Reading time: 7 minutes
Hey legend,
I’m feeling super spicy this week🔥
All because of this response I received during a Zoom call:
“I’m just not creative.”
They were the words that caused me to scrap my original idea for this edition, even if it meant re-writing a newsletter from scratch and shuffling my entire schedule to hit my Saturday deadline.
That’s how passionate I am about this.
Here’s the story:
Earlier this week, I had a call with an organisation for which I’ll be running an in-person content creation workshop later this month.
On the call, I had 3 legends from their Comms team and a senior director share their content creation challenges to help me understand their situation and how I could help them achieve their goals.
Then like a basketball coach, I started identifying the ‘positions’ each person was best suited for, so I could form a game plan based around everyone’s creative talents.
I asked each of them to share their individual creative strengths and when it came to the director, this is what he said:
Director: “I’m just not creative”
Me: “…BULLSH*T”
Director: “….”
^OK, so I didn’t actually reply to him like that 😅
But I did have to use every ounce of restraint to avoid it bursting from my mouth (and losing the client LEL)
The Truth About Being Creative
My friend, everyone is creative.
It just reveals itself differently for us all.
Creativity is connecting existing ideas, concepts or elements in novel ways through your unique lens.
Creativity isn’t about creating profound, groundbreaking “original” ideas.
Please stop putting pressure on yourself, or holding yourself back from creating content, because you’ve convinced yourself of this BS narrative that everything you put out needs to be “original.”
In a recent video, I shared my $0.02 on the myth of originality, and these 2 replies couldn’t have better captured this sentiment:
Originality, if it truly exists, stems from within you.
You might recall this image from CWC 011: Let’s Capture Better Ideas that shows how 4 best-selling books were all written on the same idea of habit formation and consistency.
Originality came from each author’s novel angle on the idea, not the idea itself.
“What is originality? Undetected plagiarism”
– William Ralph Inge
Ditch the idea that “being creative” is limited to traditionally creative roles (i.e., painters, designers and musicians) and start seeing yourself as creative in everything you do.
Cooking is creative.
Playing sports is creative.
Budgeting finances is creative.
Arranging your wardrobe is creative.
You are, and always have been, creative.
It’s not binary.
It’s a spectrum.
And it’s a muscle you can exercise to become better at connecting the dots over time.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.”
– Steve Jobs
I also used to think I wasn’t creative because all I was doing was borrowing, reworking and imitating creative mentors who had inspired and influenced my work.
It was my dirty little secret because it felt like I was cheating the creative process.
But it wasn’t until I read Austin Kleon’s Steal Like An Artist that it all clicked.
It made me realise that millions of other creative thinkers were stealing, just like I was.
“The only art I’ll ever study is stuff that I can steal from.”
– David Bowie
My dirty little secret wasn’t so little (or dirty) after all.
So for the first time ever, I’m going to reveal how I “steal” from others by showing you the process I went through to create this video:
Why am I doing this?
Because I held myself back for too many years, feeling ashamed or scared to share more of my work because of the fear of being called out (or cancelled) for copying the styles and influence of others.
If someone had told me sooner that was I was doing was not only OK but necessary to develop my craft, I can’t imagine where I’d be by now.
So this guide is here to give you full permission to start stealing (and to show you how!).
So my friend, are you ready to steal like an artist?
Let’s go 🥷🏽
Step 1: Capture
“The artist is a collector. Not a hoarder, mind you, there’s a difference: Hoarders collect indiscriminately, while artists collect selectively. They only collect things they really love.”
– Austin Kleon
Steal from anything that resonates with you.
Not what’s trendy.
But whatever lights you up.
What’s the topic, channel or interest you can lose track of time diving into, discussing passionately or daydreaming about?
Be unapologetic for having those “weird” niche hobbies or interests.
Because those are the unique perspectives you can draw upon that others won’t have.
“Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination…Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul.”
– Jim Jarmusch
If you’d like a refresher on my Cut, Collect and Craft framework that’ll help you improve the quality of the ideas you can capture for your content creation, re-read CWC 011: Let’s Capture Better Ideas
My example:
To bring in 2023, my partner and I lodged ourselves in a quiet, isolated and minimalistic AirBnB in Hobart, Tasmania, to basically “…chill the f*ck out”.
Hours of uninterrupted journalling, meditating and reflecting lead me to a visceral “F*CK IT” moment.
I made an unwavering commitment to myself to dedicate all of 2023 to go all in on the 3 most important aspects of my life:
- My family & partner
- My health & mindset
- My business & wealth
So I got selective with everything I was consuming and being influenced by, including content.
And as a result, my “Reticular Activating System” helped filter for content aligned with the themes of deep focus (#MonkMode), simplicity and growth.
^Here’s 3 examples of content that I “captured” in the months following, even though, at the time, I didn’t know what I’d do with them…
…but stay with me; you’ll see how they come together later.
Step 2: Copy
Copy your heroes.
I cannot emphasise this enough.
Copy, copy…and copy some more.
“Nobody is born with a style or a voice. We don’t come out of the womb knowing who we are. In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes. We learn by copying”
– Austin Kleon
Like many of the greats of any field, Kobe Bryant religiously studied the game tapes of the NBA legends he grew up watching and admiring.
He modelled their movements (“copied”) repeatedly but realised that he couldn’t execute their moves in the same way as them due to differences in physique (such as Michael Jordan)
By dedicating hours of practice to trying to copy others, he unknowingly created his unique style that better suited him and turned him into one of the most unstoppable basketball players of his generation.
“Start copying what you love. Copy copy copy copy. At the end of the copy, you will find your self.”
– Yohji Yamamoto
My example:
I saw @landonbtw post an IG Reel featuring a seamless transition that showed a “switch” from ‘light’ to ‘dark’ mode in his workspace by incorporating the icon on iOS devices to select it.
As this aligned with my themes of “deep focus”, simplicity and growth, this was ripe for stealing.
So how did I copy it?
I started by reverse-engineering how he did it to figure out how I’d do it:
- Set up my camera on a tripod behind me that does not move
- Record 2 x 10-15 second sequences where I’m doing the same routine with my iPhone during the daytime and nighttime
- Screen record the ‘Light/Dark’ mode button being selected on my iPhone, which I would insert and crop during editing
“We’re talking about practice here, not plagiarism–plagiarism is trying to pass someone else’s work as your own. Copying is about reverse-engineering. It’s like a mechanic taking apart a car to see how it works.”
– Austin Kleon
I then went a few steps further and added my own unique flavour and nuances to it by:
- Action: I decided that I wanted to pull out and tap the button on my iPhone
- Colour: Added the Los Angeles colours (purple and yellow) to the iOS button
- Music: I pulled the excerpt of Drake’s “Non-Stop” to where he raps “I just flipped a switch” to coincide with the button tap
- Voiceover: I pulled an excerpt of a basketball commentator narrating the moment Kobe Bryant sunk a 3-pointer to win a playoff match
- Focus Mode: I also added a screen recording of selecting a custom Focus Mode called “Mamba.”
That’s how I stole it and made it my own.
But now, we’ve got one more piece of the stealing process to address
Step 3: Credit
Always be willing to give credit where it’s due.
Because you’ll always be the by-product of all those that have influenced you.
I made a conscious shift to change my scarcity mindset:
“I need to hoarde all the ideas and act like everything I make is original.”
…to one of an abundance mindset:
“I’m grateful for all those that have influenced me with their ideas and I want to pay it forward as there’s plenty to go around.”
In case you didn’t know, The Beatles started as a cover band and spent thousands of hours covering (“copying”) the songs and styles of those that inspired them all to start playing music.
“I emulated Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis. We all did.”
– Paul McCartney
And the phrase “imitation is flattery” doesn’t quite cut it for me anymore.
It’s not about just imitating.
It’s about adding your unique contribution towards your field’s greater body of work, movements or mission.
“In the end, merely imitating your heroes is not flattering to them. Transforming their work into something of your own is how you flatter them. Adding something to the world that only you can add.
– Austin Kleon
My example:
For my post, I tagged all those that contributed, inspired or influenced the video.
And more importantly, I went as far as DMing the creator (@landonbtw), who I copied.
I wasn’t expecting him to see my message, let alone reply, but he got back to me and even shared it on his story to an audience of +144k followers.
So to Steal Like An Artist:
- Capture: Steal anything that resonates with you
- Copy: Copy it enough times that it’ll cause you to create your own style
- Credit: Give props to those that inspired and influenced you
See you in the next one legend,
🕺🏽Mamba