74: Dave Conrey on the Importance of Connection, the Keys to a Creative Business, and Getting Started

Dave Conrey‘s path to becoming a full-time artist is not a simple one. Growing up, he wasn’t that passionate about art, but over time, and after a series of jobs and ventures, he has finally dedicated himself to the idea.

After going to school for art and graphic design, Dave had two separate stints as an art director, but was laid off both times. He also spent time as a author, podcaster, and creator of Fresh Rag, which helped artists sell their work.

After years of feeling unfulfilled, Dave finally decided to put everything else on hiatus to pursue his art full-time.

In this episode, Dave talks about the importance of connecting with others, some of his keys to building a creative business, and getting started.

Here are three things you can learn from Dave:

One of the most important things we can do as artists and creatives is building a strong connection with other people. When Dave hosted the Fresh Rag show, people listened to it because his conversations felt deep and meaningful.

His conversations felt fresh and different because he didn’t try to force conversations with people just because they were famous. He just tried to build a report with his guests so they would have great conversations. “The most important factor for me is having a really good conversation, rather than just two people that might not know each other very well, talking about it, and the conversation is happening, but it’s kinda weird because there’s no real relationship built up. It’s just two people talking about it. And I want to have people that I know on so that we can have good conversations about it. And their experience level is less important to me than how charismatic they are in that conversation.”

The best way to build up to those great conversations is by building and fostering relationships with people. You are much more likely to have a great conversation with someone if there is a mutual trust and respect for each other. “It really comes down to having and building relationships with people over time. I mean, the people I’m going to have on the show are people that I’ve known, sometimes for a few months, and sometimes for years.”

Dave is a believer that there are a couple of keys to building your creative business. The first is building a brand that people love. The problem with branding is many creatives don’t know what their brand is. They believe good branding is just selling great products. But having a good product is not enough. “If you’re building up a brand that people love and adore, they follow you, not because of your product. I mean you make good products, that’s just important to make great products, but they’re not… on the edge of their seat waiting for your next Instagram post because your products are good. It’s because you are telling good stories and you… have good customer interaction and you have these relationships built.”

Another important factor for creative businesses is getting over your fears. Dave helped his audience get over their fears by having them participate in thirty day challenges. These challenges helped to change people’s mindsets from one of fear to one of action. “In my opinion, mindset is very important to how we do the things we do and so the idea was to create this thirty day challenge where you do a certain thing every day, or every single time you pick up a new challenge, whether it’s daily, weekly, or whatever. You pick up this challenge and do this thing, and it helps you kinda grow as an artist and grow as a maker. And whether its super actionable things you can do to… change your marketing program or it’s something you do in your head, getting outside of fear, the very first action is very fear based… fighting fear.”

One of the most easily overlooked, but incredibly important, aspects of creative work is just getting started. This may sound like an obvious suggestion, but often times we wait too long before taking action. We are so worried about failure that we instead of releasing something imperfect, we release nothing at all.

Dave believes we need to stop worrying so much and just get started. “Let’s say somebody wants to sell their photographic art prints… Figure out where you want to sell it and then just go put that stuff up there. Don’t worry about failing. Don’t worry about getting it wrong. Don’t worry about who’s going to see it because chances are nobody’s going to see it at first. Don’t worry about making sure you get your logo just so… don’t worry about any of that. Just get out there and post that thing up and then repeat the process, and then tweak as you go.”

Something that holds many creatives back, including myself, is the desire for perfection. But perfection is not only elusive, it’s impossible. You can’t wait for the stars to align because they never will. There is no better time than now. Remember, you can always start now and tweak later. “It’s less important for you to get it right and more important for you to get it out there and fix and tweak later because that makes all the difference. The ones that who take the action today, right now, are the ones who are going to win. The ones who are sitting back thinking ‘I don’t know. I’ll launch my show next month when I have everything just perfect,’ or ‘I’m going to buy that new microphone,’ or ‘I’m going to start my blog when I have enough money to get the really great theme that I need.’ Forget it man, just go.”

Read more shownotes from episode 74 with Dave Conrey