Cal Newport says it like this. We've grown up in a world where if you have a question and you Google the question and there's no results, then you think, oh, I'm stupid. What a stupid question. That's the opportunity. There's nothing on this topic. So that's your job to show up and answer this question.

Become a resource, become valuable by charting territory. That's uncharted, like back in the day, when I was looking at how to [00:15:00] market your illustration work, it was basically one webpage that said, send postcards. I need more than that. I did. It's not working. I sent the postcards. And so I made, you know, hundreds of episodes about how to market yourself as a creative person, because it didn't exist.

Yeah. I was wilderness and I had to find my way through it through a bunch of.

So I love this fixed versus growth. And even as you described it, the purpose of your podcast, I'm like, oh yeah, that's the purpose of our podcast. If you aren't good at something, you can get better at it. I love saying if you want to be in the top 1% at anything on earth, go by the three bestselling books and read them on that topic.

Guess what? Now you're in the top 1%. It's that freaking easy? And I think for a lot of.

creatives, but definitely audio engineers and producers and studio musicians, like all the book listened to are mastering engineers, I guess.

No, you guys aren't getting.

Yeah. Not really. Yeah,

not really. I'm just kidding. Yeah. That's what they are.

are

So there's a lot that goes into [00:16:00] this. I don't know, like kind of avatar personality of like, well, I'm not good at sales or I'm not good at marketing. I'm not good at business. The whole point of this podcast is to be like, oh, you can be, if you want to be, if you're passionate enough about the thing that you want to do or living, you're going to be willing to learn how to do other things to enable yourself to do.

And so yeah, that transition to growth mindset, that's essentially, that's our podcast.

Yeah, I love that. And I think that there's just like a few. I'm trying to add a nuance to every discussion because that's one of the ways that you get that toxic mythology happening is that they're like, this is the way it is. Like, if this is a sellout, that's not, you know what, all this like binary, you know, whatever dual way of thinking.

And that one of the things I try to talk about a lot is. As hold a relative concept in your mind, two different things. Yes. On one side of the Venn diagram, you do want to lead with your natural strengths, your innate qualities, you know, all of that, all that stuff that you've got going for you that stacking the deck in your [00:17:00] favor, do that as much as you can.

It's not. You need to ignore your talent or ignore that completely. That's a great springboard, but see it as a springboard. And the other side of that Venn diagram is all the ways you can grow. Right. And then the other thing I was going to say to what you were talking about when it comes to learning stuff, you said you can be, if you want to.

And I think that is the ultimate trick. There's a quote by Liz Gilbert. She says. You should let your creativity be led, not by fear, but by curiosity. And so one of the things that I've thought a lot about, I get these questions all the time. Do I have to learn the new software? If you think of it like that, don't because you won't learn it.

If you're letting your creativity develop through fear of it. Now I've got to learn this instrument. You're never going to learn it properly. You're not going to learn it. And the same goes for the business books. If you don't really fricking want a business, those business books, aren't going to help you.

I only started digitally drawing when I was just seeing people do stuff digitally that [00:18:00] I couldn't do analog. And I was like, you know, I'm gonna learn this shit because I want to, my curiosity is peaked. And so I think as long as you're leading. Curiosity then that will lead you to the growth mindset and the best of the growth mindset.

The other reason I get so passionate about that is because I'm a really big believer in neurodiversity. Like it's very, very important to me that we accept that not everybody's brain is the same. And so you can't just be like, here's the one size fits all and you could be anything you want to be and blah, blah, blah.

I'm like, well, that's also not completely true because everybody's brains are wired differently. Just like being an athlete. Yes. You can get better. At basketball, but it doesn't mean that you can be in the NBA.

Well, if you're four foot eight, you're going to struggle with.

Right? There's a tension there that's uncomfortable. But I think if you will embrace both sides of that and try to find the sliver where they overlap, that's where the magic is.

Well, and let me sort of. Talk you up a little bit more and Jerry Seinfeld, you, so I think when you hear someone saying such [00:19:00] amazing stuff is what Andy's saying right now. There's probably some like, well, who is this guy? Like what gives him the right to say these things? And,

That's actually, yeah, we probably didn't do the best intro

That's hilarious.

credibility.

so let me dive into that one Andy's podcast is probably. Number one ish in the field of what we're talking about. But more importantly, Andy is an illustrator and Andy's illustration work. You might've seen it on say like a youtube.com home page, not as a video, but as YouTube, actual illustration in the background, or say on Nickelodeon or maybe in the New York times or Google.

Yeah, just keep saying them.

You've acquired a lot of logos as you've worked with.

That's true. Yeah. I've been really fortunate to do.

Yeah. And I would say in the audio career, we rarely would ever have the chance to work with such big names.

Yeah. So Andy knows what he's [00:20:00] talking about. Not just because he has a successful podcast and is experienced talking about this stuff, But yeah.

so I think it's important to underscore that, like Andy knows what he's talking about because he is a top shelf, creative. He's much more successful than Brian or I,

Yeah,

I don't know about that,

correct?

yeah. Can I tell you all the dumb things that I do just to even it out?

no, you're perfect.

one of the biggest reasons that my wife and I homeschool is this idea of growth versus fixed mindset. One of my favorite books of all time is made to stick by chip and Dan. They call this the fundamental attribution error, same thing. It's this idea of like, whoa, I'm not good at soccer, so I'll never be good at soccer or I'm not good at math.

So I'll never be good at math. This idea is something that's just, it's an infectious disease in our public schools and it's almost impossible to be a creative, let alone an entrepreneur. [00:21:00] Unless You have this idea of like, I can really do whatever I want. I can walk into any library in America, spend a few hours and walk out, kind know and enough to be dangerous on any topic that I want.

You guys both familiar. Were you around for Pokemon? You already mentioned Pokemon. So I'm

dead. I will be full disclaimer that I just missed the boat on that. I was a little too old.

I was a little too old, but I had a younger brother and so I was like, I don't really like it. It's just

was a couple grades behind me.

but I did actually

I was like the kid playing with like dragon ball, Z cards and shit. And then like, yeah. And then like magic, the gathering and stuff. And then Pokemon got cool.

Anyway, I was just going to say my favorite growth mindset example is magic AARP, which I don't know if you know this, but magic card is like the worst Pokemon, any move that he does, doesn't do any damage.

And he's just like useless, stupid thing that flops on the ground. It's just carp carp carp. But that turns into one of the most powerful Pokemon Garrett dos. It's a giant sea dragon. And so, and it's yeah, sorry. [00:22:00] Um, and then find out later that that can even turn into mega Garrett house. And for me, my whole thing in terms of like I did the, you guys know Michael Hyatt.

platform university. And he's got a book called platform and he's got some.

Yeah. He has a book called, uh, God, I can't remember what it's called. I don't know. I can't, I can't remember what it's called.

How to redo it and other things. Yeah.

Uh, it's about, I don't know, finding your compass or something like that.

Great. You're pitching this. Great. No one will ever buy this book on our.

Uh, damn it. Anyway, he has a thing in there where it's like, write your own Yulia. And do it, you know, to kind of get clarity about what you want your life to be about through doing that process. That was one of the things that made me realize growth mindset was so big to me is I wanted to live my life in such a way where people that knew me at age 20 knew a magical.

And then people that knew me at age 30 knew a Garrett house. And then people that knew me at age 48 knows mega Garrett house. You can even believe, can you believe that came from [00:23:00] that? And then especially my kids, I want to be like a living Testament. And I've thought through the podcast of like, I've done this for five years and I want the listeners to be like, what's happening?

Who is this? This guy is not the same person that made this podcast five years ago. And that just being like nonstop, like, you know, my whole life, just a Testament.

I freaking love it. This is like my favorite thing ever. It's like everything we talk about on the podcast, all the business techniques or the marketing techniques, or the philosophy is all rooted in this, this idea that you can grow. And that that's the most fun.

It's like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The foundation of that hierarchy for a creative in general is mindset. That's the first and most important thing. And until you get that down, you can't build anything else on top of that. And that's kind of what you just said.

Yeah. So I freaking love this. I'm fascinated by. Reading biographies. So I've been wanting to mention this in the podcast and just keep forgetting to do it. But [00:24:00] I read mark Cuban's autobiography. He's the shark tank, Uber famous billionaire. And it was funny because in the book, one of the things he said.

it was never take investor money.

I was like, isn't that your TV show and know what it's about, But at the end of the book, yeah. at the end of the book, he was like, if you want to grow, read biography, And I was like, okay, it's really short book, but that was my takeaway. And I've read, I don't know, maybe 15 biographies or something like that at this point.

And one of the things I love about reading biographies is you see that growth. You see that carp to Magikarp to opt-in Magikarp is that I messed that up so bad.

stay out of the

Let's just assume he used to be a carp. And then he became a magic AARP.

Our listeners are divided into two camps right now, those who don't give a shit about Pokemon. And they're like,

And the others

yeah, what is those? What is all this stupid talk? And then the Pokemon fans are like,

But this idea that I love is like, when you read a biography, you get to see that transition. [00:25:00] There's a lot of times it'll be like they were born and then they had asthma and then they did this thing and then their dad died. And then by the time you get this whole picture of like, oh, another 85 and they're dead, they always die at the end in a good biography.

A better one would be one that they didn't,

This is true.

That would actually be

never died.

Elon Musk's biography. He didn't die in that one, but it's fantastic. And you see his transition from nothing to special till I build rockets. And, uh, I changed banking with PayPal and all these things, but anyway, one of the things I love the most is reading biographies about the founding fathers of America and their thing was, well, I just want to be successful.

You know, grow a business, help people and then retire. So I can just devote all my time to learning and growing. It's totally The opposite of what we do, which is learn and then work. Their goal was, I just want to work enough that all I get to do is learn all day. I'm just going to buy books and read them.

The other thing, I find really interesting about what they did now. Listen, this is not a political statement, please.[00:26:00]

Anytime you have to preface that is entirely a political state.

It really is not. It really is not, it just has a political word in it, but it's a point. Okay. What I love about what the founding fathers did was that what people do when they start something is they often say, well, what are the options available to start something? So what they could have done was said, what kind of country do we want to be?

Do you want me to be like, France? Do you want to be like England? Like, which one do we want to do? And they said, no, let's be a different type of country that never existed. And we're going to start on the back of philosophy and our personal code of ethics that we're going to invent right now. And it's an interesting, the only.

Best arguments. I've heard against capitalism. Hold on, just hold on. Their partners, whatever you feel about that is even if it's the best that we have, it doesn't mean we have to stop inventing them. Now it doesn't mean that there's not other forms of economy that have been yet to be invented that take the best [00:27:00] of it and actually improve on the bad.

So does that make sense? We literally could just call this the growth mindset that's know.

W you're saying that many of us have a fixed mindset about capitalism,

Yeah, exactly.

that there might

come up with that by the way. That's another, I don't remember who said that, but it's a philosopher of some sort.

My brain is back closer to topic here. Mr. Pizza, here I am a listener. I have heard you. I really resonated with the thing about the Oak island, where when I hit the booby trap, I know I'm where I should be and I should just keep pushing forward. But it still hurts. I still want to give up, I still like, what do you start doing to take the next step?

So when you have the realization that, okay, maybe I have a fixed mindset, I need to move to a growth mindset. It's not as simple as just flipping a switch. What are some practical steps that we can give people to start making that.

Well, first of all, I just want to say, and I'm glad Chris is here because he's not always there for my podcast. You can attest that about. Two to three days out of the five a week. I come in with like, oh my [00:28:00] gosh, what am I doing with my life? Like, it's not like, you know, I'm panicking about something stupid.

Or I feel like, oh, that thing's not going to work or, you know, whatever it is. So it's not like I've, it's not that I've mastered the emotional roller coaster. I definitely have not, I still feel all the feelings every single week. But the thing that I have done that I think is really important is that.

Proved the growth mindset through my actions starting small and then snowballing into now I'm addicted. I'm addicted to the fact that I know I can make new realities happen by just thinking them up. And then with intensity, like giving my time over to them over time. And so what I love my son is in a martial arts and I.

Love it, because it is such a tool for teaching the growth mindset within like three weeks or like four weeks, you level up a belt, they design it that way.

Nice. How old is he?

He's six. So like within a few weeks he sees his work pay off and [00:29:00] his identity change. And it's like, for me, there's just those little things early in my career, like the first three years where you're really unsure at the bottom of this mountain, am I a mountain climber?

Will I ever climb a mountain? And I think that for me, like in a way, I feel a little bit nervous about talking about this.

That means it's a booby trap, which means you should go.

like in a way illustration, and this can sound really shitty in a way, but illustration was kind of settling for. When I was in high school, like, I really wanted to do a bunch of crazier stuff than that, but I found illustration and I thought, you know what?

I think I can do that. Like, I think I've got what it takes. And so it was kind of like a next right thing move. And once I started to get addicted to, oh, I know how to learn what I need to learn, put in the time I need to put in to achieve fangs once you've proved that to yourself. Then you can apply that to bigger mountains.

[00:30:00] Right. And so you're just kind of slowly gone from there. Does that make sense?

Yeah. So slowly building your confidence up with small achievable tasks leveling up, but also the key there is not just staying in easy.

Yeah, 100.

If you don't keep pushing and stressing yourself along the way, it becomes impossible to keep growing. And I think we've talked about that. The book, uh, peak performance is a great gray part where they talk about stress.

Plus rest equals growth. If you're stressed all the time, if you only do hard things, you never rest, then you never grow. Or if you only do easy things and then rest, you never grow. So it's stress. So always tackling bigger and harder. Rest. So you're not trying to run yourself ragged 24 7, and that will make you grow.

I think that's a good book for people that are maybe in this place, right.

It's funny that you mentioned that I re-read all my highlights two nights ago and was thinking, man, we need to talk about this more in the podcast. I think it's important to clarify though, that stress in the context of stress, plus rest equals growth should be stress, doing [00:31:00] new things, stress, pushing yourself.

Not like I think a lot of people in our industry will struggle with like they're stressed because they force themselves to work for 20 hours, straight editing drums or something. Totally.

So I think the best illustration for stress plus rest equals growth is in weightlifting or bodybuilding. You need to push yourself just to the breaking point, but not being. And then you need to rest to give your muscles time to repair themselves. And then over time you're going to naturally get stronger.

You're going to naturally grow muscle. And it's very, very similar in the creative field. If you're pushing yourself creatively or in your career or in your business, and then giving yourself you're pacing it the right way, essentially. That's what leaves room for growth.

Michael Hyatt again, is coming up. He talks about this and I think it's a smart goal thing. I don't really know what that is, but people keep telling me that. Uh, and that's this idea that the best goals are in that sliver of the Venn diagram between realistic and challenge. And your psych, it has to be within the realm of [00:32:00] you.

Believe you can do it, but it has to be right outside of that realm too, to inspire you. So you have to have right in that little sweet spot. Those are the best goals.

Yep. And for those who don't know, a smart goal is actually an acronym for something.

And I don't know. So please.

When you set a goal for yourself, instead of saying like, I want to be successful, which is like the most nebulous goal of all time. It is setting something that is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound.

There's different variations of that. I actually teach it a little differently than achievable and relevant, but at the end of the day, if you just set a goal that is specific and have some sort of measurement and have the time bound part tied to it, I will make $10,000 by April 15th or whatever your goal is actually like effort based goals, not results based goals.

I like to say, like, I will. Reach out to 100 artists, or I will have 100 lunches with part of my network this year, before the end of the year or whatever. Like those are specific, measurable, [00:33:00] attainable, relevant and time-bound goals.

Yeah, that's good. I'm going to have to do an episode on that because that's all the things that I talk about and goal setting. Yeah. So that's really good. Do you know the book measure? What matters

No, but I like that.

about making a measurable, but it's key results and. Objectives objectives and key results yet. So I do the same thing and they're telling you, what's your objective, and then what's your key result, but I don't do key results out of your key actions.

So if I say my objective is to double the size of the podcast by the end of the year, then I say what the 80 20 kind of rule, what's the action that I take that has the most impact. And I'm going to say

Is it being a guest on other podcasts?

that yeah, it is.

there's a little agenda here. The truth is revealed.

it is that it's like, I'm going to reach out to 100 people to do that. And so that's something I can measure. I know it's the best shot for reaching my goal. And yeah, I do that too.

Are you using a customer relationship management software to track those relationships for the [00:34:00] podcast you're reaching out to?

No, but I could be.

Yeah.

We're going to hang out and talk about CRMs later.

I have a manager now who's doing that. So he, maybe he can,

Ooh, he went, oh, he just crushed us. He has a manager.

That's

Wow. We are. We are so small time.

manager.

I'm

You just big boy, us dude,

it probably would be better to have a manager than a CRM.

for those who don't know, we talk about CRMs on episode seven. So like way back in like 2017, we made an episode about this and any JPT. You should listen to that.

Okay. I think there's an interesting thing here because ultimately if you're the type of personality that finds it easy to manage such. Then you should do that. I'm literally just paying somebody to do that because I'm terrible at it. I'm terrible at systems. I'm not a systematic person and that's why I'm outsourcing that.

It's not really anything about my status. It's just.

We can make the shift through the 80 20 principle and hiring and delegation and automation. And.

Are you sure that you don't have a [00:35:00] fixed mindset about that, Andy?

I'm sure. I'm sure about that. Well, and at the end, we can even go to it with this. You can also just grade it based on, I don't want to do.

Oh,

That's the curiosity versus fear kind of thing. It's like the fear of like, I've got to do this. I can't pay anybody to do that. You know, versus like, I'm not interested in that.

I don't, it'll make me sad to do that. And I have the resources to make this person who loves to do.

This brings up a really good point though. When people hear you say that they think, oh, I don't want to have to talk to people, or I don't want to have to do this or that the things that are really going to push the needle forward, it might be the same as you saying, like, I don't want to be on podcasts because it's.

Like, how do you keep yourself from lying to yourself about things you should be doing? Maybe you can't afford to put it off or maybe you'll know how to automate it or delegate it. Like, how do you keep yourself from lying to yourself about stuff you don't want to do, but you have to do because you can't afford not to do.

Yeah. I [00:36:00] mean, I think that for me personally, I'm super driven by. Bigger purpose and like bigger vision, big picture is like the whole thing to me. And so if I can sell myself on the big picture, then I can get through. You know, the past decade, I've done my own taxes in terms of I've had an accountant, but I'm keeping track of all of my business and doing all that, that was like fricking pulling teeth for me.

And I hated it. And it, every April I'm like, oh God. And I'm freaking out. You know, that was 10 years of just having to sweat through it. But keeping my eye on the prize gets made to do it. There's like if I have a clear vision in mind, I can get through almost anything. Right. And so I think that for me, that's the big thing.

You know, if you're scared to get on other people's podcasts or go to the networking events or whatever. I think that the first thing you gotta do is figure out what do you really want? What's your actual goal? And is this something that moves the needle, then do it. And if you're not willing to do it, [00:37:00] get a new goal because that's it.

I mean, people all the time that say that there were like, and I taught, I'm trying to get to the bottom of like, what do you really want? And they say that, and I'm saying, well, how do people get that? Who have you seen do that? This person and that person, that person, they all do this, but I'm not willing to do that.

That's conversation over. You're like, you're you can't I always say you can't. This is an Andy Stanley thing. Who's like a Southern preacher. Your financial plan. Can't be to win the light. That's the opposite of a plan. You can't plan on being the exception to the rule. The plan only works within the rules.

And so I think that that's one of the things. If you're not willing to walk the road that gets you to the place you want to go, you need to pick a different goal that, or you have to at least offset that. Like for me, right? One of the things I noticed is all of my peers live in New York city or LA. And so I realized.

For the longest time. I just thought, well, I'll just be different. I'll just be the different guy. They're like, no, you won't be the different guy. Cause you're planning on winning the lottery, which is psychotic. [00:38:00] That's not a financial plan. And so what I did was I'd say I'm going to use my extra budget from living in Ohio or living in Indiana, which I did at the time.

And so I'll be even more networking events and more, I'll have more contacts than any of my friends on the coast. And so you can't just ignore the things that you've got to do. You either have to do them, or you have to reinvent them and offset that. Does that make.

Absolutely. Let's go back to what you said when it comes to having that clear vision in your head that drives you forward to actually do those things you don't necessarily want to do, especially at the start, especially when you're at the bottom of that mountain, staring up at how much you have to climb to get to where you want to go.

How does one really find a vision that is pushing them forward enough to do those things? Because I know so many people that are just like, they're just coasting life is just happening to them. They don't have that clear vision. They don't really know what they want to do. This is a little less prominent in the recording industry because most people listen to a podcast have that specific vision or goal [00:39:00] of in something in the audio world.

But I see this a lot outside of this and people in my surroundings. So how do you help those people that don't even have the vision of what they want to.

Yeah. So, I mean, I have a bunch of say on this topic, one of the things. And you can cut this if it's too explicit.

There's 0% chance of us cutting in.

Okay. That's juicy. So, you know, you're probably familiar with this line of self-help it's like the secret it's like, you know, if you dream, it it'll happen just automatically through visualizing it. And, you know, I think people crap on that all the time, and I'm not a subscriber by any means. I like to think of that whole line of self-help as kind of like a book on becoming a parent, but you open it up and it's just Kama, Sutra. This is how you become a parent, but I was expecting, you know, more about it's like, you know, talking about having a baby in her sack. Well, it's fricking awesome. We'll talk about the start start of it, but we'll talk about that pregnancy and the labor [00:40:00] and the raising kids. Like that's all the fricking hard work, but the fact of the matter is the birds and the bees still have something to do with having kids.

So you can't just ignore that. So the whole visualizing what you want to do, it is magic. It's just not the whole thing. Does that all make sense before. For me, what I try to do is find a moving image, like an image that's actually moves me. And I'm not a believer in like sacrificing your sleep to your detriment.

Unless it involves really good.

Amen. But I think that if I have to be willing to sacrifice. For moving the needle towards this goal, because all of my pushing the needle forward comes from doing personal work, doing my own self-initiated projects that define my brand and who I am and the type of work that I want. And we could talk tons about that too, but I only do projects that I will get up two hours earlier to do.

And so that's me knowing that this is a [00:41:00] goal that matters to me. Big time. If I come up with a project and day three, I won't get out of bed at 5:00 AM for it.

Now.

Yeah. It has to be something when I'm going to bed setting my alarm, I'm like, yeah, man, Birkin, ready to do this thing. And obviously you get in the middle of the marathon and you might not feel exactly like that anymore.

And you still have to push through that. But ultimately when you're starting out, I think the goal has to vet that metric. It has to fire you up on that internal visceral level. And then, you know, it's not just you being ego driven, not just a status thing. It's something that means something to your heart.

And we've talked about it on the podcast. Roles that are just for validation, just to make you feel like you're a big deal. Like being the number one creative podcast or whatever.

We're having a manager.

No, I'm joking. That is a real danger because I see people misusing all of their skills and abilities and talents and time putting all of that into something that is only ego-driven and [00:42:00] not anything that is actually motivating them and things that they are actually wanting to pursue.

They only are pursuing the thing because it, they feel like it validates them. And that is a huge danger that I think what you just said, there is a good indication of whether or not you're pursuing it for the right reasons. Are you willing to get up two hours early for it?

I love that. One of the books we talked about on this podcast in the past one of my heroes, this is guy Derek said, They're exhibitors were to book anything you want.

I know this chap.

So good.

No, I don't actually know

I wish you had,

I know of him.

I thought you were about the big boys

I know, damn. Yeah. I know that guy. He sends me cigars from time to

He's not as tall as you'd think, I love Derek. And one of Derek's things, his sort of claim to fame as he came up with this idea, he's got a book coming out that I cannot wait to get. I think it's in June called hell yes or no. And that's his idea of like, if someone says, Hey, do you want to pursue this? If the answer is not hell yes it's no.

And that's just amazing.

I think you guys familiar with that [00:43:00] Donald Miller book, a million miles and a thousand years. Yeah. It's the idea of seeing your life as a story? I don't know if this directly comes from the book, so excuse me, if I'm plagiarizing it, but that led to me thinking about how your ego is like the hero of the story.

It's the part of you that sees yourself as separate from other people. And I think that your subconscious has a lot more rooted in community and the greater good. And it's. Your subconscious is the audience. And so when you're watching a movie and the hero's like doing selfish things, you know, making mistakes or, you know, uh, their goals are purely rooted in self glorification.

You as the audience. No, why not, bro? I'm not rooting for you. You're not out for the greater good. And I think your subconscious does the same thing. So when your whole brain is not bought into the vision, then it's like bad fuel. We talked about that before.

Yeah.

Dirty fuel. It's like that will only that self [00:44:00] glorification, that achievement vision will only get you so far.

And you're going to run out of fuel. But if your whole brain is bought in, because you're like, you've got like seven layers of strategy, seven layers of, if this pays off, it's not only good for me. I had someone, a friend of mine tell me, come up with your big list of what you want to achieve. And then after it, her name's condom.

Bartlett, uh, she said, write the list of things you want to do. And then after that, write how this will impact everyone around you. How's this going to make you a better husband? How's this going to make you a better father? How's this going to make you a better friend? And at first I was like, oh crap.

It's not like these are all selfish. And then I started writing them out and I was like, This is achieving my goal of being a living Testament to the growth mindset. If I break into that industry, this new mountain, I want to climb, this will change me dramatically. One of the things I talk about parenting all the time is this idea of you've got to live a life that your kids want to ask you directions [00:45:00] on how to get there.

Like if they don't like Mike parents were corporate people, nothing wrong with that. My dad and my stepmom, nothing wrong with that, but I didn't want to do that. And so all of their advice I was on. Not interested, not trying to go to that destination. So, no, thank you. And so that's in my parenting thing is I want to live a life for my kids or like, how do you get their dad?

I'm like, glad you asked. That was a really, really helpful part of my goal setting this year.

Let me encourage you, your daughter dot your oldest daughter. She's going to do that. I could see it in her

yeah man. Yeah. She, she, yeah.

She thinks you're awesome.

Yeah. She is. The rest are terrible. I've got 18 children just getting I'm a dog,

Funny story. Andy's youngest daughter, Alice, and my youngest daughter and Nora are besties They just love each other.

And they also look alike,

They do look alike. It's strange. They finish each other's

sandwiches.

Oh, not sentences. Well, [00:46:00] Andy, thank you so much for taking the time to come on our podcast. Where can our listeners a find your podcast? What is it called? What do they need to search for and be where can they find out more about you as a.

Yeah. As far as I know, it's, wherever podcasts are not. So.

Yet not sold yet. And.

I know you're going to chime in with that. I knew it. Creative pep-talk creative, pep talk podcast. My name is Andy J pizza. You can find me on most social platforms at Andy J pizza, including Instagram. That's the one I'm most active on, and that can keep you up to all of the stuff I'm doing.

That's my latest favorite word is

bleep that out.

I'm sorry. I can't help.

One of the things too, if you're looking for an intro to Andy's podcast, is it episode two to six that I'm on that I'm interviewing you?

So if you need an easy entry point and a familiar friend to take you on that journey, Chris is on that one and asking me questions for my audience, who is. Yeah. And I have a book called creative pep talk. It's a nonfiction book, but it's an anthology of [00:47:00] 50 different lettering artists and they've lettered at some kind of wisdom.

And then they've paired it with an explanation of how that impacted them. So, yeah, that's one of my books that's available.

Well, and one of the things I want to mention the devil's advocate in me is it can hear people being. Wow, what kind of heat? I'm not going to explore that if it's not audio, I don't care. One of the best things you can do for your business and any business for creativity, for, you know, strategies that you can use to grow your businesses, to look at other industries, they don't have to be related at all.

You can look at things that have worked in those industries and say, oh, maybe I could apply that. And for me, the first people that ever were my business coaches or dentist. And so as I first got into mastery, I had a very dentist hygienist model that I really emulated. And it was really advantageous as I started to look around at other businesses and say, oh, they do this.

And they do that. I wonder how I could apply that to my business.

Yeah. Honestly, anything that Chris and I have ever taught you on this [00:48:00] podcast, like not anything 95% of it is stuff we learned from other businesses and other.

Are there industries,

Yeah, other industries,

you can cut this. I don't know how this is going to hit your audience. It's a little Sofie is, uh,

end of the face. That's what we need.

I grew up in the church and so that was a real education and business.

Ooh.

That was the sorry and marketing, you know, that's true. Like I grew up in that and I think I learned a ton about business and marketing from churches, and I applied lots of that to my creative business. And I think the same as for any industry.