ilovecreatives

0:09Uh, how are you guys doing? Yay. [screaming] Did anybody else get a neutral? Is it vodka seller? No. Okay. [laughter] I was like, that's what I [gasps and sighs] had. Um, well, hi everybody. My name's Puno. We're going to be talking about today owning your slashiness because baby doll, you are not scattered. You are multi-dimensional.

0:36So, okay, when [clears throat] I was in college, pick one thing and then do it for the rest of your life was basically the advice. So, let me just show you how that actually worked out for me. If you can believe it, I'm actually 42. So, I have 20 years of my career timeline up here. It's very fast, but this is my 20-y year timeline, right? In 2002, I I picked a marketing degree.

1:062006, I thought, okay, I guess I need to get a marketing job. So, I applied at Microsoft, got a little rejected there. Then I ended up becoming an advertising art director because of some side pride side project that I made. Um, and then in 2008, I asked for a 30% raise. I got that raise. Uh-oh, here comes that recession. 2008. Then I got laid off. WW. So then I had to switch careers. This is actually when the iPhone came out. So I pivoted into UX design and I became a UX designer at Activision's Call of Duty. Then uh, talk about video games burning you out.

1:502013 burnt out, quit and then after that I basically started a couple of businesses travel app called Made with Map People Map which was a SAS business then I started I love creatives and then started I love Creative Studio with Mindy who's over here. Okay. Okay. So this pick one thing and then do it for the rest of your life.

2:11That's just clearly not working out for me. So this is the other thing. This is that other question that is not helpful when you don't do one thing, right? My mom just has like no idea how to tell people what I do. She literally asked me. She's like, "Please tell me how do I explain what you do?" And I'm like, "Same, girl.

2:34Same. I do not know." So, I thought maybe I could just, you know, flowchart. So, what do I do? Okay, we've got I love creatives. I love creative studio. You're just going to throw content creator on the end of that. But I love creatives is a digital trade school. Um it had we we teach all sorts of creative skills. Everything from 3D design to graphic design, copywriting, motion, web design, all the things. And then we also have a creative studio called I Love Creative Studio. Um we do all the agency things. We also hire our students. Um and we yeah we do brand identity, web design, dev, digital marketing, creative direction, packaging, 3D and motion, all the things. Um and then content

3:27creation. So every now and then I influence and I make content where I'm a dinosaur goat riding a falcon of sorts. Um lots of fun there. But you know, I think this is the thing is like being a slashy, being a multi-hyphenate, it really took me a while to embrace because whenever I was feeling lost, sad because I was laid off, not successful, overwhelmed, hormonal, burnt out. My brain would immediately start telling me these thoughts. They would say, "Master of none, none. None.

4:10Find your niche. Niche niche niche. What's your passion? And and I I just instead of constantly asking myself what I should do, I needed to actually ask what do I actually want to do, which is a very hard question. So, of course, I I wanted to do some worksheets to figure this out. Um, Eeka guy, anybody?

4:38Anybody here? Okay, hot take. Oh my gosh. Now, here's my hot take. Um, in theory, I subscribe, but this process, it just doesn't really work for me because I would hyperfixate on that little star right there in the middle. And I was like, what's the perfect answer? What's my thing? And I was always just trying to figure out that star. But then I remembered, pick one thing.

5:04This does not work for me. This isn't this isn't my thing. So, [sighs and gasps] you know what? Maybe being a slashy is not a flaw. Maybe it's a framework that brings everything together. Now, you're probably like, "She keeps saying slashy. Is she talking about murdering people?" So, Slashy is a multi-hyphenate who builds a career connecting their identities. I I think that I coined that term, but I think somebody else claimed it in Urban Dictionary, so whatever. Um, instead of figure out exactly what I want to do, then go do it, instead I was like, you know what? I I basically I need I need to do a bunch of things and then figure it out along the way. And that has

5:51always been way more true for me. So, here's how I've started thinking about it. You've got your slashes that builds your confidence. Then you have your community that builds some equity. And then you have your income which brings [clears throat] sustainability. And for me it always starts with the slashes. So you have to start by collecting your curiosities.

6:15And so I would learn things just because they were interesting or I would learn things because I was like that sounds fun. But not because I've already decided that it's going to be the career for the rest of my life. So, inevitably though, when I'm learning something new, there's always a moment where I think, "Oh, no, I suck.

6:38Should I stop because I suck?" And so, this is where Ira Glass, has anybody heard of the gap? Oh my god, it's so helpful. This really helps me whenever I want to quit. Basically, when you start something new, your skill is is way down there and then your taste is really high up there and the space between those two things. So, that's the struggle. And you can see, you know, you can see what good looks like, but you can't just you can't make it yet. And everybody goes through this. And the only way to close that gap is to buy is by continuing to make things. So, yeah, you got to I had to do things that I

7:19suck at. just a little reminder for myself. But once I gave myself permission to do that, I started collecting all these skills. Not because I had decided that this is my next career, but just because these were the things that I was curious about. So now you might be asking, okay, so I have all these slashes. How do they connect? How do you turn your slashes into a career? So, this is what I found is that your slashes don't just connect because, you know, you're like sitting and staring at your resume trying to like map it all out. I found that a community actually starts revealing which slashes matter. So, I stopped asking what's my passion, which is

8:07basically a question that you ask and decide alone in your own head, which is not always great to do. I mean at least and I stopped asking that and then I feel I instead of started instead I started asking what does this community need? What's missing? And those questions gave me something I could actually respond to and and that's when I really started getting really passionate about the answers. So, Isle of Creatives actually started because people kept asking me like, "Hey, Puno, do you know someone who could do blah blah blah, do you know web designer? Do you know graphic designer? Do you know a copywriter?" So, I made a website that helped find those people and I used some

8:56of the skills I already had. Then I had to learn a few new ones just to make that work. Then we built courses because someone wanted to learn this. We literally had someone ask us like, "Do you know any graphic designers who design like you?" And we were like, "Why don't you just put an ad out?" And then they were like, "Well, sure, but can you teach them your style because I want your style?" And we were like, "Okay, I think we should build that." So then we built that.

9:24Every new income stream basically just came from listening to our community. And I'm going to tell you, not everything hit. We sold these things called nail stickies. That was really not working out. [laughter] But the goal here is to keep listening to your community. And I think that there's this this pressure, especially as a creative person, that everything you're interested in eventually needs to make money, but it doesn't. You can experiment with different ways to bring income. You don't need to monetize everything. Just start with that one idea that feels really aligned with you and your community and then build from there.

10:06Okay. So then does this mean that I should quit my job so I can make money doing all these things? These are all the questions that I had in my head by the way. So I read um you are a circle by the late ProfG G and it changed the way I thought about making money. He said, "Creatives are always juggling three jobs. One that pays but you're not always passionate about, one that sometimes pays and you're sometimes passionate about, and one that doesn't pay at all, but you're very passionate about it." And the point here for me, my takeaway was it's okay to keep your day job. You don't have to make every slash support you financially.

10:51So this is my actual timeline, my income timeline if you will. And you can see it's not a straight line. It went up, it went down. And it really took me about three years to replace a six figure salary after I left my job. But I was juggling three jobs. And that allowed me to continue to experiment for three years, which is a long time. I could keep trying things without ever every like every single thing needing to work or always needing to make money.

11:25So, you know, here's the thing though. The timeline I I think it just takes a lot longer than you want. But that's fine because you're helping communities and the people that you care about while doing all the things that you are your are curious about. So, whenever you're thinking jack of all trades, master of none, like you're scattered and maybe you should have picked one thing by now.

11:53Just remember, you're not scattered. You're multi-dimensional, aka a delicious pancake. Does that make sense? [laughter] And eventually all of your slashes are going to start to assemble into your own weird little stack of pancakes, even if they don't look like they're going to yet. Thank you. [cheering] See you. [applause] Oh my god.