Episode Transcript

2020 was a doozy, and I know it hit everybody differently and we all had to deal with our own set of unique challenges. I wanted to give an update here in this episode just what happened to me and why I fell off the radar for several months and what I’m doing now to correct that in 2021 and what we can expect moving forward from the Well-Paid Creative podcast. So let’s dive in.

So I’m not 100 percent sold on that intro just yet. In case you didn’t notice, we have completely changed the podcast name, the intro music, what we’re all about.

So that’s kind of a big thing.

In 2021, I have changed the podcast name from the secret weapon diaries, to The Well-Paid Creative, and it just really aligns with what I want to be putting out there into the world, how I want to be supporting creative professionals like you and the main messaging behind what I really want to bring to this podcast and all the content and value that I’m going to be bringing moving forward.

And really, it’s about not only becoming your client’s secret weapon, like I talk about in the book, but that’s more of an internal business process. That’s more of a mindset shift. That’s more of a way of being.

Whereas being a well-paid creative is the external factors of that. It’s how you’re showing up. It’s the clients you attract. It’s being able to do solid business so that you’re profitable, you’re making money. And all of that supports you in being creative and doing what you love and bringing, you know, just that next level of quality and projects and client work to this world that we really need.

Right.

And so we need creatives that feel supported, that feel safe and have structure in their lives, in their businesses so that they can do what they do best. So that’s what the well-paid creative is all about.

And, you know, 2020 really threw us all for a big loop. I mean, we were all in it together. We were all in the same rough seas. We all experienced things, albeit a little bit differently from one another.

And while I don’t want to take away from anybody else’s experience, I did feel like in this episode here today (I’m kind of doing this off the cuff. I don’t have any script. I don’t have any notes).

In this episode today, I really wanted to talk about where I’ve been and what happened to me in 2020 and kind of where we’re going now that it’s all behind us and we can move forward.

I mean, 2020 was awful. I mean, for so many different reasons.

We had the pandemic, we had social injustices and uprisings. We had just a general sense of being unsafe and insecure permeating throughout the entire world. Schools were shut down. If you’re a parent like I am, we had to homeschool our kids while doing our work, while being creative. And it was just really hard, right?

A lot of us had personal losses and that’s really why I disappeared for the last, I guess eight months now. In 2020, I experienced deep personal loss.

Both of my parents passed away within four months of each other and it was too much for me to deal with. I call it the unthinkable because that’s exactly what it was. It was something that I would have never, ever thought would have happened, and it was something that I didn’t think I would be able to make it through.

But now I am, I’m on the other side of it.

I can look at it a little bit more objectively. I can examine what happened, what didn’t happen, why things went wrong and why things didn’t go wrong, which is actually surprising.

Now I’m here and I’m ready to move forward. So, like I said, I have no notes for this episode. This is just me off the cuff and I’m a bit rusty.

So 2020, we can all agree, sucked. But 2021 is going to be different and not because I’m a glass half full, rose colored glasses kind of person. The thing is, is that 2020 put us through so much and it’s not going to be that 2021 will be different because we’re still going to be dealing with a lot of the things that we dealt with in 2020.

There still is going to be school closures. There still is going to be social changes, there still is going to be this pandemic. It’s not going away any time soon. We’re still dealing with this. Very much so. But what it is, is now we have gone through so much, we can now adjust and move forward.

This is a term that used to just drive me nuts when I heard it at the beginning, everybody talking about the “new normal”. And I think maybe I hated it because I didn’t want to think that there was going to be a new normal. I wanted the old normal. Right?

I didn’t want to adjust. I fought it and I hated that term. But now moving forward, I’ve realized that 2021 gives us the opportunity to adjust and accept that this is our new normal.

Now that we can accept and we can adjust, now we can move forward and see the success and achieve our goals and be able to move towards what we want in our lives and in our business without clinging on to the past.

I think that’s a big deal. Not so much resigning ourselves, but accepting that this is what’s going to happen moving forward.

One of the main concepts that I’m going to be talking about a lot moving forward is the idea that creativity needs support. Creativity can’t co-exist with chaos.

When a creative person feels safe and supported, that’s when they’re able to do their best work, and that’s when they’re able to cause changes in their industry. And that’s when they’re able to feel safe enough to reach out to new clients.

And that’s when they feel safe enough to market themselves, and that’s when they feel safe enough to charge more for what they do because they can see the value that it provides.

And I absolutely love this concept because I’ve not only experienced it myself, but I’ve seen it in so many other creatives out there.

Once they have that safety and that security, they’re able to do so, so much. So that’s going to be a big thing that we’re talking about moving forward.

A lot of this is going to come down to some of the unsexy stuff, it’s going to be things like business fundamentals, it’s going to be things like sales, it’s going to be things like marketing. All of these things that we have been scared of before.

I can honestly raise my hand and say that marketing my own business has terrified me in the past. But it’s also something that I’ve learned a few tricks along the way. And I’ve been able to find other people and mentors that have made it easier for me.

So I’m going to also do that to you. I’m going to find people to make it easier for you, and I’m going to impart everything that I know about it so that you can assimilate it into your own understanding and you can run with it in 2021.

My whole goal here is to make 2021 and forward a little bit easier for us, a little bit easier for us creative folks, because we tend to be a little bit more, I don’t want to say sensitive… sensitive is not the word. We tend to be a little bit more perceptive. We pick up on things around us way more than an average person, and that tends to throw us off.

I want to give us that safety and security so those outside conditions don’t affect our inner calm, our inner self.

That’s what we can expect moving forward with the well-paid creative podcast, we’re going to be doing live tapings of the podcast in the well-paid creative Facebook community. So if you haven’t joined yet, you should totally hop in there.

And there’s going to be just a lot more activity going on in my world and hopefully in yours as well in 2021.

So thank you so much for joining me on this brief little intro episode here. And I’m excited for 2021. I’m excited for you. I’m excited for me. I’m excited for the world and I can’t wait to see what you create. That’s it for me. Thanks so much for joining me and I’ll talk to you soon.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Well-paid Creative. All the discussions we have around these episodes mean a lot to me, and I love how much I learned from the creatives who listen in.

Before we head out, if you want access to free resources, trainings and a community of creative pros, just like you visit wellpaidcreative.com where you can find all this and more.

Join me for the next episode as we continue discussing how you can grow and love a profitable creative business.

If you enjoyed this episode, I’d love for you to leave a review or share it with someone you think would benefit. Thanks so much. See you soon.