Brandon Stanton – Learning from 30 Days of Creative Genius

LTieu-30dayscreativegenius

This month I decided to watch the video interviews on CreativeLive by Chase Jarvis and get some daily inspiration, motivation and wisdom. I’ve decided to blog about the series, logging my thoughts and takeaways…

Day 20 creative genius – Brandon Stanton.

Humble creator of the Humans of NY, Brandon Stanton is a photographer, writer and speaker. Even if you don’t know his name, you have probably heard of or come across his work. He has so many followers and he is really straightforward about always focusing on his work, the stories of others and not himself. It’s not self-promotion.

Definitely an interesting perspective and a bit different for those of us who do personal work and have a lot of our identity in our business, so it’s difficult to be so behind the scenes.

One thing he said about social media that he dislikes is that it seems as if people are promoting themselves by showing how great their lives are… or how much better their lives are, because it’s all curated in social media. That is a harsh yet true statement, that often what we see is just a small window of the person’s life. Perhaps looking at someone’s social profiles is just like the new way of flipping through magazines and books of what people choose to publish.

On the flip side of things, I know that we all don’t want to share everything about our lives, impossible, right?

The big takeaway from this interview was when Stanton emphasized outworking people. As with others in this interview series, he talked about how your effort – how much you work – is what you can control. So he vowed that he would work hard. He also talked later about how following your dreams is about working hard. It’s not an excuse to not work…

Just enough… not enough.

Stanton was talking about how you have to work hard and obviously spend your time on your dream… if that’s what you claim to be following! True dat! In way, it’s like tough love, to really drill in the point. I totally understand that it’s easy to slip into excuses… so we need to be checked.

You can watch this interview by signing up for FREE – 30 Days of Genius at CreativeLive. Enjoy!

* Please note there are affiliate links in this post. That means if you purchase after clicking through, I might receive a small commission (at no cost to you). All opinions are my own and thank you for supporting me!

Kevin Rose – Learning From 30 Days of Creative Genius

LTieu-30dayscreativegenius

This month I decided to watch the video interviews on CreativeLive by Chase Jarvis and get some daily inspiration, motivation and wisdom. I’ve decided to blog about the series, logging my thoughts and takeaways…

Day 19 creative genius – Kevin Rose.

Founder of DIGG, the discussion about founders was a bit up there and seemingly out of my league. It was a lot about creating amazing new technologies, but at the same time, Rose talks about how it’s just starting with your idea and keeping at it.

Passion and aptitude.

Definitely there was the discussion around needing to have the aptitude to do great work, but that you also need that internal passion and drive. Without which you will not make it pass the obstacles. I think this is the case with anything. If you are able to stick it out, you’ll keep going and achieve some points of success. But when you come upon a hurdle, if you don’t really believe in your work, you will abandon it. I think it’s true with everything in life.

I think the idea is if you keep at a project, you’ll pivot and work through the struggles to find a way to move ahead. It might change the course of what you had imagined previously, but you keep moving forward. Perhaps it’s just the age old idea of hustling – hard work and perseverance.

You can watch this interview by signing up for FREE – 30 Days of Genius at CreativeLive. Enjoy!

* Please note there are affiliate links in this post. That means if you purchase after clicking through, I might receive a small commission (at no cost to you). All opinions are my own and thank you for supporting me!

Illustration for Crochet Pattern Designer Tanja Osswald

Snow Falling on Shadows by Tanja Osswald

I’m super excited and grateful to have created a little illustration for my friend Tanja Osswald to help promote her latest crochet pattern release – Snow Falling on Shadows. It’s a lovely shawl with multiple color blocks, beautiful, yes? And it’s crocheted! Definitely check out the pattern if you are interested – it’s on Ravelry here.

If you ever need illustration for your business from web to print to design, definitely drop me a line!

Sophia Amoruso – Learning From 30 Days of Creative Genius

LTieu-30dayscreativegenius

This month I decided to watch the video interviews on CreativeLive by Chase Jarvis and get some daily inspiration, motivation and wisdom. I’ve decided to blog about the series, logging my thoughts and takeaways…

Day 18 creative genius – Sophia Amoruso.

Founder of Nasty Gal and author of #girlboss, Sophia Amoruso is what Jarvis calls a powerhouse.

It’s amazing that she had such initiative at a young age, although she says she didn’t have a plan or really know what she was getting into. Quite simply, she hustled and kept trying different things to test out what worked.

I love how down to earth and straightforward she is in her conversation. She talks about how you don’t need to know the lingo or have influential friends to do what you want to do. She seems like such a calm person, it’s a bit bizarre against her brand “nasty gal” – huh?

I think this interview really brings big success and a fair amount of fame, back down to reality. It’s not untouchable, it’s not impossible and it can very much happen in our universe. Possibility, I suppose?

You can watch this interview by signing up for FREE – 30 Days of Genius at CreativeLive. Enjoy!

* Please note there are affiliate links in this post. That means if you purchase after clicking through, I might receive a small commission (at no cost to you). All opinions are my own and thank you for supporting me!

Kevin Kelly – Learning From 30 Days of Creative Genius

LTieu-30dayscreativegenius

This month I decided to watch the video interviews on CreativeLive by Chase Jarvis and get some daily inspiration, motivation and wisdom. I’ve decided to blog about the series, logging my thoughts and takeaways…

Day 17 creative genius – Kevin Kelly.

Kevin Kelly is the founding executive editor of Wired Magazine. He is an editor and writer with a pretty famous blog, seemingly predicting what the next big things will be, in the creative community and technology.  His latest book talks about the next 20 trends that will shape our lives, so you sort of get a sense of how he’s an idea guy.

Quantity over quality.

In his interview with Jarvis, he mentions the story of a professor that allowed students to be graded on the best project they submit – quality – or by weight, the quantity of projects done. It turns out that the best work comes from the group that focus on quantity… bringing up the point that we must do a lot, make mistakes and keeping going to create great work.

I really loved this point because I often get frozen in analysis or “perfection” of one thing, holding me back from releasing, trying, putting it out there. When in fact, it’s really proven to be more effective to create as much as possible! Another example of things that we sort of “know” but unable to follow through on, right?

Fail often… not a disaster.

At one point Kelly talks about failing often and it’s little things that you can handle. It’s a-okay. Instead of not tolerating failure and inevitably reaching a failure that brings our world down. That is so much worse! We must tolerate failure.

Lots of wisdom and creative talk, a great listen!

You can watch this interview by signing up for FREE – 30 Days of Genius at CreativeLive. Enjoy!

* Please note there are affiliate links in this post. That means if you purchase after clicking through, I might receive a small commission (at no cost to you). All opinions are my own and thank you for supporting me!