Bob Baker has always been determined to make a living from his creative career. He started off his career by creating a music publication from scratch, with no prior experience. He didn’t let his lack of experience prevent him from achieving his goals. He just experimented with different ideas until he made it work.
Since that first publication he has expanded his interests well beyond a local music magazine. He has dabbled with writing, painting, and creating courses for aspiring artists. He even got into stand-up and improv comedy.
Bob has not let the starving artist mentality prevent him from making a career out of his creativity. In fact, he has thrived as an artist and creative.
In this episode, Bob talks about doing things that interest you, why you need to be persistent, and what separates successful artists from unsuccessful artists.
Here are three things you can learn from Bob:
Many of us have this fear of pursuing our creative careers. We are afraid that we will crash and burn, and never recover from our failures.
Bob takes a different approach to his creative interests. He doesn’t play it safe. He explores the things he thinks are fun. “I had this philosophy early on where, if something seemed liked it was fun to do, I was like, I want to take some action… I want to experience that and see what it’s like sooner rather than later. So, you know, a lot of people play it safe, or they wait til they know everything about a topic or they think everything’s perfect… before they dive into doing something. And I was just like, ‘I want to see what that’s like. That looks like fun.’ So I did that with comedy, with improv, with publishing a newspaper.”
It all started with creating his local music publication and has blossomed from there. Bob has never let his lack of experience stop him, and neither should you. “I published a local music newspaper and I had no business doing that whatsoever because I had no previous experience. Never wrote for the school paper, never really took journalism classes. You know, had just written on my own, had a passion for music. So I said I want to combine these two long standing passions, and just started publishing a local newspaper. And it was ugly. There were typos. People pointed things out. And I eventually learned just from doing and getting things out there to make it better.”
There are no guarantees that you will ever make a living from your creative career. Not everyone is cut out for it. But there is something to be said for doing something you are passionate about.
That’s why Bob believes persistence is crucial if you want to make a career out of your art. You need to pursue it regardless of the outcome. “There are no guarantees. The world does not owe you a living. So even if you are persistent and keep your nose to the grindstone for years on end, there’s no guarantee that you’re going to make it, whatever make it means to you. However, I guess what I encourage is if you’re meant to do that thing, to express yourself in that way… You should do it regardless of the outcome. You should do it for the joy of it, however, at the same time, you could be strategic in doing it and learning the things that will move you to toward that greater potential of maybe supporting yourself some day. But hopefully it’s something that even if you don’t make a living at it or you don’t reach that point, that you’ll still do it for the joy.”
Bob recommends creating goals you can work your way towards so you can see the progress you’ve made. The key is to be strategic when you move towards your goal. “Making sure that your financial needs are met first just takes the pressure off to do your art more free flowingly I guess. And I kinda like that approach. But you can still be strategic in moving toward that goal if you have one of sustaining yourself like I did. It’s just… it may not happen on your time table… and that’s where the persistence comes in I guess. Yeah, if the payoff is not there in a month or two, are you willing to stick with it? And that’s another thing… that not everyone will, which is why not everyone succeeds because all of these rare… traits have to come together to make for a successful life.”
There are always people who will find success and those who won’t. There’s a fine line between success and failure.
Bob believes one of the things that separates success from failure is seeing thing through to completion. “There are tons of people that want to write a book. There’s tons of people that have started writing books. There’s tons of people who have even finished the first draft of a manuscript of a book. But there’s a very small percentage who actually follow it through to get the darn thing published. So there’s this seeing it concept, and I don’t know what quality that is, but it’s like, when you start on a project, make a commitment to chip away at it and to see it through to completion.”
Bob also sees another trait from many creative people: the need to jump from one project to the next. But you can’t always chase the shiny new object. You need discipline. “Another thing creative people are excited about new fresh things, and that’s cool, but you also have to follow through on the things that you’ve already started that may not be as exciting as they were those early weeks that you’re working on them. And that’s just a discipline I suppose and a personal commitment to stuff.”
Another thing Bob recommends is re-framing the way you look at marketing. Artists need to stop looking at marketing as a necessary evil and approach it as something that is creative. “To me the marketing thing, the necessary evil, is all about an attitude toward it. If you re-frame and realize that all you’re doing is just sharing your work with people who are going to resonate with it, that’s not painful, you know. You just gotta do it in a more strategic way. So get on friendly terms with marketing and don’t lump a lot of things into this “business” category.”
A recap of episode 68 of the Cracking Creativity podcast. If you liked it, check out the full episode with Kym Dolcimascolo where she talks about creating plans, why you should know your audience, and how artists can change the world.
Kym Dolcimascolo got a degree in photography and film making but didn't follow that path once she graduated from school. Instead she became a computer engineer and worked her way up the career ladder.
After working for a while in the corporate world, she decided she had had enough. So, she set herself up to leave her corporate job and started a web design company.
This career move allowed her to work with people who embraced creativity, and eventually led her into coaching for artists and creatives.
In this episode Kym talks about creating plans, why you should know your audience, and how artists can change the world.
Here are three things you can learn from Kym:
As artists, we tend to do things on a whim. We want to live a free-spirited life. We want the freedom to choose our own destinies. But this line of thinking often hurts us instead of helping us.
We should be planning our way to success instead. Kym didn't walk away from her job immediately. She decided what steps needed to be taken and she took them. "It wasn't instant. It wasn't, you know, I walked out that day and that's the end of the story. I created a plan for myself. And the plan was, I'm going to start working on my business and I'm going to actually have my business be able to generate enough money that I can afford my cost of living. And then I literally went out and did that."
Many artists believe in the starving artist mentality so they give up on their dreams. But what they really need is a plan of action. Kym believes a plan of action can help us overcome our negative mentality. "I think that part of it is that a lot of people... don't see that if they actually plan things out, and if they actually take actions that they need to take, that the starving artist thing is just whatever it is. It's something we've bought into. It's something that everybody's told us. It's something we've bought into. It's just kind of another BS that we fall for."
One of the mistakes that artists make when trying to selling their work is not knowing who they are selling to. Instead of figuring out who wants to buy their art, they try to sell it to everyone.
Unfortunately, that strategy does not work. Kym believes it is vital for us, especially in the beginning, to focus on finding people who want our work. "There is a market that's dying for your particular work and if you don't focus on that market, at least in the beginning, then the frustration is really high, if nothing else. Obviously the frustration becomes very high and your bank account stays pretty low."
That's why Kym believes we have two choices. We either need to find the people who want the art we are already creating or we need to create art for the audience we have. "If you really want to create that kind of art, then there is a particular person that wants that. Go find those people... It's one thing or the other. Either if you really want that kind of audience, then produce the art that that audience wants or if you really want to produce this kind of art and sell it, then go find that audience."
If you an artist that wants to create for your own self expression, that is awesome, but if you want to sell your art, you need to learn the game. "There are tons of artists... [that] create for their own self-expression. They have no interest in selling their art at all... and that's fabulous, but for those artists who really do want to make a living off of it, then there is a game afoot."
One of the things that artists fail to realize is how much of an impact they can have on the world. While many artists start creating to satisfy their own creative needs, most don't realize how big of an impact they can make.
Kym believes artists can make a difference once they are ready to move to the next level. "If you really had it inside of you to alter some of the things on this planet, that we could totally do it through art, and I think a lot of artists are up to that... They move beyond the 'I just create for me,' and they... actually admit 'No, I actually want to make a difference with my art.' Right? It's not just for me.... I think that that's kind of the next level."
It all begins with thinking and knowing you can make a difference. "It's beyond I just create because I have to create. Now it's move to I can take what I create and make a statement, make a difference on the planet with it. But even those artists sometimes resist the conversation about making money off of it."
In order to get to that level, you have to change your mindset. You have to be able to produce work when you want to, not when the Muse hits you. You have to call on the Muse yourself. "I think that's one of those things too, by the way, that I see that the artists that do actually build success and continue to build success for themselves is that they really know, that they can actually sit down, and they can create, and they can produce what they need to produce, whenever that is... and it's not waiting for the moon to be in a certain phase, and them to be in a certain space, and their environment to look in a certain way. It's like, okay, I can harness this and I can pull it forward, and I can put it to work right this second because I have everything it takes to do that."