🍕 Making Money as a Creative — Strategic Planning & Social Media with Andy J Pizza

Speaker 0Let's go off the grid. Okay. Let's go off the grid. Okay. I know that you really wanna put your phone away.

Speaker 0Yeah.

Amelia HrubyHello, hello, hello, and welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast about being a deeply creative person or superficially creative person, however you like to think about it, but still a creative person who is sharing their work online, who wants to make some money from that effort, and who is trying to do that without relying on social media, or who is just so burnt out on the trials and tribulations of the Internet that you have landed here at Off The Grid, hoping to do things differently and trying to find community and guidance and inspiration on that journey. Hopefully, hearing that makes you feel like you arrived in exactly the right place, and I am thrilled to have you here. So if we haven't met before, I am your host, Amelia Ruby. I am the founder of softer sounds podcast studio. And on this show, I share stories, strategies, and experiments for sharing your work and making money online with radical generosity, energetic sovereignty, and no or minimal social media.

Amelia HrubyToday is a very special episode of the show because I am joined by a person who may be my favorite creative business podcaster, you know, other than me and this show, of course. But when I wanna listen to somebody else's creative business podcast, this is the one that I go listen to. And that is Creative Pep Talk by Andy j Pizza. I am so thrilled to have Andy on the show today to talk about how he makes money as an artist, as well as the strategic choices he's made to grow his podcast and the musician framework that he uses for thinking about how a creative business needs singles, albums, tours, and merch to be successful. It's a wonderful conversation, and I wanna get right to it.

Amelia HrubySo let's go ahead and dive in to my off the grid themed chat with Andy of Creative Pep Talk Podcast. Hi, Andy. Welcome to Off the Grid.

Andy J PizzaHey. Happy to be here.

Amelia HrubyI am thrilled to have you. As I'm sure are many listeners who press play on this episode, Creative Pep Talk is oft recommended. In the interweb, in the clubhouse, in every space I run, your show gets dropped in the links regularly. So

Andy J PizzaIt was very nice to hear.

Amelia HrubyYes. And it's really impressive that you're still making it over 500 episodes in.

Andy J PizzaI'm not slowing down. I feel like, if anything, I've ramped up, but I'm I still love making it.

Amelia HrubyThat's the gift, right, to be able to stay in the practice over time, which is one of the many things I wanna talk to you about today. So you have had a twenty year career as an artist, as a creative. You've done so many cool things. You've collaborated with brands that everybody knows about, like Nickelodeon and Xbox and Apple. You've gotten to do stuff on Sesame Street.

Amelia HrubyYou've published so many amazing books. And I know that, you know, looking at your career from my perspective, it's like, wow, this is all so cool that somebody can actually do this. But also, I know as someone who also works with artists that all of that type of work is shifting. You know, last year, this year, a lot has changed. We're all dealing with different, like, market forces, the rise of AI.

Amelia HrubyLike, all these things are impacting creatives and artists in every industry. So I kinda wanted to start with you today just, like, in the present moment and ask you what your business looks like in 2026. Like, what are the things that you're doing now, and, like, how are you making money as an artist these days?

Andy J PizzaYou know, I've been asked this a few times, and usually, I don't know the answer because I am very into the business of trying to succeed and trying to make sure I'm doing the kind of work that I wanna be doing. But I'm not always good about knowing what the income streams are and how much they are and all that kind of thing. But you asked me at a good time because I just did my taxes, so I have Scott.

Amelia HrubyWe're, like, six days from tax deadline.

Andy J PizzaAnd the other piece of it that's kinda hard is that it changes all the time. So last year isn't necessarily indicative of what it was the year before and prior to that. But last year, I think books were the biggest part of my income doing picture books, and clients were probably second. And then everything else fell underneath that. So podcasting sponsors and Patreon and talks and the some we still get some from the classes that we did on Skillshare.

Andy J PizzaBut there were definitely years when Skillshare was number one, and there were years when podcast sponsors made a lot more money than they do now. If you're not in the podcasting space, this is kinda boring, but in 2022, podcasting hit a huge bubble in terms of sponsorships for all kinds of reasons. Mainly just that we had all the investors just pouring tons and tons of money into something that could never get the returns they were looking for, you know, these huge tech companies buying podcasts for billions of dollars and stuff like that. Like, it was a ridiculous time and, you know, it was kinda fun to be part of that a little bit in a tiny way prior to that. But then, you know, 2022 and 2023, it just kind of all the money just disappeared overnight.

Andy J PizzaThen we kinda rebuilt it since then. So now it's still a piece of what I do and but the other reason why I think that question is kind of difficult to answer, I guess it's not even just difficult to answer as much as it is not how I think about it. So I think about it much more like all of these things are interconnected in a way that's hard to pick apart. It's kind of like in the business world, what they call like a flywheel, like this thing leads to that thing leads to that thing leads to that thing. And so to me, I don't think of it as which is the most profitable as much as, like, what is the purpose of each of these things and how do they fit together.

Andy J PizzaAnd I'm thinking about that a lot. Like, I even think about it like one of the things I had in mind as I started pursuing picture books more seriously was, okay, if I if I really make a big part of my business and my creative identity picture books, then what does that say about what kind of talks that I'm gonna give? Even if I'm giving a talk to a corporate client, it might be more about storytelling because there's kind of a a connection between those parts. So is that too much information, not enough, where somewhere in between, like, I don't know.

Amelia HrubyThat was great. You were thinking both, like, very specific, and I think at, like, the higher level of how it all fits together, which I appreciate. And, you know, I love that you start with, like, it's so many different things that it changes every year. Because I find that when I work with folks who have a clear art practice and they're really building their business as an artist, this is always a little obvious to them that they're doing a lot of different things, that it's always gonna weave a lot together. But when I work with people who are sort of coming to it more from the online business space, they've been trained in this way of, like, one signature offer.

Amelia HrubyEvery piece of your work should hit, like, this, you know, $5.06 figures of revenue. And, like, it's such a different mentality. And I appreciate talking to artists who have made a living, who have made a career like yourself for decades now, like, doing this work and being very upfront about, like, it's never just one thing. And even if it is one thing one year, it's not that one thing the next year. And so part of loving this work is loving, I think, like, juggling a lot of different balls, having things up in the air.

Andy J PizzaDefinitely. I actually think about it like this. Like, when I was a kid, if you would ask me, like, what is my art form? What is my unique offer? Like, I wouldn't have had any idea because at the time, we were making fake Senate Live videos, and we were drawing tons of pictures, and I made, like, a fake radio show on my talk boy.

Andy J PizzaAnd so I was just doing all kinds of stuff. And then when I got to go to college, then they're like, you need to focus on one thing. What is the thing that you're gonna do for the rest of your life? And so I picked design and illustration, and I was like, alright. I'll do it.

Andy J PizzaFine. I it was hard to pick, but now I'm all in on this. And then now I can find myself in this place where I'm like, god, now I gotta make videos, and I gotta do this podcast, and I got all I wanna do is make the art. And I'm like, hold on. That isn't true.

Andy J PizzaLike, when you were a kid, this is what you wanted to do. You wanted to express your creativity in all these different ways. And then even beyond that, a podcast is basically a fake radio show on a talk boy. That's basically what I do. And so I try to remember that that I actually like having this diversification, not just of income, but of creativity, partially because it doesn't put too much pressure on any individual piece.

Andy J PizzaWhen the podcast started taking off, it took the pressure off illustration, and that's when I started doing some of my favorite illustration I ever did to date because I felt looser, and that led to some of the books that we've made and it's just I just I like having all of these different parts that are, to me, kind of all the same thing too. So for me, they are also all illustration. So illustration is like my favorite definition of that is writing with pictures, and I even when I'm writing with words, I'm still writing with pictures because I'm reaching for metaphors and symbols and analogies. I'm I'm still looking for an image to kind of bring something to life. So for me, yeah, from the outside, it might look like, oh, he does all these different things, but on the inside, I'm always kinda trying to do the same thing.

Andy J PizzaThe thing that I like to do, which is illustrate something that I care about or that I wanna say. And then so there's the financial side, there's the creative side, and then there's the productivity side where after doing this for a long time, I realized, like, what most artists probably already know is that I can't really be super creative more than like three or four hours a day. That's the max amount of creativity that I have and I don't really feel like doing more than that. And so I used to really fight things like email and I still don't like email, but I do feel like, okay, a couple hours in the afternoon, that's really the best way I could spend my time because I can't really do much else anyway. And so I like having all these different outlets too just in terms of not burning out on one particular type of creativity or sitting in the same chair or, you know, just sitting in the same energy.

Andy J PizzaEven sorry. I'm going on a huge rant. It's something I this is something I think about so often and one another piece of it that I haven't quite figured out is I would love to have, like, the podcast interviews give me a little bit of this, but I do feel like the entrepreneurial art game is incredibly lonely. And I get I definitely don't, I definitely would not thrive in a regular office. Like I've done that before.

Andy J PizzaIt is really, really, really hard for me as an ADHD person. And so I don't think I could do that, but I do feel like, man, sometimes I feel like my social skills are just atrophying because I just can't. I just don't see that many different people that often because I'm doing my little creative rhythm, which is kinda, I'd say it very intentionally because I know for a lot of people that is the dream. And I just wanna say, like, there are elements of it that are not so great and that you're still gonna have to problem solve things. And there are all kinds of other ways where I'm not living the dream.

Andy J PizzaI'm not trying to make it out like my life's baller. It is not. There's tons of problem solving and juggling and struggling and all that crap too. It's hard to keep it all going, but I just wanted to highlight that aspect of it. Like, I would like to have some part of my life that that is just a little bit more like, you know, social, even though I'm pretty introverted?

Amelia HrubyI think that knowing yourself in those ways is actually a really important part of being self employed, knowing what you need to thrive and then finding solutions to bring those things in. Because even for the introverted artists among us, like, creativity requires outside sources, right, to inspire, to rub up against, to problem solve with and for. And without that, like, you can't just live in, like, a friction free bubble where you make art all day because I think you, like, run out of creative juice. It won't flow.

Andy J PizzaI think about a lot, like I don't know if everyone feels like this. So I'm curious what you think, because this is something that I haven't really explored with anybody. But for me, when I look back over my life, I have very distinct kind of good eras and not so good eras. Do you feel like that?

Amelia HrubyI can see it. I don't I don't know that I thought about it that way before now, but, like, when you're like, what's a bad era? I can come up with years. So It may be easier

Andy J Pizzato do that even. You know? Maybe they're they're more memorable in a way. But it was I've been thinking about it recently because I've been in a little bit of a funk. I haven't been in a funk creatively.

Andy J PizzaI feel like I've made some of my favorite stuff. But just kind of, like, socially, I think it's probably post COVID and not just socially, but just mental health wise and everything. Like, I think a lot of people have experienced that. Not to mention just the state of the world. Like, it's just been a lot.

Andy J PizzaAnd I've tried to think about the parts of it that you accept and then the parts of it of it that you have some control over. And one aspect I've thought a lot about is what were the eras that felt great? It sounds kinda like Taylor Swift anyway. What were the, yeah, what were the seasons? And I think a big part of it for me was, like, having a clear idea of, like, this is what I'm all about right now, and I'm surrounded by a handful of people that are on their own journey, but we're kind of in a similar vein, and we're just really, like, sharpening each other and inspiring each other and challenging each other.

Andy J PizzaAnd I think, oh, I kind of I think with the pandemic and then everything after that, it's just been a weird time. Anyway, it's kind of a massive digression, but it is a piece of the puzzle in terms of building a lifestyle that works for your brain.

Amelia HrubyYeah. And I mean, I think what you described, like it sounds very simple perhaps, but it requires a lot of moving pieces to be in that place where you're like, this is what I am all about right now. And I know other people who are actively all about something tangential or related or similar in a way that we can really grow and thrive together. You know, you have to be clear about that. You have to know those other people.

Amelia HrubyThey have to be in the same place. And I think that I've definitely been in eras where that felt true, where I was like, oh, we're all building. And there's something so satisfying about, like, crescendoing with other people. It is like an orchestra. And then sometimes, you're just like a random trombone player who's off key in the back, and you're like, oh, no.

Amelia HrubyThis feels really bad.

Andy J PizzaYeah. Just like walking down the street with it and just annoying people. Like, that's it feels like that sometimes. And maybe also that's not for everybody. I know there are other people that need to kinda go into really intense modes and have a really solitary focus and maybe that'll last for a season and then they shift gears and do a different version of a project where they're all in on that thing.

Andy J PizzaBut for me, I need a really diverse grouping of things to make me feel good.

Amelia HrubyAnd I think, you know, between us, we are both podcasters with creative practices. We obviously are blending some of these different modes together. And so, of course, like, we'll feel similarly perhaps about that or attract people who feel that way. And, also, like, I always like to use an ecosystems approach to a business, and we all know that monocropping is bad for ecosystems. And I think that's true in a natural ecosystem or in a business ecosystem.

Amelia HrubyLike, if your business is only built on one thing, it cannot be very resilient. And so I often work with people to try to be like, okay, what else can we add in here? What's how can we take some pressure off, like you said before, or how can we, you know, companion plant some things next to each other such that you have more resilience if something dries up or there's a literal drought or, you know, the metaphor actually kinda works, I think, all the way down in those instances. I want to weave in something else that's, like, very popular on the topic of this podcast and talk a little bit more about social media, as well as your podcast and, like, creative pep talk. And so, you know, along the way of your career, you've built a large social media following.

Amelia HrubyYou've built this incredibly popular podcast. I'd love to hear a bit about how those came to be. And I don't know, like, did one come before the other? Were they both just things you were doing and trying out? What's what's, like, the origin story of those aspects of your work?

Andy J PizzaYeah. So I think that one thing that is pretty different about me as a creative person is that I've always been showing up online throughout the entirety of my creative journey. It was Tumblr and Twitter back in the day and even before that was Flickr, like I was in those that era of things. So I was always kind of showing up and connecting with people that were doing similar things and part of some kind of scene. I don't feel like my Instagram really got to a substantial size until after I was doing my podcast.

Andy J PizzaBut both of the podcast and the Instagram and then the other social media things that I've done, but especially those two, were very intentional things. They were intentional. They were goal oriented. They were strategic. And the the thing I was gonna say was I think that the typical way to think about creativity is that you start without knowing where you're gonna go.

Andy J PizzaAnd I've heard John Mayer calls this Ouija board creativity, where it's like the guitar is playing itself, you know, the paintbrush has a mind of its own, like that kind of thing. You don't know you start, you don't know where it's going. And that's the flying by the seat of your pants, and writers call it pantsing. I think that we mostly think that is the definition of creativity. Like, that is what creativity is.

Andy J PizzaWhereas, I think it's just as creative, just a very different type of creativity to do strategy, and strategy is the opposite, which is not starting without knowing where you're gonna go. It's starting with the end in mind. It's starting starting with, I wanna go there. What's the step before that, what's the step before that, all the way until you get to where you're stood, and then you try to take those steps. Right?

Andy J PizzaAnd so I bring that up because both the podcast growth and the Instagram were both very intentional. And and there are I could give you other examples. I don't I'm not saying the the reason I'm bringing this up is not to say, like, when I want something, I get it. Like, you know, it's not like that. It's not like that at all.

Andy J PizzaIt's just that I there are plenty of things that I've wanted and tried to do and had a strategy for and it didn't work. Like, that's true. I've experienced that plenty of times. The reason I bring it up is just because I think it's so underrepresented in creative conversation and I think it's so disempowering to feel as though you are at the mercy of what life does to you and what happens to you. And we in in the creative world, I like to think of it like most of the people that get interviewed, it's like if in the business world, they only interviewed lottery winners.

Andy J PizzaAnd they said, how did you do it? And they're like, it was the secret man. It was like, you know, some kind of mystical thing that, and I, you know, I see myself as a little bit of a mystical person. It's not, I don't, I'm not divorced from that. Spiritual practice has been important to me throughout my life.

Andy J PizzaSo it's not I'm not even like hating on that. I'm just saying that the people that end up getting asked the most questions about how you did it are the most extreme cases. And almost every time someone's like, well, David Bowie did that, you're like, okay. How is that gonna help you? It's not.

Andy J PizzaI can guarantee just by probability that you're not gonna be David Bowie. So I say that because I just think, I think creative strategy is an incredible muscle to strengthen because it's about co creating with life. That's what came to mind about building the podcast, building the Instagram, is that both of them were kind of separate things and they were both things that were like, this is why I'm doing this, this is what I'm aiming for, and I'm gonna figure out how does one do that. Like, there was a time where I realized, like, oh, a lot of the jobs I wanna get at this moment in time, I'm not gonna get them if I don't have a larger Instagram. Now I don't think that's true right now.

Andy J PizzaSo, you know, I'll just say that. I don't really think your Instagram following is gonna be a deal breaker for lots of opportunities. But I already had an Instagram by the time I started the podcast, but it wasn't very big or very successful. And it wasn't until maybe three or four years into the podcast that I started thinking a lot more seriously about it.

Amelia HrubyYeah. I really like this point. One, because I'm also a very strategic thinker, and I think that something social media has really done to people's brains is, like, sort of fuck with that sense of, like, well, anybody could be David Bowie now. Like, it's you know, everybody knows somebody who's gone viral or knows somebody who knows somebody who, like, like, made it as an influencer. It brought a lot of that, like, seemingly closer to home, I think, for people.

Andy J PizzaYeah. So true.

Amelia HrubyAnd it's been really harmful, I think. It has, like, eroded the sense that we can be strategic. And also, I think a lot of people are being very strategic, but they're attempting to strategize, like, bargaining with the algorithm. That's what they think strategy is. I hear this a lot.

Amelia HrubyRight? It's like, well, my strategy is how do I get the algorithm to like me? And I don't think that really works because one, an algorithm is not like a sentient entity. It can't actually bargain with you. And two, at this stage, the only motivation of these platforms is to make their own profits.

Amelia HrubyAnd so any success you have, like, it's a byproduct of that. You can't count on it. And even if you do make a ton of money doing something on social media, the next time you try to do it, it won't work again. So, like, part of what I think about strategy is it can be, like, not always strictly repeatable, but you can iterate on it. You can learn from it.

Amelia HrubyAnd I think social media just breaks all of that logic. It doesn't work anymore.

Andy J PizzaI think you're completely right. Like, this feeling of, at any second, I could be David Bowie. Anybody could. It's scary even to the point where I'm not trying to be harsh on anybody, but you don't even have to have any talent or skill. I don't mean that in in a harsh way.

Andy J PizzaI mean that's what it promises you, and it's that's dangerous because it's kinda like just because of who I am and what and and and I'm very pro, like people have value without skills and talents. I'm I'm very pro of that. But I just think in a creative career, that's a odd thing. It actually keeps you from developing and and trying to create something of value and and interesting. And I feel so strongly about, especially TikTok and Instagram, that the only value for those platforms really is the casino, is the house.

Andy J PizzaThe house wins every time and they are weaponizing this feeling of I at any second my life could change. Why do you think they're making videos and they're having calls, real calls with creators, one on one to coach them. Why? That's not generosity. It's because they're a TV channel that doesn't pay their creators.

Andy J PizzaLike, it's it's so sad to me because I think, I know people that have went mega viral. I know people that have millions of followers. And guess what? It mostly didn't go well. It mostly didn't do anything for them other than and the only and this is the realistic part, and this is why I did build the Instagram.

Andy J PizzaAt the time, it was more meaningful, and even now, I'm glad that I have that following purely just because it is some level of social proof that helps me get my foot in the door in the opportunities that I want. And so it's not that it's completely meaningless. I think that some aspects of this new version of it are much more meaningless than they used to be.

Amelia HrubySocial media is the casino. They're the house. We are just pulling the slot machine all day long. And I also really like your point of, yes, of course, human beings have inherent worth. And also, if you're a creative person and you just want to, like, be famous for being yourself, that that's just a celebrity.

Amelia HrubyThat's not actually an artist.

Andy J PizzaRight. It's a different thing.

Amelia HrubyIt's a totally different thing. And if you wanna be an influencer and try to make that work through the power of celebrity, like, move yourself to LA, network effectively, get good at social media, and maybe that can happen for you. But that's not a creative business. That's a different thing. And I think sometimes people mistake these logics as different, and they don't quite understand that even those business models are so different.

Amelia HrubyBeing an influencer is so different than being a creator. But this gets back to your the strategic piece and the question that I wanted to talk through more, which is, like, how do we understand where we wanna go and how do we understand the path to get there? So could you share some more specifics with an example from your work around how you charted that course?

Andy J PizzaYeah. So I have lots and lots of examples of this. Usually, the way that I go about doing it is a strategic side project. It's a body of work that kind of tells people I am who I say I am and I can do what I am asking to do. It's a, you know, a portfolio.

Andy J PizzaAnd the easiest example of this is the podcast. And so you can see how there was strategy baked into the podcast from day one that was pretty unique to serve the goals that I had. So when I made the podcast, I always like to say this first because if you're not ADHD, you might not real I take this for granted. So there's two things that have to be true for me to want something. First thing has to be, it just intrinsically interesting to me.

Andy J PizzaIt just I'm curious about it. I like spending time on that. It's, you know, it's just an authentic expression of something I wanna do. The second thing, which maybe this I don't know if this is an ADHD thing or if it's just a human thing. I actually think ADHD people really do love helping people.

Andy J PizzaAnd I think there's a couple reasons why. I think one is because it's easier than doing stuff yourself because you have executive dysfunction. So you have all these answers, but you can't put them into practice super easily. And so it's really fun to be there's nothing more fun. I love coaching people for that reason to be like, hey.

Andy J PizzaMaybe you should do this, this, and this. And then they go do it and succeed, and it's like, that's awesome. It's also it's just, like, very fun. And so I think I've got a lot of dopamine from helping people. So two things always have to be true.

Andy J PizzaI have to feel like I have to feel like this is something I just wanna do, and I feel like this is good for people. This is good for me and good for other people for me to do this. And also the thing about that is that's getting my whole self on board. You know, I'm a nerd for like Jungian thoughts, and I like this idea of like that gets my ego on board of, like, this is something that's really cool to me, and it gets my deeper self that's much more connected to the the whole and and to the community and that kind of thing. So when I did the podcast, it felt like I had done a talk that had hit that Venn diagram perfectly.

Andy J PizzaI'd done some talks that hadn't gone super well in random, like, scenarios for a whole bunch of reasons. And then I'd done this one talk that was much more story driven. And I was like, it it was just a little community talk. And I just felt like, this feels like something I wanna do for the rest of my life. Like I just, I've, I completely fell in love with it.

Andy J PizzaAnd sometimes you have that moment where you're like, I feel like my life has changed, and then you check with your partner and they're like,

Amelia Hrubyhas it though? I don't know.

Andy J PizzaYou know? And that's a good, you know, that's a good indicator. Right? That's a good way to check the temperature. And, like, she was at that talk, my wife and Sophie, and I asked her, I was like, I think that was kind of, like, something.

Andy J PizzaAnd she was like, I think it was something. Like, I've never seen that before. I've never seen you in that zone. Like, that was really cool. And so I was, like, a little bit tempted to be like, maybe I should just go.

Andy J PizzaI'd already I was already an illustrator. I was already, I think, full time at that moment, and I there there was a little temptation to be like, let's just go straight into talks. Like, let's go hard into that. And but I had kids and had already had built some of this stuff and loved that stuff too. And so I thought, okay.

Andy J PizzaIs there a way to, like, combine these two things? Like, storytelling and doing these talks with doing illustration. It wasn't until later that I was watching some, like, TED talk or something, and they were like, hey. I wanna give you a story to kinda bring this to life. Here's my illustration.

Andy J PizzaAnd I was like, it's the same thing. They're both illustration. And so that yeah. That didn't come till later. But I did that talk.

Andy J PizzaI wanted to get more talks. I knew, like, this I wanna do more of this. So I knew what I wanted, and I thought, okay. I want to be the person that gets booked on the design conferences and gets brought into the corporate creative teams and does talks there. So I knew what I wanted.

Andy J PizzaThat was my endpoint that I had to work my way back from. And then you say, what would the client be or the conference that I would speak at before that? And then before that, and then before that, maybe go back 10 steps even. And then what would I need to build to cold call that first one? And that's a project.

Andy J PizzaAnd so, my project was the podcast. And the reason why you can see the strategy in it from day one is I started this podcast in 2014, and I made it for the first 50 episodes, it was completely solo. It was just literally me talking. Eventually, I started doing some interviews, but it's remained primarily a solo podcast throughout its entire decade plus existence. And the reason was was because I was building a portfolio of talks so that I could send that to one of these conferences or someone would discover it at one of those conferences, and that's exactly what happened.

Andy J PizzaAnd so that's an example, but the same thing happened for me in picture books, the same thing happened to me with editorial, the same thing has happened to me in all these different spheres. They almost all have happened that way. Sometimes I feel annoyed that so much of my career has had to be me making stuff happen. Like, I would love for something just random to happen and that it was great. I've been lucky in all kinds of ways, but I'd love to be lucky in that kind of way.

Andy J PizzaBut I also like that my story that I tell myself around that is if I did get lucky in all these different ways, then I wouldn't be able to tell anybody else how to do it. And I have got lucky. I'm not saying I haven't. But, yeah, a lot of the bigger things have happened have been strategy.

Amelia HrubyThank you for laying all that out for us. And I also just love that you knew what you wanted to do, which was speak at these major design conferences, be the person that, you know, big firms, companies invite in to speak about creativity. So you started this side project, the podcast, and you you would just use it as a talk reel, essentially. Like, here I am 50 times in a row. Which talk do you want?

Amelia HrubyI have all of these options for you. Exactly. And, also, like, that helped you book talks, but then the podcast became its own thing. Right? Like, now it's a whole arm of your business.

Amelia HrubyIt's not it's obviously not just a way for you to get speaking gigs anymore. And that's something I've seen time and time again as well. It's, like, everything I'm doing now came out of these, you know, random side quests of my life. DJing in a community radio station, and they taught me how to podcast, and that got me freelance work, and that led me to my studio, and that led me here. Right?

Amelia HrubyLike, for me, personally, sometimes the strategy is more obvious in hindsight than it was when I was starting out. Right.

Andy J PizzaYeah. Sure.

Amelia HrubyBut I like I think as you get more experience in your career, you know more of the moving pieces, and you're be able to be much more intentional. I'm also curious, something that's really happened for me a lot, and I'm curious if this has been the case for you, is, like, in being strategic, I have had to very consciously shed a lot of the sort of false promises of things I thought I wanted that didn't turn out that way. For instance, you know, like, my first book deal didn't live up to what I thought I was going after or something like that. Right? I know it truly never does.

Amelia HrubyBook deals are so fraud.

Andy J PizzaDeals are. Yeah. It's a complicated world, for sure.

Amelia HrubyAnd it's always a reckoning. I don't know anyone who's published their first book traditionally that didn't have, like, a complete creative reckoning in the process.

Andy J PizzaYeah. It's true.

Amelia HrubySo that to me is always, like, a paradigmatic example. But do you feel like when you have worked toward a goal, it's typically just been like self authored or have you found yourself chasing things that you're like, this is what people told me to do, or this is what I thought I was supposed to do. And then I had to figure out that's not actually it for me.

Andy J Pizza100%. So all of these projects haven't worked out. Okay?

Amelia HrubyYou know?

Andy J PizzaYeah. True. And one one example of that is I remember when I was this was when I earlier in my career, I was looking around at trying to figure out, like, what kind of jobs I could do that would feel right and be kind of a good fit. And I remember seeing illustrator friends of mine or people on the Internet who had in their portfolio these book cover illustrations that just looked amazing. And I just thought this looks so freaking cool.

Andy J PizzaLike, I would love to do that. Right? And I came up with a project where I was gonna make a handful of books from the public domain and recreate the cover. At the time, this was a little bit more unique than it is now. This is something that happens all the time now.

Andy J PizzaIt wasn't completely an original idea, but the, you know, it was a little bit more novel than it is now. No pun intended, novel. But but I I the extra layer I was gonna do was we were gonna screen print them as posters. And so I did Wizard of Oz and I did 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and then I did Moby Dick. And I remember posting about it and someone saying, oh, this is great.

Andy J PizzaHow'd you like the book? And I was like, oh, I'm supposed to read these books. You know, I was in my, like, early twenties, maybe mid twenties. I'm

Amelia Hrubylike, I skimmed the Wikipedia page.

Andy J PizzaCheck out the shit.

Amelia HrubyI just I just

Andy J Pizzadidn't really think that much about that side of it for some reason. And that to me is I like to make fun of myself with that project, but also I like to use it as an example to say, doing the thing is the best way to know, not thinking about the thing. Like, yes, that's something I should have known before I started. Like, at the time, I wasn't reading any classic books. I wasn't really reading hardly any fiction, almost exclusively nonfiction.

Andy J PizzaNowadays, I'm more into fiction and even classic books than I was then, so I could probably do that project more authentically now. But I didn't know that until I had done it, You know? And and so for me, those side quests are always valuable because they do get at what you're saying. Like, sometimes these things are just like an ego trip. They're just like, that looks amazing.

Andy J PizzaI want and it's similar to the celebrity or the fame or whatever. Like, so many people have had to learn that the hard way of, like, oh, all this attention is not so good. But doing those projects are some of the best way to make progress. I I talked about it on the show, like, I've seen this meme about how to put in a USB stick, and you put it in once and it's the wrong way, and then you put it in the other way, and you're like, no. That's actually the wrong way.

Andy J PizzaAnd then you put it in the right way. And that's what creative stuff is like. It's much easier to just try things and realize, like, because and here's the reason, like, Steven Pressfield talks about, you're always gonna feel resistance. And almost the only reason only way you're gonna know which resistance is truly the wrong resistance is by doing it the right way and the wrong way. And so, I yeah.

Andy J PizzaI feel like lots of the projects have been wrong, but the but the best way to figure that out is to actually, like, test it.

Amelia HrubyYeah. I often find that I have a ton of clever ideas. So many clever ideas. I mean, as strategists, all we have is clever ideas sometimes. And it has taken me years of just trying to do the clever thing to realize, like, not all these have legs.

Amelia HrubyNot all these are for me. But if I didn't try them, I wouldn't know that. If I didn't go down those paths, I I wouldn't be able to really feel into now my, like, very honed sense of, like, oh, this is the true thing or the real thing or, like, this feels right. And no one outside of you can tell you if it feels right or not. That's such an important part of developing a creative practice.

Amelia HrubyI wanna stay on this theme of projects and weave social media back in because you recorded a podcast episode last summer about creative people leaving social media, because you and I both know that last year, everybody decided they wanted to leave social media. There was all of this, like, buzz around it. And people might have expected me to be like, hell yeah, we're all leaving social media. But I am a strategic thinker and I'm also like, I always won't be able to do it intentionally. I wanna make sure it's the right fit for you and your business.

Amelia HrubyAnd I loved your episode because I felt like it really grounded us in, like, how do you make this decision? And you provided a framework for leaving social media, kind of follows the musician model of singles, albums, and tours with merch. And I had never heard anybody talk about this before. So I'm curious, could you, like, kind of explain that to off the grid listeners and walk us through that framework?

Andy J PizzaSo at the time, I was listening to your podcast and Cody Cook parents' podcast and and also just feeling and part the reason I was, like, seeking that stuff out was because I was feeling not just the burnout of social media and doom scrolling and all that. Like, I was feeling all that, but I was also realizing, like, I've been taught to believe this is important for my creative career. You know, people's billion dollar businesses rely on people like us believing that we need to be creating for exposure for them for free. And I was starting to realize, like, this isn't really serving my creative goals like it used to, and I wanted to think about it a little bit differently. And so I was kind of exploring.

Andy J PizzaI took lots of breaks from social media and different kinds of tried different things, but ultimately, it got me thinking about what are my actual creative goals and what are my creative business goals, and what are the things that I need to be doing. And one thing I'll just say, like, when I first started as an illustrator, I had some lucky breaks early on and then it all disappeared. Like it just that we we were in the recession, this was like back in 02/2009, and I got I started building some momentum, got a few lucky breaks and then it was just kinda disappeared overnight and then didn't get any work for six to eight months or something and just, it just all kinda disappeared. And I often joke that my rock bottom wasn't, like, drugs and alcohol, but it was business books and marketing podcasts.

Amelia HrubyI mean, a funnel will only take you to rock bottom.

Andy J PizzaYes. Yes. Exactly. It's a pretty yeah. The the funnel is pretty dicey.

Andy J PizzaPretty dicey stuff. But, you know, I'm grateful for that time because I learned a lot of things that I think are are important, are not. Some of it is not compatible with creativity or you can get sucked into that and lose your creativity, but there are elements of it that I think are just really, really important. And one element of it is kind of the funnel or the customer journey, which is something that I didn't we have an intuitive sense of, but we don't really fully maybe know what that means. I think if you would ask most artists and you've got them to think about what does it when it comes to, like, selling my work or connecting with other people, what are the steps of that?

Andy J PizzaI think I would have thought there were two things. It was, you know, you have to be discovered, you have to get on their radar, and then you have to sell the painting or sell the the work. And one of the things that I learned in the marketing side of things that I saw in the music industry is that they have a more complete version of that process of how someone goes from not knowing you exist to being a casual consumer to being someone who is supporting you and being a true fan in that way. And so I think of it as like the journey of the true fan, and there's these three pieces. And so it's not just discovery and then sale, like there's this really big middle part because you do wanna get discovered, and how musicians do that is they have these singles, and they have these collabs.

Andy J PizzaThey open for other bands, but they have singles that and the point of the single is to be discovered. But the fact of the matter is, just because you like a song on the radio doesn't mean you're going to the tour or buying the merch. Right? Like, what is the thing in between those two events? It's the album.

Andy J PizzaIs that you hear the single. If you really, really like it, then you're gonna go check it out and you're gonna go deeper, and that going deeper is developing a sense of trust in a relationship with that artist. So there's these three parts. There is the single, which is the discovery. There's the album, which is the developing of the trust and becoming like a fan, and then there's the third part, which is the way that you support them, which, you know, nowadays is tour and merch for musicians.

Andy J PizzaAnd so I like this because this is something that the music industry built this infrastructure around music, and it's not perfect, but I do think that we can learn a lot from it. And so to me, the thing where I landed after exploring all these different ways of having a creative career without social media or with social media or all that stuff, I thought, oh, this is kind of the wrong question. It's not really the thing I it's not yes or no. It's I have to have a solution for what are my singles, what are my albums, what is my tour and merch. I have to have something for those three things.

Andy J PizzaI have to get people to know about me. I have to get people to be able to go deep with me, and then I have to have something that is worth that people are buying, and and musicians have had to change that too because it used to be people were buying the music. And now they're not buying the music or that now they are again, but there was a period of time where they weren't, and you had to sell t shirts. And, like, I've heard boy genius talk about, like, feeling like they're just a t shirt commercial. And yeah.

Andy J PizzaOkay. I get that and it's kinda, you know, it's it's funny and sad and everything, but as practice, those are the pieces that you need and I try to be not super precious about them. Like there were times where my podcast was the discovery engine Then there was a time where, like, people weren't outwardly focused on finding new podcast and that wasn't so much the case, and it was more so the album. It was how people were going deep with me. And I think the biggest takeaway from all of this is that there is that middle piece.

Andy J PizzaIt's the most ignored. Most people are thinking about how do I get discovered and then I'll make up the rest later. Oh, if I go viral, then I'll figure out how to monetize it. So at best, they're thinking about they're thinking about how to get discovered and then what am I gonna sell. Almost no one thinks about, do I have ways where people can get into the deep cuts and actually make that transition from being a casual appreciator to someone who knows your name.

Andy J PizzaThis is another crappy thing about social media, but it's similar to the radio where it's like if I said, hey, what's the song you've enjoyed the most lately? You might if you were if you exclusively listen to the radio, you might not know what they're called. You might not even know the name of the song, and the same is true for art. If I said, what illustration, like, lit you up the most recently, you probably be like, I can't even find it because I don't know their name. I might just saw it on Instagram or saw it on Pinterest or whatever.

Andy J PizzaAnd so if you're trying to build a practice as either just is either as a business or as a kind of community, you have to make the relationship, that middle piece is super super essential, and the only way it gets done is a long form sort of thing. And that was another piece of wanting to do talks. Early on, I realized like, oh, the only way I could imagine sustaining my illustration career was getting ad jobs frequently. They were the only ones that had the kind of margins that I could see, like, this working. And I saw all of them go to people that are doing talks.

Andy J PizzaAnd I couldn't know if it was, like, a chicken or an egg thing, but I was like, I do think I need to get on stages and that seems to be a big part of how you develop a bigger presence in the industry. And at the time I did it, I knew talks, but I didn't realize like, oh, that's just a long form piece of content. It is someone spending an hour with you. And so no matter how you it could be a newsletter, it could be a podcast, it could be a talk, it could be a book. Like for me, books have been a big part of that.

Andy J PizzaLike being published is a part of building trust for me. And that's one of the silver linings of if your first book didn't go as well as you wanted it to go, just having a book, whether it's published or self published, even just just having that as an accomplishment and as a statement and allowing people to go deep with you, that is that middle piece, and it's really essential, and there's not really any other way to do it.

Amelia HrubyYeah. I really appreciate how you're emphasizing these, like, three points. Often, I'll think of it as a sort of marketing framework, like, grow, nurture, sell. Like, we do need all of them. It's so interesting too.

Amelia HrubyLike, the people you work with, you're really seeing, like, they can grow and then maybe they can sell, but they're never nurturing. And I often find with people who make their way into my world, they might only be nurturing. Like, I encounter a lot of people who have an email list of, like, 200 people that they have been dedicatedly talking to for years, and they're like, it's gonna be a business one day, Amelia. And I'm like, well, gotta have some offers there.

Andy J PizzaPeople too. Yeah. Now that you say that, that's true. It's not really maybe my nature, but I definitely see that. Yeah.

Andy J PizzaThere there are a lot of people that are dedicated to, like, authenticity and and doing it right and and are all in for the right reasons. And, yeah, I I could totally see that.

Amelia HrubyYeah. And I I think it has a lot to do with, like, it's about, like, our personalities. It's about our, like, core wounds and what we're afraid of. It's about, you know, are we afraid of visibility? Of you know, there's so many different places we find our comfort zone, and often we stay there.

Amelia HrubyBut I completely agree with you. Like, it's never gonna be a business without all three pieces. Like, you can make music and play in bars forever, but if you don't have singles, albums, and tours, it's not gonna you're not gonna make a living from your music. And so I often think that's an important thing to distinguish too when we talk about, like, creative strategy. Like, is that what you want?

Amelia HrubyAnd I often ask people when I'm working with them, like, is the goal here that this is a business that supports you full time? Because if it is, we need to function differently than if this is just actually something you wanna do for creative fulfillment. Doesn't really matter if it makes money, it's a hobby, it's whatever. Like, those are different ways of operating once again. But I like this framework a lot, and it's helping me rethink my work.

Amelia HrubyLike, even if I just chart for off the grid listeners, like, my first single was my list of 100 ways to share your work and life off social media. That was the first thing I made that got seen by, like, over 25,000 people. It got shared in all sorts of spaces I never even knew it got shared in. It got translated into other languages and published in other things. Like, that was a big single for me.

Amelia HrubyAnd then Off the Grid became my album. And now, you know, it's an album with, like, a 150 tracks. Your podcast is an album with 550 tracks.

Andy J PizzaYeah. Lots of

Amelia Hrubydeep cuts there. Yeah. And I'm sure people

Andy J Pizzasay

Amelia Hrubyto you what they say to me, which is, like, I've been binging your show. I've been listening to so much of the bad cattle. Like, people find it, and they just go deeper and deeper and deeper. They travel with you. And then there's the tour.

Amelia HrubyFor me, that's gonna be my membership, the interweb. And then also there's the meet and greet, which is the group program I run inside the membership that you only know about if you're in there and you're a VIP and you sign up for it. Right? So we build these, like, different layers, but I think it can all track very nicely onto that musician model. And then sometimes, yeah, there is the t shirt.

Amelia HrubyAnd the t shirt is where, like, your superfan carries you into the world, and other people can see you.

Andy J PizzaAnd that's great. Yeah. Yeah. That ends up being that another business thing, the flywheel of now that t shirt becomes the way that someone else discovers it, and it just kind of has this and I think it also is important to kind of highlight this accounts for the idea of churn where I know that if someone listens to, like, 50 episodes of my show, maybe even a 100 or 200, they might be, like, superfan and they might be in the superfandom for a few years or ten years or whatever. But a lot of people are going to eventually be like, okay, I got that.

Andy J PizzaI don't need that anymore. And that's the same thing happens with music. Like, as a musician, you might not wanna feel like that, but as a music consumer, you definitely feel like that. You have eras where this was everything for me, and for some reason, it doesn't really do it for me anymore, or they went on a different path and, you know, whatever. And there are, yeah, there are probably a handful of bands that you're gonna follow for the rest of your life, but those are the exception to the rule.

Andy J PizzaBut that's the other thing I like about this is that kind of accounts for you don't need to have people in your world for the rest of their life and it's okay to feel like, yeah, if this is hitting you at this time then that's great. I think the other thing I just wanted to mention with that was there's a huge spectrum of creativity for yourself that's kind of like a diary all the way to being a full time artist. There's this he there's everything in between there and even like I don't feel like it's a perfect definition, but creative researchers often use the definition of creativity being something creative as both novel and useful. Now there's I think there are pros and cons to thinking about creativity that way, but it can be new to you and useful to you. Meaning it did something for you.

Andy J PizzaIt it helped you process something, whatever, like, that's creative, and that's great in its own right. I think that there are a lot of people that maybe never wanna go full time, but they still want part of the creative impulse is coming from being a social animal and wanting to connect with other people and have conversations about it and be seen by other people and and show their audience themselves and all that kind of thing. And I think anytime it start goes beyond the journal thing, you need the singles, albums, and tour.

Amelia HrubyYeah. I think that's a nice point. You can, like, move into that sharing without it needing to be, like, a full time Yeah. Business or even a business?

Andy J PizzaEven a business. Yeah. Maybe you don't yeah. Maybe the tour is the only piece that's not necessary there if you really don't want if you don't want to sell it. But there's an exchange there that goes beyond yes.

Andy J PizzaIt's been kind of soiled by the economics and capitalism and all that in some way, but there is an exchange of energy and value and resources that goes beyond, like, just making money. Yeah. It's not it's not for everybody. I'm not saying it is.

Amelia HrubyYeah. No. Absolutely. Well, I know that you have a book coming out soon, and I was trying to figure out what book this is of yours, and I Yeah. Couldn't count it.

Amelia HrubyI don't know if you've counted.

Andy J PizzaI've tried to, but I've done so many different kinds of books. I always feel like I don't even know if this number is relevant. I've done over 10 books, but there's a lot of different kinds of books.

Amelia HrubyYeah. It's like asking how many kids you have, and then deciding if you count your pets, and you're like, I don't know.

Andy J PizzaOkay. Yeah. I definitely count my pets on that. But yeah.

Amelia HrubyYeah. I mean, as I think we should. But could you tell us about Mysterious Things? What is this new book of yours? When does it come out?

Amelia HrubyWhere can folks get it?

Andy J PizzaYeah. It's right here.

Amelia HrubyOh, exciting.

Andy J PizzaMysterious Things. And if you're listening just audio, you won't be able to see it. But it's a follow-up companion to a book that my wife and I, Sophie Miller, did called Invisible Things three years ago, and it is about mystery. It's about trying to switch on brains to curiosity. I think at the heart of this, we don't say that it's about the knowledge paradox, but it is about the knowledge paradox because it is a picture book.

Andy J PizzaBut the knowledge paradox is as we learn more and more and more, you would assume that at some point, mystery is gonna be extinct. Like, we're going to know everything. And, knowledge paradox is the more that we know, the more more we realize we don't know. And that in some ways, the universe has never been more mysterious. And the reason why that's really been at the core of the Invisible Things project as a whole, and then very specifically this book, in that project Mysterious Things, because I think that as a kid I felt like Truman from The Truman Show in this very particular way where he wants to be an explorer and if you're not familiar with that movie, it's supposed to be a young Jim Carrey in a classroom, and he's in this movie set or TV set.

Andy J PizzaHe doesn't know it, and everybody's filming him. And they're trying to get him to not go anywhere because they he can't actually leave this set. And so the teacher's like, actually, we've explored everything. You don't actually need to explore anything. And I felt like that as a kid.

Andy J PizzaI really did. I felt like it wasn't anybody's fault. It was just the way that we went to school. It made me feel like, okay. Look, all the juicy stuff has already been discovered before you got here.

Andy J PizzaWe put it in all these books. And for the next twelve years, you're gonna get up to speed, and then you can go get on with, you know, making value for shareholders. Like that

Amelia HrubyYeah. That's what we're told.

Andy J PizzaSo but it wasn't until so I was so checked out from learning, and it I didn't become a lifelong learner until school was almost over. And it wasn't until I started getting into, you know, popular quantum physics discussions and trippy conversations you have in college and all that kind of stuff. I started being like, oh my gosh. Like, we live in the most incredible and mysterious universe, and it just gets weirder all the time. All the time, we're learning something that just seems completely impossible.

Andy J PizzaAnd so much of our world, we don't even like, even our technology, we don't know why it works. There's a lot of, like, you know, things in the quantum realm and stuff that they're think that they're creating these microchips that they know work in theory, but they're like, we don't really know exactly why they work. And so the more we know, the more we realize we don't know, and we have there there was like physicists a hundred plus years ago that felt like we only got like 1% left to figure out. Like we pretty much nailed it, and then thirty years later after that, you the physicists are like, we don't even know if we know 1%. We are so limited.

Andy J PizzaAnd so that to me was wanting to give this book to younger me, and be like, look, the universe is crazy. Like, you don't even need to understand it, but it felt like school often felt like learning to play the guitar, but I'd never heard music before. And I'm like, why am I doing this? What what is this? Why do I care care about this?

Andy J PizzaLike, even math, which I I don't I feel like I might have, like, the dyslexic equivalent to numbers. I'm not sure, but I I definitely struggle with numbers. But even math now, I'm like way more friendly with math, and there's a character called math in this book. I'm way friendlier with math because I'm, like, this is the code of the universe. This is this mystical, weird, amazing thing.

Andy J PizzaAnd so that it's it's both, like, I always try to make my books kind of like an art book. So they're like it's a collection of some of my favorite paintings in a way. And so for adults, I know a lot of adults bought Invisible Things, and I make it for that reason. Like, it it ended up in a lot of the, like, art galleries and gift shops, which is kinda like a dream of mine. Like, I love that that vibe.

Andy J PizzaAnd then for kids, it's like, I just wanna be like, hey, kids. I don't know if anyone's told you this, but, like learning is how you dig into the juicy mysteries of being alive and it's really cool and the interesting there's just as interesting things here as there are maybe more so than what is in the screen that you're looking at or or what have you. So that's the book. I kinda went overboard telling you about it, but it's just because I'm excited about it.

Amelia HrubyNo. I love this. Yeah. I I feel like I'm, like, well, we talked about plenty of mysterious things today, like marketing and Internet. Yes.

Amelia HrubyYes. And also, I love, like, seeing dark matter and math on the cover, and I'm with you. Like, I feel like once you start learning anything about quantum physics, it will crack your brain open to how much is unknown and even understanding that, like, the two most popular theories of physics that we have conflict and make no sense together even though they both are evident when you look around the world. And so I love that this is a children's book about the knowledge paradox, and, of course, it's beautifully illustrated and, like, such a such a wonderful, just, like, object in addition to being full of wisdom. So I know it comes out July 14.

Amelia HrubyFolks can get it anywhere they get their books. Do you have preferred retailers or do you do you signed copies or anything like that? If

Andy J Pizzayou go to invisiblethings.co, there's a list of the retailers, like the classic ones. And then also, if you order it from Birdie Books, which is my local bookshop that is across the road from this studio, we're gonna go sign all of those. So if you wanna sign copy, you can do a preorders from there.