Standout Creatives: Business, marketing, and creativity tips for solopreneurs launching their ideas
Feel stuck in the endless juggle of running a creative business? I'm Kevin Chung, your creative business host, and this podcast is your guide to thriving without losing your spark. This podcast is for you if you find yourself asking questions like: - Are you juggling creative work and the demands of running a business? - Do you feel overwhelmed by launching a product or course? - Struggling to find a marketing strategy that feels authentic to you? - Looking for ways to grow without burning out? - Wondering how to balance business success with your creative passion? Each episode...
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I Shelved This Book for Ten Years. Here's Why I Finally Finished It.
<p>What if the project you abandoned years ago wasn’t dead? What if it was just waiting for the right moment to come back?</p><p>I wrote the first version of We Are All Creative almost ten years ago. I was running a blog and podcast for artists and creatives at the time. Then life happened, the way it does, and the manuscript sat untouched on my hard drive for most of a decade.</p><p>This year, I finally brought it back. My friend Stephanie Graham, host of the noseyAF podcast, sat down with me to talk th...
Standout Reinventions: She Buried Her Best Friend, Broke Down, and Became a Kindergarten Teacher in Costa Rica. Grace Grossmann's Many Reinventions
<p>What if the version of yourself you keep trying to get back to was never the one you were supposed to become?</p><p>Grace Grossmann has lived in England, Spain, Germany, and now Costa Rica. She’s been a journalist-in-training, a freelance writer, a yoga teacher for nine years, a well-being coach, and a kindergarten teacher.</p><p>She self-published Chill Out and Cheer Up: A Ten-Step Guide, a book she wrote while grieving her best friend. She then sat on it for four years because her inner critic wouldn’t let her release it. She finally did it f...
36: Why Every Big Dream Needs a Pilot First with Darnell Brown
<p>What if the thing keeping your idea stuck isn’t a lack of money, connections, or credibility? </p><p>What if it’s just that you’re aiming for the finished version before you’ve made the pilot?</p><p>Darnell Brown calls himself a multi-passionate creative polymath, and after 18 years in branding, design, and storytelling, he’s earned the title. He helps non-creatives find their voice through design, and runs Forge, a community for multi-passionate entrepreneurs who want to grow their impact without abandoning what makes them them.</p><p>In this conversation, Darnell traces his path from drawing su...
Standout Authors: They Lost Everything in Hurricane Maria. The Book Survived Anyway. Migdy and Clau's Author Journey.
<p>What if you lost almost everything, except the one thing you were building?</p><p>Migdalia Sanchez and Claudio Soriano (aka Migdy and Clau), didn’t set out to become authors. Migdy is a professional counselor and life coach. Clau has a background in electrical and process engineering. Both spent twenty years mentoring young adults, first as volunteers, then as certified life coaches, long before either of them thought about putting any of it into a book.</p><p>Then came a workshop, a hurricane, a decade of writing, and a 450-page manuscript that had to be split in tw...
35: Why Creative Business Coach Christi Johnson Says Your Business Should Feel Like Play
<p></p><p>What if the thing standing between you and your best work isn't a strategy problem? It's a permission problem.</p><p>Christi Johnson spent ten years as a wedding photographer, earned a master’s degree in piano performance, and later burned out so badly as an online business manager that she stopped sleeping and had to shut her business down for six months.</p><p>Now she runs the Dream Biz Playground, teaching creative and neurodivergent entrepreneurs to build businesses through creative play instead of hustle.</p><p>In this conversation, Christi walks through what her crash an...
Standout Authors: She Couldn't Type Her Book, So She Spoke It Instead: Tiffany Yu's Author Journey
<p>What if the tool everyone else uses isn’t the only way in?</p><p>Tiffany Yu is the author of The Anti-Ableist Manifesto and the founder of Diversability, an organization she built to help disabled people move through what she calls their shame-to-pride transformation.</p><p>She was in a car accident at nine years old where her arm became permanently paralyzed. And she lived a decade feeling like there was no community built for someone like her. So she built one.</p><p>In this conversation, Tiffany talks about how a literary agent found her through a fi...
Standout Reinventions: She Burned It All Down. More Than Once. Bridget Baker's Many Reinventions
<p>What happens when the thing that defined you for most of your life suddenly isn't yours anymore?</p><p>Bridget Baker has reinvented herself so many times she’s started to consider herself an expert in it. Her reinvention journey spans a car accident at 21, a Las Vegas tiger show, five years in a travel trailer, and a writing group she started on a whim that’s almost two years old.</p><p>She’s a brand and website designer, a creative coach, and the host of a brand new podcast, The Deep Dig. But before all of that, she wa...
34: She Never Planned to Write a Book. Now She's Published Twenty-Four. Cathy Derksen's Author Journey.
<p>What if the book you never planned to write became the business you were always meant to build?</p><p>Cathy Derksen didn’t grow up wanting to be an author. She wasn’t a writer. She’s dyslexic. Books weren’t even on her radar, let alone publishing them. But somewhere between a divorce, a career change, two teenagers, and a quiet voice she couldn’t ignore — she ended up in a book. Then another. Then she started making them herself.</p><p>Today Cathy has contributed to twenty-four anthologies and created ten multi-author books of her own, giving over...
33: Why Children's Book Illustrator Melquea Smith Ditched the Lone Wolf Creative Myth
<p>What if the secret to creative success isn’t your portfolio... but your people?</p><p>Melquea Smith is a children’s book illustrator and artist who creates clip art of black and brown kids.</p><p>Her journey from side-hustling artist to full-time creative is built on one foundational truth: community changes everything.</p><p>In this conversation, Melquea shares why the lone genius myth is killing creative careers, how she’s learned to create her own luck through intentional relationship-building, and what it really takes to survive the marathon of creative entrepreneurship when patience is basically a requir...
Standout Authors: How an Illness and Forced Rest Unlocked a Hidden Creative Gift with Maya Sarin
<p>What if your biggest breakdown became your creative breakthrough?</p><p>Maya Sarin didn’t plan to become a poet.</p><p>Her journey began in beauty marketing. And she wrote consistently but never quite found her voice.</p><p>Then illness forced everything to stop.</p><p>In that stillness, something changed. Poetry emerged from fragments. Healing became creation. And the beginnings of her book were born.</p><p>In this conversation, Maya shares how trauma reshaped her relationship with creativity, why she learned to collaborate with the divine instead of forcing inspiration, and what it really takes to...
