On the creative journey, it's easy to get lost, but don't worry, you'll lift up.

Sometimes you just need a creative pep talk.

Hey, you're listening to the creative Pep Talk podcast. I am your host, Andy J.

Pizza and the only thing that I think is more frustrating than not knowing what you want as a creator is knowing exactly what you want as a creator.

And no one actually letting you have it.

You know, for years, I wrestled with every option. I didn't know what I wanted to do.

Did I want to make band posters, character design, book covers, illustrative branding, editorial, infographics like what I tried everything.

And nothing felt right. And then I finally figured it out. I wanted to focus on making picture books, but there was just one problem.

No one would let me actually make one. And you know, email after email after email and pitch after pitch and draft after draft.

I just came to a complete dead end. And what do you do when you finally know what you want, but no one will even give you a shot?

What you do is you pet yourself. And I'll explain exactly what I mean by that in just a second. Stay tuned.

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So this is episode two of what we were calling the creative summer school series and it's a summer school series because we've been revisiting some of the foundational ideas of the show that we've gone through over the past eight years.

And I just had the feeling that I needed to revisit some of these things and tighten up and kind of recalibrate using some of the ideas as well as like bring them further and show how they fit together.

And I thought maybe you need this as well and I realized that these steps are essentially how I built my creative practice and career.

These steps are the process I've done over and over and over again to create each arm of my creative business you know I do picture books I do client work I do talks I do the podcast I do classes I do all kinds of different things.

And each one of those arms have utilized most of them have utilized every single part of this process and if you want to be a solo creator if you want to make build your own practice.

This series is the best advice that I have to get you to find direction to make some actual progress and essentially build a thriving practice that's not based on trends or going viral.

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