From The Archives: Overcoming Fear and Self-Doubt in Marketing Your Creative Work

If you are a stuck or frustrated creative and want to get paid to do what you love, let's talk. https://yourworkisagift.com/coaching

Have you ever felt that gnawing discomfort when you're trying to market your own work? 

You're not alone. Drawing from George Orwell's disdain for advertising, this episode of "The Right Questions" tackles why marketing can feel so daunting and how we can overcome that fear. Through personal anecdotes and the journey with my book "Feck Perfuction," you'll learn how consistent messaging plays a crucial role in making your work both visible and memorable. I promise you'll walk away with practical tips and tools to ease those marketing jitters and confidently share your passion with the world.

This is fresh from the archives, where we bring back episodes from the past and let them shine once again. Enjoy! 

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Transcript

Taking the Fear Out of Marketing

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right, let's do this shit. Hello, you pirates and saints, you heroes and bootleggers, jokers, kings and queens, and geniuses, all of you. I'm James Victory, and this is The Right Questions, the podcast devoted to you. And thank you so much for being here and supporting this, because without you, I'm just talking to myself. So welcome to The Right Questions, where we help you get paid to do what you love. And let's just get right into this, okay? So, one of my favorite authors is George Orwell. He wrote books like he wrote 1984 and Animal Farm and a number of really great and delightful books. If you haven't read any George Orwell, take a look. But there's one quote of his that has always stuck out to me. And it says, advertising is the rattling of a stick in the swill bucket of society. How about that? Calling the pigs to swill, basically. Come and get it. Clearly, George Orwell hates advertising. And possibly has a certain level of disdain for society as well. And I've heard from a number of you and a number of my coaching clients and a number of people historically and myself that a lot of us hate advertising. A lot of us hate the way it's presented to us, and a lot of us more than that, we hate doing it. Or hate feeling we have to do it, or hate feeling we're selling ourselves. And to you guys and to George Orwell, this program is dedicated. And this one is called How to Take the Piss Out of Marketing or How to Lose the Fear and Sell Your Work. So today I'm going to tell you, give you a bunch of ideas and some tools and some words and hopefully calm you down around this idea of selling. Hopefully make it easier for you. Hopefully give you some devices to remind yourself so you can calm down and get it done. Because we all have to do that. At some point in our careers, we're selling ourselves, where we're looking for a new job or selling our wares, right? And I want to take the piss and vinegar out of selling. And I'm going to hit some big points here. Points about fear, um, a huge idea about your audience that you've never thought about, and a lot of other topics to help you get paid to do what you love. And as we always like to add to that, stay sane in the process. So you've heard the expression that if you build a better mouse trap, the world will beat a path to your doorstep. Well, that's just bullshit. Ain't gonna happen. The world will not beat a path to your doorstep unless and here's the thing. Unless they know you made a better mouse trap, right? It's just gonna sit in your basement. Like, like it's just gonna sit there, not doing nothing, just staring up at you like, hey, hey, Joe, what's next? What do we do now? Right? Three years of your life, huh? Right? They will not beat a path unless they've heard from you, unless you tell them, unless you show them how it works. Right? So we want to talk about how to do that, the marketing. Um, and the marketing is the activity or business promoting products. And advertising is that in motion. Advertising is the tools we use to do that, right? So I'm trying to I'm kind of using them in um um uniform or universal expressions here, and basically talking about selling. So we're gonna be talking about selling, specifically you selling and how to make it easier for you. But what we're talking about is, you know, there's there are different terms now, right? It's not 1984 anymore. There's marketing and there's advertising, and they're slightly different, you know? Marketing is the business of promoting, you know, and selling services, while advertising is marketing in motion, right? Advertising is like a subset of marketing, taking all of your activities like ads and posts to support your marketing goals, right? But we're just talking about selling, right? So so we're not gonna get caught up in those differences right now. We're just gonna talk about why it's so hard to market yourself. Why is it so hard to sell yourself and to advertise? Okay. When my book, Feck Perfection, came out, I was having a meeting in New York with my book agent. And she said, James, here's the figures. We've done the research a number of times. The audience, your audience, has to see the book cover seven times before buying it. Right? How crazy is that? How crazy is that that we don't go, oh, that sounds good, let me just buy that. But that's not human uh nature. That's not how it works. So, so for a book cover or for a book, the audience has to see it about seven times before buying it, right? So what's difficult for us is not only selling, but it's the repeating, right? The repeating. Which is funny because my definition of marketing, if you say, hey James, what is marketing? Marketing is having something to say and saying it over and over and over again. That's the ticket. That's what makes it work. First of all, have something to say and then say it again and again and again. And we're gonna go over this again and again today. It's the consistency, it's the consistency that helps. Right? Like any practice, it's consistency that makes it work. It's consistency that embeds it into our into our neurons and into our muscle memory, right? Consistency, practice, because repetition is how we learn, right? That's how we learned our ABCs through repetition. It's also how we teach others. Let me repeat that. Repetition is how we learn. If we want to establish a new habit, basically teach our bodies a new way, teach our minds a new way of thinking, we need to repeat it consciously again and again to ourselves. You know, for example, if you want people to know that you make the most dangerous wedding invitations in the world, right? You don't just make wedding invitations, you don't just say on your on your site, you say wedding invitations, you say, I make the most dangerous wedding invitations in the known world. You need to tell them that line again and again and again. That is your content, that is your brand, and it needs to be on your site in three or five different places. We need to repeat these things. You know, you need to have the world's most dangerous wedding invitations in the known world on your LinkedIn or on your Instagram or stickers or t-shirts or whatever. And if you are that client, call me. I'm your branding guy. I will take care of all that. This could be awesome. So the way we learn and the way we teach others, we teach others about ourselves and what we're doing and our activities is through repetition. I've spoken with so many of you. I've spoken with so many of you. Whether you whether it was back when you were a student or when if you were a coaching client of mine or just a pal of mine, we're hanging out at the bar and talking. So many of you who think say things like, I hate selling, right? Or I'm shy about talking to myself. I heard that one yesterday. Or I'm no good talking about my work. Or wait, maybe, wait a second. Oh, those are me. Those were just me. Okay, forget it. We all have this thing.

Embrace Your Unique Perspective

SPEAKER_00 8:44

Nobody really likes this. You know, I had a friend, I had a friend who was an illustrator and he had dolls and products, and um, he was super successful, but really no annoying because he carried his little doll that he made everywhere he went. And every time you met him, he'd say, Hi, I'm gonna make up his name. He said, Hi, my name is Gary Brotmeyer. I have a doll named This. Uh, you can find me at this. I'm in these museums, I'm in these shops. It's just like, dude, settle down, right? Super annoying guy. Nobody really wanted to hang out with him. But he was successful because he kept repeating these things again and again and again. He was basically socially awkward, but he was a good salesman because he kept repeating the things, right? He had nothing, he had no subconscious telling him that he didn't like selling. He probably was super shy about selling, but he just kept doing it, right? So so telling us that we're not good at anything is in a long list of the lies that we tell ourselves. And I get it. I hear you. I don't think I'm good at it, but I keep going. And people are like, James, your newsletters are really awesome, or or they love what I'm doing on Instagram, and it's just like, uh, okay, okay. Um, you know, so we tell ourselves these things, and they're lies, and we have to understand that. And the reason there are lies, and we're going to go into this, the reason there are there are lives is because we haven't looked at the other side yet. We haven't questioned it, you know? So there are other people like you who are uncomfortable with it, but we do it anyway. I am sometimes made uncomfortable, and then you might have this, you might have this situation too. I am made uncomfortable by others, right? I literally get people who write back to my newsletter. If I decide I'm selling a course or something, they will write back to me at length how they hate it when I sell. And my standard answer is unsubscriber or fuck off. It's your choice, right? And that's me being kind of a jerk and not getting back to them and saying, ah, please explain to me, tell me. Um, you know, we can't listen to the haters, right? They will come out of the woodwork. When we start doing something new, the first line of resistance is going to come from our people, for either from directly from our family or from the people who follow us, right? And we have to understand that. And we have to just keep going. We have to, we have to love what we're doing and love ourselves so much, and we have to understand that they're wrong. That they're wrong, that they are jealous that you are doing something they can't do. And yes, they can unsubscribe, they can look the other way. So save your breath, haters. I hate selling too, and I wish I could give everything away. I would love that. I would give away the farm. But you know what? I like to eat. I gotta tell you, I like to eat. So we really have to ignore the haters. And more than that, we have to ignore the presumption of haters. I've got two guys who I've talked to who have businesses and who I'm who I'm coaching, and I've I've gotten them to start writing newsletters because newsletters are how we build our audience, right? And both of them had the same experience. They sat on it for months until I said, Hey, what weren't you working on something? They said, Yeah, I can't, I can't push the button. I'm like, send it to me. And they sent it to me, and I'm like, oh my God, this is genius. This is wonderful. Shorten it, take this thing out, but go ahead. And what they got back was not what they expected. What they got back was love and people saying, Yeah, all right, keep going. And it might have been an audience of 60 or an audience of 130, but that's the beginning, that's where it starts. And listen to the people who love you and ignore the people who dis who unsubscribe. Because here's the big idea: people want to support you. With a thumbs up, with a like, with their money. It's an exchange of energy. If you give them quality, if you make them feel good, they will give in return give you their money. They will support you if you over-deliver. So make them feel good. Give things away for free. You know, it's funny because people will support you in a big way, even if it just makes them feel really good. And if you're not selling, or even if you're selling and it makes them feel good. You know, you have to know that people are out there for you. There's no one again, right? You just have to give them quality, over-deliver, and be consistent. Again, repetition, repetition, repetition. You know, under the idea of um people want to support you, people want you to succeed. You know, can you imagine a um a film set? And there's a young actor, and it's his first action film, and he's like a number three or number four in the action film. But this is like one, it's one of those big scenes where like he has to run across a room and flick a switch, and the whole room like uh and then looks scared, and then the whole room kind of collapses around him, right? And there's like fire department, and there's there's riggers who've built this thing, and there's people watching, and 33 cameras on him, and he's nervous, right? That's how you feel when you want to push that button. You want to push the send button. He's nervous. But he has to understand, just like you understand, no one wants to see him fail. Nobody wants to see you fail. Everybody wants to hear from you. You gotta know this, and the only way you will know it is through practice. Through practice. Sometimes we can be made to feel like we're out there all alone, right? You're out there alone, just like you know, you're a fart in the wind, you're looking out, and everybody's doing all this cool stuff. Listen, I bet dollars to donuts, you can name three people doing exactly what you want to do. Right? Exactly what you want to do. They're having the career, they're having the life that you want. And the only difference between them and you, and I mean the only difference, is that they are doing it. They're not thinking about it, they're not wasting time, they're not, they're not their finger isn't shaking over the over the the over the uh send button. They're doing it. Or maybe they are shivering over the send button. We don't know, because we're just looking outside, but they do it consistently. That's it. They are not smarter than you. Nor are they braver than you, and probably certainly not more talented than you. I know, big surprise. You see it, you see it all over. You look at the people's work and you're like, really? That's successful? Okay. Right? Like some m mother-in-law at a bridal shower. Really? She wants that. Okay. So they're not more talented or smarter or braver, they're just doing it. That's the only difference. So do it. And there are practical steps. Listen, there are practical steps to getting from where you are to where you want to go. But I can't get into it now because these steps are all personal and it depends on where you want to go. We don't always want to go to the same place. We don't all want to go to the same place. This is what my coaching program does. So drop me a line if you have questions and want to help want me to help you figure out those steps. And yes, that was advertising. That was selling. Something else I've heard from you all was who would want to hear from me? And of course, my first idea, my first response is, yeah, you're right. Who the fuck are you? Who wants to hear from you? You have stupid ideas. You're dumb. Oh, on top of that, you're ugly. Right? Who would want to hear from you? You have to understand that you see things from your own perspective. That's it. You are unique in how you see the world. You are not normal. You have an opinion. And when I say opinion, it's kind of a it's kind of a tricky word, right? Because you think opinion sounds like a braggart or someone someone who walks into a party and is like, I don't like how these things are done. And and did you see the polls in the in the rally? And did you see, you know, like someone who comes in and just like spreads their opinion everywhere? I don't mean that. I mean it's you as an artist, as a designer, as a creator, you have an opinion. That means you apply a way of seeing into everything that you do. That is your perspective. That is your opinion. You need to share that. People want to hear that. That's who wants to hear from you. Any artist in any form, you know, design, art, music, poetry, architecture, whoever's out there, writers, whoever's out there, or wants to be out there, you guys, you we apply our way, his or her way, our way of seeing, feeling, thinking over various forms. That's your opinion. And how you see is exactly what everyone wants from you. I just make these digital butterflies. Yes, but they're genius. Keep going. I just paint flowers. Yes, keep going. The museums are full of people who just paint flowers.

The Art of Authentic Marketing

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I don't know if any of you played Little League baseball. I did. The hardest part, stepping up to the plate. Hardest part, just stepping up to the plate, right? And no one's going to ask you anymore. You're not in a roster. You're not number seven. No one's gonna ask you anymore except me. And you need to step up to the plate. You need to start. Just start. You have questions? Ask me. That's what the right questions is for. James, how do I start? How do I get going with this or that? Step up to the plate. Another way of seeing the idea of selling or m you know, marketing yourself is like this. It's asking for what you want. What do you want? Well, I mean, uh, we're creators, we want to be seen and heard and loved. Well, the only way to do that, like the mousetrap, the only way to do that is ask for it. Ask for it. Tell people what to think. Explain to them how you want to be seen. It's like showing your portfolio and going, well, don't look at this because it's not very good, and well, this piece was, this piece I didn't do very. You know, that's not asking for what you want. That's being a Debbie Downer. We have to ask for what we want and tell people what to think. Tell people what to think about us and what to think about our work. We have to get good at describing it, why we make it, what's the drive. When I was a kid, I loved painting flowers, right? And we through practice, we take the emotion out of it. Because the emotion and the thoughts and the feelings is where the fear comes from. So listen, nobody cares. This is a big idea. Nobody cares. They just want to see you succeed. Nobody cares that you're scared. They just want to hear from you. Nobody cares that it's your first time, or that you're shy, or that you are worried whether they will they'll get it or not. Or nobody cares that your rent is due, like now. And nobody cares that it's hard for you to do. Or that it's easy. And it took you like three minutes to make that doodle or paint that thing, or or write that letter. Or nobody cares that you're not confident. I mean, I could go on, but I think you get it. Nobody cares. They just want to exalt in the glory that is you. They want to see you, they want to hear from you, and they want to appreciate you, with likes, with little floating hearts up the side of your picture. With their energy, their congealed energy, that is their hard earned income. You put a lot of energy into your creativity. So it's an exchange of energy back that they're giving you their hard earned money. Here's a secret people think I'm confident. And I am. You know, at 20 seconds a pop, right? It's like nitris. You don't just drive around on nitrous all day. You use it in spurts when you need it. So I just practice confidence. And I probably have to practice it more than you, because I have a podcast and I like to um uh film myself and put myself out in the world. So that's the thing. The only way to kill that critic, the one that tells you you're not confident, is practice killing it. Is get out there and do it. You don't get confidence, you do things first, and then you become confident. Okay? So if you want confidence in your selling, you have to practice it again and again. Right? The only way to kill that critic is to practice killing it. And I'll tell you, the fear, it doesn't go away. I'll tell you now, it does not go away. But through practice and failure, we get success and you get better at dealing with it. Here's a big lesson about your audience. You maybe have an audience already of ten or sixty or thousands, right? And if you don't, you have to understand this you have an audience. We all have an audience of tens of thousands, possibly more, possibly hundreds of thousands. We have an audience already. Here's the trick. They don't know it because they've never heard of you. You don't know it because you haven't tried. That's it. You have an audience, you don't know it, and they don't know it yet. But through effort and through consistency, you can build that audience in a very quick time. So you have an audience and they are waiting to hear from you. You need to understand that. So whenever I'm feeling odd about selling or writing a newsletter that I'm trying to sell, I need to check one thing. I need to check my attitude. Because if it feels icky or gross to you to do that, to sell, like I'm not comfortable with selling, I don't like talking about money. If you feel icky or gross, then you're not doing it right. And doing it right means this: doing it your way, the way you want to do it. You're not playing. You're not having fun with it. You can play, you can have fun with selling, with being memorable, with marketing. Remember the world's most dangerous wedding invitations in the known world? That is fun. That is playing. That is marketing. Check your fun meter. If you're not having fun, turn it up. Turn it up. Here's an idea for you. And it's actually the secret of the universe. Do you know the secret of the universe? Well, the secret of the universe is that nobody knows Jack shit. The secret of the universe is everybody, and I mean everybody, is making it up as they go. And we're just building on things that have gone before. And we take a little bit from this successful author, and a little bit from from that guy selling courses, and a little bit over here, and we try to figure it out. Right? We just make it up as we go along. And hopefully, everything is you, everything comes from you, everything has your opinion, your vision on it. You know, there is a lot, a lot of information out there. I have to say, I've started unfollowing a number of things social in social media because there's just too many people marketing courses and training on how to sell. But listen, there are no rules. There are no rules. If there were, everybody would be doing it. It'd be like, oh hey, you didn't know the rules? I'm sorry, here it is. Why don't you tell everybody? These are the rules, this is all you gotta do, right? Everybody would be doing it, and everybody would be doing it well. Which is clearly not the case because you could follow Brendan Bouchard or or Tony Robbins and figure out what they do. But if you don't have an opinion, then it's just mimicry, right? If you're following the rules, then it just looks like a bad version of them. So there ain't no rules except your own. There's another beautiful idea with a beautiful title, of course, and it's called Fact Perfection. Because Feck Perfection gives you the freedom to fail. It's like, listen, it ain't gonna be perfect. It's never gonna be perfect. It gives you the freedom to fail and try again and make way for better answers. I remember when my work first got into the Museum of Modern Art, and I was having conversations with the uh the curators there, and I said, Hey, you know, can I get my work back occasionally to put it in shows? And they're like, oh no, no, once it's in the museum, it's always we don't let it out. And they told me the story about William de Koonig, a super famous um American master, you know, a modernist, whose work was in the uh was in the museum, and it was it was a it was a massive piece. And he said, Hey, I need to take that back into my studio. And they said, Oh, yeah, okay. And he they he took it back to his studio and he changed it, and they got it back, and they're like, oh fuck, we don't like it anymore, right? We all want to change things. Nothing's ever perfect. That's why, that's why for newsletters you have A-B testing, right? You try a little here, you try a little there. We need to all find our own way of doing things. We need to try all sorts of things to see what works out. Every company does this, every major company does this, every small company does this. Or they spend shit tons of money doing market research and basically ask a lot of people or a lot of soccer moms what they want. And even that is wrong, even that fails. It's just a very expensive guess, right? So get used to feck perfection, get used to the the freedom to fail, the freedom to suck. It is very freeing, right? To make a mistake. You know, I when I when I send out newsletters, I don't I try not to look at the unsubscribes because it is deafening the number of people unsubscribing. You can't, you can't worry about that. You just feck perfection, you keep moving forward. That they are not your audience, right? They are not my audience. I cannot, I wish them well. I cannot worry about them. I have found time and time again that you are amazing, that human beings are born with incredible intelligence, born with incredible intelligence, born with it, not because you read some books, right? Not because you did well in school and learned memorized a bunch of information. It's that you're born with all the answers you need. If you don't judge them, we're so bad at judging ourselves. Is this good? Is this bad? Just move, just go, please, just move forward. Trust. Trust. That's that's that's the end result. That's what I want you to remember about selling. Trust. Trust yourself. You're doing great. If you have questions, ask. You're doing great because you're doing, and that's movement, that's what's gonna keep you going ahead. So don't judge yourself. Trust yourself. Trust the practice. And better than that, trust your audience. They will support you, they will be there. And they will get back to you and say, thank you. So these are all reminders or devices or tools to help you get paid to do what you love and to take the fear out of selling. Now get out there and rattle that bucket. I'm James Victoria. This is the right questions. Hey, I'm nothing without you, and I'm nothing without your questions. Please send them in. Drop me a line. I want to hear from you. You know, that's the thing. I want to hear from you. I need you too. So drop us a line. Thanks so much for being here, and I love you. I'll talk to you later. Bye bye.