Create Out Loud With Jennifer Louden Jennifer Louden

This episode is all about how seeking wonder can help you bother again and embracing the natural fallow period after you finish a big project.

I’m joined by Andrea Scher, author of Wonder Seeker: 52 Ways to Wake up Your Creativity and Find Your Joy, to talk about how to fill up your creative well when its run dry.. 

We talk about the power of mixing up your routines to try something new – going for a walk and finding a new plant, taking pictures, going to a new restaurant – as a way of sparking creativity and finding desire. 

Our brains react in fear to trying new things, to hanging out in the liminal space of venturing into the unknown, but it’s when we put ourselves in those spaces that we grow. 

We also talk about how the pressure to monetize our creativity keeps us stuck not creating. Instead, what would it look like if you created without the expectation of making money, or “being creative”, or even getting better at what you create? What would it look like if you created for creativity’s sake? 

Listen to the episode to learn: 

How to seek wonder in your everyday life
How to find ambition and creativity as you age
Why just being there in life is enough
How to bother when it seems like your life is falling apart
What Andrea and I’s superpowers are 

Check out these resources: 

Andrea’s podcast The Creative Superheroes, and look for me in a recent episode! 
Andrea’s book Wonder Seeker: 52 Ways to Wake up Your Creativity and Find Your Joy - Get your copy here: Amazon | Bookshop


Unbound by Kasia Urbaniak 

 

Not everyone listening to this podcast wants to make money by being creative, but a larger number of people believe that they CAN’T make money from creative pursuits. That is NOT true!

 

I’m joined by the author of The Middle Finger Project and Meat and Hair, Ash Ambirge, to give a big ol’ middle finger to the idea that you can’t make money by being creative. 

 

We talk about how important it is to devote time to your happiness, how to manage multiple streams of creative income, and just how important it is to believe that you can make money by being creative. 

 

Ash Ambirge runs three businesses that she built herself, and is currently curating a fourth. How did she do it? Ash has ALWAYS had an entrepreneurial spirit, and in today's episode, Jen and Ash discuss how being creative shares a lot in common with running a business.

 

Listen to the episode to learn: 

 

How Ash is able to devote two whole days to happiness, not work 
How to ignore your itty bitty s****y committee telling you that you can’t make money by being creative 
How Ash is dedicated to giving the middle finger to imposter syndrome 
Why getting started in your business doesn’t have to be complicated 
Just how effective a simple newsletter can be
How important it is to create a system to sell your work 

 

Episode resources: 

 

Ash Ambirge’s latest book, The Middle Finger ProjectGet your copy here: Amazon | Bookshop



Ash has two amazing newsletters that I highly recommend joiningMeat and Hair, a creative writing newsletter
The Middle Finger newsletter for tips on making money online



Wynter, a nifty tool to see test how your messaging is landing
ConvertKit, an email marketing tool best for deliverability and segmentation
Buzzsumo, a tool that shows you what high-quality content looks like 
Zapier, a productivity platform that connects all of your apps 

Do you spend thousands on marketing, or hours researching trendy new marketing strategies… and it doesn’t move the needle forward? 

Then this episode of Create Out Loud is for you. 

In this episode, Jen Louden talks about the importance of ecosystem marketing. 

It’s all about finding out where your people are, and communicating with them there. 

Not to sell anything. Just to connect. 

Are you…. sweating just thinking about that?

Are you thinking “that’s not me! I don’t do all that social media stuff?” 

Or do you just desperately wish your book could market itself (don’t we all)?

Reaching out and connecting with people can be terrifying, but when we do it IT WORKS. 

In this solo episode, Jen talks through why ecosystems are so important and how they can be nourishing instead of scary. 

Listen to the episode to learn more about: 

What ecosystem marketing is 
Why relying solely on traditional marketing is giving up control 
Why YOU are the only one who can build and connect your ecosystems 
How being in relationship and connection with your audience can make you a stronger writer
How connecting with others doesn’t have to mean relying on technology or social media 

Episode Resources: 

Check out the Create Out Loud episode with Pam Slim about her book The Widest Net. 
Buy The Widest Net by Pamela Slim
Here’s a great newsletter about making money from creative pursuits. It’s a bit bro-y, so take the good parts and leave the rest.
Need an extra push to get started on your non-fiction book? Check out this free resource. 

We can be remarkably uncomfortable discussing money, but what if we shifted our relationship with the topic by instead recognizing how money can facilitate freedom, power, and creative potential? This is Paco’s mission. As a creative, author, consultant, and coach, Paco is passionate about empowering people, particularly those who identify as women, to step into their power. 

 

On today’s show, Jen and Paco discuss:

 

How business instincts can be artistic, creative, and fulfilling
How to make it as independent contractor
How to figure out how much you’re “worth” when finding clients
What it means to schedule financial “time”
Shifting your mindset towards your business to focus on problem solving

 

You will love Paco’s ideas and even more, her comforting truth-telling vibe!

 

Paco de Leon is an author, illustrator, musician. She is the founder of The Hell Yeah Group, a financial firm dedicated to inspiring creatives to engage with their personal and business finances and Hell Yeah, Bookkeeping, a bookkeeping agency for creative businesses. Her career experiences in banking, business consulting, financial planning, and wealth management have informed her financial philosophies. 

 

She is a TED speaker and her work has been published or featured in The New York Times, Bloomberg, Vice, TIME, on other publications, and on NPR. She lives in Los Angeles with her wife.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Finance-People-Getting-Grip-Finances/dp/0143136259

 

https://thehellyeahgroup.com/

 

https://www.ted.com/talks/paco_de_leon_the_secret_to_being_a_successful_freelancer?language=en

 

LINK TO VIDEO: https://youtu.be/3oS5Sh-NFsg

Work, relationships, kids, friends… Do you find that everything comes BEFORE your creative desires? 

Or has it been so long that you can’t remember what it’s like to take some time to just be curious, and play with creativity? 

Author Eve Rodsky joins Jen Louden in discussing how our patriarchal society has carved away the time and space women need to pursue their creative passions, and how to reclaim that creative space – your unicorn space. 

Eve Rodsky has spent years researching the hours of unpaid and unrecognized labor that women are conditioned to do, and how it has affected our ability to be creative. Her book, Fairplay, outlines a new system for managing the household that divides labor fairly, and allows plenty of room for creativity and play. 

 

Her new book, Find Your Unicorn Space talks about reclaiming the space for curiosity, connection and completion needed to live creatively. 

Eve and Jen discuss how to engage in curiosity, the importance of connection in establishing a creative routine, and why completion doesn’t have to mean finishing the whole thing. 

Listen to the episode to learn more about: 

How the unpaid labor that falls on women constrains creativity and curiosity 
A new system for putting your unicorn space FIRST 
How to spark curiosity and follow that spark 
Why creativity is not f*cking optional 
Why you don’t need to be afraid of completion 

Get a copy of Eve Rodsky’s books here: 

Find Your Unicorn Space
Fair Play

 

Do you have to choose between writing for passion and writing for pay?

 

Getting paid to write seems like a fantasy to most, and getting paid to write something you are truly passionate about seems even more far-fetched.

 

Bestselling author Susan Shapiro joins Jen Louden in discussing what it takes to write what you’re passionate about AND get published in different genres. 

 

Susan Shapiro is the bestselling author/coauthor of 17 books across multiple genres. She has written novels, memoirs, poetry, and more recently – The Book Bible and Byline Bible, two books that guide writers on how to get their work published. 

 

Susan and Jen discuss how to balance your passion for writing with the practicalities of the publishing world, as well as some hard truths about what it takes to get paid for your writing. 

 

Listen to this episode to learn more about: 

How to balance writing about your obsessions with giving your audience what they want
Two powerful prompts that will help you write the kinds of stories only YOU can write
How to show vulnerability when writing memoirs, while still maintaining boundaries
When to accept edits to your piece – and when to push back 
The power of literary matchmaking
The biggest mistake that holds writers back from being published – and how to avoid it
How to create energy for writing, every single day

 

Get a copy of Susan Shapiro’s books on writing here: 

The Book Bible
The Byline Bible

 

 

Visit jenniferlouden.com/podcastkit to get instant access to a collection of audios that will help you with some of the most common struggles we creatives have to manage, including: 

 

The fear of choosing
Falling into compare and despair, managing the inner critic(s)
Feeling too exposed and vulnerable when you put yourself or your work into the world