1 hr 23 min
Peleg Top on Fear, Love, Money and Creativity The 21st Century Creative
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- Arts
This week's guest on The 21st Century Creative podcast is Peleg Top, an artist, a writer, a speaker and an inspired guide who coaches creative professionals to succeed and become extraordinary leaders in the process.
As you’ll hear in this interview, he started out as a graphic designer, breaking into the very competitive niche of designing in the music industry, and running his own agency, Top Design, for 18 years in Los Angeles.
Some of his biggest clients included The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, The Grammy Awards, Universal Music and Capitol Records. During his career as a creative professional, he designed over 200 album covers, he published four design and branding books as well as the best selling The Designer’s Guide to Marketing and Pricing: How to Win Clients and What to Charge Them.
Like many young creatives, Peleg was so focused on achieving success that when he finally achieved it, he discovered it didn’t bring him the true fulfilment he was seeking. But unlike most people in this situation, he took it as a cue for self-exploration, taking a deep dive into the world of personal development and spiritual growth and facing up to some uncomfortable truths about himself that he had been avoiding.
At the age of 40 he sold his firm and took time to awaken his creative free spirit. This led to him reinventing himself as a coach and an inspired advisor to creative business owners who were seeking prosperity, helping them to balance the pursuit of external success with inner work and the acquisition of self awareness.
I first met Peleg back in 2012 when we were both speaking at the HOW Design conference in Boston. We went out for dinner and discovered we had many things in common, as coaches for creatives and on a personal level.
So we stayed in touch after the conference and our conversations led to me hiring Peleg to coach me, which was a transformative experience for me and my business.
Since then we’ve stayed in touch as friends and met up for adventures together on both sides of the Atlantic.
In this conversation Peleg talks about his journey as a creator, from his early days as a designer in LA, to his travels around the world in search of wisdom, to his current life as an artist and coach in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
He also talks about the importance of self-awareness and love for all of us as creatives, and how we can confront and transcend the culture of fear that is rife in the creative industries.
And Peleg shares a very unusual and liberating perspective on money, and sets us a really fun and surprising Creative Challenge to help us find a healthier and more creative relationship with money.
Peleg is an extraordinary and special person in my life and I’m thrilled to be able to introduce him to you. Listen to this conversation and you’ll hear the wisdom and compassion in his voice. You’ll also discover his gift for making big concepts like love and spirituality very practical and meaningful in your everyday life.
You can follow Peleg's art on ArtbyTop.comand Instagram, and find out more about his coaching at PelegTop.com.
Peleg Top interview transcript
MARK: Peleg, when did you first start to see yourself as creative?
PELEG: That’s an interesting question, Mark. To see myself as a creative happened a lot later than being in the experience of creative that I made myself. As early as a kid I didn’t really realize that I had this type of wiring in me, but I remember one of my earliest memories that I have as a kid was growing up in Israel and in the Shabbat newspaper at the end of the week, at the back of the newspaper, there was a 'Guess the Logo' weekly competition.
This week's guest on The 21st Century Creative podcast is Peleg Top, an artist, a writer, a speaker and an inspired guide who coaches creative professionals to succeed and become extraordinary leaders in the process.
As you’ll hear in this interview, he started out as a graphic designer, breaking into the very competitive niche of designing in the music industry, and running his own agency, Top Design, for 18 years in Los Angeles.
Some of his biggest clients included The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, The Grammy Awards, Universal Music and Capitol Records. During his career as a creative professional, he designed over 200 album covers, he published four design and branding books as well as the best selling The Designer’s Guide to Marketing and Pricing: How to Win Clients and What to Charge Them.
Like many young creatives, Peleg was so focused on achieving success that when he finally achieved it, he discovered it didn’t bring him the true fulfilment he was seeking. But unlike most people in this situation, he took it as a cue for self-exploration, taking a deep dive into the world of personal development and spiritual growth and facing up to some uncomfortable truths about himself that he had been avoiding.
At the age of 40 he sold his firm and took time to awaken his creative free spirit. This led to him reinventing himself as a coach and an inspired advisor to creative business owners who were seeking prosperity, helping them to balance the pursuit of external success with inner work and the acquisition of self awareness.
I first met Peleg back in 2012 when we were both speaking at the HOW Design conference in Boston. We went out for dinner and discovered we had many things in common, as coaches for creatives and on a personal level.
So we stayed in touch after the conference and our conversations led to me hiring Peleg to coach me, which was a transformative experience for me and my business.
Since then we’ve stayed in touch as friends and met up for adventures together on both sides of the Atlantic.
In this conversation Peleg talks about his journey as a creator, from his early days as a designer in LA, to his travels around the world in search of wisdom, to his current life as an artist and coach in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
He also talks about the importance of self-awareness and love for all of us as creatives, and how we can confront and transcend the culture of fear that is rife in the creative industries.
And Peleg shares a very unusual and liberating perspective on money, and sets us a really fun and surprising Creative Challenge to help us find a healthier and more creative relationship with money.
Peleg is an extraordinary and special person in my life and I’m thrilled to be able to introduce him to you. Listen to this conversation and you’ll hear the wisdom and compassion in his voice. You’ll also discover his gift for making big concepts like love and spirituality very practical and meaningful in your everyday life.
You can follow Peleg's art on ArtbyTop.comand Instagram, and find out more about his coaching at PelegTop.com.
Peleg Top interview transcript
MARK: Peleg, when did you first start to see yourself as creative?
PELEG: That’s an interesting question, Mark. To see myself as a creative happened a lot later than being in the experience of creative that I made myself. As early as a kid I didn’t really realize that I had this type of wiring in me, but I remember one of my earliest memories that I have as a kid was growing up in Israel and in the Shabbat newspaper at the end of the week, at the back of the newspaper, there was a 'Guess the Logo' weekly competition.
1 hr 23 min