The Make Stuff Podcast

Loving their podcast episodes. It’s super interesting, really helpful, and makes you think a lot about what it means to be creative and what is art, and how to go about making it. They’re relatable, and they talk to you as if you’re right there with them. There’s an intimacy and honesty that’s so great! I found your episode 2 so relatable and something I’m currently struggling with now. I am an aspiring statistician and researcher but I never did the best in school, so I always struggled getting research experience. Publishing experience. I love investigating autoimmune diseases and areas like the environment, but the only way to get positions and grants is to publish more. Get more research experience. And so like you guys did, I started emailing doctors and researchers of different hospitals near me and different professors and anyone associated with anything, and been asking if anyone needs someone to run statistical analysis for a research project; and I’d do it for free. It took me so many tries and re-writing emails until I got my first doctor interested in free labour. And since then; that’s what I’ve been doing. Emailing, and doing statistical research and publishing for free. But recently; I’ve been wondering if I should start asking for money for these projects. They’re time commitments and lots of work, and I’ve now published in 3 journals. But I don’t know where that line is that I’m not a statistician or data scientist ready to make money from me helping on projects. I also shoot film, and been trying to do the same. Shooting friends and family, for events, and again, deciding when is that time where it’ll make me money. So this episode helped so much as a reminder that hard work pays off if you’re persistent and continue to strive to do better

I’m loving Iz & Johnny’s podcast so far, especially the episode about Closing the Gap. I resonated a lot with the theory of making a creative commitment in order to motivate yourself to get better. In late 2018 I finally decided to more seriously pursue my dream of becoming a travel filmmaker, so I reached out to a local travel agency and wrote them a cold email proposing that I would create a series of promotional videos for one of their trips in exchange for them sending me on the trip, all expenses covered. To my surprise, after many meetings and negotiations, they agreed, and in March of 2019 I took my first ever filmmaking trip to Ecuador! I knew this was a huge opportunity and worked tirelessly to step up my game in order to deliver amazing work for them. The quality of my work grew faster in those few months than it had over the past year of creating on YouTube. Long story short, i totally agree with Iz & Johnny’s approach to closing the gap, and I’m excited for future episodes!