Hey, you're listening to the Creative Peptalk podcast. We help you succeed on your creative journey.

I'm your host, Andy J. Pizza, and you can stay up to date with all things Creative Peptalk

by following me on Instagram at Andy J. Pizza. Let's get into today's episode.

Just kidding. Let's talk about sponsors. I promise they're always relevant. They're not just...

It's not just mattresses. Although who doesn't need mattresses? Creators don't. We sleep on the card.

The card? Harb, whatever. Concrete. Patreon. Sponsors. Sponsors.

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Thanks, Patreon.

Quick shout out to our sponsor Storyblocks. This episode is brought to you by Storyblocks Video.

Storyblocks gives you Studio Quality 4K Stock Video without blowing your budget. If you need B-Roll, After Effects, Templates, or Video Motion Backgrounds,

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Thanks, Storyblocks.

Today's episode is very special. I got a little bit, well, considerably emotional in this conversation with my buddy and my agent and my co-lube co-founder, Ryan Appleton.

He's been bugging me to watch Hamilton on Disney Plus. I had so much stuff to talk about that I decided to record our conversation in case we wanted to share it.

Now, there aren't spoilers. There's some basic history things in there that mostly come out at the start, but there's not spoilers to it. Hard to spoil history, though.

But anyway, it's not really about Hamilton per se. It's about this idea of hiding your way to the top.

I think at the start of my career, I tried to avoid actually having to be good at my creative practice to get ahead by just trying to get endorsements rather than results.

Get this client under my belt or this blog to feature mayor, this artist to retweet me or whatever, as a means of avoiding actually being undeniably good at what I do.

I actually produce results that grow in audience of raving fans. I think that this is a pitfall that is very easy to fall into because it's scary to get an actual ring and actually try to get results.

It's scary to put yourself out there and say, hey, I'm trying to do this thing and fail. I'm trying to make a great podcast. I'm trying to make pictures online that move people, that touch people.

...