Motivation, Mindset, And Getting Out Of Your Own Damn Way: With Andy J Pizza of Creative Pep Talk

This is the six figure home studio podcast, episode 78

Whoa. Listening to the sixt figurer home studio podcast, the number one resource for running a profitable home recording studio. Now your Brian Hood and Chris Graham. Welcome back

[inaudible] to another episode of the six figure home studio podcast. I am your host Brian Hood and I'm here with my bald and beautiful and purple shirted cohost, Chris Graham. Chris, how you doing today buddy? Oh Hey guys, I'm great. I'm really good. That's a very boring and generic answer. I'm so extravagantly amazing right now that I don't even know what to do it myself. We have this be a star on our podcast today.

A true podcasting start. Now that's terrible. Ladies and gentlemen, my office made Andy Jay.

Jerry Seinfeld always tells people that are introducing him like, don't hype me. Don't. That's comedian Albert and in the audience like prove it. Okay, so like this guy owns podcasting and this is gonna be the worst episode of all time. And they're like, I thought he was supposed to be good at this. This guy has a podcast. Nobody listened to it. Everybody frigging hates it, but this might be an exception. Wait and see

on that note, I'm going to do that. Right. So Andy lives here in Westerville, Ohio where I also live. We met through a mutual friend and we were both looking for office space. I work out of the house, but I wanted somewhere where I could work on my business, not for my business, and that I can be a little farther away from my kids when they were screaming and going crazy. So I was working in a spot that was very close to my house that ended up going south. We did an episode on it a while back.

It was such a bad falling out that we made an episode about how to not be a shitty business owner.

It did not go so well. And my friend reached out and was like, Hey, there's this guy Andy. He also has a podcast you guys should hang out. We met at this fabulous restaurant here in Westerville called North Star and we immediately hit it off and Andy said to me, you know, I also have add, and I said, let me stop you right there. I didn't tell you I have add, but I know,

wait, you guys have 80 I have add as fuck. They tried to put me on Ritalin when I was in elementary school. You do? Yeah. Yeah. They tried to put me on Ritalin and my parents instead. And here's the deal. This is a really weird side story, but it's fine. Yeah.

This is like before Google, so you couldn't just like Google. What the fuck does riddle and due to a child, like it turns him into a Zombie and it will stifle your creativity and all these other side effects. You couldn't do that back then. So she literally went to the library and researched the effects of Ritalin on children. Oh, thank God. And decided to just a, not put me on it and then be pulled me out of school and homeschool me for a few years until I got my act together. He could go rejoin society. Is that just a creative trait add?

I think I have a bunch of say about that, but I don't know if that's a problem.

Okay, so let's move on to your hyping of Mr Andy Jay.

Ah, yes. Add. So we met, he said, I have add too and I thought, oh my God, I love this guy. And I said, you know, I didn't tell you. I know we bonded. We found an office space that's kind of in between our two houses and it's been amazing. Andy has a podcast called the creative pep talk.

Can you say that more clearly so our readers can actually understand what the hell you just said, the

creative path. Dot tart. Sorry,

readers, as Brian just said, we're unable to understand me. It is the creative talk podcast. Andy, sum up the creative pep talk podcast.

We help you build thriving creative careers. That's it.

Yeah. So this is the weird thing. What we try to do on our podcast is that, but for audio engineers, and Andy does that for all creatives. So it was this weird thing where it was like, we both have podcasts and they're in the same micro genre. Really Weird,

very weird. Very weird. If you like what you hear from Andy Today, go subscribe to this podcast because there are thousands of audio engineer's and listen to us that are the perfect candidates for the creative pep talk. Thanks man. And I think we're going to talk about some of the stuff today, because I'd say one of the biggest things we've avoided on the podcast and something that Chris and I are both equally terrible at 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 to, 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 of that.

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

do I need to cry? I said, I'll try it again.

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 him.

So we had a good response to that. So I said, well, let's bring in the real thing. Yeah, that's funny.

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. Yeah, lots of people feel that way. I always say habit and routine trumps 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 to 28 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 had never thought about commanding. Thanks. Thanks. I'll take it. I'll avoid the self deprecation is like desperately trying to break free of my mouth, but yeah, there you go.

We need no innovation as creative podcasters 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. Audio engineers and mixing engineers and mastering engineers are no different in our struggles and motivation. Then someone that's an illustrator or someone that's your graphic designer, which I think a lot of your listeners are. Yeah, 100% what are some of the common things that you see that hold people back from fulfilling what they set themselves out to do?

I think the number one thing that holds people back is the fixed mindset. I would say this is the overarching narrative and my podcast is trying to get people to sweat from the fixed mindset to the growth mindset. Because I think in creativity there's a lot of toxic creative mythology. Like we clung onto these ideas that were kind of passed down from people in the last generation and generation before that. And there 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 there. Things you either have or you don't have. And that's one of the reasons why you know this thing about you shafing 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 too.

Can you quickly go over what fixed mindset versus growth mindset for our listeners?

Absolutely. So there's a book called mindset by Dr Carol Dweck. 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 best 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, that 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 out a task, you're dumb.

And if you have the fixed mindset, that can't change. And so the same goes for the kids that have the growth mindset. When they got a challenge, they were like, Ooh, yeah, challenge. This will be fun because challenges are fun. And so to me there's a 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 work. 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 is that it's the journey that takes you there rather than figuring it out is something that you do at the end of the journey, not the start of one. Does that make sense?

I personally love this as someone who liked got A's, B's, C's, D's, F's all through school. Yeah. False. Bactrim, Pokemon collect them all. Like I got the full spectrum of grades. I feel like I was the true embodiment of the growth mindset. I went from that to like where I found my stride. I visually 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. I've grown 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 myself 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. The set their mind to a task that they set a goal for themselves. They hit that roadblock and like you said, they crumble. Yeah, 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 then to face the potential that they're not good enough yet and that's a tough pill to swallow.

That's the problem with fixed mindset as if you're 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, but this is like a simplification is it's like 228 episodes of Ammo to crush that thing, 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 is.

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

There you go. Yeah, this is, I talk about Goonies and the show called the curse of Oak Island or they're like searching for a 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 Oak Island or digging and they find a booby trap, they don't think, oh no, we got trouble. They think there must be treasurer, right?

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

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 route. And it's just, you know, basically art school, whatever, you know, all this money's being made off you on this road. You know, the treasurer is not at the end of road. It's alongside the road now. Right now if you go in, it's a fricking wilderness and you're just one out your re 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 Oak Island show that every time they hit a booby trap, instead of being discouraged, they look at each other in like, it's Oak 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 Island, 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 mean 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. It all my elementary school teachers. Yeah, yeah man. They're like relished being like, you're a good one. You're a good one. You're a bad one. You need drugs.

Yeah, absolutely. Ah, which is funny. Like give the battle on drugs and then he grows up to be a drug addict to look at me now Mrs. Newton. Yeah, but 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. You want me to do or we can switch gears or something, but 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. Yeah, 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 continue. 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. No, 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 market your illustration work, it was basically one webpage that said send postcards. And I was like, I need more than that. I sent the postcards and so I made hundreds of episodes about how to market yourself as a creative person because it didn't exist. Yeah, it was wilderness and I had to find my way through it through a bunch of crap.

So I love this fixed versus growth mindset and even as you described, but 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 best selling books and read them on that topic. Yes. 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 you know, it was studio musicians, like all they book listened to our mastering engineers, I guess to know you guys aren't creatives. Yeah, we're not really, yeah, not really. I'm just kidding. Yeah, that's what you are. You are. So there's a lot that goes into this, I dunno, like kind of Avatar personality of like, Whoa, I'm not good at sales or I'm not good at, you know, marketing. I'm not good at business. The whole point of this podcast is to be like, boy, you can be, if you want to be, if you're passionate enough about the thing that you want to do for a living, you're going to be willing to learn how to do other things to enable yourself to do that. And so yeah, that transition to growth mindset, that's essentially it. That's our podcast too.

Yeah, I love that. And I think that there's just like a few, I always am 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 the sell out, that's not, you know, what at all this like binary, you know, whatever dual way of thinking. And that, one of the things I try to talk about a lot as think of it as hold a relative concept in your mind to 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 favor, do that as much as you can. It's not that you need to out 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 as all the ways you can grow. Right? And then the other thing I was gonna 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 trek. There's a quote by Liz Gilbert, she says that you should let your creativity bay led, not by fear but by curiosity. And so one of the things that I've thought a lot about it, I get these questions all the time. Do I have to learn the new software? And like if you think of it like that, don't, because you won't learn it if you're letting your creativity developed 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 brick and want a business, those business books aren't gonna help you. I only started digitally drawing when I was just seeing people do stuff digitally that I couldn't do analog. And I was like, you know, I'm going to learn this shit because I want to. My curiosity is peaked. And so I think as long as you're leading with 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, it's 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. And like, well that's also not completely true because brains 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 a four foot eight you're going to struggle with that. Right? There's a tension there that's uncomfortable. But I think if you will embrace both sides of that and try to find this lever where they overlap, that's where the magic is.

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

And it's actually, you know, we probably didn't do the best intro. That's hilarious.

So let me dive into that one. Andy's podcast is probably number one ish in the field of what we're talking about it. 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's actual illustration in the background or say on Nickelodeon or maybe in the New York Times or Google.

Yeah. Just keep saying him. You've acquired a lot of logos that you've worked with. That's true. Yeah. I've been really fortunate to do that.

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 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. It's correct. Yeah. Can I tell you all the dumb things that I do? No, no, no. You're perfect. 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 Heath. 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. 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 of knowing 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 already did. I will be full disclaimer that he just missed the boat on that. I was a little too old. I was a little too old and I had a younger brother and so I was like, I don't really like it. It's just a couple grades behind me. But I did actually like the kid playing with like dragon ball z cards and Shannon and then like, yeah, and then like magic, the gathering and stuff. And then Pokemon got caught. Anyway, I was just gonna say my favorite growth mindset example is magic AARP, which I don't know if you know this, but magic. I was 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 Brown. It's just carp, carp, carp.

But that turns into one of the most powerful Pokemon Garrett House. It's a giant sea dragon. And so, and miss spoiler alerts. Yeah, sorry. 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 other stuff too. Yeah. He has a book called, uh, um, God, I can't remember what it's called. I don't know. I can't, I can't remember. It's called [inaudible] and other things it's about, I don't know, finding your compass or something like that. Right. You're pitching is great. No one will ever buy this book on our podcast. Uh, dammit. Anyway, he has a thing in there where it's like write your own eulogy and do it, you know, to kind of get clarity about what you want your life to be about if you're 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 new Emagic carp and then people that knew me at age 30 new again or dose and then people that knew me at age 48 nos mega Garrett us, you couldn't even believe, can you believe that came from 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 to that

freaking love it. This is like my favorite thing ever and it's like everything we talked about on the podcast, all the business techniques or the marketing techniques or the philosophy is all rooted in this. Yeah. This idea that you can grow and that that's the most fun thing. 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, Chris. 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 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 a or TV show and what it's about. But at the end of the book, Yeah. And then the book, he was like, if you want to grow, read biographies. And I was like, okay, it's really short book. But that was my takeaway. And I've read, I dunno, maybe 15 biographies or something like that at this point. And one of the things I love about reading biographies, as you see that growth, you see that carp to magic harp to, you know, Aarp to magic carbons that I messed that up so bad. Just stay out of the Pokemon. Let's just assume he used to be a carp and then he became a magic carpet. That would be even better. But our listeners are divided into two camps right now. Those who don't give a shit about Pokemon and they're like, what does all this stupid talk?

And in the Pokemon fans are like, hey, you create this idea that I love is like when you read a biography, you get to see that transition. 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 know 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 and actually be incredible guide Elon Musk's biography. He didn't die in that one, but it's fantastic and you see his transition from nothing too special till I built 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.

Yeah. The thing I find really interesting about what they did, now listen, this is not a political statement.

Please. Anytime you have to preface that is entirely a political statement. It really,

it really is not. It just has a political word in it, but it's a point, okay. That. 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 I want to be like France? Do you want to be like England? Like which one do we want to do it? 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 one of the 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 and venting them now. It doesn't mean that there's not other forms of economy that have been yet to be invented that takes the best of it and actually improve on the bat. So does that make sense? We literally could just call this the growth mindset.

That's yeah. You're saying that many of us have a fixed mindset about capitalism. Yeah, exactly. There might be

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

Let me bring 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 Oh Guyland

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 steps 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 shift?

Well, first of all, I just want to say, and I'm glad Chris is here cause he's not always there for my podcast. You can attest that about at least two to three days out of the five a week I come in with like, oh my 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 how 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 rollercoaster. 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 I've proved to 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 freaking 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 by the way? He's six. So like within a few weeks he sees his work pay off and his identity changes. 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 for it.

Like in a way illustration, and this can sound really shitty in a way, but illustration was kinda settling for me 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 things. Once you've proved that to yourself, then you can apply that to bigger mountains. 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 mode. Yeah, 100%. If you don't keep pushing and stretching 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 things rest. So you're not trying to run yourself ragged 24, seven and that will make you grow. I think that's a good book for people that are maybe in this place right now.

It's funny that you mentioned that. I reread 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 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 dumb.

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 beyond it. And then you need to rest to give your muscles time to repair themselves and then over time you're going to national 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, it's 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, had this idea that you're the best goals are in that sliver of the Venn Diagram between realistic and challenging and your psych. It has to be within the realm of you believe you can do it, but it has to be right outside of that realm to, 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. I 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, attainable, relevant and time bound goals.

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 liked that saying 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 your objective and then what's your key result. But I don't do key results. Ido Key actions that 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? Yeah, so there's a little engine. Truth is revealed, but it is that, right?

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 podcast you reaching out to?

No, but I could be, yeah.

We're going to hang out in tech about CRMs later. Andy,

I have a manager now who's doing that, so he may be, he can,

no, he wasn't. He just crushed us. He is. He has a manager. Wow. [inaudible] manager. I'm saying this big void us dude. It probably would be better debit manager then 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 Andy Jpt, you should listen to that.

I think there's an interesting thing here because ultimately if you're the type of personality that finds it easy to manage such things, 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 so

we can make the shift to the 80 20 principle and hiring and delegation and automation and stuff.

Are you sure that you don't have a fixed mindset about that, Andy? I'm sure about that.

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

Oh yeah.

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 doing that.

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 podcast because it's hard. 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 don't 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 it.

Yeah, I mean I think that for me personally, I'm super driven by bigger purpose and like bigger vision, big picture as like the whole thing to me. And so if I can sell myself on the big picture, then I can get through like, 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 Poland teeth for me and I hated it and it every April on go, ah, 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. It was 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 is, 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 got to 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, get a new goal because that's it. I mean people all the time that say that they 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. And like that's conversation over. You're like, you're, you can't, I always say you can't, this is the Andy Stanley thing who's like a southern preacher. Your financial plan can't be to win the lottery. Like 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 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 because you're planning on winning the lottery, which is psychotic. That's not a financial plan. And so what I did was I'd say I'm gonna use my extra budget from living in Ohio or living in Indiana, which I did at the time to travel. 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 sense?

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 that you don't necessarily want to do, especially at the start, especially when you're at the bottom of that mountain steering up and 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, they're 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 our podcast have that specific vision or goal of in something in the audio world. But I see this a lot outside of this in people in my surroundings. So how do you help those people that don't even have the vision of what they want to do?

Yeah, so I mean I have a bunch of say on this topic. One of the things that I'll say is, and you can cut this if it's too explicit,

there's 0% chance of us cutting it now. 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 and you're like, 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 and it's like, well it's fricking awesome. Talk about the start startup start of it, but want to talk about that pregnancy and the labor 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 I move on? Totally. For me, what I try to do is find a moving image, like an image that actually moves me and I'm not a believer in like sacrificing your sleep to your detriment

unless it involves really good coffee.

Amen. But I think that if I have to be willing to sacrifice sleep 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 to get. 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 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 not worth pursuing. Yeah. Done. It has to be something when I'm going to bed, setting my alarm, I'm like, yeah man, frickin ready to do this thing. And obviously you get in the middle of the marathon, 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.

Yeah. We've talked about it on the podcast with goals 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 or having a manager.

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 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 or not? I love that. One of the, we talked about on this podcast

in the past, one of my heroes is this Guy Derek Sivers. Derrick Sivers were to book anything you want. I know this chap so good.

No, I don't actually know it. I wish you know of him. I bet you about to big boys again. I know. Oh dear. He's not as tall as you'd think,

but yeah, I love Derek and Derek's things is sort of claim to fame is 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's not hell yes, it's no, and that's just amazing.

I think you guys familiar with that Donald Miller buck a million miles and a thousand years I've read it. Yeah. Yeah. It's an 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 like your subconscious is the audience. And so when you're watching a movie and the heroes like doing selfish things, you know, making mistakes or you know, their goals are purely rooted and self glorification. You as the audience is like [inaudible] no, why not road? 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 has not bought into the vision, then it's like bad fuel. We talked about that before, right? Yeah. Dirty fuel. The fuel, it's like that will only that self 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 Khandi Bartlett, uh, she said, write the list of things you want to do. And then after that, right? 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, no, 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 on how to get there. Like if they don't like Mike parents where 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 like not interested, not trying to go to that destination. So No, you and so

that's in my parenting thing is I want to live a life for my kids are like, how do you get their dad? Am I 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 eyes. Yeah, man. Yeah, she, she, yeah. She thinks you're awesome. Yeah, she's a good one. The rest are terrible. I've got 18 children. Just kidding. I'm a dog or you know, funny story. Andy's youngest daughter Alice and my youngest daughter, Nora, are besties and they just love each other and they also look alike. They do look strange. They finish each other's sandwiches. Oh, not sentences. Well, 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 it and be where can they find out more about you as a creator? Yeah, as far as I know, it's wherever podcasts are not sold 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's Andy Jay Pizza. You can find me on most social platforms at Andy Jay Pizza, including Instagram. That's the one I'm most active on and that can keep you abreast to all of the, uh, that's my latest favorite word is abreast. We've got out, I can't help myself. One of the things too, if you're looking for an intro to Andy's podcast, is it episode two to six? Then I'm on that. I'm interviewing you. So if you need an easy entry point and a familiar friend take you on that journey, Chris is on that one and asking me questions from my audience.

It was, it went really well. Yeah, and I have a book called creative pep talk. It's a nonfiction book, but it's an anthology of 50 different lettering artists and they've her to 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 like, wow, what can I eat? 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 in 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 were dentists. And so as I first got into mastering, 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. Hmm. I wonder how I could apply that to my business. Yeah. Honestly, anything that Chris and I have ever taught you on this podcast, like not anything, 95% of it is stuff we learned from other businesses and other books, other industries, other industries. You can cut this, I dunno how this is going to hit your audience. It's a little saucy. Puts it back end of the

face. That's what we need. Don't know. I was going to him. Well, I grew up in the church and so that was a real education and business. That was the, sorry, in 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.

So that is it for this episode of the six figure home studio podcast. Next week we will be coming at you bright and early 6:00 AM Tuesday morning with an episode about a lot of stuff. Actually. It's about figuring out a way to see your blind spots. Because we all have blind spots. Even me, even Chris, even Andy, Jay Pizza, we all have blind spots. And the biggest risk would blind spots is they can really hurt our business. They can hurt our relationships, they can stifle our incomes, it can stifle our careers. And we're blind to them. That's what they're called blind spots. You literally cannot see it. You do not know you have it. And so how do you help spot blind spots? Well next week we talk about that, but we also talk about finding a mentor. We talk about finding a mastermind group for you. Chris and I talk about her, my mastermind groups all the time. Right here on the podcast. We meet every Friday. It's a lot of uh, audio bloggers and podcasters and we all help each other out. Um, and spoiler, that's one of the ways you can help find the blind spots is with people in mastermind groups. So we actually talk about finding, informing a mastermind group. Again, that's next week's episode. Brighton early Tuesday morning at 6:00 AM until next time. Thanks so much for listening and happy hustling.