Hey, Creator!

We are all living unfinished symphonies. Our lives and our work never actually end. We are always moving on to the next chapter, the next project, the next incompletion. And everything we put our hands to is yet another opportunity to discover who we are. And when we finally discover that, the real work begins. Until then, we'll just have to keep—

Developing your taste is a process of trusting yourself and your experience. It's about learning to live in the moment and knowing that sometimes it never gets better than the first sip. And really, what we're talking about here is the art of learning to live a little more fully alive.

An artist's taste is everything. But this takes time and effort to develop. And often, we won't know what we like until we experience what we don't like. Maybe taste, then, is more about paying attention than it is about preconceived preferences.    This is part one of a two-part conversation.

The first step to finishing is to begin. And the secret to getting unstuck is to begin again. We cannot bring anything to completion. That's not our job.

Join us as we get to the bottom of the future of money, cryptocurrency, and NFTs with our guest expert Ty Ward, founder of Book Coin and wearer of aggressively short shorts.

A little life is underrated. When all the glitz and glamor of “success” fade away, all that's left is the life you choose to live, the one that may be standing right in front of you. Maybe your greatest story is the one that's already happening.

What do tattoos, dreams, and bulls have in common? Maybe more than you think. Today, we explore this dream-like existence we call life and the creator's dilemma of making sense of the mystery. This Week's Sponsor: Aura GoinsWriter.com/Aura

After being able to buy a house he didn't know he could afford, Jeff muses about money and value and where it all comes from. If currency is merely a concept, then what does that mean for the artist? Maybe we can create the very resources we need to produce our work.

All art is a little scandalous. It takes that which you treat as precious and sacred and exposes it. A great artist knows how to play the trickster, that devious misfit who stirs things up in a way that changes things for the better.

What do you do when the familiar story you've been telling the world—about yourself—gets interrupted by reality? You do what no marketer or influencer wants to do. You tell the truth. Ray Edwards shares his story about getting Parkinson's, how he tried to get healed, and what happened to his identity when what he wanted to become didn't happen.

The problem with a (personal) brand is it's an idea, a distillation of a concept that is interesting and attractive to a certain group of people for a certain period of time. But then you change, and you have to keep selling the same thing to a world that wants you to be what you were. So what do you do then? Well, that's when life really begins.

Wherein we explore the art of making a perfect cup of coffee—and why it ultimately doesn't matter. Art is an asymptote: a striving towards an impossible standard of excellence that you never actually reach but always makes you better. 

After a cross-continent road trip, Jeff is still here and opens up about the story of his divorce, how he overcame writer's block, and the magic of making things. 

A sequel only works when it ignores what came before it. This is true with your life and work: to be truly innovative, you have to be willing to break the rules, even the ones you may have written. You can't just be another connoisseur; you've got to become a true creator, and that requires unmistakable audacity. You have to dare to be different if you want to continue creating work worth noticing.

We're back! But are we really? In this volume, we're gonna talk about sequels and second seasons and why they fundamentally don't work—unless you completely disregard what came before. And that's just what we intend to do (hopefully). See you soon.

Jeff and Kelton sat down with a glass of wine to wax philosophical about the creative process, the first season's most popular episodes, their personal favorites, and the fate of a second season. TL;DR – They don't know where they're going, but they know how to get there. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

A farewell poem to Season One from Jeff.

In this final issue of our first season, Jeff shares more about his recent “retirement” announcement and hints at what's next. It turns out we are always retiring from something, outgrowing an old way of being and graduating to the next. This week, we explore how to end things well, what it looks like to create blank space for future work, and why endings are never really the end. We also hear some kind words from the audience, celebrating ten years worth of creative work together and bidding farewell to the old.

This week, as we prepare for our season finale, we have a bonus episode for you. Recently, while walking through the Art Institute in Chicago, I had a revelation. Observing the Picassos and Warhols and O'Keefes, I realized that art is not necessarily the final product. It is the process. The same might be said of our own work, as well.

With our work, we are all trying to answer an important question. And how we choose to answer it affects everything. Art, however, may not be about answering the question as much as learning to live well within the unknowns of what we do. In this issue, we talk about death, art museums, writer's block, and more. Where we end up just may surprise you.

Someone once asked when I was preparing to give a talk if I could make it practical—and I had to wonder what that meant. Is Art practical? Does it need to be? This week, we explore how our life informs our art and how what we make influences everything else, complete with interruptions from my kids and a few stories from the lives of famous artists who struggled to reconcile their creative work with the demands of a normal life.

We all want to create things that matter, that actually make a difference. But how do we know when we've done our job? Do we need others to “get it” for our work to be meaningful? Is “art for art's sake” a real thing? What does it all mean? This week, we examine a critical tweet, tell three creator stories, and share some audience feedback. Hang in there. We get a little fired up (or at least Jeff does).

Yes, the money thing. The thing almost all of us struggle with. The thing that haunts and plagues us and tells us, “If we just had enough, then we'd be okay.” This week, we are going to get super vulnerable, sharing stories, facts, and figures about having a lot of money and a little and how, maybe, your attitude is what matters most.

When people want to know the “whole story,” that's not really what they're looking for. They are looking for permission to be themselves. In this issue, we invite a personal branding expert on the show to discuss the most misused word on the Internet and how authenticity doesn't work the way we think it does.

Every day, I try to disappear. It is my version of staying sane, of getting in touch with what matters most to me. If we don't disappear, we miss so much, getting lost in the myopia of our daily dramas. The discipline of stepping away from the outer world to access a deeper, inner one is what makes our work—and our lives—meaningful.

You didn't get into this game of making things to be consistent. Consistency is boring, unworthy of our attention. What we want from you—that we'll never ask for—is something that surprises us. Something that scares us a little bit, that keeps us on our toes. We want something that is familiar but we never saw coming. Here's another bonus for your ears. Back again next week.

In this live conversation between Jeff Goins and David Hooper, Jeff and a local radio host explore what it looks like to let go of something that's working to start something new. This conversation was recorded live in July 2021 at the Nashville Podcasters Meetup, and Jeff shares what he learned from ending his last podcast and starting a new one. He and David also discuss when to keep going with a creative project and persevere through challenges as well as when you should just throw in the towel and start fresh.

Every artist wants to be unique. But the truth is before you can stand out, you first have to fit in. In this issue, we explore why even the indefinable needs definition, and how being extraordinary begins with being ordinary, but just not staying there. This week, we expand the conversation to a few more voices to help us grasp this mysterious thing we call genre and when it's time to create a category of one.

In this mixtape of mixtapes, Jeff brings co-producer Kelton Reid on the show to talk about what it takes to turn a piece of creative curation into an actual work of art and why the process isn't what you think. In this issue, we talk about how to make a perfect playlist, why taste is integral to all creation, and why what you leave out is more important than what remains.

Change is always happening. It is all around us: in our relationships, the work we do, even in ourselves. We are always turning from one thing into another, often without even realizing it. But when the story of your life no longer matches the role you want to play, it's time to rewrite the script. This is re-creation.

Coming every Tuesday, a weekly mixtape of inspiration, resources, motivation, and shenanigans. Hey, Creator! is the podcast for the creator economy, for those who know they're capable of more than the boring, derivative content that's good enough for most people. Join us as we explore what it means not just to make interesting art, but to live an interesting life.