QUESTION: What if you only made work that YOU loved, and you were certain that you would be paid top dollar if you did…Would you do it? Of course! Most sane creators / entrepreneurs would jump at the opportunity – and such is the topic of Srinivas Rao’s new book: An Audience of One: Reclaiming Creativity For Its Own Sake. The problem is, so many of us are watering down our work making it for someone else. In fact, the path to our best work is digging deeper into who you’re creating for and what happens when you create art for yourself.
In this episode we also cover…
- “If you’re going to take the time to learn to use a tool, take the time to make something with that tool…” This is a fascinating POV I’d never heard before, but it keeps us creators in the building mode vs the procrastinating mode.
- How to take your art+career+future into your own hands… Srini’s view is that we must put our focus and effort into the things that you can control. You can’t control follower count, you can’t control Facebook’s algorithms. You can control your creative process. If you focus on the process, you’ll make better work which will lead to better results…
- Why those people who live life more deliberately are more likely to find success. Simply by choosing what’s important to you (and leaning into it with deliberate force) is quite often the biggest thing that’s missing in people’s creative lives… Once you find what’s important? Pour on the gasoline…and watch out.
Enjoy!
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Some Questions I Asked:
- How many episodes of your podcast, Unmistakable Creative, have you done? [00:45]
- How did you kick off your book “An Audience of One”? [50:00]
- What was your personal realization like when you found that creativity was in all of us? [4:44]
- What would you say to someone who doesn’t consider themselves creative? [11:01]
- At what point did you understand that you had this power that separated you from other species on this planet? [14:37]
- At what point did you realize that the creativity itself was what you were chasing? [18:20]
- How do you measure your own success? What’s your north star? [22:17]
- Why you and why now? [24:20]
- Talk to me about being different, not better. [28:00]
- How important is listening in finding out who you are and creating for yourself? [31:20]
- What are some tactics that you do that we might want to try? [34:00]
- How do you stay true to an audience of one? [42:50]
- Talk to me about how you think about habits. [46:50]
- What are the habits you always try to do on a daily basis? [51:10]
- What are some common habits between some of your 700 podcast guests? [54:05]
- How do we have a healthy relationship with technology? [56:45]
- Question from audience: How do you deal with the tension between making things for yourself and experimentation? [60:00]
- Question from audience: How could your redefine what creativity is so we don’t feel like we have to create masterpieces right away? [62:30]
- Question from audience: Who has been your greatest creative inspiration? [65:34]
In This Episode, You Will Learn:
- If you write 1,000 words a day, some of those words are bound to be good. [1:55]
- Check out Srini’s viral blog post on Medium titled How Writing 1,000 Words a Day Changed My Life. [2:30]
- The story of how Srini’s high school band teacher taught him that he could be an average athlete or an outstanding musician. The choice was his. [5:00]
- Knowing how to use a tool is only relevant if you’re making things with that tool. [9:05]
- The only difference between “creatives” and “non-creatives” is that “creatives are in the habit of creating on a regular basis. [11:32]
- Reject the notion that if a million people won’t see your art then it’s not worth doing. [12:27]
- While job searching in the heart of the recession, Srini was inspired to write 100 Reasons You Should Hire Me by following Jamie Verone’s lead with her website Twitter Should Hire Me. This kicked off Srini’s writing career. [16:25]
- Check out The Life and Times of a Remarkable Misfit by AJ Leon. [19:40]
- Why you need to focus on the process, not the results. Focus on doing what it takes to find a flow state and success will I follow. [22:45]
- Check out Demitri Martin’s sketch about life coaching. [28:35]
- Why you need to cut the informational junk food out of your life. [33:00]
- Check out my interview with Steven Kotler, which convinced Srini to meditate every day. [35:10]
- Why you should set out your morning tools the night before. [37:50]
- Writing hack: fight the blank page by using someone else’s quote for inspiration. [38:26]
- Why you should make your own values and standards the lens through which you make your work. [44:30]
- How employing habits inevitably build skills. [47:13]
- The benefit of coaches and teachers. [50:00]
- Why Srini turns off screens after 8pm and how he schedules his work around his active pursuits. [51:45]
- The value of taking small risks. [53:22]
- The most common traits of all the successful and interesting podcast guests Srini has interviewed is that they live life delibrately, they are willing to do what it takes to get where they want to go, and they are optimistic. [54:19]
- Why you need to set times during the day where you will and will not let yourself be distracted by technology. [57:26]
- Check out PostSecret. [63:55]
- The creators who have had the biggest impact on Srini are Steven Pressfield, Dani Shapiro, Michael Jackson, and Cai Guo-Qiang (check out Sky Ladder documentary on Netflix). [66:05]
This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world’s top experts — Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.
