Welcome back to the Creator Spotlight podcast. This is our tenth episode, and today's guest is PJ Milani.
He's a longtime high school animation teacher known for his visual metaphors, simple single-panel illustrations imparting lessons about life and creativity. As always, thank you for listening, and enjoy.
[upbeat music] I spent a few hours, you know, researching you, looking you up, but I don't think that the audience did. So tell our listeners, who is PJ Milani? Who... Whoa, man, that's a [laughs] love that question.
Big question. Well- Who is PJ Milani?... in the context of, uh, yeah.
Uh, I am a film and animation teacher of 20 years turned digital creator, but still has a day job as a teacher during the day and at night, uh, which is probably the only time I have, I create visual metaphors, and I share them online.
Your origin story, as I know it, is like you've been a teacher now for 20 years. I think this was your 20th year teaching. Mm-hmm.
Um, and then a couple years ago, around the time of your birthday, you were journaling, and you were like, "I gotta do something more for myself. I gotta create for myself.
Like my students are always asking me why I don't create for myself." And then you went back, and 10 years before, also around your birthday, you'd written the same thing, and you were like, "Well, I gotta...
I guess I gotta do it now. Like I've been, you know, not, not making myself do anything for 10 years. And I'm-- I don't wanna do it when I'm 50 and like ha-have the same thought." So tell me, what was the direction?
You wanted to create something for yourself. What was it? How did you start after not really doing that for a while?
So first off, that's the first time anyone's ever like actually told my story to my-- to me, so that's really [laughs]... You actually did your research, so that's really cool.
Trying to take the burden off of it for you. I know you're tired of doing it. [laughs] Thank you.
Um, yeah, so in the very beginning, I have to admit, because I had waited so long to start creating, to start doing something,
I had this tension between like my age and like, you know, what I was doing 'cause I was like thinking, "Okay, I'm too... I may, I may even still be too old." That's what I was thinking like.
But I tried to just push all those fears, all those anxieties, all those like I'm-not-sure-what-the-hell-I'm-doing down, and I didn't have too much direction at all.
I was just trying to do something and do that on a regular daily basis, and that was kind of like the goal. And I believe, just as I try to share with my students, the most important thing that you can do
to just nourish the soul is to have some kind of creative practice. And it, it, it ha- it can take many different shapes, like a podcast like this, work, writing a newsletter, writing daily, journaling daily.
Doesn't always have to be shared publicly.
For me, I needed that public component to add an element of accountability, to add an element of, um, as I like to share, uh, one of my favorite things from Lawrence Yeo, who is the creator of More To That,
uh, which is a blog on, um, that I would highly recommend.
Um, I like the way he kind of articulates this in that you have to have this balance between your internal motivation and your external validation, and you need those two, uh, to some degree, both those two elements to kind of continue and feed the practice.
And so that is why I initially started to share. Now, initially it was crickets, I have to admit. Uh, [laughs] you know, you just, um, I, you know, when I first started posting, I just--
I actually started with a newsletter, was the very first thing I created right out the gates. Um, and it was with Review, if you remember Review, who it w- uh, who was- The, the Twitter thing that failed. Yeah.
Well, it was even before Twitter. That's when I started. Oh. Before Twitter bought it out. I didn't even realize. I, I-- Sorry. That's how long ago it was.
[laughs] Uh, so it was the very first thing I, um, started posting on 'cause, you know, I was like, "Okay, let me just do something. Let me start with a newsletter," 'cause I didn't really know what I was doing.
Um- Why did, why did a newsletter, why of all things did that seem like the most obvious choice? You know, I was thinking that, all right, I'll have
a group of friends, at the very least, that will get me started, that I know that they are going to be, um, reading this. And so it was like this, the lowest-- I was trying to think of the lowest friction,
um, easiest sust- easily sustainable thing for me to do. Um, and it was really un-- I was just not really sure what I was doing. I was-- It was like a, a...
It was like Tim Ferriss' Five Bullet Friday without the credibility or fame. And so I just was trying to put something together, uh, to document what I was trying to do. Um, and you know, they all had- Was this-- Wait.
If I can interrupt for a second. Yeah.
So I was, I was looking, I was trying to find the first thing you did, 'cause as I understand it too, you weren't really online in any meaningful way or really at all, maybe on social media, until you started.
And so the earliest thing I could find, um, was November 16th, 2021. You published this post, uh, "Simply begin. Do 1%. You're ready."
[laughs] And then your first few posts, you po- you're doing this like Ship 30 for 30 thing, right? Where you're posting every day, you're getting that muscle going.
Um, and your first three posts were about this as well. The next one was just called Doubts. The third one was called Trust the, Trust the Process or Trust the Practice.
And then your fourth one was like more about your grandparents. So, so yeah, so in the beginning, you were doing this almost like meta reflective, like about creating, like you said, like this Tim Ferriss thing.
But that was just, that's-- I imagine that's kinda what you were consuming as inspiration to get started, so you're kind of doing this mirroring and warming up, and then you start getting to your own thing, right? Yeah.
In fact, that was way before the Ship 30 stuff. So that was like- Oh... the blogging. [laughs] That was the first... So I started with a newsletterI had eight subscribers- Nice...
uh, most of them good friends, one former student. And I was like, okay, I di- and I didn't foret- I didn't, like, really broadcast this to too many people. I just was like, "Hey, this is what I'm...
something I'm gonna do. Anyone who's interested, just let me know." And then I was like, okay. I go to my wife and I was like, "I think I'm gonna start a blog." And she's like, [chuckles] "Do people still read blogs?"
[laughs] And I, you know, I was like, "Uh, I mean, I do," but, uh, you know, honestly, after, after probably, maybe, I don't know how many posts I did, maybe 15 or so, uh, maximum, maybe 20 at max.
Yeah, nobody reads blogs. At least no one [chuckles] reads mine. And, um, and I came across Ship 30 with, um, Dickie Bush and Nicholas Cole, big on Twitter.
I came across him on YouTube, honestly, because I wasn't on Twitter at all. I think I might've just talk... r- looked up writing online, and he must have popped up.
He pretty much talked about exactly what I was experiencing, um, and that's how you s- know you got a good salesman.
'Cause he literally hit all those same exact pain points that I was experiencing, which was, "Hey, you know, I initially thought I, I would start a blog," Dickie Bush was saying this, "and then he posted online, and it was like crickets, and, you know, you...
no one goes to those blogs. Instead, find, use social media as a way to attract, um, people to your ideas." And it all really kind of sung true to me, so I was like, "Okay, let me look at what this Ship 30 thing is."
And it was a big investment for me. I mean, I'm a teacher. It was $500. But I was, uh, committed to trying to, again, sustain some kind of creative practice. And so, yeah, that's where I started.
Like, I started writing on Twitter, and, uh, yeah, all those, all those things that, you know, the do 1%, the, uh, all those little things that you just pointed in those first three posts, I remember those.
Those were very... Like, I spent a lot of time trying to think through those.
Those were precursors j- basically getting me prepared to, um, be in the right mindset to post on social media, because it was something I, again, had stayed away from for so many years. Mm-hmm.
And in fact, Dickie, one of the questions I had asked him early on, I was like, "Hey," like, "how do you find people like you? How do you find people that are,
you know, other teachers who are filmmaking, [chuckles] who teach filmmaking, and how do you find people that are of your kin, I suppose-" Mm-hmm... uh, creatively?" And he was like, "Well, where were you before?
Were you on Quora? Were you on Instagram? Were you on Facebook?" I was like, "Bro, nowhere online." [laughs] "This is all the first time for me."
So it, it was a huge learning curve for me to, I guess, get acclimated to this world of, you know, posting on social media and- Mm-hmm... um, yeah, meeting strangers and- Engaging online. So that's...
I mean, I think it's almost an advantage that you hadn't been online at all, and where... So, like, obviously now you have, uh, like 137,000 followers on Instagram, something like that, almost 90,000 on LinkedIn.
You've got your newsletter. You've got... You're on a couple other channel. Twitter, I think it's like 17,000 or something.
Um, so that's, I mean, three and a half years, you've gone from, like, never touching social media- [laughs]... to, like, being pretty good at it, clearly. When did you first start to get traction? When did, like...
wh- when did that... When did the first kind of, you know, boulder fall- Mm... in the, in the, the journey from zero to 200,000 plus? So it's interesting. Um, I remember it exactly. It's, uh, actually an exact moment.
Like, I had been posting... So I po- I started posting on Twitter actually March of 2022. That was the first, like, real posts I started doing with Ship 30. And from March till June 11th,
June 11th, I hit 1,000 followers. And I was only on Twitter. I was not on Instagram. I was only on Twitter. And I hit 1,000 followers on June 11th, 2022. And I thought, "Hey,
I've been seeing these threads, these things called threads." And, uh, I, uh, decided, "Okay, well, let me take my, 10 of my top-performing or favorite rather images and put them together in a thread."
I had it scheduled, which was one of the first scheduled posts I ever did also, for the next morning, um, June 12th, which was my birthday. I had it scheduled. Next morning, I wake up.
I have doubled my following in less than 24 hours. And by the end of the day, I had tripled my following. And, and, and, uh, and I was like, "What the heck is going on?"
But, you know, and the funny thing is, though, and this was the lesson I learned, and I remember talking... I remember mentioning this to Dickie and, and, and Cole.
You would have thought that this feeling that I had was, like, just complete elation. But it was complete bafflement, honestly, [chuckles] because I was not posting anything different.
My expectations up until that moment were, "Oh, I just have to create good enough work to be seen, and I'm not there yet."
But at that moment, I realized that it wasn't necessarily the quality of the work, but it was the packaging of the work. It was not necessarily the work itself, but the following is a byproduct of the work.
And it is really something you cannot ever anticipate, uh, or try to do intentionally. All you can do is the work, and, you know, the chips will fall as they may.
And the lesson I took from that was that, is that it is not the quality of the work, but the algorithm itself that determines your, quote unquote, "following count."
Unfortunately, most people will look at that following, following count and think, "Oh, this person has status or not," or whatnot.
But I didn'tTake that lesson as a, "Oh my gosh, now I'm-- I hit a viral post, and, like, everything is awesome." Like, it was really-- I was really confused, honestly.
Um, I mean, of course it was-- I was thankful for the exposure, and it did really become kind of like the catapult that, uh, helped a lot of additional external validation kind of come in.
Um, but it wasn't what I initially thought would've f- it would've felt like, you know?
It was, it was literally that chart that y- um, Jack Butcher is known for this chart where it's, like, flat, flat, flat, flat, flat, a bar graph that's just a flat chart. Mm-hmm.
And then everything everywhere all at once, it just kind of pops. And, um, I've experienced that in almost every platform that I've expanded to. Like- Yeah...
I started with Twitter- This empty sugar rush too, though, once you get there. Yeah. Well, it-- the thing is, like, I think every time it has happened, I get this feeling of, like,
detachment from it, because, again, it's not as if I'm not grateful or thankful for it. It's just that, um, I really try to be careful that I don't put too much stock in the numbers that end up rising.
And each person, anytime that somebody likes it, it's an individual person who's come across that, and that's a beautiful thing in and, in and of itself. So I wanna appreciate and honor that.
I just wanna be careful not to judge the quality of my work based on the number that ends up being attached- Mm-hmm... to that work.
And that was the-- that early lesson, that first milestone, that was the lesson I took from that.
Which I think is like, again, going back to, like, you not having been on social media, like, you were able to come in and, like, not have those, like, you know, social media brain and, like, that addiction to the notification kind of...
Uh, in this other interview you did, you said that taking the next step after having an idea, that is what it means to live a creative life. Not having the thought, but acting on it.
And I think it's like you don't get to creating visual metaphors and that being your thing and what you're known for without first, like, writing about, like, just the act of, like, writing as a way to [chuckles] make yourself start writing.
And it's like it's that step. So I don't know. I, I always...
Whenever people ask me too for advice on how to grow an audience, there's all different types of advice you can give, but really it's just, just start doing it, and then do it again, and do it again, and you never really know where it'll take you, but you won't get anywhere, uh, without doing it.
Um, so I, yeah, I just really like that as a, as an example in your work. Going back to the writing and drawing thing, you said, again in an- in another interview, that you used to have separate notebooks for- Mm-hmm...
drawing, for sketching, and for journaling, and now it's the same, and I thought that was really interesting. I'd love to hear you talk more about the relationship for you between writing and drawing. Yeah. Uh,
yeah, that's, um... Man, you did some really good research, I have to say. [laughs] Um, yeah. My job. So I-- [laughs]
so yeah, that became actually a, a great a-additional, um, inflection point in the practice of how I come up with ideas.
Um, so yeah, I used to have a separate journal for writing and a separate sketchbook for ideas and whatnot.
And there is sometimes still that, you know, sometimes I wanna just, like, go through a sketchbook and just come up with a bunch of different ideas.
But as a general daily practice, like, I keep my journal and my sketching in the same thing, and it's because both one feeds the other.
Like, I could be writing about something, and as I'm writing it, I make a connection, and then I can visualize that connection immediately next to it.
And vice versa, I could be making a connection in the visual and, and drawing or sketching something out, and that creates a, a connection in the thoughts and the ideas themselves, so I can expand on that through the writing.
And this can even be in the context of day-to-day experiences.
Like a little hack I, I teach my students is sometimes all you need to do is take a key word and put a circle around it, and you start to think of it visually. Like it's really s- as simple as that.
Take a circ- take an idea like entrepreneurship, put a circle around it, and all auto-automatically it becomes a visual in some context. Put another circle around it.
What is that then con- what is that then trying to communicate, that circle around the entrepreneurship? And now you're starting to think visually. It's as simple as that. You don't have to overcomplicate it.
So making these kinds of connections is really tough to do when you keep the two separate, sketching and, you know, your journaling practice or writing practice or, or whatever.
Uh, I say journaling because usually that's the way I would kinda try to work through ideas or ask myself questions or whatnot.
Um, but that's been a general piece of advice I give to anyone who's starting out who wants to kind of think vi- more visually, is to stop putting them in different places. And the other thing is,
I am a big proponent of physical writing instead of typing because, one, you're going slower, uh, and you're becoming a little bit more mindful of what it is that you're saying, and two, it's, um,
you ha- being able to flip through your ideas and incidentally come... refresh your mind on, "Oh, that was an idea," actually continues to feed into your future ideas.
Whereas unless you intentionally go into your capture system that's digital, you're not gonna, again, have those incidental, uh, creative accidents, if you will- Mm-hmm... um, that are really wonderful to experience.
Um- Well, all the more too, you, again, in one of these interviews, you mentioned that you suggest people journal with a pen rather than a pencil.Yeah. Yeah.
That's, that's, that's, uh, again, great, [laughs] great research and memory. Um, yeah, so I-- that's, that's one of those things that is to try not to get too caught up in what it is that you're drawing or sketching.
You're... This is just a playground, so a, an eraser gets in the way. You're just-- just redraw it or draw it again. Um, if, if, if you're...
And that's one of those things, a, a hack kinda I, I, I developed for myself personally and I recommend to other perfectionists or recovering perfectionists, is if you have a pen, you... there is no going back.
So just get on with it and move on and move on and move on.
So, um, that makes-- that's made a big difference in, in how I go about doing it, um, because again, you're, you're being a little bit more thoughtful and mindful as you're doing it, so you're not just wasting, um, your energy just, you know, trying to get this one circle perfect or whatever.
Yeah. You just make the circle and move on. No, I love that. I, I can definitely relate to that. Like, I'm somebody who I used to...
In, in school I was good at writing one draft of an essay, and then I would get a good grade.
So it took me years of, like, unlearning that behavior after leaving school of like, "Oh no, I should write a thing," and just write it and come back, and like learning to draft took me forever.
And anyways, going back to the social media platforms, and you started on Twitter, but now that's like your least engaged, least followed platform, I think.
The most is Instagram, like I said earlier, at a hundred thirty-seven or so thousand, and then LinkedIn is like ninety thousand.
And with LinkedIn, I, I've never seen a LinkedIn post with more engagement than your one that it's like from a year ago. There's...
It has like eleven thousand engagements, and it's like a, a, a carousel of ten of, um, of your, of your, of your visual metaphors. But, um, we can get into the LinkedIn specifics later.
But I wanna hear the journey of like from Twitter to then getting on these other platforms and your relationship with, with these three platforms now: LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Yeah.
Uh, Twitter is probably my least favorite platform in the moment. The shift in ownership has, [laughs] has, uh, affected that platform. Um, and- It's also the least visually oriented.
Sorry to interrupt, but I feel like that- Yeah... there's a clear line there, right? Yeah. A-I, I think it's, um... it doesn't necessarily lend itself to visuals as much.
Funny enough, again, that was what sparked and started everything. So I have like this weird relationship with it and how I feel about it because I'm grateful- Your hometown. Yeah. [laughs] Exactly, exactly.
It's like, yeah, you know, I know what you're s- I know what people are saying about Twitter, but it's not so bad. It's not so bad. I actually really hesitated to, to get on Instagram.
Um, but luckily Janis, um, Ozolins, he really encouraged me to do that. And, um, and I initially started posting and I was like, "People don't seem to like it on Instagram. People don't seem to care."
And he's like, "You just gotta stick to it." And I will say Instagram took the longest. It took at least two months. Literally was flat. Flat, flat, flat, flat, flat, flat.
And then all of a sudden it picked up again, just like Twitter. I don't... I can't tell you-- I don't even know which post it was, but it just picked up immediately.
And then almost all of them picked up at the same time. LinkedIn I got into the very latest. Like was the, one of the last ones I was like, "All right, let me, let me also expand onto LinkedIn."
And the only reason I expanded on LinkedIn was because of how many people were on LinkedIn using my visuals without crediting, crediting me.
You know, you come-- you have to come to some level of peace when you do this kind of work with, okay, people are gonna steal your stuff, and you have to try to find a way to manage those emotions and, and try to have a little bit more of an abundance mindset with that.
But it is challenging. [laughs] It is quite challenging to get into that mindset, uh, and stay into that mindset.
And, uh, so LinkedIn w-was-- I was getting all these, um, messages about certain people, and I would get on the platform and message them and say, "Hey, not cool. Uh, at least credit the artist."
Um, and then they'd be like, "What are you gonna do about it?" essentially. So I was like, "Okay, well, I guess I gotta be on this platform too." So that's when I started posting on LinkedIn.
The funny thing with LinkedIn was the exact same post that went viral on Twitter- The 10-part carousel... yeah, goes extremely viral on, on LinkedIn. And my friend Roberto kind of is the one who pointed this out.
He was like... 'Cause he knows how I kind of approach these things. He's like, "I know you barely care about this."
[laughs] And here I go, I, I, I get offline and I look back and all of a sudden you go from twelve, fifteen thousand to sixty-five thousand f- in, in like however many weeks- On that one post. Yeah, off of that one post.
And again, it just goes to show that if you do this long enough, you can't anticipate when, and you won't know how and why. Stuff like that just happens. Just- Mm-hmm... it just happens, and y-you can't
base your success and your failures on what the algorithm's will is. The funny thing is I posted that same carousel other times, and it hasn't done as well.
So with all these, am I to understand that, like, you've basically... Your audience, your two hundred thousand plus audience, it's all basically come from organic social media?
Like basically you just putting good content out there time after time and people seeing it, and then other people seeing it, reposting it to their followers, and that's it. Like which, which I love.
This is like my favorite kind of story where it's just like- [laughs]... the pure quality of your content is so relatable. I think another thing too is like because it's visual, there's very few words that...
and y-you often say like on your website, et cetera, like that you have an international audience, and like it's because anybody-You can just look at-- You don't even need to read the, like, the three words that are usually on it.
You can just get it. But so that's-- I mean, that's amazing that it's, like, this pure organic growth.
But then, I mean, you know, I talk about newsletters, and I do a newsletter, and people ask me how to grow newsletters, and that's the hard part 'cause it's not an algorithmic thing.
It's like if you're on Substack, that's kinda become a social media platform less than a newsletter platform now.
But if you're on Beehiiv, which your new newsletter is, that you can't just, you can't just put stuff out and expect people to get it. So tell me how we get to the newsletter.
Why you st- 'cause, again, you s- at the very beginning, you said you'd been doing newsletters, and then you kinda stopped, or I don't know if you stopped.
But, um, now you have, at least on Beehiiv, your archive there, 40 issues dating back to almost exactly two years ago, April twenty-second. Oh, nice. It was your fir- twenty twenty-two was your first one there.
Why the newsletter? Why did you start it, and how did you get people to subscribe? So yeah. So all of this has been, um, organic, which I didn't even know was a term. Uh, I just thought that's what you did online.
Which is ama- see, exactly. [laughs] It's, it's just the pure you're just putting good stuff out there. [laughs] Yeah. I-- well, I was-- I remember, like,
at some point on being on social media recognizing and realizing, "Oh, wait a minute, people have engagement groups that they're- Yeah... engaging each other's posts and doing that."
Like, I didn't even know that that was a thing, um, 'cause I was like, "Why are they... This is... I don't understand. How is this..." Anyway, [laughs] "How is this going viral?"
Uh, anyway, that's neither here nor there. So, uh, with the newsletter, so yeah, I actually kept going. Um, I never- Oh, cool... stopped the newsletter from the very beginning.
Now, there were periods where I was like, "Okay, maybe I do one once a month," or, um, or whatnot. But that same newsletter, the same list has been growing since I very first started.
Um, all my newsletter growth has also been from just plugging at the end of my posts. Uh, "Hey, if you like these visuals, check out my newsletter."
And, and, and that's kind of where, where it's grown, how all that growth has happened. Um, and, uh, I will say the initial shift to doing the Ideas newsletter, um,
that was because I was, like, thinking, "How do I connect what I'm doing visually to the newsletter side of things?
Um, how do I create these posts that kind of will make it worthwhile for somebody to subscribe to this anyway?"
Um, so the Ideas idea [laughs] came about, um, uh, it actually came about from, um, Neville, uh, I wanna say... I'm gonna butcher his last name.
Um, but he has a copywriting course, um, and he, uh, had a newsletter called... He doesn't call this any- call it this anymore, but he called it The Stupid Newsletter.
Um, [laughs] but it was S-T-U-P-I-D, and he had, like, a thing for e- each letter. Mm.
Um, and I thought that was, like, a brilliant idea 'cause I was pretty random in everything that I was doing, and so I thought, "How do I create, like, a random approach to continuing to share ideas but still with some guided, like, guided chaos, if you will?"
And so, uh, I came up with Ideas, you know, 'cause that's what I've been trying to do, share ideas and- What does it... Okay, what does it stand for again?
Yeah, so I for interesting, D for design, E for enchanting, and A for analogy. Now, that has shifted as well. That has warped and changed over, over the last couple years.
Initially, it was D for drawing, A was for app 'cause I would share an app each time. Um, but then I just was like, "Well, maybe just people want to see four visuals," and it would make it easier for me, too.
And, uh, you know, very recently I started adding, like, a recommendation of a book that I'm reading, um, just to kind of add some additional, like, visual interests that's not just my visuals.
And, and yeah, that was, that was really the basis of it.
The, the reason, like, the newsletter was so important to me from early on, and this is one of the few things I understood about social media, is that the people that end up following you will not get your content.
That's just the way it works. Um, and, uh, that is really disheartening, uh, 'cause you're like, "Okay, out of 137,000, 1,000 of those people will probably get every post for sure.
And if they-- those ran- that random group ends up liking it, then maybe it'll expand out."
But that-- even that model has shifted, and the algorithm gods have ch- changed what they wanna do because now it's like even the people that follow you are not gonna get your work unless they've been looking at other visuals, and it's just giving people what more of what they want rather than what the people that they're following.
So the newsletter was a vehicle to help deliver to the people that really are interested in the kind of stuff I'm doing in a more regular basis get that, get that content.
Um, and, and, and so that was, that was kind-- that's been kind of like the mission of the newsletter, I would say, is to, is to share with the people that really want to see the work regularly. Mm-hmm.
Now, I, I used to do it every, uh, week for a period of time, and that was way too intense for me. Um, and so I had to do it every two weeks.
Um, it may impact, uh, engagement to some degree, uh, but I, again, I have to kind of, uh, make the sacrifices that I, that I have to in order to kind of keep the practice going.
It's one of my favorite things, uh, from James Clear, and I, I made a visual about it, um, a few weeks ago, which is, uh, reduce the scope to sustain the habit.And That's good...
that's what I, I, I'll just kind of live by that, you know? It's, it's like it may not be perfect, but I'm doing it. I mean, also, like, to- as we're talking today, Biden signed the, the TikTok ban bills.
I mean, we'll see what happens with that. But exactly, it's like not only can people not find you, but with social media it's like
it's not your au- it's the soc- you know, you're almost like a contractor to the social media platform. Yeah.
Anyways, though, so I know that you have the course, um, but is there any-- are there any other ways that you monetize your work online? Um, yes and no. I mean,
I do, uh, take on clients once in a while, usually authors. Um, I have to say no more regularly than I can accept clients because- You're a busy guy. Well, it, I don't wanna be, be like, "I'm su- I'm super busy."
No, no, not in like a big way, but you have a full-time job and a family. I mean, and, and this is like- Yeah... something you do for yourself too, for fun. Ex- exactly. And I also wanna, um, be...
I'm usually very clear about what it is I'm providing as a, as that service because I don't want somebody to think, okay, they'll hire me to do a visual, and then all of a sudden they're growing-- they're gonna grow their, uh, following to however, whatever many thousand.
It's, uh, that's not the way it works. Like, unless you wanna make a long-term commitment to doing it, uh, it's not gonna move the needle that much.
And if it does, you probably don't want that audience or you, you're not thinking about the kind of audience you're attracting.
Um, it's usually a misunderstanding of why it is that you're doing the thing that you're doing. Um, so there is a lot of... Unfortunately, I, I can't take on, um, that many clients.
I, I like to work with authors because they usually have very well-defined ideas and, um, it's, it's more of a collaboration and it's a lot more fun.
So, so yeah, that, that's usually a, a kind of a privilege to be able to do that, um, when it works out. I have tried doing some sponsorships.
I'm still not too happy with the way it works yet, but I'm, I'm, I'm kind of refining that part of it. Um, I don't have like a, a, a call to action for sponsorships. The boosts have been nice on, on Beehiiv.
Uh, they've, they've been a very small-- they've been a small but significant, um, piece of income that at least helps to pay for itself essentially- Yeah... um, on the scale plan.
And there's also, you know, monetization when it comes to, uh, just the visuals themselves. Um, I don't make it a habit, but when people...
Sometimes people will ask, um, if they can buy, uh, licenses for a group of images. But I don't make it a, like a s- a, a thing that I'm trying to sell. Mm-hmm. Um,
for me, it's like, okay, you can use the visuals as long as you're crediting in a way that is... feels like a genuine credit. Okay. Yeah. Well, so but you, you have the course, which I think you started last fall.
I, uh, you're about to start your fifth cohort next month, and I think it costs $375. Mm-hmm. And, uh, it's... Well, I, I'll let you tell me what it is.
Tell me, tell me about the course, why you started it, and, uh, what that does for you. [lip smacks] Yeah. So, uh, actually it does a number of things.
Um, the first, probably most important, is that it sustains the creative integrity of what I'm doing, because I will say
that if you don't have something outside of followers, connections, whatever you wanna use to measure your success online, subscribers even, you know?
If you don't have something outside of that as a metric of success, then there's a concept in filmmaking called, uh, a visual vacuum. Basically what it is, is y- when you're filming a shot, if you leave empty space,
uh, that's got nothing there, it wants to be filled. So that's why it's called a visual vacuum. So something is going to enter into that space.
That's-- This-- It, it creates this tension, subconscious tension in the audience. And I kinda think of social media in that re- regard.
Like, if you don't have something intentionally thought about to be that substitute for what is your measure of success, then that absence of being intentional is going to default to, how many followers do I have?
How many likes does this post get? How many, uh, people are actually commenting on my post?
And that becomes a really toxic way to look at what you're creating, because then you start to shift what you're creating to what you think is going to get likes.
And having the course became this way for me to, like, focus on helping students who are in my course as,
as my primary mission, and the visuals that I'm creating is a way to attract people who are interested in that stuff. And also, it continues to demonstrate, like, I'm not creating visuals about visuals.
Like, I'm not writing about writing, you know? Like, I don't know. Mm-hmm. There's a nich- a n-niche of people that, you know, all they do is write about writing.
And there's nothing wrong with that, but I wanna show that I'm creating visuals about things I'm interested in, and people who are interested in about, about creating visuals that they're int- about things that they're interested in are gonna see me doing that, living what I'm saying.
And so that is ki- that becomes the purpose of what I'm doing online. Mm-hmm. Instead of, you know, doing-- getting likes for the, for the, for just status. Yeah. And it-- The, the really cool thing about doing it too is
it feeds into my teaching ability. It's like as I'm-Thinking of visual metaphors to explain concepts, it's helped me become a better teacher in just my day job as well- That's amazing...
as a, as a film teacher and an animation teacher because there are concepts that you think, oh, you don't just wanna teach the concept itself, you wanna teach the thinking behind the concept.
Before I was just teaching the concept, now I can teach why, uh, that is because I'm using metaphors, uh, to c- explain ideas. It's essentially there's-- I've always believed there's two ways to
explain the unfamiliar in a familiar way: storytelling and visual metaphors or metaphors in general. So, uh, it's, it's like they've been working together, [chuckles]
uh, my, my teaching online and my daily teaching in class, uh, they've been working together to kind of help me become a better teacher.
And, and, and another added additional side effect to that, um, a beneficial side effect is that I can also tell other teachers that you can do this too. Like you're not, [lip smacks] um...
It's not just you don't have to have an animation or film background. Um, I didn't have an illustration background, which is very different- Mm-hmm... than what I do in the classroom.
I just-- And if you look at my earliest work, it looks very different than what it does today. It did. There's way more words in it, too. It's way less streamlined and polished. Yeah, absolutely.
And I, uh, I share my first 50 visuals with my students in the course, um, and, and I say, "Look at how these look. They do not look anything like the way they look now."
And it's just to say you have to trust the process. You know, one of my earliest blogs,
uh, blog posts [chuckles] going back t-the, the trust the process post, that third post that you, that you pointed to, that was about this whole thing.
And, um, you know, it, that initial post was about playing the guitar. [lip smacks] And, uh, I remember when I first learned how to play the guitar, I, uh, I was like, "All right, E chord."
I don't know if you've played a guitar, but I'm like, "E chord, no problem. C chord, no problem." And then I got to the G chord, and I was like, "What the hell is this?" Like, my fingers...
It was the first time I've ever come to a physical limitation and I was like, "How the heck are my fingers ever going to make this shape with pressure to make this sound?" And I just, for some reason,
I kept thinking, and I trusted. I couldn't see any progress happening. Day to day, I kept trying to do that freaking G chord and, uh, it was no sound, no sound, no sound. Day to day my fingers hurt.
But over time, one day, brring. It's just like- [laughs]... it actually sounded out and I was like, "Oh, whoa!" And it was the first time that I had real proof that just because you can't see
the progress that you're making doesn't mean that you're not making progress. And I think with visuals it's the same way.
You-- And it's, it's tough because we are painfully aware when our images don't look like what we want them to look like. Mm-hmm.
Whereas writing, if you're writing, you're like, you can't really tell if your writing isn't, you know, perfect. Uh, but your visuals become just like sup- you're super aware.
So you really have to fight through that frustration barrier early on to, to like, "Okay, I know I will get better.
I know I'm gonna m- by making these freaking shape on my fingers, I know over time that this is gonna sound like music. Just right now it sounds like crap."
And so, [chuckles] so it's just, it's just one of those things you have to kind of trust.
But going back to the course, it was one of those things that, um, I think it just, it gave me, one, a monetization vehicle, which is great. Um, but more importantly- And one that you felt really good about. Yeah.
More importantly, I like, I feel really good about what I'm doing in the class, and I think, uh, uh, from all the reviews and all the, um, students I've, I've taught, uh, I,
I try to demonstrate like a real teacher would, 'cause I've taken courses from other people as well online, and not everyone has that much integrity in the courses.
Um, but you know, I try to stick around in Q&As every day, uh, ev- after every live session until no one's got any questions left, you know? And
I, I wanna make sure that people who are in the course are actually getting time with me to... Because I've taken courses where I've like, I've never talked to the teacher. And- Yeah...
again, like $500 for me w- is, is a lot for a course. So, you know, it's, it's one of those things where it's like, all right, $375, you know, uh, this will be, this might be the last time I, I actually have it at $375.
I've expanded the course significantly since I started teaching the course. It's, um... [lip smacks] And that's one of the benefits of doing cohorts, and it's like the speed of iteration- Mm-hmm...
is like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I read, I read in your reviews that one guy said he'd done all four cohorts, which is- [chuckles]... amazing to me, and like tells me that...
I mean, again, you've been teaching for 20 years. Like I, I'm naturally skeptical of most online courses. I think most oft- a lot of them are, you know, to get a quick buck. Plenty of good ones out there to be sure.
Um, but I, like with you, it's like obviously it's a good course. Like you've been teaching for half your life, [chuckles] like, you know? Um, so I really respect that.
You've been doing this now for two and a half years and I think you've found that clearly. But, um, two and a half years from now, are you still doing it? And if so, what does it look like? Yeah, I, I hope so.
Uh, two and a half years from now, if AI hasn't taken over and, uh, [chuckles] and, and somehow we're still all here, um, [chuckles] That sounds very cynical and not even my nature.
Uh, but no, two and a half years, what... I, I hope I'm still doing this. Um, I hope to some degree to also, um, have expanded into, um, YouTube in some respects.
I think there's- Start flexing some of your animation skills even. Yeah. Uh, I'd love to be able to do some of that, and additionally, I'd love for the course to have, um, really kind of brought in more creators, uh,
into the space that are also passionate about having this daily creative practice. Um, you know, it's, it-- there's something kind of corny about it, but I...
If I had to articulate my mission, and I've, I've shared this with some of the other visual creators like Hannah Wilson and, um, Michael J.
Borman, um, who I, I talk to regularly, um, that if I had to distill down the mission of Milani Creative is to encourage people to have a daily creative practice to make the world a more creative place.
And that would be lovely to see in two and a half years.
I would love to see the students that are taking my course now to, to be where I'm at today, and to see that they're finding fulfillment not in necessarily the getting caught up in the,
i-in, in the- Likes and subscribes... dopamine hits. Right. Yeah. The dopamine hits. Which again, you, you need a little bit of that, but you wanna make sure to temper it with, um, other things.
It's part of the recipe, but it's not the cake. Right. [chuckles] Exactly. Exactly. I like that. It's a good metaphor in there, I think. [chuckles] I also... Big metaphor fan, me. [chuckles] Awesome.
So thank you for joining me. Thank you to the listener for sticking around to the end. Um, and PJ, where should people find you? You can find me at Milani Creative on all, uh, on, well, on Instagram and Twitter.
You can find me at Pejman Milani on LinkedIn. Uh, you can also find me at my newsletter, uh, The Visual Ideas on Beehiiv. Definitely say hello. Um, don't be a stranger. Be sure to DM me. I do respond.
So, um, maybe, maybe not quickly, but I will. [chuckles] I respect that. Responds to all his own stuff.
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