Overcoming Stress, Anxiety w/ Artist Kyle T Webster (Good Human)

i'm wound up so tightly that not to get into this in too much detail but i've actually suffered from a host of really bad physical ailments the last few years because of this and so i'm actually working harder than ever to to calm down and uh it's funny that you said you seemed like a chill guy because i was in a meeting with um the chief product officer at adobe when we were getting ready for max one year and everybody was in there was getting down to the wire and he goes gosh how do you you stay so calm and you look so relaxed through all this and that you have to get up there and present and i i said yeah you don't see me having panic attacks you know backstage five minutes before i go on and do this um nobody sees that but i am absolutely freaking out all the time i just wear a really good mask i'd like to just go there for a second because as a public speaker as an introvert as a super shy and awkward person myself i have similar you know the the pre-talk talk with myself because i'm freaking out backstage and as much as your public figure take us backstage tell us what it's like 10 15 minutes before you're actually on stage i'm my hands are sweating um i'm pacing a lot uh i've got a lot of nervous energy um i feel like i could sometimes i even feel like i could pass out at any minute um i just yeah and then the thing that happens is uh i was in theater in high school i loved acting and i was the same way but then the moment you're on stage the electricity the the crowd the the feeling of um being in that moment and being in action so to speak just takes over my body and then i'm really comfortable and really happy and i really enjoy that part of it the lead up the build up is always just terrible um so the backstage for me is me trying desperately not to completely fall apart before i make it onto stage um and that goes for like lots of big moments in my life where i know that something's riding on it but i'm sure i don't know if you're the same way chris but what i do is i build it up in my brain to be much bigger than it really is because we all know going and talking in front of a crowd is not as important as you know um taking care of your family or you know these these things everything falls out of whack with regards to perspective and so i try and try and talk myself down and be like hey this isn't the big deal if you screw up you screw up there'll be other opportunities your children will still love you after this yeah they don't care they don't care about anything i do that is the way okay so take me through some if you may if you if you don't mind um take me through some of the dark thoughts you're having you told me the conditions your your hands are clammy you feel like you're gonna pass out what are you telling yourself before you calm your mind and get on stage a lot of what happens is i go through worst case scenarios that are really unrealistic i future trip and i imagine something completely unrealistic happening where i completely forget everything i was gonna talk about or i just get frozen and cannot i literally cannot speak and cannot move through it or maybe if i'm doing some kind of demonstration for adobe like on the mac stage i think the ipad's going to crash and i'm not going to be able to recover and i have to stand there and just stutter and mumble and not be able to get through it and these are the kinds of things i envision which anybody who coaches people in public speaking tells you is the opposite of what you should be doing right you know but it's just kind of i think what i do and i sometimes wonder if some of that comes out of um what motivates me as an entrepreneur to continue to make things and build and to stay quote unquote relevant which is a lot of that's actually motivated by fear um i think if i don't work and if i don't stay successful you know my family's going to starve i just immediately jumped to the absolute worst case scenario which is just not healthy yeah it's not take me back then as a child because you mentioned theater so it's not all that coming together for me because as a person myself speaking uh just speaking for myself the signing up for theater would be the last thing i would want to do to be in front of people so is there something that predates like when you're much younger where you did have this thing where you're called out in public and you froze and that's kind of lived you know that's stuck with you gosh that's a good question um i i don't remember that happening no it's funny that um that you mentioned that because normally these things you know you have some evidence to call on of something having gone wrong in the past and so that will inform how you're thinking about it happening in the future but um no i i had i had really good experiences with with quote unquote public speaking i guess um you know which is made in the form it was theater and oral interpretation i did a traveling oral interpretation competition and um other things and i i liked that stuff i guess as you get older things just intensify so what was in high school like butterflies in my stomach grew into in my 30s and 40s you know crippling stomach pain and and you know bad health problems so i think that's what happens is everything just grows in intensity and gets bigger so um but i'm actually much better now i mean i've really learned it's a lot of tricks for helping and i'm happy to share those tricks with anybody who wants to know about them because i know there are people out there who suffer from anxiety and from public speaking issues and whatever so yeah i'd love to hear about them so it sounds to me like you were a strange like late bloomer when it came to the fear of public speaking because you're okay as a kid and then as an adult you're like hey i'm more aware of the world there's a lot of things that could go wrong maybe yeah when when you you know i think the other problem is too um when you're starting out so like the first couple of lectures i gave at universities where i'd go and talk about illustration i wasn't that nervous because i wasn't really that well known or anything um and then you know how it goes like more and more people start to invite you to do things and you start to think oh well um i really better not let them down because they're expecting something great so then the expectations you put on yourself is different from when you were younger so now if somebody does invite me to go do a thing i have to talk myself out of believing that they're expecting me to really wow them and and blow them away in some way or tell them something you'd never heard before and what i tell myself instead is if i tell them just one thing one little nugget that they can take away they haven't heard before i've done my job that's all that's all people can really remember anyway you know what else do you do what else do i do um so i do breathing i really really concentrate on breathing um and i do different breathing exercises um and i now have started incorporating and this comes out of a thing i was doing as a as a service i guess you'd call it i was doing meditative drawing workshops through the aiga and through a couple of other organizations and helping people to use drawing as a way to calm down and i was really astonished that i wasn't doing it for myself it was so silly that i was offering this to others and that not taking advantage of it myself and so the last time i got uh nervous about something i had to do the the apple event in september last year and i the morning i woke up in the hotel i was just freaking out about going there and filming it uh and i was in the process of building this this app that i'm working on called lines of zen which is a meditative drawing app so i actually sat and did my own exercises for about 15 minutes and totally calmed myself down and i just felt kind of stupid after that because i was like why am i promoting and preaching all this stuff and then not actually practicing it so although i think a lot of us are guilty of that you know and i don't know about you but exercise for me is always great but it's not something i can always fit in right before a talk so what do you do to stay healthy and fit so right now what i do and this is going to sound very not so impressive but i take daily walks and i find that just like an hour long walk every day is enough to really settle things um i was jogging for a while like i'm dealing with some some knee injuries right now so i'm just gonna work around that but when i get back to jogging i think jogging even just for 20 minutes is phenomenal or any kind of aerobic exercise like that and i play tennis i'm a huge tennis fan love it my wife would love you she wants me to play tennis with her but i'm so bad at it i just try to power the ball and it just goes out the corner i don't have that flick at the end that's so funny we have the inverse thing here because i want my wife to play tennis and she's always resisted but guess what she's taking her first lesson this friday so i'm so excited that maybe maybe in the future it's gonna happen i know a lot of people who love tennis say this is a sport you can play for all of your life yeah because we see young people and we see really old people on the court yeah it's not too demanding on your body but it's really great for hand eye coordination and keeping you moving so if your wife doesn't get great the next time we cross paths i'll bring my wife you and we'll just you guys will get together and your wife and i will hang out and just watch that sounds like the perfect arrangement yes and i'll just say too about tennis it's a social sport which i love so i i spent half as much time on the court talking to the person i'm playing with i do hitting the ball yeah so it's like a nice way to have friends and have relationships that's wonderful yeah okay so i'd like to circle back because um you said something which really resonated with me that when you do a talk whether it's five minutes 10 minutes or 40 minutes or however long it is the human mind can only process so much but there's at least for me this tendency to want to over deliver i used to tell myself if somebody paid 500 to attend a multi-day conference it was my sole responsibility to deliver at least 500 of value no matter what and of course that starts to stress you out and you start putting so many things into your presentation that it just becomes overwhelming for people or do you do this yourself like yeah i gotta give so much value no i mean it's when you're what everything you're saying is just you know echoing through my head like uh it's my own voice because i i do exactly the same thing i think well this whole conference is riding on me kicking butt and what a joke and i really overdid it one time and i learned my lesson i tried to do too much i did a presentation a few years ago at icon the illustration conference where i i covered way too much ground and i even ended it with a guitar song and i also had a special guest a friend of mine come up and do a little comedy bit and it was just all too much to organize to keep to keep straight it it became discombobulated and i i came off the stage and thought that was just such a mess of stuff and so since then i've really focused on narrowing it down to maybe two or three things that i think these are the things i want them to walk away with and i make sure and reiterate those things a couple of times and i keep coming back to them circling back to them so that they're really really clear um and that just also takes the pressure off me because then i feel like as long as i deliver on those two two messages or whatever i've done my job and um the other thing too is i remember being in the audience at a lot of these things and like i start to zone out when it's too much you know but when somebody stays focused and they and they're really concise and they get off the stage when it's time i i'm remembering it more fondly so i try and be that guy yeah it's it's a paradox of sorts like we want to give value so we try to put more in it but by putting more in it we confuse the audience and it's so much for them to process then their circuits get fried and it's a it's an instinct that we have to really fight at least for me i'm still struggling through this because my wife will be there she's like no matter how much time they give you you always be jamming so much in there and rushing at the end can you just start editing things out so in the last year i think i've started doing a better job where i'll jam it so with so much stuff in about two days before i'll just start deleting stuff saying like that's not necessary that's a tangent we don't really need that and then i strip it down a little bit it's still not great but i'm working towards it i like that what you said about right before starting to pull stuff out i think that's sometimes what's needed is a little time between when you've actually finished preparing it and then you let it sit for a minute you come back it you know it marinates you come back to it and go oh this is redundant this is redundant this is redundant and yeah it's getting to the essence of it i think john cleese talked about that once in his with writing skits and sketches and just trimming the fat and um yeah editing is always a huge part of the process that i sometimes overlook and need to spend more time with yeah i find that if i over prepare it helps to quell my insecurities about this is not enough and then moments before by editing it out and saying okay really this is what matters and i i think people are going to be good with this i'd like to share something that my friend joe pilger told me one time prior to me going on stage the night before he said you know the best advice he got from somebody who who was a mentor of his he said you know we're always busy trying to give people our top shelf stuff and so we're reaching and it's a stretch for us and it creates a lot of anxiety and stress he says just give him your middle or even your bottom shelf stuff because even that people just love and gobble up and so that kind of put my mind at ease i'm like you're right it's always like i want to do the the best job possible be the best version of myself this is the newest greatest latest thing and causes so much stress for me but i i kind of hear those words echo in my mind every time i start to stress out that's really smart um that's wisdom right there and i i don't know who it was uh but you're calling to mind something i had a conversation with somebody that was similar where what they told me was a lot of the things that i take for granted as obvious are news to a lot of people and so i think that relates to what you're saying where instead of me trying to find that amazing new thing that even i hadn't known or discovered yet tell them what you already know that to you just is something that's become habit or whatever um and it could be a completely new piece of information or a new inspiring idea for them um i think that's really important too that stuff matters it's just that we sort of forget it because we've been doing it for a while yeah i think it's a form of cognitive bias it's what is it called um something the cursive uh knowledge where you've learned it you've figured it out and then you forgot that there's one at one point in your life you didn't know this stuff and then you don't want to teach it because it's like duh doesn't everybody know this and it turns out no yeah yeah that's that's really important and i'm i'm so glad we're having this conversation because i know i'm gonna have to do more public speaking next year when things are opening up and opening it up and i'm gonna keep all this in mind i'm sort of rusty so prior to the pandemic uh while we stay on this theme here public speaking in a given year how many times were you giving talks well actually before joining adobe i was doing it more um because i was more sort of representing my brand kyle brush these brushes i built and also just my my work as an illustrator um and i guess i would go it wasn't that much maybe like eight to ten times a year either at schools or conferences so certainly not as much as as someone like yourself i would imagine or um people who really get out there and and um make a name with with doing that kind of work and and so how have you adjusted during the last two plus years under lockdown i've done a few little speaking things and they were remote of course so um i found that i didn't enjoy it very much um it's just not the same you don't get anything back from the audience um everyone's unmute or whatever and can't see really you can't feel that energy of a room full of humans um and then also you're missing the after talk where after the talk you can you can talk to a few people who come up afterwards and have more questions for you and you can help them out more with you can be specific you know they have you never know if you're covering everything people want when you speak and it's great to have q a and then to have even a smaller q a afterwards where you feel like it can really laser focus on one person's question and help them out in some way so i miss all of that i feel like we're the same person sometimes when you're speaking you know what i have to say this i've not heard anybody else say it exactly what you said that so speaks to my soul what people don't realize like oh they just assume you make youtube videos you do public speaking so zoom calls the zoom call right no you're exactly right here's what you said no energy back it is a draining process you're just speaking it's a camera there's almost no feedback because you can't even see people's faces or they're they're muted most of the time for me the work is a talk the reward is what you call the after talk like i want to meet people yeah i'm a shy weird guy so after i do the talk it breaks the ice and people are brave enough to come up and talk to me that takes a lot of pressure off me and i really want to talk to them and get the feedback like what's going on did you like this what didn't work for you where were you confused and that's really helpful for me and that's how i re-energize yeah i'm feeling what you're saying yeah the interesting thing is with public speaking in person i would always come away from it feeling energized feeling pumped like i would feel like i could just go race you know like i could run i was just high you know now with the zoom calls i would literally turn off the machine and then go flop down on the couch and just feel kind of drained and exhausted like what you said and that so interesting how that's the same you're doing the same thing but in a different environment and so the end result is either feeling energized or feeling exhausted it's really weird isn't it and i don't know i'm gonna guess are you an introvert i'm such i cannot figure that out great question because i i seem to bounce between being really really wanting to be by myself and be left alone and have my own time and do my my little projects and hobbies and things but then suddenly going the other way and craving uh a crowded room full of people to have interesting conversations with and i yeah i don't know what that is so what am i i don't know you and i again i think we might be the same person because there's extroverts and there's introverts and there's something i think in between called an ambivert where we're on the spectrum you know like you tip the scale one way or the other and it's not by choice but we can float and it's kind of interesting i always thought myself as an introvert i've taken tests but it's interesting because i take some online tests and the score puts me like within five points away from being an extrovert yeah interesting i've never taken those tests i should take some just to see what they what they say about me um but yeah that's how i feel it's it's really split down the middle yeah you know what i realized we just jumped cold into the conversation there are some people who might recognize your voice because i think you have a pretty distinct voice but in case somebody doesn't know you can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you well i i am an illustrator first i think i like to draw that's really what makes me happy and i started out as a web designer just because i needed a job after school and i was terrified of leaping out and figuring out how to make a living drawing but i fortunately was laid off and then got a design job working at a design firm and that was my that was my real education because i got a chance to learn the business of you know image making for clients you know commercial work etc pricing all those important things and then i started my own business as an illustrator four years later i ran that business for about uh 12 years um and in that time i created a really big number of photoshop brushes for my own purposes because i like to work in a lot of different styles and we can talk about this later but one of the things that always bugged me that's quote unquote conventional wisdom about illustration is that you should have this really distinct style and stick with it i went completely the opposite direction and sort of marketed myself as sort of like an agency where i could just work in any style that best suited the voice of the the campaign i was working on or whatever project right in order to do that i needed different tools and so i've created a bunch of brushes that have different feels to them and what wound up happening was through a friend's recommendation i started selling them and that actually became my primary business um through a lot of luck and timing but also a ton of effort and work and and experimentation to make it into this sort of leading brand for photoshop brushes uh called kyle brush and eventually i was able to bring that brand to the attention of some people at adobe and eventually this is we could talk about this too but it was a quite an amazing process getting from selling one little brush pack to adobe acquiring the library of brushes and then bringing me on as an aqua hire so um that all happened in 2000 late 2017 and so now i work at adobe and i i bounce around i'm sort of a floating asset working on anything having to do with drawing and painting um and i also work as an evangelist teaching uh drawing and painting and illustration concepts and techniques and all that kind of stuff through adobe live which is free to everybody hundreds of thousands of hours of stuff and i'm really happy to do that it's really fun uh so that's that's what i do now i still draw and i still you know occasionally do client work but i i limit that now to um very few projects per year i hope that was a good summary there's a lot of information i didn't cover but no that was perfect that allows me to kind of go and chair pick a few things to kind of draw out i wanted to ask you first uh getting out of school you said there was some insecurity you're not quite ready to go off on your own you got a job doing web design and ultimately it was laid off which was probably a blessing for you kind of emotionally like how was your self-confidence when when you were laid off how did you feel about that you know it's funny i look back on that time and i remember feeling relieved because i was so unhappy not doing the thing i liked in every meeting in that web design company and these were lovely people i mean i they're great people but i was just every day dreading going to work and having to sit and code when what i wanted to do was be drawing and so in meetings i was just drawing batman and you know um i i when i got laid off i knew that i could go get another web design job right away because this was like a 2001 when there were just a builds alien web design jobs right um so what i did instead was i created a mock portfolio of illustration work for brands like nike and um you know lee and or levi's and i did a bunch of things that i these were not really my clients but i created fake projects for them and i shopped that portfolio around and i was transparent with people if they asked did you do this for nike i said no but it didn't matter because my point was that what i was trying to do is show them i could do good work and i wound up getting a lot of freelance illustration jobs for about three months before i got hired at the design firm and um i learned from that that like all that pressure i'd put on myself before to like go out and get this kind of work for real and stuff was garbage i just had to show people my potential and show them i could do the work and they would trust me to then do that work for them so it really paid off and it i i was it was really a great lesson um so yeah then i went into drawing so the insecurity when i left school was just first of all i think it was i didn't know because i didn't have any business education i went to a fine art program i literally just drew naked people for four years i was like how do i parlay that into a career so web design i taught myself html senior year of college just just on the side because i knew i could get a job doing it um and i was kind of fascinated by it it was kind of fun but then the moment you're actually doing it as a job and you're literally pricing like doing pricing for mattresses which is one of our clients it was a mattress company i was like this stinks so i was glad to be laid off but i'm riddled with insecurities uh if you want to talk about those you're like how long's this called yeah okay i want to peel back some of the layers and some of the meaning especially for people who are in the job market right now i i love the way you explain that story because sometimes things are not meant to be and the universe is telling you this is not for you could you imagine if they didn't lay you off and you're just like oh i just hate work i hate my life but i still show up because these are like golden hand cows for a little while you just go to work and you and they did you the biggest favor but then that point you in a different direction which probably gave you enough courage to say you know what i'm gonna now do something that i love and there some people are questioning this practice of doing spec work to build a spec portfolio of things that you like and you love as a demonstration of your skills not to say i've worked with these people it's a wonderful way for you to open doors and have conversations with people and i i don't know why some people frown on this but if you're in a space right now where you don't have the work that you want to do whether you're an independent person or working for a company show them what you love to do put in your own time invest in that and then hopefully if it's if it's good people will start to notice and doors will open yes so i love that that block portfolio led you to the design job which then oddly opened the doors for you to learn all the business side of things it was the perfect time to to learn that because i was i had some skills at that point but i didn't know how best to employ them and how to turn them into you know money and watching the design partners who were my employers watching them navigate all that watching them negotiate with with stuff and get new work and and talk to clients and just i was it was so great to be sitting right there and watch them do all that stuff because i just took i just you know through osmosis it all just sunk in and when i started my own illustration business i really got off on a good foot from day one with contracts and with things like that and you know not getting taken advantage of as much as possible i still had to learn a few things um but it was really cool to to have that that knowledge um i didn't feel like i was starting cold and i had been of course doing a lot of illustration work on the side at that point when i finally did quit my job and been slowly building up my business at night you know i never took any risks that weren't calculated or weren't fairly well considered you know i i i always was like i'm gonna do this thing but i'm gonna get myself pretty well prepared um you know so i'm just not a huge risk taker uh a lot of people have i've talked you know before in interviews and things they're like how did you have the courage to leave your job i'm like well i waited three years while i was building up another business i didn't just say bye and then you know start from scratch did they invite you into these conversations where you got to witness them doing the bidding and process yeah thing yeah yeah what was uh what's cool is it was only seven people it was a really nice small firm but we did so much great work in fact we were the agency of record for krispy kreme donuts and at the time krispy kreme just got a new ceo and they wanted to shift directions with their their materials to be more illustration-centric um and so that was perfect because i was the only person at the company at the time who was like sort of an in-house illustrator so i got so much of that work and i got to sit in all the meetings with the ceo and listen to my uh my bosses talk about the projects and um so yeah i was always there in the room when these things were happening and it was it was great and i actually have to thank one of them um one of my the partners john walker he was the one who encouraged me to submit an illustration to the society of illustrators for the very first time i hadn't even know what the society literature was remember i was a fine art major so illustration to me was kind of a really mysterious thing and i submitted an illustration of jack black and it got accepted so i got to go to the society of illustrators in new york for the opening and that's where i met my people like the moment i walked in that room i was like oh my gosh this is all this is what i want to do with my life and so that lit that spark of just i've got to figure out how to become an illustrator for real and that that's when i started like sending stuff out and getting small jobs on the side and really kicked it off so it was all thanks to that guy there's so many things i want to follow up with you on one is what what advice would you have for someone who's in a company but isn't invited or allowed to witness some of the business going on so they they never they never learn that skill like how can we put ourselves in a position where we can be exposed to that kind of stuff yeah i would just say ask because um i know it sounds obvious but the thing is i've gotten so many opportunities in my life and i've moved my life forward career-wise simply by asking can i be involved in this and just asking permission um and also by finding like ways around things so you know there are sort of gatekeepers that we talk about all the time and if you can find a side door you know so if there's somebody else who is in that meeting who is at your level just talk to them then start with that person be like hey what was it like in there would you guys learn would you talk about i want to know more about that but um but also i really i really do believe that uh employers you know in these kinds of places if someone comes to them with any interest in something they're excited to know that you care and that you're passionate about it and that you're you're curious rather than just a a drone coming to work every day and and doing what's required of you um you know i certainly i come alive and i get excited when a student comes to me and asks me a question i'm just like oh thank god somebody wants to learn you know it's like so exciting so i probably tell them more than they want to know because i'm excited so i feel like if your employer doesn't do that it's also possible you're not in a good place like what do they have to keep secret why are they hiding this from you you're you're all working on the same team why wouldn't they why wouldn't they want you to know how this works it's weird i think probably insecurity and just general suspicion of why people want to know certain things yeah i guess you're right if they if they think oh they're gonna they're out for my job or something but yeah or oh you want to know about what we charge so they can ask for more money or something like that oh yeah gosh i don't think about that stuff i mean i i really just ask and i i can't think of any time when i was just outright rejected um maybe there have been times but i've probably just just forgotten them or blocked them out um can i tell you a quick story about that because i think it's relevant to this you know when i was trying to work for the bigger publications like the new yorker and entertainment weekly and things like that back in the day i would i wouldn't be able to get in touch with the art director but i knew their names and so what i finally did one day i just said forget it i'm going to do this i called the main switchboard at entertainmentweekly and i just said to the person who answered hi i was cut off with uh what's his name the art director could you please reconnect me and she did and then i was i had him on the phone i knew i only had 10 seconds i was like hey this is my name this is my website and i'm really good at drawing likenesses of celebrities whatever give me a call if you got a job and um on the phone that moment he's like hey guess what uh an artist just dropped a gig we have four portraits for a movie review coming out can you do them this week and i said yep and that was it then i started working regularly with them and so i used that trick with several other publications just call the main switchboard say i was disconnected and the reason i realized it worked was i put myself in the position of the person answering the phone and i thought who is the person sitting in this massive building answering phones why are they going to police the situation they just want they want to get the phone call over with so they can go back to sudoku or whatever you know you're not you're not you're not getting training on a job like that to be like don't answer the don't connect people to the art directors especially not the art directors nobody cares about them sad to say but you know that's just the way it is so i think there are ways around these things you can be a little you can tell white lies and you can nobody gets hurt but you can move your the ball forward that's a really good trick you got there that takes a lot of moxie by the way to fabricate a little story so you can get on the phone and also to be able to pitch yourself in 30 seconds what what did you feel in that moment the very first time you did that where that art director said hey i got a thing what's going on in your mind i couldn't believe it first like when i got through i just thought okay this is it this is my moment but the fact that i actually got a job out of it was just um i mean i hung up and immediately ran downstairs and told my wife i was like you will never believe what just happened um and i was just thrilled i was so excited but then i also i think when i calmed down i i started to realize you know and this is something i've realized year after year after year more and more is not to be afraid of people um if you know people we get intimidated when we think we have to talk to somebody who's in a position of of power so to speak or they're doing something we consider to be more important than whatever it was we're doing but you really have to try and remember that they are just the same as they're just a person just like you they have a different job um but they're not a monster they're not there to like say how dare you call me right now and interrupt my very busy day you know uh i think there are probably some people who are more like that but i think that they are the problem i think they've made themselves believe that they're so important and honestly i don't really want to deal with people like that you know yeah the day the day i feel like i'm too important to talk to a high school kid who has a question about drawing i may as well just retire you know then i'd become a monster so after this episode high school students all over the world they're going to reach out to kyle t webster and that'll be the end of your free time well it depends on how they reach out that's another topic of conversation but i mean i do get emails from people that start with yo dude and i don't read them right i know that sounds mean but honestly i do think you should approach people with respect and you know you know that their time is valuable so you know show them that you know that but then you're fine so that first gig where they said yes and i got something did you guys talk about price on the spot or when you ran downstairs did you already know what you're doing these illustrations for price wise no i did not um i went ahead and waited for the email with the budget and what i learned from leo espinosa who's a illustrator who i love was one time early on in my career he told me he's like whatever the job is start by asking for more and that's what i always did so whatever the budget was i would just say can you do it for this amount i never once had somebody say no how dare you no more job for you they would either say yes or they would say no but that's still to the job but i i never didn't ask for more money and especially with editorial because editorial budgets are famously not great and have been you know declining for years which is really sad um so no you know i don't remember specifically on that project what i got paid i know that entertainment weekly had a much bigger budget than what i was used to at the time um but a great example of the asking for more thing was a few years ago um maybe 10 years ago now gosh time flies i did a emergency job you know immersion dash c that stuff you buy for when you're sick and it was through an agency and they wanted me to do some drawings that they were going to turn into web like animated little web cartoon thingies um and so they needed like 12 illustrations and they they were like they said to me uh you know we have a budget we're thinking like 4 500 per and i was like um okay and then i i said i'll get back to you and i called around a few friends or whatever and they're like i don't know never done that kind of work before so i decided uh i'm just gonna go crazy and i said um i ca i remember calling them back or writing them back whatever i was like i was like you know can you double it let's do nine by nine k each and they came back and they're like okay what they just said okay and i thought wait a second so what happened there did they did they lowball me like crazy to begin with did they hit throw me something in the middle and expect me to come back with that number or was i still going low based on what the price should have been for the for the usage and so it just messed with my mind for for days i was like what just happened they didn't even blink what should i have asked for and i didn't have any friends at the time who had done this kind of work or could really bounce it off with them but to me it was just the biggest it was the biggest payday of my illustration career for that kind of assignment work ever by by a long long mile i was happy with it but i still to this day don't know what happened there i don't know what is the right amount of money and that's the problem with our business or especially with illustration i don't know exactly what design how it works but there's so many question marks sometimes around pricing that it's it's really fluid it's really difficult to understand um i'm very happy for that for that amount that i got obviously made a huge huge dent in our bills but but at the same time i just wonder sometimes like what what was the amount that they kind of expected me to say i don't know some interesting things going on there i get this a lot because i try and teach creatives how to value their work and it's it's oddly strange because when i when i say to people just try and double the budget or push the boundaries a little bit so that it gets uncomfortable and you kind of know the theoretical ceiling and i think people are like yeah let me try it but the weird reaction that i get is no i can't do that stupid i'm gonna just take it because somebody else will do it for less so kyle help me out here for people who have this kind of mindset what kind of advice could you give them if you're already in these talks it's because they want to work with you that's the assumption i make at least on my end i assume that they're calling me because they like my work not because they need the work to get done by any old person for the cheapest amount of money but specifically me so that already gives me some confidence going into it thinking you know this is i have some leverage here um and or at least i'm on equal footing i'm not sort of you know just begging for the job so and then the second thing i think is like i said before when you're asking for more i think that should be the expectation in any situation where you're trying to price a job like this a creative job i don't think it's fair to assume on on the clients part that the money they have to get the job done is exactly what you should receive to get the job done because how do they know what you get paid um it's so weird it's like when i we had a sun room built like five years ago in our house it's not like we said to the contractor well uh fifteen thousand dollars is our budget and uh please build us a sunroom we said to them we don't know what this costs tell us some options and that's when you negotiate they say for this kind of flooring for this kind of siding for this kind of whatever these are your options i think the same goes for creative work you want five logo designs this is how much it's gonna cost if you can't afford it i'll give you three you know it's bartering and it's negotiating but it should never be this thing where the the illustrator the designer feels like they're tucked they're stuck in a corner and um they're the one who has to be like great grateful for the work and it's the other way around i think that the client needs this thing done because it will help their business it has real value to their business so i mean a logo it drives me crazy when someone does a logo for like 1500 or something and you know for 10 years or 20 years this company's using this logo and they're putting it on everything they make and it starts to represent their brand and like everything they stand for and you're like you know try and help the client see that that's what this little mark that i'm designing will mean for you in five years time you sound like you have a really healthy relationship with money and you know how to value your work where did this confidence come from i think just from experience where like experiences like what i shared a moment ago where i did do this where i literally doubled the budget that was suggested or or where i would you know get in the habit of just asking for more um but also i think it came from knowing that uh i had relationships with clients that were they went farther than just you call me i just i deliver the work and then you know merry christmas it was more like i i would get to the point where an art director would call me and we'd talk for five minutes and i'd say how you know how's your family what would you go on a little trip what'd you do and i got to know these people and build meaningful relationships with clients and then see them at a conference and get to know them even better meet friends of theirs through you know in in the business and so on and i think the confidence came from me wanting to believe more and more that it wasn't just the work it was me the person and that i feel confident that i'm a nice person to to be around and i feel like i'm personable and and engaging and i this is something i i value in others and so i always felt like at the end of the day if i ask for more or if i if i need to explain why i need more um the other person i'm talking to will care enough about about me and my business to try and accommodate and know it knowing that if they do that i'm gonna really give them my best and i think that's also a thing that i i try and communicate clearly and show when i do work with clients is that i will give them a hundred percent every time because i feel like i'm being treated fairly and so i want to give them the best possible result you know at the end of the day and um so a lot of it comes down to relationships expectations and then just a history of things going well in in that department so i think like everything else you the confidence comes from time and from doing a thing and from experience and probably also just that thing i said earlier about remembering that we're all just people and it's not like they have this they're not out to get you you know um at least i i don't think they are i'm trying i'm trying not to be negative you know i try to think that try and hope that people are good people most people are i think and we should give people the benefit of the doubt um as it relates to illustration and fine art are there ever moments where you start to have thoughts of imposter syndrome oh sure all the time um especially because now you know you can see how many talented people there are in the world um talent's a scary word but yeah how many skillful people there are you know you can you can see evidence of the thousands of thousands of people who draw better than you do um and it just can make you feel like uh why am i even bothering you know and i just i had this conversation with somebody yesterday where we were both suffering from this sort of midlife crisis thing where we're looking at people on instagram who are in their 20s who are drawing circles around us and going why am i even trying to do and how can i go out there and call myself a professional illustrator um but then what you know what's great was we came back around to what it is that we do well and one of the things we realize that we do well is we can take a client's idea and turn it into the thing they need to sell something we can turn it into the thing they need to brand something um and that skill is is what has sustained us and kept us going in this business for so long not necessarily our ability to draw a dragon absolutely beautifully and from any from any vantage point or whatever um and so there are different kinds of skills and so we were starting we turned the conversation around and started celebrating the skills that we do have now maybe our technical drawing skills don't compare with some of these younger people who are getting massive followings on instagram but you know we said what translates to dollars and cents and what's kept our families going and kept our businesses going is a different skill set and that's really where we focused our time and energy and we're glad we did so you can't be good at everything everything requires time you know right so i do have imposter syndrome sure and then i i try and talk myself out of it because you know i i look back on my life and think when did i spend my time and then i feel good about it because i spent my time not drawing eight hours a day but doing some drawing but also learning business stuff and you know uh nurturing hobbies right and playing the guitar family yeah a little bit of guitar a little bit of i do card magic that's my biggest uh hobby um and play tennis you know these things so yeah lots of stuff you're well-rounded human trying to be yeah absolutely there are three things i need to talk to you about before we run out of time here so hopefully we can tackle these number one is i've not known that many people um especially in the creative space who have been able to turn their skill their talent into ip you did that with the brushes what started out as just for you turned into a thing that you actually made money on what was that like and and how did that impact your life well it's certainly the thing that had the the biggest impact on my life uh professionally speaking um there was just it was just a massive experiment and a learning a learning um experience really more than anything um just realizing i i took away so much from that experience probably the main thing i learned was that if i'm my own customer i can really go to town and and knock it out of the park i can i can make something really good um and i think that was why it succeeded was i'm an artist who needs good digital brushes for what i do so by creating the brushes i need it's kind of a no-brainer that the rest of the illustration community is going to need them too so i think that was why it really took off like a rocket was i understood the customer because that was me um the timing was also really good we had come to a point where technology for digital drawing had reached this level where you could pretty comfortably draw on a tablet and if you had the right tools which were what was i what i was providing to draw with um the experience was pretty seamless and pretty wonderful and pretty comparable to drawing with traditional materials depending on what medium you use the other thing was with timing gum road had just uh started and gum became the platform where i could for almost no money uh create a web shop and sell to anyone in the world and they could pay me right then and there and download the product and use it immediately that was kind of amazing um and then the ability to market and advertise through social media was huge most of that was free and so there was a lot of organic growth through that and then the fact that i was already plugged into the illustration community thanks to my profession meant that i could send it to artists all over the world and say what do you think about these and then uh get them to give me testimonials that i could use and pass them around to their studio mates that's how i got them you know sneaky i was sneaking them into places like disney and pixar that they get passed around the studio and then i could approach the studio manager and say hey you know make you guys look good would be a license for these you know uh and then everybody's everybody wins and so then i could make claims like these are the brushes that are used in pixar so it all just you know me figuring that out along the way learning that it it just was such an amazing experience and then the other thing i learned is that you have and i know you're familiar with this idea i'm sure listeners have heard about it this idea of having true fans you have however many thousands of true fans equals you know the success of your business because you have a lot of fans who don't actually buy anything um so me realizing like that that number was growing because every time i release a new brush set i would have these pre-sales that would just be a given they would be granted and then those people who would buy them would go back and buy older sets and so it was just an amazing experience selling the business was a completely different thing it took over a year um and i hired a business manager for it and i think that goes to something we haven't talked about which is when you don't know how to do something you find help get help from people who do um and partner with them and and you can make you can make really big things happen that are outside of the scope of what you normally work on and so for me that was that having a business manager um made that all possible and writing a real proposal to a multinational corporation like adobe that was terrifying idea but it was because i had help that it went so smoothly and it worked out there's so much to talk about there but it was just a massive life-changing moment i want to talk about the acquisition by adobe because that's something that not a lot of people are in a place to do or to be even considered for but before i do that i just want to remind our listeners that we're so busy making things for other people that we don't often take time to look at what am i doing for myself that can save other people time and to spend some effort and package that and that's how you start to package your ip and you're able to scale your business and and you mentioned before that it started to become the predominant way in which you were generating income yeah maybe a lot of flexibility when it came to client work gives you confidence to say no to people because it wasn't a good fit for you the timing wasn't good or you just wanted to spend time with your kids or something yeah that's an awesome thing to have and i encourage every single person whether you want to be acquired by a large multinational company or not to have some other form of income so that it gives you some of that balance and it allows you to buy back some of your time now let's get to adobe sure okay so somehow somewhere a conversation has started it takes a year to process through and you obviously ultimately decided to sell your brushes and now it's included in photoshop which i think adobe for buying it and for you for creating it so that we all have the ability to use them i use them on a on a daily basis whenever i'm drawing obviously you do it my little chicken scratches but it's kind of nice to have more natural media brushes versus the the soft edge brush that's the default brush which isn't all that interesting um how has that impacted your life and what ultimately made you decide it's time to sell there were several factors involved um one was that i had already started bumping up against the limitations of the brush settings panel in photoshop for at least about a year and i was concerned that i would not be able to continue really innovating too much if i didn't have something else to do or if the technology didn't change i guess um that was one thing another thing was that as much as i did enjoy the passive income and it was really starting to work for me as a business the customer service end of it became honestly unmanageable um the number of emails i was responding to every day and having to work through and and trying to help people with the brushes and everything that really became sort of my full-time job more than anything so i wasn't spending as much time growing the business working on new products you know so those two things were coming into play but also i think i was starting to get a little bit kind of a little tired i felt i was repeating myself and you know that's for any creative person that starts to really feel bad um so when this opportunity came it was such an incredible amazing opportunity because at first the idea of selling it was just exciting to be because of money frankly i was like oh wow great payday although i didn't have a plan for it afterwards which i'm that was not good thinking but then when it turned into an aquahire i quickly quickly realized that what that meant for me was that inside the company i could innovate with these resources that never before existed like literally having access to scientists and researchers in the company who build this stuff and being able to sit down with an engineer and say i want the watercolors to stay wet and so adobe fresco that's what we have so i spent the first two years at adobe just working on fresco on the product team and making the brushes the best we could and working with all that stuff and that products now like in its fourth year and it's i can finally say with like sincerity that it's where i wanted it to be back in 2018. um and i draw it in every day but it's because like i got to sit down and to help make it so this is a completely different job now i'm on the side where if i dream it up it could actually happen as opposed to if i dream it up i have to work within the limitations of what the brush settings panel in photoshop does and then i can't actually make it happen so so that was kind of amazing um and then honestly this is going to sound so practical and nothing wrong with practicality but at the time i joined adobe our health insurance for my family was just almost unaffordable right and to get the benefits of real health insurance from a company like adobe has made a world of difference in our lives i mean we live in a country where health insurance is yeah it's not a given uh health care is not a given so for a family of four this this was just amazing so yeah the other thing was adobe lets me work on what i think is is important and i respect them and from from day one i knew that was going to be the case and they've they've held up their end of the bargain on that i really get to focus on what i love drawing and painting and designing things for drawing and painting and educating that space so yeah it was all it all worked out for for me to give up a future earnings on a product even though it sounded like managing the customer service up was becoming a nightmare for you uh and to walk away from that it'd have to be a lot of money i'm just gonna just speaking for myself yeah yeah and we we definitely got paid fairly for it what i did was i projected sales for the next four years based on growth that we currently had and that was the number that we gave to them and so i felt at the very least i'm getting what i project will probably be my income for the next four years from that on top of my being hired you know at a salary that is absolutely very competitive and very fair for what i'm doing and um plus the health benefits financially it was it was an absolutely fantastic move um and another thing i didn't mention chris was that when i was able to make that sale i was also struggling with the problem of not just piracy but pure imitation where i would release a brush set and literally a month later there would be two identical brush sets from competitors or from anybody where they just reverse engineered what i made and then just released it and that became pretty tough to stomach right well i'm glad this happened for you because it couldn't have happened to a nicer person and i'm so glad that you're on the inside helping to shape the future products because you're you're an advocate for other artists and it's like these are the tools that we need so now you're working from the inside making those kind of changes and it's wonderful last question i have for you is what's it like to be an evangelist it sounds like a great title and what do you get to do as an evangelist and and it's just it's kind of fascinating to me the main thing i i think the title is kind of interesting it should be more sort of educator but um what the main thing i do is teach i i spend a lot of time doing live streams where i just pick a project idea and i walk people through how to complete that project or i pick some fundamentals when it comes to illustration i actually spend a lot of time on my illustration master class every friday where i talk about fundamentals like shape design and line weight and composition and all these things that you know would be great if everybody did learn them in art school but a lot of times they get glossed over or maybe you need a refresher and i talk about really specific things like i did a three-part series on editorial illustration and how to think through an editorial project or a poster design or those kinds of things so i that's what i really spend a lot of time with but i also do that more technical stuff like here's how to use this application that application and i focus on photoshop and fresco because they're drawing and painting apps um and that's really where i spend most of my time so that's what it doing an evangelism you know role right now at adobe is it used to be that we would travel around and do these things in person all over the world but adobe live has made it possible to do these remotely and broadcast hundreds of thousands of hours of content uh for free you know um every week and that's that's nice but i you know of course i'm looking forward to doing these in person again like the last time i did it in person overseas was in tokyo it was amazing um and prior to that i had gone to barcelona for the off conference and done some work there and some demos in a workshop and you cannot beat that experience it's it's phenomenal kyle it's been a real pleasure talking to you i think you're a wonderful illustrator and artist a great teacher and an even better human being thank you so much for being a part of this podcast i hope our paths cross really soon maybe we can produce a workshop for you or do some other educational stuff where we can collaborate for people who want to know more about you and find you on social where's the best place to send them so first let me thank you chris for inviting me i've really enjoyed the conversation and i am a huge admirer of you and everything you do especially when it comes to designers valuing their own work we just need so much more of that um people can find me at kyle kyletwebster.com or i'm also as i mentioned earlier working on a drawing meditation app if you want to sign up to try that out before we launch you can go to lines of zen dot com i love that thank you so much kyle thanks hi my name is kyle t webster and you are listening to the future [Music]