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 Creative Pep Talk, a weekly podcast companion for your creative journey.

I'm your host, Andy J. Pizza. I'm a New York Times best-selling author and illustrator.

And whether I'm illustrating for clients like Apple or Xbox or pep talking creative teams at places like Warby Parker or Sesame Street,

I aim to tell stories that make us remember why life is worth saying yes to.

And I'm also ADHD, which means it takes a whole lot of creativity just to even get by on this planet in this time.

And I'm just sharing the things that are helping me do that in case they help you too.

If you are a creator of any kind, it can be incredibly difficult to navigate.

How you present your work, how people reply or resonate or react to your work, how sales enter that.

You know, the mixture of doing something for yourself and then bringing anybody else into that equation, whether it's just opening it up to the forum online on social media or actually going to the point of selling your creativity,

mixing art and commerce or mixing art with not just yourself but other people can be dicey territory and it can get really complicated really quickly.

If you are finding yourself in a place where maybe you completed some goals and you're like, should I just set more goals?

Should I just take it to the next level or if you're in a place where you're having a hard time separating the stuff you're making.

And the impulse to create and still having fun and playing with also making something that you can profit off of or sell to other people.

If the goal oriented side of yourself and the creative oriented side of yourself are struggling or in battle with each other, this episode is for you.

This is a conversation that I had with a online buddy of mine, Maro Gotti, he is an Italian designer and illustrator working in America.

I've known him for a long time online. I've actually contributed some illustration to his project, the happy broadcast where he shares good news stories online and on Instagram.

It's a project that I'm just a huge fan of. His work is excellent. He injects everything he makes with tons of humor and personality.

And I just love his approach to creativity that is varied and has he has a lot of different arms to his creative practice and I think it's one of the reasons he's had a lot of success.

He embodies a lot of the ideas that we talk about on the show and then recently he's made a bigger effort to strike a balance between work and life and have creativity in his career in different compartments that are not as mixed.

And so we get into that. If you stick around to the end of the episode, I'm going to share a call to a creative adventure that I hope is a mindset trick or mindset prompt that may help unlock your creativity.

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