What Nobody Tells You About Being Creative

Whether you think you are a creative person or not, I can tell you right now that you are. Every single person on this planet is a creative person, and it doesn't mean you have to be Picasso, you have to be doing art or anything. When it comes to building an online business, which is what we do here, you have to be creative. You, when you're creating content, you're a content creator. There's so much that we are creating every single day. Every conversation we have is all about being creative, and we learn from people And then we get to go implement things we are creating day in and day out. But sometimes as a creator or creative person, we get in slumps and we run into barriers that we have inside of our mind of thinking that we're not capable of doing something. We just get writer's block or creativity blocks. And what if I just told you that the best way to get over all of that and the secret that nobody tells you about being creative is that great artists steal. That's right. But they do it ethically. And that's what today is going to be about. I'm going to dive into one of my all-time favorite books, which is Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. It's an amazing book. And if you haven't read it or even heard of it, go read it. And that's really the main point that I want you to walk away with from today. So I'm going to list off a bunch of quotes that I've pulled from the book and then read them off to you and give you a little bit more insight on some of the ones that I feel actually need it. So without further ado, let's dive in to how to steal like an artist. Welcome to episode number 7 of the Profit Your Knowledge podcast. I'm your host, James Allen, here to help you turn your knowledge, passions, and skills into an online business. And build yourself a life of freedom. Today is going to be so much fun. I've actually been wanting to do this episode for a while because this book, Steal Like an Artist, is so impactful and it has been so impactful in my life. And it's really just helped me relax into being more creative when I felt like I had to just kind of reinvent the wheel when I didn't actually have to. So it's going to be awesome. I pulled out a lot of great quotes. I pulled these quotes, by the way, I stole them. Ethically from goodreads.com. That's a great resource that I love to look for quotes from books from before I consider buying the actual book. And my hope, my dream, my goal for today is to inspire you to actually go pick up this book, Steal Like an Artist, if you haven't already. And if you have, but you haven't read in a long time, reread it because it's such a good book, or get it on Audible. That's how I like to read, or listen, I guess. And, um, I just love to listen to this book. The narrator is Austin Kleon, and he's phenomenal. He's very passionate about what he teaches and for good reason. But before we get too deep into these quotes and the ideas behind them and how they can apply to helping you grow your online business, if you're a person who's thinking of starting an online business, maybe you haven't even done it yet, or maybe you've been working in your local area and you've built a bit of a reputation in your local area, but you want to make a bigger impact, you want to make a difference globally and in the world and leave a legacy in the online space, then I have a great resource for you. It's a 5-step guide or an action plan, if you will, that I put together where I put the entire method that is responsible for helping people create successful online businesses without draining all their time and energy. This— people have used this method to build 5, 6, or even 7-figure online businesses. I haven't made it to the multi-six or seven-figure mark yet, but I will. But this method, it's just, it's a slow burn. It does take time. But the beautiful thing about it is that you're not going to be glued to the phone all the time unless you want to. You can get discovered online, have a great brand that makes a big difference in the world, makes a big impact just from free content, giving away free content, brings people over to your website, and then you can make sales on the back end from your website. So you don't need to have some crazy big audience in order to make money doing this business model. You just have to get out there and have a couple simple systems put into place. But this guide breaks down all of it. It's really short. I put the whole method out, just wrote it out and then trimmed all the fat to make it as actionable as possible. And I want to give it to you for free. So my gift, the way that you get it is just go to ProfitYourKnowledge.com/guide, or I put a link in the description as well. So let's dive into how to ethically steal like an artist. Again, huge list of quotes, and I'm just going to pack through them. How many do I have? I have 18. Okay, 18 quotes that I pulled, and I organized them so they would kind of link together in a good way, smoothly, the best that I could anyway. There's a really cool quote I wanted to open with from the book, and it's by David Bowie. David Bowie said, the only art I'll ever study is stuff that I can steal from. David Bowie said that. The stuff that I can steal from. That's the only people he hangs out with are people that he can get influence from and that he can steal from. Okay, now this word steal, we're gonna dive into a bit more of what it means and how to ethically approach it, because I know that steal can have a bit of a negative connotation to it, um, but there are ways to be ethical about it, so we'll get there. Another great quote in the book is by Salvador Dalí. Or Dalí, and he said, those who do not want to imitate anything produce nothing. I thought that was a really interesting quote and I wanted to pull it out because the reason that I wanted to share that is because a lot of people, especially in like online business, they— if like, this is the old version of me, really, it still can kind of happen at times. But the old version of me especially had to think I had to come up with something completely new. I studied from mentors. And different people invested in myself and all that. But I had to think— I kept thinking like, I can't, can't steal anything. You know, it's unethical, it's wrong. One of my first mentors was Mary Morrissey, and she told me that you can, like, take people's work, but just give credit where credit is due. And it's something that is huge because, I mean, when we're thinking about a business and we're helping people, we business owners are problem solvers and problems have price tags. So the bigger the problem that you can solve, the more money you can make, you know, and a bigger impact you can make as well, which is really cool. So business owners, when done in ethical ways, are like superheroes. And it's super cool because I love superheroes, still do to this day. But what people really care about is, can this person help me? Can you help me? You're listening to this podcast or watching this video and thinking, can you help me be more creative? Can you really help me start my online business and make money teaching the things that I know or would love to learn about and love to teach people and things I'm passionate about? Yes, I know that I can, but I need to explain that to you. So sometimes the best way to explain these things is by stealing other people's work and giving it to these people. I don't need to create everything brand new. I can just say, oh, this is really great book called Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. And I am giving that to you. So in a way, I kind of like stole a huge list of quotes from this, but I did it ethically because I name-dropped on who I took it from and why it's so awesome and why I think you should have it. Okay. This is the most like unoriginal piece of content I think I've ever created, honestly. And it's about creativity, which is really ironic and funny. One of the quotes from Austin Kleon. Right here, starting with like the actual stuff that he says inside the book, not quotes from other people. He said, nobody is born with a style or a voice. We don't come out of the womb knowing who we are. In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes. We learn by copying. So when you're born as a little kid, you start developing in your life, and then you look at your parents and you see that your parents are walking and you say, I want to walk like that. And then you try to walk, you get up and you're trying to imitate and mimic what your parents are doing because they are your heroes. They're the people that you look up to day in and day out that feed you, that take care of you, they give you all the love. So you start to learn how to walk and you get up and then you end up falling on your butt. But you don't just like quit there. You end up getting up again and you keep falling on your butt until you finally get up. And now you are a walker. Never once did you sit down and just say, that's it. I'm not going to be a walker anymore. That's it. You got to that point because— to being a walker, congratulations— because you learned by copying your parents. And there's no difference when it comes to online business. But there is this whole thing of like protecting like copyright and all this stuff. So it does get kind of like nerve-wracking. But I think the biggest thing about stealing unethically is where you claim that it's all of yours. I never do that. I steal from people all the time. Still do. Always have. But I always say who I learned it from. You know, and that's the biggest thing. And I try, I make it my own, but we're going to get into it a bit more in just a minute about how to actually copy very well. But it's okay, I guess, is what the point of this quote is, to learn by copying. Copy your heroes. And I encourage you to find your heroes. We got a couple more quotes here that will help you do that. He said, what a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original. Look at that. Everybody's trying to be original, trying to be new and unique, but nobody is really original. Even the people that you see as being original, like, let's take a band like Led Zeppelin, for example. Whether you like Led Zeppelin or not, you don't, you don't really hear Led Zeppelin and say they sound like this. They just sound like Led Zeppelin and that's it. But you'll hear other bands and say that band sounds like Led Zeppelin. So Led Zeppelin is the one who seems to be original. But what's crazy is that Led Zeppelin even pulled tons of ideas and inspiration from other people, and then they end up creating their own sound. But they are seen as being original. Pretty interesting stuff. I think when I first read about this, I was like, wow, that's kind of a trippy way to look at it. He goes on to say that seeing yourself as a part of a creative lineage will help you feel less alone as you start making your own stuff. I hang pictures of my favorite artists in my studio. They're like friendly ghosts. I can almost feel them pushing me forward as I'm hunched over my desk, like they're pushing you into creativity. Really love that one. Now he says that copying or what to copy is a little bit trickier. So it's okay to copy, but what to copy is a bit trickier. He said, don't steal the style, steal the thinking behind the style. You don't want to look like your heroes. You want to see like your heroes. Now I want to pause here for a second because this was really eye-opening for me. Like, yeah, I have heroes in online business that teach the same or similar things. And I'm like, I don't want to just be another one of them. I want to be me. And it, you know, talking about like creativity with like Led Zeppelin or the way you walk, all these things, the more you can inject your personality into it and who you are and embody you, the more original it's going to be. People compliment me on my walk, which is kind of weird. I don't know if they compliment me. They say I have like a very unique walk. Because it's just how I walk. It's me. But I learned walking, which isn't a new thing, from other people, you know what I mean? But I inject my personality and my style, I guess, into my walk. But also with my drumming, I learned drums from a ton of different people. And I— what I do is I actually listen to exactly what they play and I copy it verbatim to the best of my ability because I'm just listening. And then I pick up what their style is. And then I'm doing this where I like, I don't look like my heroes, but I do when I'm, when I'm just learning it, I look like my heroes. Because if you do a side by side, it's like, wow, you look just like this other drummer or this other business owner because I'm learning and I am copying and I understand that. But I'm not going to claim that, oh, this is all me, this is all my idea. But eventually you get to a point where it becomes second nature for you. Their style becomes that way and you start to see like your heroes. Okay, so again, pick up some heroes that you have. Make a list of 3 to 5 heroes that you have. When I say heroes, I mean the people that you look up to, that you say, I want to be like that person. So a couple heroes of mine are like, uh, Graham Cochran is one of my all-time heroes. I love him, and he's the one who I learned this method from. Um, And we've talked about like, you know, doing it ethically and stuff. I actually like put myself under a microscope with him, full transparency. I did, which was interesting, but it helped me learn a lot and take a lot from that conversation to go study other people. And we're going to get into a great quote about that in a minute. But he's a great inspiration of mine. Another great creator is Film Booth by, well, with Ed Lawrence. Check them out on YouTube. They have awesome YouTube channel. Film Booth is a great hero of mine when it comes to like YouTube and creativity like that and production. I don't really do as much production, but like this podcast, for example, looks very similar to Graham Cochran's, is very similar style, if not like the same style. But I made it my own, you know, and that's just like me copying and learning from people because I like that style. I have another mentor named George Bryant who teaches business and he's all about relationships beat algorithms. and he has a very similar style where he does like a long-form podcast like this and does like a video podcast as well. And I love listening to their content. I get so much value from it. So I looked at the thinking behind the style because I wanted to see like my heroes. And I saw the people that I really look up to are doing these video podcasts. I get a ton of value from that. So I want to go do it myself. So I copied that style from a couple of different people. Okay, I just hope you can kind of see this. So when you're looking at your heroes, these people you really look up to, and you look at like their website design or the way that they do their products and things, aim to, I guess, ask yourself, what's the thinking behind the style? And that's what I like to do. Is it really simple? And I guess you kind of have to be intuitive with it because I don't really think too much about, like, think too hard, I guess, about it. I just think, what is the thinking behind the style? It's typically what I say. And then inspiration starts to come up from inside of me about what I can do to kind of see like my heroes. So I hope that makes sense. Austin Kleon goes on to say that copying is about reverse engineering. Copying is about reverse engineering. He says, if you have one person you're influenced by, everyone will say you're the next whoever. But if you rip off 100 people, everyone will say you're so original. And that goes back to like Led Zeppelin, for example. I'm sure they ripped off a ton of different things from a lot of different people and they started practicing like that to get better. But then that kind of style carried on into their originality. But really it all came from ripping other people off, for lack of a better term, from stealing other people and learning and copying other people that were their heroes that they looked up to. All right. There's a great story or little like example that he uses inside of Steal Like an Artist where he says there isn't a move that's a new move. The basketball star Kobe Bryant, RIP, has admitted that all of his moves on the court were stolen from watching tapes of his heroes, the people that he looked up to. But initially, when Bryant stole a lot of these moves, he realized that he couldn't completely pull them off because he didn't have the same body type as the guys he was thieving from. He had to adapt the moves to make them his own. And he goes, he goes on to say that chew on one thinker, writer, activist, role model, thought leader, whatever it is that you really love. Chew on one person. Just focus on them. Study everything there is to know about that thinker. Everything, like more than other people. You're not just surface level, like you're going deep on this one person to understand their style, to study from them deeply. And then he says, then find 3 people that thinker loved and find out everything about them. So when you look at your heroes, an example for me is Graham Cochran, one of my heroes. I study a lot from him. I still do. Okay. Because I love his content. I love his personality, his work, everything. And, his viewpoints, all that stuff. I love it all. So I study from him. But then I started looking into who are Graham's heroes. And then I started studying Ramit Sethi, who's another phenomenal hero of mine. And he became one of my heroes. But initially he was Graham's hero because I heard Graham talking about Ramit Sethi all the time because I was studying Graham. And I started looking into Ramit. And it was funny because I could see so many similarities from Ramit to Graham Cochran, which was funny for me to see. I was like, wow, look at that. Because I was thinking from the mind of Stealing Like an Artist and the creativity pieces. But Graham has taken from a lot of different people. So I go and study his mentors as well and his heroes. So that's the point that he's getting at here. And he says, repeat this as many times as you can. Climb up the tree as far as you can go. Once you Once you've built your tree, it's time to start your own branch. Austin goes on to say that everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again. The great thing about dead or remote masters is that they can't refuse you as an apprentice. You can learn whatever you want from them. They left their lesson plans in their work. Fun stuff. I really— I just love these. Okay. And then next he says, it's our failure. This is important. I think this is like really important because I hope you're understanding the concept here of it's okay to copy the people that you really admire and dig into their work and steal the thinking and the style or the thinking behind the style. And it does take creativity in and of itself to be able to do that. Like I said, it's listening to your intuition. And noticing the kind of ideas that come up from asking yourself these questions of what's the thinking behind the style? And just ask yourself that and then kind of ponder and look at the work that they're doing and pick out what it is. Okay, but make it your own, like inject your own personality and say, how would I do it differently? How would I improve this? What do I think is missing from this work, from my hero's work? What do I think they didn't touch on enough? And then that's what you make. All right. But he says it's our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique. Thank goodness. It's our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique. So you're pursuing this ideal by your, by following your heroes. That's your perceived ideal. You're like, I want to be like like my heroes. I don't care if you're in sports, if you're in business, if you're in art, if you're in music, it doesn't matter because I'm a musician myself and I do the same thing when it comes to other drummers or other people who sing as well. I have heroes. I'm not going to go down deep into who they are per se. You can ask me if you want. If you want to leave a comment on YouTube, you can ask. But it's our failure to copy our heroes that we discover where our own thing lives, and that's how we evolve. Okay, so homework, we're not done yet, but it's just to keep thinking about as we go through these who your heroes are. And if you already know, that's awesome. But like, literally make a list of your heroes. And better yet, please let me know down in a comment on YouTube who your heroes are. And if you know who their heroes are, list them too, but gimme 3 to 5 heroes that you have related to whatever it is you do. And I'd even love to know what it is that you do. So say like, here's what I do or what I'm working on. Boom, boom, boom. Here's my creative work. And then here are my heroes and list them. I would love to hear that. All right. But yeah, it's our failure to copy our heroes that we discover where our own thing lives and that's how we evolve. Then he goes on to say that you don't, or you have to dress for the job you want, not the job you have. And you have to start doing the work that you want to be doing. But this, this ties into like imposter syndrome. Quick story about me. I left construction work. I wanted to help people with career and something to do with like creating a job that they love. But I didn't want to be like a career consultant that worked for a company. I wanted to work for myself. I want to be my own boss. To make a difference in the world, helping people in the realm of careers and work and make— doing work that they love. That's what I always wanted. And I didn't even know what coaching was or anything. I was just like, oh, if I could find a job like that. Then I found a coaching institute called Brave Thinking Institute, and I jumped in and I started getting certified as a life and transformational coach and like a spiritual coach. So I was like, that's what I want to do. I like helping people. So went me down. It took me down this path of coaching, but I realized I didn't really like it. It wasn't everything that I wanted. It was still— I was doing like cool stuff and I still teach some of the similar things in terms of like mindset, spirituality, stuff like that, intuition. I learned a lot about that stuff and it's really helped me in my life, spiritual life principles, I should say. But then I always had this idea of like, I really want to help people with career, but I always felt like I wasn't good enough. Like I, how am I supposed to teach people about starting a business or finding the career that they love if like I haven't done it myself and become really successful? I had this ideology that I had to be some ultra successful person before I could help people, which is just when I say it out loud, it's so funny. But that's what a lot of people get tripped up on. It's called imposter syndrome. And I did make a whole episode. It's actually episode number 1 of when this podcast officially like started. Um, but that is all about imposter syndrome and beating imposter syndrome. And Austin Kleon actually touches on this. He said, you might be scared to start. That's natural. There's this very real thing that runs rampant in educated people. It's called imposter syndrome. The clinical definition is a psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments. So I had a lot of accomplishments, but I wasn't able to internalize them and see myself as being I guess, validated enough to be able to help other people. He goes on to say, it means that you feel like a phony, that you're just winging it, that you really don't have any idea what you're doing. But guess what? None of us do. Ask anybody who is doing truly creative work and they'll tell you the truth. They don't know where the good stuff comes from. They just show up. And do their thing every day. I create content every single week. Every week I show up and create content. And I work with people, and this is one of the biggest challenges that people have. They're like, I have all this information. I've been doing this for years, teaching my thing like fitness or whatever it is for so long, and I'm really passionate about it, but I'm just terrified to get on camera and start creating. and I always tell them, you just got to start creating. You just got to show up and give the goods away. Just show up and do it every single week. If it's one time a week or multiple times a week, just show up at least once a week and just be there. And I'll even have people make me a video every single day, just one quick point that they're teaching me, but they make a video and they make it out to me because that helps people. I've learned. Every single day and get some used to being on camera and then they can start making camera because it's an awkward thing to talk to a camera like it's not natural for me or wasn't. Now it's become more natural, but I still struggle at times. There's some days where I'm like, I don't want to hit record. But in Think Media, which is a great YouTube channel about content creation and YouTube and all that, they always have their little tagline in the beginning. It says you got to just hit record. And that helps me so much. You got to just hit record. And just do it because I'll sit there all day being like, I really don't want to do this. So even for me, it's uncomfortable. And I hope that I can inspire you because people tell me all the time like, oh, James, you're really good on camera. It's like, well, I've been doing it for a long time. But also, yeah, I mean, that's really it. I've been doing it for a long time and I still struggle. Okay. But yeah, just show up and do their thing. That's what they do. That's what you got to do. Here's like, we're going to start wrapping it up here. But he said, Austin Kleon in Steal Like an Artist: Draw the art that you want to see. Start the business that you want to run. Play the music that you want to hear. Write the books you want to read. Build the products that you want to use and do the work that you want to see done. I love that. He also ends, or I ended with my collection of his quotes. You, you're ready. Start making stuff. That's it. You're ready. Start making stuff. Whether you think you are, you think you're not, maybe you got that imposter syndrome stuff. You got to just start doing it. And if you need a coach, you can always reach out. If you want me to be your coach, reach out. Even if it's for a 15-minute, I will hop on a 15-minute call with you. Assuming you don't seem like you're a a spam artist or something. But yeah, I would even just emails and stuff sometimes just having someone tell you and inspire you and hold you accountable. That makes a world of a difference in the kind of results that you want to make. Okay. But yeah, do the art, do the work that you want to see in the world. Be the change that you want to see in the world. It's like Gandhi. All right. And if you're, if you're curious about How to kind of go about that. Look from your heroes. Look at your heroes, see what they're doing, mimic them, copy them. Always give credit where credit is due, but just start doing it. Okay? And I know that's a hard step because I, I waffled around for years before I just started my business. And now look at me. People reach out. I'm not some like incredibly successful person yet, but I've had many successes on top of thousands and thousands of failures. Okay. But you just, you got to just start. It's the hardest part. The first step really is the hardest. There's a reason that's a saying. Okay. You are ready. Just start making stuff. Even if it sucks, put out crap and then put out crap 2.0. Get better as you go. Improve as you go. Okay. So that's all I got for you today. I hope that going through this has inspired you to go pick up Steal Like an Artist. If you haven't already, pause this episode and done it, go do it. Okay, I'll even put a link down in the description to like Amazon. You can go check it out and pick up the book. Whether you read it in person or you just listen to the Audible, I don't care. Just read through it, study it, and then practice it and abide by it and start seeing it everywhere that you go. All right, and if you are hesitant of like you want to start an online business but you don't know, maybe you're looking for a hero, I would be honored to be a hero of yours. So learn from me, pick up the 5-step action plan, and it's going to walk you through again the exact method that's going to help you start an online business that point blank is going to take work. It's going to take quite a bit of work, but you're going to be able to create systems and assets that are going to run for you without you having to be working, which eventually you'll be able to get there. Okay. But it's just going to take some work. This guide gives you the exact roadmap. Okay. It is my gift to you. I want you to have it. I hope that you can see that I really care about giving you as much value as I can in these episodes, and I hope that inspires you to pick it up and to use it. Because whether you buy anything from me or not, or you ever hire me as your coach, it's a great resource to have regardless. Okay. So let me know down in the comments if any of these really stuck out to you, if you think that it's bogus, you know, whether your thoughts are you know, connected, whether you agree or you disagree, let me know down in the comments. I would love to hear. We can have a little debate. That's always fun if you're on YouTube anyway. If you're on the podcast, please leave a review. It really helps. And whether you're on YouTube or the podcast, if you felt that this episode is valuable, please share it because it really, it does help me. It helps grow this channel. And people message me all the time saying, James, you should have more viewers and subscribers and stuff. And yeah, eventually we'll get there. But what does help is by you simply just sharing this. to some friends or family. Makes a big difference. All right. You know, all this stuff, like, subscribe, all that stuff. I think you've been in the game long enough to understand all that if you felt it was valuable. Um, but that's all I got for you today. Take what you learned here, get out there, start stealing like an artist, and I will see you in the next one.