Lauren and Rachael answer more of your questions! Being authentically you, building confidence, avoiding the cringe: these were a few of the concerns listeners had about developing an online presence and promoting their work. The hosts explore these ideas the best way they know how, with lots of curiosity and nuance, to guide you toward what works best for you!
Lauren and Rachael answer more of your questions! Being authentically you, building confidence, avoiding the cringe: these were a few of the concerns listeners had about developing an online presence and promoting their work. The hosts explore these ideas the best way they know how, with lots of curiosity and nuance, to guide you toward what works best for you!
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The transcript for this episode can be found here!
Lauren: Hey, Lauren here. Want to add muralist to your ever-growing list of creative titles? Well then you're in luck because this episode is brought to you by, Mural Painting for Designers, my online class that teaches you how to plan, paint and price murals of your very own. Gain the confidence to pick up a paintbrush. Start adding murals to your portfolio now instead of someday, and start painting the large scale artwork that you've always dreamed of doing. So head to homsweethom.com/classes or click on the link in the episode description to learn more. Okay, now back to the show.
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Rachael: Be yourself. That's the advice. Okay.
Rachael: Welcome back to Chaotic Creatives, the show about embracing the chaos that comes from living a creative life.
Lauren: We are your hosts, two self-proclaimed, chaotic, creative gals. I am Lauren Hom, better known as Hom Sweet Hom on the internet. I am a designer, lettering artist, muralist, and chef.
Rachael: Yay.
Lauren: She's saying yay because I usually say most recently chef.
Rachael: Yeah. I just wanted her to claim it.
Lauren: And I claimed it.
Rachael: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for letting me soft bully. And I'm Rachael Renae. I am an artist, a creativity coach, and your internet hype gal, and today we are answering your questions. Thank you for submitting them. The last time that we did a Q&A session, we gabbed for so long answering your questions that it ended up being two episodes, so we'll see what today brings.
Lauren: I bet it's going to be two.
Rachael: I think so too.
Lauren: I put money on it.
Rachael: Yeah, I think we could do most things. We had to force ourselves to stop a lot of times, so yeah. Long-winded.
Lauren: Yeah.
Rachael: We're not short-form content girlies.
Lauren: No, no. Did I already talk about how I almost had a meltdown trying to film TikToks?
Rachael: No. Tell me.
Lauren: After my Skillshare shoot a couple of years ago?
Rachael: Tell me. No, you did not.
Lauren: Oh my gosh. Yeah, I can't. I have a hard time as a millennial recording short-form content, just like chill short-form, just get on camera, especially when it's educational because I feel like I'm doing my audience a disservice if I'm too brief about something without explaining, adding a little nuance.
Rachael: We love nuance.
Lauren: And so I shot a Skillshare class a couple years ago about how to create a brief for yourself, like a container like we've talked about in this podcast for a passion project, and at the end of this two-day shoot, they bring on a producer and they're like, "Okay, we just want to grab a couple quick TikTok's." And I was like, "No problem." In hindsight, I was exhausted and she was kind of prompting me with some questions to record 15 to 22 second clips, and I just could not do it. I almost cried.
Rachael: I feel like I wouldn't be able to either. I mean I told you right before we started recording, but I am feeling quite agitated right now, and especially yesterday I was, and I tried to record a video talking about it, and I definitely do multiple stories and I'll give myself five to eight minutes to tell a story on Instagram stories. But then I started talking and I literally recorded 40 videos of me starting and there's so many of me being like, "Ugh," or like, "Oh my God." So last night after I did that, I cut them all together, all of the eye rolls and the, "Okay, okay." I don't know what I'll do with them, but I did that. Anyway, I cannot, for the life of me do a one-minute explanation of something a minute is impossible to think about, let alone 15 seconds.
Lauren: Yeah. I think that knowing how to be concise and brief to get to the point is helpful in an internet age, but it's not the hard and fast rule that everything you have to make has to be that way. If that's just not your thing, we're obviously publishing a long form podcast. This is on YouTube. You kind of have to go where the kind of content you produce fits in and hey, we post reels, we can do short form content, but it's usually cut down from other longer bits.
Rachael: Totally.
Lauren: It's not created with the intention to be 15 or 20 seconds long.
Rachael: And I think we're both educators, so we create course content and explain the nuance and explain the perspective, and I feel like my whole thing is all about perspective shifts and mindset stuff. So it's hard to be like, okay, just play. And that's it. You have to get people to think in a different way and it's hard to do in shorter format. So anyway, speaking of shorter format, let's actually get to the point.
Lauren: Thank you for submitting your questions. We've written them down on pieces of paper to go back and forth and ask each other. Can I start with one for you?
Rachael: Absolutely.
Lauren: Okay. So someone asked a question that I thought would be a really great fit for Rachael about how do you incorporate playfulness, AKA sparkle into your corporate job full-time job?
Rachael: Yeah. Love that question. The outfit that I'm wearing today, in fact is, I came straight from work to record this. So style is one thing that is my favorite creative expression, whether at my corporate job or not. It's just something that I feel very drawn to and I feel like that's one way to not lose your identity in your corporate role. So finding outfits that feel like you and I work in a very traditional STEM environment, what I wore today is absurd to most people. People's eyes were like, oh, when I got in the elevator to get up to the floor today, but I feel like myself and that's what's most important.
I feel like I can produce the best work and be the most engaged when I feel like myself. And so yeah, clothes are my favorite way. If you're thinking about adding more sparkle to your corporate role in terms of something that's not kind of a visual representation of yourself, I feel like how I speak at work is also something that maybe is more unique. I don't lean into technical jargon, even though I definitely could. I love to say words like gab and jazzed, and hype, and I speak how I normally would speak even when I'm talking about important corporate things, and I think that that just makes me more human. It makes it easier for people to relate to what I'm talking about or for me to explain these complicated technical things. So just paying attention to what feels authentically you and not kind of masking that just for work.
Lauren: Yeah, I think a lot of times as someone who worked in a corporate environment for a brief period of time at a traditional ad agency, I think I went in with this preconceived notion of how I had to act in a environment like that. I was wearing blazers to work, even though I was working in the creative department of an ad agency, I just was like, this is what adults do. You're cosplaying basically as a corporate worker, and I think a lot of that stuff holds us back. Well, sure there are some things that are workplace appropriate or inappropriate, but within reason.
Some of the, like you were saying, the ways we talk, if you want to loosen it up a little bit, that's probably fine. If it doesn't impede getting the job done, people generally want to feel comfortable and casual at work. I remember even talking with my dad years ago about how he's been with the same company for 20 plus years and he used to have to wear a suit and tie to work, and over the last 20 years they've slowly chilled out their dress code policy where now my dad's wearing khakis and Hawaiian shirts to work.
Rachael: Hell yeah. Okay, dad.
Lauren: Yeah, so corporate culture is always changing too.
Rachael: And I think in the age of the internet and virtual meetings, and I do think that when so many of us went remote during the beginning of COVID, it gave other people a little bit more insight into as humans and not as just employees. We saw people's backgrounds, we saw people's kids interrupting, we saw their pets, and it humanized it and it blurred the lines, which can be good and bad, I think between sort of strict co-worker, like, "I only know you in this capacity," to, "Oh my gosh, I can relate to you because your kid is screaming in the background and my kid is too."
Lauren: Yeah. Another way I wanted to approach this question too was in case you meant how do you incorporate more playfulness and creativity into the work you're doing at your corporate job. One thing that came to mind was in addition to dressing how you want to dress, if it's colorful, I think that's great. Letting people know about the other creative work that you're doing in your workplace, which use your discernment. So I want to bring up the example of I have a student, I believe her name is Morgan, who took my mural class and she works a full-time job, but because she was talking about painting murals and like, "Hey, I learned this new skill," she ended up getting commissioned to buy her full-time job to paint a mural in the office.
And so I think you should be talking about all of your other creative hobbies or planting those seeds in your co-workers minds. So if cool creative opportunities do come up, maybe your day-to-day, if you're making marketing materials as a graphic designer, it's not the most exciting, but if people know like, "Hey, we have someone in-house who can do a workshop or do murals," or anything creative, it would be ideal if you could be the go-to person for that, and most companies would rather hire from the family rather than like-
Rachael: Keeping it in the family.
Lauren: Rather than going to find doing the labor of finding an outside contractor.
Rachael: Totally.
Lauren: So I think that it can be great to just casually mention the other creative stuff you're tinkering on outside of work.
Rachael: Yeah. You saying that reminded me that my boss hired me to do her wedding invitations.
Lauren: Oh my gosh.
Rachael: When I first started.
Lauren: Perfect.
Rachael: Yeah. But then also on the flip side of that, as someone who doesn't work in a creative field as my day job, sometimes people ask me for my creative opinion and then I get roped in. I mean, I should just say no, but I get roped into doing stuff like painting a mural but for free, and that's not part of my job description and it's actually detracting from the time that I can spend on my job. So I'm very cautious about doing that sort of extra.
Lauren: I think you have to kind of suss out your workplace. And if you have a manager who's always asking you for extra unpaid stuff like that, then maybe not.
Rachael: Totally, but I think your advice is right. Talk about the things that you're interested in and I think even are you facilitating meetings? Do a funny icebreaker. Don't just ask people what they are... I tried to do that the other day and it got nixed. I tried to ask people, "What game show could you go on and win?" Which is a very neutral one, and then they were like, "How about we talk about this?" It's funny, but I think even at the lunch table or at the beginning of meetings, you can use my silly questions, ask people within reason workplace... Some of them are not workplace appropriate, so again, use your discernment. But I think you can be practice being yourself, especially once you're established in the job. I understand being fresh and new, and wanting to really impress with your work.
Lauren: And your blazers.
Rachael: And your blazers. Yeah. I did it too. I think it was the time too that we were done with college where it was like, yeah, I can't wait to wear a blazer in jeans in my platform. Sparkly high heel. I wore such high shoes to work. Absurd. Okay.
Lauren: Hell yeah.
Rachael: Be yourself. That's the advice. Okay. I guess let's follow up on that advice with how do you avoid being cringey when promoting yourself online?
Lauren: Yeah. We really liked this question because I think the truth is everything, something's going to be cringey to different people. And what I heard from this question was like, how do I avoid looking like an idiot in front of people that I want to look cool in front of? And the answer is because your followers are people and don't know and you can't calibrate for all of their opinions and preferences, you just have to post what you feel like posting and embrace or accept that some people will find it cringey the same way that we've said this before, other people will think it's awesome and some people will be not for me or like, oh, and hopefully they don't say it to you. But that is the price of admission for sharing online is some people might not like it, but 99% of them are just going to scroll past it, so it's okay.
Rachael: Yeah, and I think you have to be your own biggest fan, and if you feel that something is cringey, is it because you have some perceived judgment coming from someone else? Are there people in your lives that are saying that what you're doing is cringey or are you not allowing yourself to be the fullest version of yourself? I'm trying to word this while I'm sort of noodling on it. I, when I first started sharing my outfits on the internet, I was like, this is cringey of me posting every day of myself. I used to post like, oh, I feel valid in posting pictures when I'm on vacation or eating somewhere cooler with friends, but I can't possibly post pictures myself every day, even though I wanted to. The first step in overcoming that was admitting to myself that that's what I wanted. And so whatever's cringey is you.
I'm so cringey. Some people think that I'm so obnoxious. I'm sure some say it, some don't. And I just have to be so okay with being who I am and knowing that I feel really good in what I'm wearing or what I'm posting or what I'm making. And like you said, it's always going to be cringey to someone and those just aren't our people. There was some really good advice from my business coach Andy, that she shared recently about are you posting for your friends and your family or are you posting for your business?
Because so many of us, when we first got Instagram, it was social media. It was connecting with people and staying connected with those people. And so if I'm posting an outfit picture, but I know that somebody I went to college with is probably like, "Oh, what is she doing?" And that's in the back of my head. I might be limiting myself instead of being like, I don't know any of these people that I'm posting to and they are for sure my people, they're here because I'm posting. So maybe reevaluate who you're thinking about when you're creating your content.
Lauren: Yeah. I mean, I've talked about this before, but I blocked my entire family on Instagram last year and it was something I used to never, I minded them following along, and then I just was again, navigating personal and professional relationships, I found myself doing exactly what you were talking about where it's like, oh, what's my family going to think? And I don't really feeling that way, and it's not entirely their fault. They're my family. They have opinions, whatever. But in order to create, you have to cultivate a container.
Whatever tools you have available to you through a social media platform, you have to cultivate a container that allows you to post as freely as you can. It's never going to be a hundred percent comfortable, but whether that means restricting access to you, whether that means not answering comments, we've talked about this in the social media episode. There was no roadmap of how you were supposed to use these platforms. And so there's a lot of things we're navigating there. And I think another important question I had when we got this question was cringey to who though?
We live in an online culture where there is seemingly so much critique or content that's like, here's the problem with this, or here's why this is bad. And because we live in a culture of critique and so many people are making content about that, I think a lot of times something that you might like or something that you might want to post, you're like, oh, but I just watched the thing about how it's cringey. If you like it and you want to do it, people can think it's cringey and that's okay.
Rachael: Yeah.
Lauren: I don't know if you'll ever be able to get over that feeling entirely. And if it makes anyone who's listening feel better, I don't know anyone who doesn't second guess some of their posts or when I'm about to upload a post, I'm like proofreading my caption. We are posting to a public audience where anyone could say anything, and most of the time they don't, but sometimes when they do, it feels extra bad. I think was tied into this question about feeling cringey about sales too, or is that a different question?
Rachael: When promoting yourself online? And then we also got the question how to share in a way that doesn't feel fake, so it's tangential.
Lauren: Okay. Because one thing I've encountered too in the last couple months is I had someone leave a comment on one of my posts about why do all of these, why do all of your posts, why are they selling me something? Why is there a sales pitch at the end of this carousel? And I chuckled to myself because I'm like, because I'm running a business?
Rachael: Because that's the point of this platform.
Lauren: I am pretty resolute at this point about some of your personal life will get mixed in there, but the main point of me, me personally being on Instagram is to promote my business and hopefully be helpful to other creative people out there. But I am going to sell you stuff sometimes, and if that's a problem to you, then you can leave.
Rachael: Well, and I think it's different too because you never started as a lifestyle influencer, and I think that how that type of content creation started was like, "Hey, we're buds and look at this thing that I use. If you want to live like I do, buy this thing." And so it was really sneaky sales.
Lauren: Rather than explicit.
Rachael: And so I feel like that's what people are like, "That's bad. Quit selling to me." At least in my opinion, I don't feel as comfortable doing affiliate codes or paid partnerships with certain brands anymore because it just feels like it's like sell, sell, sell, buy shit, buy shit, over consumption, but what you're selling is education. It's not buy more you don't need. It's like, let me help you grow your creative business, and the goal of your Instagram is to share your creative work. It's not like, "Hey, you can live like me if you do this." Does that make sense?
Lauren: Yeah. Yeah, totally. I think a lot of the gremlin in my brain was like, well, you can over consume online education too.
Rachael: Sure.
Lauren: But yeah-
Rachael: It's not harming the planet as much.
Lauren: I completely understand. When I read that, I chuckled only because I see it. I've been trying to give everybody in general a more generous read, so I'm less agitated with strangers. And I saw it more as like, oh, I think what this person might be frustrated about is just that anytime you log to Instagram, everyone's selling you something. And so it's not necessarily, this is not a me thing, it's being pointed at me right now, but it's like what I said in the social media episode. I am choosing to believe that everyone is coming on Instagram before they had their coffee. That's the tone.
Rachael: Yeah, I think it could have been a last straw thing.
Lauren: Totally.
Rachael: They could have seen someone else posting about an offering all week, and then they happen to see yours right after that and we're like, "Enough is enough."
Lauren: Yeah.
Rachael: Yeah. And on the flip side of that, I think some of the marketing coaches that I follow are we feel like we are being obnoxious. At least I do when I'm talking about my offerings, and I know we've talked about worthiness of offerings in previous episodes, and that's something that I need to work on internally. My little gremlin, it's like you can't charge for your work, but people want what we are creating, and I think you and I both put a lot of care into the things that we offer, and so it's one thing that we think we're being obnoxious, but Instagram is so saturated that people don't even see our shit.
So it's like, you have to be your own biggest fan. You have to be your own biggest advocate, especially you work for yourself who's going to pay the bills if you don't market yourself? It's not like if we compare it to a big corporation who's doing all of these ad efforts, I guess, has a huge marketing revenue, no one thinks twice about seeing a billboard or seeing a commercial. They're just like, okay, yeah, it's part of the process, but when it's an individual, it's easier to target. Quit selling to me. Okay. Are you also writing to Nike and Rocket Mortgage and saying, "Quit selling to me. Why do you pay Jason Momoa to be a Rocket mortgage?"
Lauren: Because he's so hot.
Rachael: He's so hot. Yeah. Right? Where's he at? I've been asking a lot of, where are they at? There's so many celebrities. There's so many people. Before I go down a rabbit hole.
Lauren: Yeah, we did the Dennis Rodman rabbit hole this season, we're not going to do Jason Momoa Rabbit hole.
Rachael: I don't know enough about Jason Momoa other than-
Lauren: Yeah, me either, other than he's hot.
Rachael: Yeah.
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Rachael: This episode is sponsored by, Dress For Yourself, A three-part style course by me, Rachael Renae. In Dress For Yourself, I share how exploring my personal style helped me to show up as my authentic self, and in the course you'll learn how to use personal style to build confidence, how to define your personal style and how to incorporate play into your wardrobe. Visit rachaelrenae.com That's R-A-C-H-A-E-L-R-E-N-A-E.com/stylecourse to sign up.
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Rachael: Do you have any questions that are related to this before we move on to kind of a different topic?
Lauren: Yeah, actually. One question that we got that we wanted to discuss was, how did you find the confidence and conviction to talk about what you do, what we do in our intros of like, "Hi, I'm Lauren, I'm Rachael, and this is what I am. This is what I do." This question specifically was regarding, I can't find the language to speak about my niche or explain what I do to other people, and I thought it would be an interesting discussion for us because we even struggle with it.
Rachael: Yeah. I mean-
Lauren: It's always changing. We're always iterating on this.
Rachael: And bullying each other.
Lauren: People call it like your elevator pitch or your one line kind of thing. It doesn't have to be that succinct, but I do think it is a helpful practical skill to be able to quickly explain to someone in simple plain language what you do in case they are curious and they might want to learn more, instead of having one of those word salad artist statements where you're like, what?
Rachael: Yeah. I kind of feel like mine's like that. I struggle with this too. I think this is a great question, and I struggle with this because I'm not succinct. I am not good at explaining things briefly because I feel like so many of my ideas are layered and my big umbrella is play, but what I'm actually doing is healing your inner child and helping you identify the things that let you up and help you live a creative life and a fulfilling life by changing your mindset about things. But how do I say all of that? And what I say is prioritize play, because ultimately that's what it kind of boils down to, and that statement resonates maybe with more people, but I think how to gain the confidence in doing it is literally practicing it.
Lauren: In front of a small group and then a bigger group.
Rachael: If you listen to our intros over the course of two and a half seasons, my intro changed almost every time. I used to not be able to call myself an artist. I used to not be able to call myself a creativity coach. I even brought it to my therapist, we should start doing, how many times has Rachael referenced her therapist on the podcast? Don't worry, Kristle, I won't make you do that count. It's every episode. And I was like, "I feel like what I'm doing is coaching, but that feels cringey." She's like, "Okay, so why do you feel like it's cringey?"
And I'm like, "Because there's a lot of people who are rich white women that say, I'm a life coach and there's no training. It's just like, oh, okay, so you had enough money to do all the things that you wanted to do." And that was what I was associating with coach, when there are plenty of coaches that are doing really good work, and what I am doing is being an encouraging person and challenging people's beliefs about themselves. That's coaching. If you think about it from a sports analogy, Dennis Rodman, Phil Jackson, that's what it is. And so I literally had to kind of think about why don't I feel comfortable saying this? Part of it is because I didn't feel valid in that title, and part of it is that, oh, I have this connotation of cringey people that are manipulating people or taking advantage of people.
Lauren: You don't want to be associated with the bad.
Rachael: And then just practice at first like you said, doing it in person. I workshopped it with you a million times, and then I've talked about it in therapy for so long about not being able to call myself an artist, because I didn't go to art school, so how could I possibly be an artist? We're all artists to be clear. And then saying it when I met new people or saying it when I taught a workshop and saying it on the podcast. Now that I've practiced saying it so many times, I feel very comfortable. It's like when we first did our intro, it took us so many times to be able to even say what we wanted to say, and now it's just in our heads.
Lauren: I also think that the confidence and conviction part of saying what you do comes from having done the thing over and over again. And so a base level competence in, you've done the things that you teach about the same way that I've done the things I teach about. I would never teach about something that I don't know or haven't done myself. And so if let's say you're having a hard time saying that "I run a boutique stationery company and we do retail and wholesale," it's very objective.
It's not even if you're struggling with the confidence part, I would just write down all the things you have done creatively and then you're like, "Oh, these are just facts." And then you can say them or craft a statement that you're like, "Oh, yeah, I do run a stationary business," or, "I am a muralist." If you've painted one mural, you can call yourself a muralist. And that's all it really comes down to is like, have you done the thing that you're calling yourself? And I think the conviction comes too from practice.
Rachael: And refining that statement. And I remember when I visited you in New York, when you were in culinary school and we were walking down the street and that YouTube guy stopped us and asked us about our outfits, and we had just had a conversation about me feeling comfy enough calling myself a creative, and he was like, "What do you do? Tell me about your outfit." And I was like, "I'm a creative." And then I couldn't say anything else, and then I was like, I help people with their mental health, but as it relates to style, and it was very clunky, but the fact of me, the act stumbling through that gave me the confidence to, okay, actually let's refine it so that when this question comes up again, I don't stumble over my words.
Lauren: Or you can even set up a framework where you're like, "I'm going to workshop a couple different things." So rotate what you call yourself, and it's like trying on clothes. You have to try it on, see how it feels if you're like, oh, asking yourself maybe whether it's you don't feel like you are quote-unquote good enough to claim a title and talk about what you do, or if it's from the perspective that Rachael was talking about where you're like, well, this term technically refers to what I do, but I don't relate to some of the connotations around it.
Try it on and see how it feels. And it might feel fine. It actually might be the most succinct way to explain to people what you do. There was a lot of discourse in the design world a couple years ago I feel like of, oh, once lockdown happened, people were like, "Is being a designer my only identity marker?" And people were like, "No, you're more than just a designer." And of course, but there's nuance in saying, "I'm a designer." It doesn't have to be your whole personality. You have the skill set of a designer, but it's just the easiest. That's how we talk. That's just the easiest way.
Rachael: If that's how you want people to know you, if you are talking about yourself to people that you're pitching your work to and you want to say, "I'm a designer. I make these things." Great. If you're on a date, you could say, "I'm a designer," so that they know. But you could also say, "I'm a really good cook." You get to choose which labels apply at which points in your life. And we've talked about obviously I would not say that. Is that why you're laughing?
Lauren: I'm laughing because if I asked someone on a date what you do, and they said, "I'm a really good cook," my brain automatically goes, "Unemployed."
Rachael: Oh my gosh. I would be like, "Yes, I love that you answered the question in the non-traditional way." Yeah, that's incredible.
Lauren: I'd be like, it's okay to say you're not working right now.
Rachael: In between jobs.
Lauren: I'm kidding. Of course. Yeah.
Rachael: But it's funny, because anytime people ask me what I do, I try to not have that gut reaction of, what's my job title? And we've talked about labels and when, I think that was one of my favorite episode titles like, Get The Goo Gone. We're peeling back labels because it's important to have them to help people understand what we do if you're trying to get work, if you're trying to network professionally. But it's also, I think just as important to challenge them and your whole identity as a person is not tied to your job title.
Lauren: The context of the rooms that you're in is what you're talking about.
Rachael: Talking about. But I think to answer the question, practice, definitely do the word salad exercise of, "I blank or I help these people with this by doing this. My business card says Rachael Renae, artist, creativity coach, hype gal." And I say, "Hyping you to prioritize play for growth, creativity and connection. Nice. It's not great. It doesn't say exactly what I do. I'm still working on that, but for now-
Lauren: It's a work in progress.
Rachael: That what's fitting right now.
Lauren: Yeah, it's a work in progress. You can always get new business cards printed. I think what you could take away from this specific conversation is you have to do having conviction about your mission statement or your artist statement or your, what do you answer to the question? What do you do in a professional context? It's really dependent on you and your personality and what feels like a good fit for you. For me, I have become more comfortable over the last couple years, it's been a complete return to home where I used to struggle with even calling myself a designer until you're like, "I need to make a certain amount of money or work with certain clients before I can really call myself a designer."
And then once you become a designer, then it can be like the label becomes all of you and then you peel it off, and then now I am more like, "I'm just going to use these terms and not attach a lot of meaning to it because it communicates quickly to someone who's asking." Depending on what room I'm into, sometimes I don't even say lettering because I don't want to explain, because I'm like, "This room is not the room to explain it in." I might just say, "Calligrapher."
Rachael: Calligrapher.
Lauren: Or I just started saying designer too because-
Rachael: She whips out her feather pen.
Lauren: And so you can have a short statement, a long statement like, you got to do... It's similar to the advice that I give with people who are just starting to price their work of just say the highest number that will come out of your mouth. That's the most basic.
Rachael: It truly is so much just practice trying it and seeing if it works.
Lauren: And then you charge a little bit more next time, a little bit more until, and you study. It's good to ask other people what they're charging too, but in general, you have to feel comfortable typing it or saying it. And similar to your artist statement, you could download 500 workbooks online right now, I'm sure about how to write your artist statement or how to write what you do as an online coach, and you have to figure out what will actually come out of your mouth. If someone else's formula doesn't work for you, you might have to get creative and come up with your own little weird thing.
Rachael: What I like best is hype gal, because I feel like that's what I do.
Lauren: It's great.
Rachael: And I also am working on trying to do more sort of studio practice art projects, and so that's why I put that in there, because it's me practicing saying I'm an artist. And hype gal is so much more appropriate for me. The language, we talked about that earlier. The language that I use is I want to hype you up. I want to help you feel encouraged. I don't see it as I'm solving the problem for you. I'm guiding you along. So okay, I'm guiding you. I'm not a guide. Coaching is the best thing that people can relate to. Because if I were like, "I'm a hype gal," could it be like I'm a DJ or I am an MC, always have my air horn with me, so please-
Lauren: God, no one be the guy who always has the air horn with him.
Rachael: You know somebody does.
Lauren: Oh my gosh. Yeah.
Rachael: So practice and how do you want to be perceived? And if you feel comfy with a label, keep using it. I think your advice of not attaching so much meaning to it is really helpful. We're all multifaceted. We have so many labels and titles.
Lauren: It's been helpful for me and what you were saying earlier about feeling the bristliness of embracing coach, I completely understand because coming from teaching online courses, there are a lot of grifters out there for sure. And the online coaching industry isn't always painted in the best light because anyone can say they're a coach and sell you a life transformation for $10,000, and that's not what you're doing. But I was going to say is when I see someone like you who has coach in their bio, if anyone can put coach in their bio, I tell myself, we're all adults with discerning eyes and brains.
Someone can see coach in your profile, and if it makes them write you off completely, that wasn't your person anyways. If they see that and then they scroll, just one scroll through your feed, they'll see what you're about and then they can come to their own conclusion. I've had to tell myself too, people are smart.
Rachael: You have to give people credit.
Lauren: I trust in my audience's intellect and they can make their own decisions the same way I'm come to my own conclusions about things and people and if they want to be here, cool. If not, then if me using that word is the thing that makes someone turned off, then okay.
Rachael: That's a really good point because it's, it ties back to the cringe thing. If reading the word coach gives you cringe, I'm not person. You haven't given me the chance to show you what I'm actually about.
Lauren: Yeah, I was just talking with Kristle during lunch today about how when it comes to dating...
Rachael: I was just, oh, I just going to go to dating too. Okay.
Lauren: Kristle thinks we should start a dating segment of the podcast.
Rachael: We should.
Lauren: It would be actually really fun.
Rachael: Season four. Whoa.
Lauren: Like a chaotic creative like singles.
Rachael: Oh my God. Yeah. Speed dating where we invite a bunch of people and we speed date on the podcast.
Lauren: Whoa. But I was going to say in general, I don't need someone who is an internet person or who even is a creative entrepreneur. I don't need that. But what I need is I don't think I could do well with a partner who was so anti-social media. I understand the critiques, don't get me wrong, but if someone, because of what I do and how I run my business, if someone was so offline and so salty about being online that it caused, I don't want it to cause friction in our dynamic.
Rachael: Totally.
Lauren: And so it relates to what we were just talking about. Because if someone is like, "Ew, coach, or ew..." If there's so much weight on that one term, and I think we're not doing ourselves any favors by just thinking that, that one word doesn't carry everything. People have to evaluate us based on so many other factors. And there are so many ways that I feel endeared to someone online versus not, and we're human. Even someone like your favorite rando online who you actually don't know, but you follow them, you like their work, they're going to be cringey sometimes, and that's okay.
Rachael: Yeah. I think about this a lot, especially as I'm paying attention to when other people are sharing their offerings. Sometimes I'm like, "Oh, I wouldn't have said that." And then I'm like, "Good for them." It doesn't bother me.
Lauren: Yeah, whatever. I remember one time I posted one of those POV videos that was a very popular format. I still like them. And right after I posted it, I was scrolling through my news feed and someone that I admire was like, "Can we stop it with the POV videos?" And I was like, "Oh, no." And then I was like, "It's fine, it's fine." And because she followed me too, I was like, "Oh no, she's going to think I'm not cool." It's like...
Rachael: We're all just trying shit.
Lauren: Yeah.
Rachael: Yeah.
Lauren: That's okay.
Rachael: I love this. I love this conversation.
Lauren: Do you have any other questions on your list that tie into the ones we've been already talking about?
Rachael: A little bit. Yeah. There's one about how to break free of rejection sensitivity.
Lauren: Is that like a clinical term or that just like a... like being scared to be rejected in general?
Rachael: Maybe. I guess, I've seen a couple people that I follow talk about rejection therapy as in, and not rejection, like, I hate you, you're terrible, but just like you ask me to dinner, I say, no, you don't take it personally. That's rejection therapy, putting yourself out there and getting practice in being rejected in a very normal way because it's also helping other people feel comfortable, say no to you. And so I guess I'm interpreting this question, and I did abbreviate when I wrote them down, so I may maybe misrepresenting the question, but how to break free from rejection sensitivity. I am interpreting that as how do I, it's kind of tying into the cringe thing. If I post something and I feel so strongly about it and then people, it's not well received, how do I break free from that? I guess it's kind of like what we've been talking about. Do you have any other insight with that slight shift in language?
Lauren: It's like fear of rejection. I think it's a completely human thing to be fearful of rejection because no one wants to be ostracized from the tribe.
Rachael: Yeah.
Lauren: I think it is one of those cost of admission things for sharing your work or putting yourself out there. In order to get the thing you want. You have to risk the chance for rejection. And I mean, I was just talking with Kristle about this with she's judging the Type Directors Club show right now.
Rachael: Cool.
Lauren: And I did it a couple years ago and we were just talking about the process, and it is, and I was telling her from the outside looking in for design award shows, it's a very mysterious process, but I've judged a decent amount of shows in my life now and being on the other side, being in the judging room, and you see how the sausage gets made, you're like, oh, this is actually just a bunch of regular people just having a discussion.
There's so many silly reasons, little reasons why or why something doesn't get awarded. Maybe one person on the panel feels really strongly that it should or shouldn't, and we have a discussion, but there are so many factors why someone might reject you or your work. If we're talking about this through a creative lens of, I'm scared to put my work on work out there, or to pitch myself or to reach out or go for an opportunity, apply for a grant because I'm worried about being rejected, it does tie into what you were saying of don't let the fear of rejection stop you from trying, because you will gain so many valuable skills from just putting yourself out there that eventually someone will say yes, and sometimes you only need a couple yeses to really get yourself going.
Rachael: Yeah, that's what I was going to say is tying it back to dating, there are so many parallels, and maybe it's just a thing that we're both doing right now, but if you go on a date and you are presenting the most palatable version of yourself to appease that person and get them to, you might succeed in doing that, and then you might have to shed that mask or let your weird self come out eventually, and then that person is not going to be ready for that because you have presented a different version of yourself. And so I've seen some folks talking about dating online where it's like, you want to show the most authentic version of yourself from the beginning so that you are rejected by the people that are not your people.
Lauren: You want a early quiet rejection.
Rachael: Just have it be a bad first date, or not even a bad first date, but maybe it's a first date where you're like, "Oh, yeah, great guy. Not interested." And that's better to know earlier. And the more that you can lean into being truly yourself, whether it's on a date or with your work, the faster you'll weed out the people that aren't your people.
Lauren: Yeah. It is very much like matchmaking because if you, I've always thought of it about it like, for me, cursing was a big one where early Instagram days with lettering, there were a lot of Bible letters and cool, do that.
Rachael: If that's your thing, great.
Lauren: Yeah. There were a lot of people who were lettering stuff too. That was just anything that was like, what's the word? Public domain, fair use phrases to letter was always safe, and so bible verses fall into that category, but there was a period of time, it doesn't happen so much anymore, because I'm not a hundred percent lettering, but people would be upset when I cursed and let me know, which I always found so silly because I don't curse that much, which is maybe why it catches some people off guard.
But there was a moment where I was like, oh, should I change my behavior to appease my audience? Not doesn't matter that much to me. And then I was talking with my dad about it, and I actually think that it does weed out the people that are going to have a problem later down the road. I've always likened it, I think the food analogy that I've used in the past is think about the people who unfollow you or don't follow you as the raisins in your trail mix that you didn't want anyways. I don't like raisins in my trail mix. Some people love raisins in their trail mix, and this is nothing about raisins. Raisins are just my thing.
Okay. Replace raisins with anything that you don't like in the trail mix. When you eat trail mix, what's the stuff that's left in the bottom of the bag, whatever that is for you. We're in charge of curating our own trail mix basically by being ourselves. We're trying to attract only people who are excited about the stuff we're excited about, and you can't please everybody, but you have to, like you said, present as authentically as you can. The way I've always said it is how you text your friends is likely the tone you should be taking just so you don't have to do so much mental calibration too for, how do I word this? Think about how people talk about, we were just talking about this at the beginning, your corporate version of yourself, where your cosplaying is, what you think you need to be to be professional.
We try to do that sometimes, and it's so exhausting when going online, presenting ourselves online. I should act this way on Instagram, where actually the easiest way to share on Instagram is to just share how you would normally share, and then you don't have to think about it so much, and people who aren't into it will leave, and that's a good thing. I know it's tough seeing your follower count go down or not getting a lot of followers, but I think you'd rather have people there who are into what you're doing and engaged than just a big number.
Rachael: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I have three things to respond to.
Lauren: Yes. I'm so sorry.
Rachael: Number one, I'm giggling. No, it's not, don't apologize. I'm giggling or I was giggling because I was thinking about what is my favorite thing in the trail mix? And it would just be end up with just peanut M&Ms, like there's no healthy stuff in there.
Lauren: Great.
Rachael: It's just the M&Ms part, and then I'm like, okay, maybe I should, I like the nuts too, but if I am going for the chocolate first.
Lauren: But peanut M&Ms have the peanut inside.
Rachael: You're right. So it is peanut M&Ms are technically trail mix. Number two, I think I also want to clarify, because I think we talked about it before we started recording, that both of us still feel this fear of this is going to be cringe, and like you said, the cost of admission, it's just something that we have to acknowledge as part of the process. Like, "Oh, this is going to be embarrassing." Or like, "Oh my gosh, why am I talking about depression on the internet?" Sometimes we share things a lot of times and it's like, was that the wrong decision? But then trusting ourselves that, okay, I think this is valuable, and if someone else finds it valuable, that's why I'm doing it. So we both feel that fear never goes away.
Lauren: Yes. It never goes away.
Rachael: The confidence may raise.
Lauren: You just get more comfortable too. Every time you do something where you're like, you blast past your fear of rejection and share it anyway. As you blast past your fear of being cringey and share it anyways, you slowly build a tolerance to that feeling and it makes it a little bit easier. I think we were kind of talking about like, what were we saying before?
Rachael: We always do this where we're like, okay, we're going to talk about this, this, and this, and then we have really good insights.
Lauren: Oh, yeah. There's one question that we got that is related to this was how do you connect with your audience, which we thought was a little broad, which is why we chose the ones that we did, but it relates to when you share stuff that you genuinely feel like sharing, what's on your heart, what's on your mind. There will be people who are like, "That's weird," or, "That's not for me." But connecting with your audience doesn't mean getting as many, getting a bunch of comments that say, "Oh my God, I love this." That's just surface level stuff. Connecting with your audience oftentimes looks like even if you have a tiny audience and you share a piece of artwork about your depression or about how you were struggling with after you lost your job or something. Connection looks like one person DMing you going, "Hey, thanks for sharing that. I really needed that."
Rachael: Yeah, absolutely. I think connection is behind the scenes.
Lauren: Yes.
Rachael: Yeah. It's people messaging you or talking to you and saying, this meant a lot to me.
Lauren: Or even a lighter touch of them saving your post in one of their, think about this later folders on Instagram, the save folder.
Rachael: Or sharing something. Yeah. I made a post around Christmastime, and I remember this because my Christmas tree is in the video and it's like, "Hey, this is just a reminder that you don't actually have to sell your creative work. It can just be a fulfilling hobby." And that thing has been shared so many times, and it was just like I was in a good mood. I had a cute outfit on, and I was like, "Hey," because I had just come from my ceramic studio sale where I didn't really have that much for sale, and I felt great.
I just wandered around and looked at everybody else's stuff and it was fun. And so I was like, "Hey, we don't have to do this. It can just be for us." And I think that enthusiasm and that me really feeling it resonated with a lot of people, and so having people find me through that, that's connection. It's just talking about the things that feel important to you in the moment. Yeah. I'm very much a person who I have to, I'm not good at batching my content and making a bunch of stuff. I'm very feelings-based and I share based on what I'm going through or thinking about in the moment or a couple of days before or after.
Lauren: I think that makes a lot of sense. I think the timeliness of that makes it authentic as well.
Rachael: Agreed.
Lauren: And it allows you not to overthink it too much, because you're like, this is what's going on right now.
Rachael: Yeah, exactly. We are at about an hour. Do we want to stop and maybe do an official break from Q&A?
Lauren: Yeah. I think that you can tune into the next episode to hear us talk about some of other questions that we got. We got one related to what you were just talking about of, how do I explain that I don't want to sell my creative work. When people go, "Oh my gosh, these are amazing. You should sell them." Tune in next time for answer to that question and eight more.
Rachael: Yeah, we've got some fun ones, but we'll get them done.
Lauren: Yeah.
Rachael: See you next time.
Lauren: Wait.
Rachael: Oh, what?
Lauren: We got to plug Patreon.
Rachael: Oh my gosh. Yes. We have to market ourselves.
Lauren: See, we're doing the thing that people ask us questions about of how do you blast past the fear of being cringe about promoting yourself? We don't love doing this, but we're going to do it anyways, because before we started recording, I was telling Rachael, I have had the realization that, oh, I am my own hype man. There's no one else who's going to do it as someone who is self-employed, unless I want to hire a part-time social media manager, which I don't, I've tried in the past, and it just doesn't feel quite right for me. It's me. So I have to plug my stuff and let people know who want to support us and want to support me. And so if you like this episode, please share it with a friend, someone who needs to hear the answer to one of these questions-
Rachael: Absolutely.
Lauren: ... in this episode, and if you have any spare cash, you can support us with the Patreon link in our show notes, we do bonus content, some more Q&As. If you want to ask us a very specific question, I think we'll be doing more of these and you can get discounts to me and Rachael's courses. Anything else?
Rachael: That was great. I didn't have to do anything. I just got to watch.
Lauren: It didn't feel that hard. I was the one who actually resisted us starting a Patreon because there's something about the perpetual subscription thing that's always never felt great to me, so I've never even done it in my own business. However, Rachael and Kristle lovingly nudged me and we're like, "Why don't we just give it a try?" So we're trying it, and now I can do, I say that. We've don't that a couple times, it doesn't feel that bad. So if that's any-
Rachael: It's not, because we also, we aren't coercing people like-
Lauren: No. You have agency.
Rachael: ... "Oh, you want to get this? Too bad. Behind-"
Lauren: You can shut this off right now.
Rachael: Yeah. We're not like, "Only the good stuff is behind the paywall." We offer so much for free and we will continue to do so because we believe in what we're talking about, and we have fun doing this, and it costs money to produce these episodes, so we are trying to recoup those costs.
Lauren: We'd love if you could support us. Are we selling listener-sponsored ads yet?
Rachael: It's probably one of the tiers in the Patreon.
Lauren: Yeah. We think that one of the tiers in the Patreon is-
Rachael: It will be by this episode.
Lauren: We have a mega tier, which isn't even that mega for instead of getting in the interim before we get big ad sponsors, we were thinking it'd be fun to have listener-supported ads of, tell us what projects you're working on. Do you have a workshop coming up? Do you have an course? Do you have a market you're selling at? Do you have an online shop? We'll do listener supported ad reads because it's chaotic creative, for chaotic creative.
Rachael: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. The chaotic creative classifieds.
Lauren: Oh, I love that. That has to be our newsletter. Not that we have a newsletter, but maybe by this episode we will.
Rachael: So here's the thing about us being chaotic creatives. We're like, "We're recording all of season three before Lauren moves back to New York." So we're recording a little bit sooner than when the Patreon officially launches.
Lauren: Yeah. So if you hear any of the hesitation in our voices or us looking back at forth at each other, that's what that is.
Rachael: We say we would do that, and that's chaotic creative for you. So join the Patreon if you want to, and we'll see you next time for the rest of the Q&A. Bye
Lauren: Bye.