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Lesson 09: Feed Your Soul with a Creative Side Project

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Lesson 09: How a creative director started a side project purely for HIS HAPPINESS, and transformed IT into more

With Kevin Butler

Don’t overthink it and don’t wait for it to be perfect. Making stuff that makes you happy, doing it, getting it out, and moving on is the best way to be happy and creative at the same time.
— Kevin Butler

We talk a lot on Creativity School about making things simply because it makes us happy, even if we don’t have a bigger plan for it. Yet we often find ourselves feeling like our creativity needs to be more purposeful than that - if it doesn’t make us money, what’s the point?

In today’s episode, I’m talking to someone who has an extremely demanding day job, and started a creative side project for one reason: purely because it was fun. What happened next was beyond his imagination!

Kevin Butler is an award winning creative director that’s created memorable ad campaigns for clients like Apple, Playstation, Tinder, Airbnb, and Facebook. While he was working at his most demanding job ever (working 6 days a week, 12-14 hours a day), he started his illustration project, Rad Cars with Rad Surfboards. It started out as one personal drawing that quickly grew to 100 illustrations. Now, 10 years later, Rad Cars with Rad Surfboards has had sold out art shows and collaborated with brands like Herschel Supply Co., Igloo Coolers, Vans, and more!

Kevin talks about how Rad Cars with Rad Surfboards is what keeps him sharp and inspired, why money is never the motivation behind his project, and why it's important that he protects the integrity of his work by choosing the right brands to collaborate with.

He also shares how he juggles his side project with such a demanding day job, and why it’s SO IMPORTANT to be selfish in the work you create for yourself.

Mentioned in this episode:

  • How Kevin creates effective communication that connects with people through his ad campaigns

  • Why he says you need to be selfish in the work you create

  • Why other people’s opinions shouldn’t matter

  • The questions he asks himself when he chooses which creative side projects to work on

  • How starting Rad Cars with Rad Surfboards was started purely for fun

  • Why you should value your work and be discerning about what brands and companies to work with

  • Why money is never his motivation for his Rad Car collaborations

  • How giving your brain space to rest and breathe allows you to be more creative

  • How he finds time for creativity with a demanding day job and while being a dad

  • The Modern Trap of Turning Hobbies into Hustles

  • Facebook “Friends” brand campaign

CONNECT WITH KEVIN:

Rad Cars | Instagram | Website

CONNECT WITH CREATIVITY SCHOOL:

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Lesson 04: Creativity and Intuition

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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

An exclusive offer just for Creativity School Listeners! Get 20% off of e-courses with code: CREATIVITYSCHOOL19

Thank you so much for listening!

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

Instagram | Twitter | Facebook

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