Lesson 07: Building Self Confidence and Resilience as a Creative

Lesson 07: How to build self confidence, resilience, and be yourself in your work

With Aimee Hoover

“Be yourself in life and in your work.”

— Aimee Hoover

Today’s episode is for everyone that was told you can’t make money doing what you love, especially as an artist.

(I have a feeling this is the majority of us!)

The myth of the starving artist is one of the biggest misconceptions there is about creativity. I was told my entire life that I could never make a living with my creative hobbies. But my guest today, Aimée Hoover, has made a successful career as an extraordinary fine artist for 20 years, painting contemporary portraits of animals. Her paintings are in collections all around the world, seen in galleries and exhibitions, and featured in countless magazine articles.

In this episode, Aimée tells us how she accidentally stumbled upon her niche painting portraits of pets 20 years ago, built her business as a side hustle, and how she’s been able to sustain a long lasting career creating exactly what she loves to make. She talks about the point in her career when pleasing clients left her lost and burned out, and how she shut down a successful, profitable business to find joy in her work again. Aimée also shares how to build self confidence and resilience in your work, especially in this day of social media when it’s so easy to feel like you’re not good enough. You’ll also find out why I call Aimée a social media and marketing genius!

Mentioned in this episode:

• How Aimée accidentally stumbled upon her niche painting pet portraits 20 years ago

• How she transitioned from a side hustle to full time business

• How she learned the business of being an artist (and it wasn’t from school!)

• How to overcome the “compare and despair” of Instagram and social media

• Why I call Aimée a social media and marketing genius

• How to build your confidence in your work as a creative person, even when you feel like you’re not good enough

• The point in her career when she felt completely lost, burned out and wanted to quit everything

• Why filling your creative well is so important when you have a creative career

• Aimée’s tips for how to get started as a creative entrepreneur

• The power in just being yourself and creating work that’s important to you

CONNECT WITH AIMÉE:

Website | Instagram

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Lesson 04: Creativity and Intuition

Lesson 04: Becoming More Creative USING YOUR INTUITION

With Esther Loopstra

This week’s episode is all about HOW TO BE MORE CREATIVE! How to tap into it, how to follow the creative process, and how to feed your creative spirit by listening to your intuition. This is just the first of many episodes devoted to becoming more creative, and I’m excited to bring you Esther’s take on it.

My guest today, Esther Loopstra, is a prolific artist and illustrator, specializing in food and travel, hand-lettering, and surface design. Her work has been used for print ads, editorials, books, stationery products, and textiles and her clients include Target, Frito Lay, Google, Jo Ann Fabrics, Eddie Bauer, and American Greetings.

Esther’s insatiable curiosity drew her to learn as much as she could about the creative process, eventually leading her to teach people how to discover their innate creativity. She believes everyone is creative and is passionate about helping others find and express the creativity that resides inside of them. In this episode, she shares all about her insights as a creativity expert and teacher.

Mentioned in this episode:

• How Esther became an illustrator, burned out, and eventually discovered her intuition

• How creativity has a whole range of pathways and is something innate in all of us

• Exercises to develop our intuition, trust it, and act on it

• How to quiet your inner critic

• Why we need to feed our creative spirit

• Overcoming the fear of what people are going to think and the fear of sharing our work

• Giving ourselves the freedom to make mistakes

• How to find your passion using your intuition

• Open mode and closed mode - the two modes we need for the creative process

• The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron

CONNECT WITH ESTHER:

Instagram | Website | Courses

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Lesson 02: Quitting the traditional path to success

Lesson 02: How an unhappy lawyer with a Harvard degree became a badass calligrapher

With Shinah Chang

What do you do when you’ve worked hard all your life doing everything you were “supposed” to do, only to end up unfulfilled and lost?

Shinah Chang is the owner of Crooked Calligraphy, a modern calligraphy studio. She calls herself an unconventional calligrapher and her work stands out because she likes curse words and isn’t afraid to use them, in real life or in her work. Shina teaches classes, creates work for weddings and events, and for clients like Disney and Nordstrom.

But Shinah’s started her journey on a very traditional path to success. She had a tiger mom, got a perfect 1600 on her SATs, went to Harvard, and went on to become a very successful attorney making over 6 figures right out the gate. But she was stressed out and extremely unhappy, until she left everything behind to explore her passion for calligraphy and now it’s paying off.

Mentioned in this episode:

• How she felt lost and unfulfilled in her career as a lawyer, and ultimately how she found her way thanks to some really good questions a life coach asked her that changed everything

• How to discover what you love to do

• How to channel who you really are into your work by finding your authentic voice, even if it pisses people off

• How to begin to overcome the fear of failure and the fear of rejection, and move forward despite the fear

• Tatsuo Horiuchi, The Michelangelo of Microsoft Excel

CONNECT WITH SHINAH:

Instagram | Website

Thank you so much for listening!

Subscribe so you never miss an episode, and connect with me online!

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If you have any questions or comments for the show, click here.