100 – Celebrating 100 Episodes!

Laura

0:06 Hi, this is Laura Lee Griffin.

Nikki

0:08 And this is Nikki May with the Startist Society, inspiring you to stop getting in your own way and start building an art biz and life that you love.

Laura

0:17 We are artists who believe strongly in the power of community, accountability, following your intuition, taking small actionable steps and breaking down the barriers of fear and procrastination that keep you stuck.

Nikki

0:30 Follow along with us on our creative business journey as we encourage you on yours.

Laura

0:38 Nikki, it may not have happened on our originally scheduled timeline, but we’re hitting a huge milestone right this very minute. Do you know what it is?

Nikki

0:50 Recording an episode without drinking bourbon?

Laura

0:54 No, Nikki, we are recording our 100th episode and we’re here to celebrate that despite how crazy our lives have been.

Nikki

1:04 Well, we can’t possibly celebrate that without bourbon. So let’s go grab some!

Laura

1:09 Well, you can. Bourbon is not my drink of choice; I’m gonna have to go with a Fireball shot, because it’s cinnamonalicious.

Nikki

1:16 Oh, that is too painful for me to even respond to. All right, Laura, remember back in episode 87, when we did a whole episode about getting back into the groove?

Laura

1:29 Yeah, I remember that.

Nikki

1:31 Well, I’m totally not in the groove. I don’t know about you, but I have not been in the groove for quite a while

Laura

1:42 Honestly, me too. I had planned by this time this year I would have already released a couple of more Skillshare classes, I’d be well on my way to some new collections… And I’m going to be honest, none of that’s happened because I have really been thrown off by a couple of things. So one is – my day job is very intense. So I work in a financial field. So I’m one of those weird dual-brain people.

Nikki

2:10 Well, you’re weird, that’s for sure.

Laura

2:12 Okay, yes, I’m weird.

Nikki

2:15 I know, it takes one to know one.

Laura

2:17 I frequently work 12 to 16 hour days, including weekends; I’m just gonna put that out there. That is not a badge of honor.

Nikki

2:25 You’re not bragging about that.

Laura

2:26 I’m not bragging about that. And I don’t think anybody else should do that.

Nikki

2:30 Absolutely.

Laura

2:31 And when I invest so much brain power during the day, I just don’t have all that creative energy at night. Now, I’m not going to go into the laundry list, but when I actually do have extra time, so much of that has been invested in my new house that I moved into, which I love the fact that it’s like an 80 year old house. But also, that means that everything on it has pretty much broken in the last six months.

Nikki

2:58 Oh, I can’t possibly relate to that. But I’ll wait till it’s my turn.

Laura

3:05 You can share your challenges. I mean, I have this, I have this list. That’s like two pages long of all the repairs that I’ve had to do. And so many people have come into the house to fix it. So I feel like that’s eaten up a lot of my free time as well for sure. But I have been trying to squeeze in a little bit of creativity. So I’ve been doing some loose acrylic paintings. And then I’m finding just you know, five minutes here and there where I can do something creative. And in a throwback to my crafty beginnings. The other night, I just got out a whole bunch of colorful cardstock and I die cut all of these, like cute little pieces of colored paper and I created some really fun bouquet greeting cards.

Nikki

3:47 And it was like, Wait, let me interrupt how many die cuts. Do you have Laura?

Laura

3:51 Um, yeah, we’re not gonna go there. So many die cuts. But it’s really, it’s really satisfying to pull something together. And it didn’t take a lot of brain power, but it kind of used that other side of my brain a little bit. And so I’m trying to find little ways here and there to not just want to sit down and binge watch NetFlix, because that’s sort of my initial response after a hard day of work is like I have to just let my brain not do anything. And I’ve got to throw something on and just mindlessly watch TV, which is not getting me anywhere closer to the goals that I have. So I’ve got to work through that.

Nikki

4:31 All right, but were you binge watching something on Netflix while you were making the die cut cards?

Laura

4:36 Um, I I actually was killing two birds with one stone perhaps. But yeah, I’m finding that I’ve got to find ways to inject that and I even have a really cool studio room. So it’s just like getting in there and getting started. And I know I get energy from being creative. It’s just getting past that hurdle to get started

Nikki

4:57 getting started when you’ve been working for 16 In hours, it’s tough. It’s really, really tough. No, I mean, you can’t do anything except collapse into bed,

Laura

5:07 and then want to eat all the sugar in the house.

Nikki

5:10 I’ve been doing that too. Oh my god.

Laura

5:13 So I will say that I’ve been stockpiling some inspiration though, because I have a beautiful yard. And now that spring is upon us. There’s all kinds of nature inspiration happening outside. So I’m trying to spend at least one afternoon every weekend not working and going out there and being in nature. I’m somebody who was always a black thumb, Nikki.

Nikki

5:37 I’m still one. You should see all the dead plants on my bus right now.

Laura

5:41 I was gonna say I’ve killed just about every plant that I’ve owned

Nikki

5:44 so many dead plants.

Laura

5:47 But now I’m I’m turning kind of into a brown thumb. I have to say I have

Nikki

5:52 not quite green yet. Not quite

Laura

5:54 green. I mean, we’ll see. Maybe in two months. I’ll say that I have a green thumb if everything has survived. I don’t know if it’s going to survive or not. But I have raised garden bed with herbs. It’s I’ve had three ripe strawberries. I’m very proud of that. I’ve eaten.

Nikki

6:10 Ooh, did you plant this bed or was it already there.

Laura

6:14 I actually assembled it all together. I bought it at alldis which is really awesome. They have like housing goods in a grocery store. It’s super cool. And I created this garden that has like cilantro and thyme, lemon thyme and lemon verbena and strawberries and gosh, all kinds of things in it that I can cook with, which is cool, because I’m also learning how to cook.

Nikki

6:42 I bought a little little shelf herb garden thing from Home Depot that you just plant in the thing it comes with. I bought that about six months ago and it’s still sitting in the box.

Laura

6:56 Well now it’d be the time because everything is definitely growing. And so I also built a or not built but I put together with some help. For my family. I have a new garden bed that’s full of blooming pink hydrangeas, which is really, really gorgeous. I have some peonies I planted a little tiny twig. It’s a lilac bush and it actually has leaves on it. So I’m super excited. It’s grown

Nikki

7:19 awesome. So we can expect to see some new paintings of flowers.

Laura

7:23 Yeah, when I said I was stockpiling inspiration, really. It’s all the flowers and I have two incredibly gorgeous trees. I had to take out a few big trees that were hurting my house. But I have a pink magnolia tree in my front yard. They’re also called saucer magnolias are tulip trees. And I gotta say, Nikki, this tree took me by surprise. It started blooming in February because it’s silly and doesn’t know what spring is. And it had like 10,000 blooms on it. I mean, I’m not joking. And I’m going to put a video so everyone can see in the show notes of happy absolutely stunning this tree was so that was huge inspiration. I took a million videos and pictures of this tree. Nice. And then in my backyard. Now I have a southern magnolia like a very standard like 100 foot tall one that has big white flowers that are now moving

Nikki

8:16 on it those so much. Oh, they’re so pretty.

Laura

8:19 They’re really hard to upkeep because they’ve dumped like leaves and puddles. And they’re all the same. They’re messy. They’re really messy, but they’re beautiful. And I have a bird, a Robin that has built a huge nest on one of the lowest branches. Oh, and so every day I go out there and look and we had two huge storms and the Robin is still there and sitting on the eggs. So I think everybody survived. But I’m about to have little birds there, which it’s going to be really fun. So cute. Super inspirational to see that as well. So I’ve really been enjoying getting a little bit of that. But I have to say when you move to a new place, you never kind of realize what’s going to happen. And I’ve discovered I have seasonal allergies in Oklahoma that you never had before. I never had before and I literally thought I had COVID One day I was like I can’t breathe. It’s so bad. And I thought like I tested myself it was negative. I’m like what is this and then I saw all this stuff floating in the air from like a neighbor’s tree and I was like oh my goodness, I’m allergic to pollen. There’s like a layer of pollen on the deck and I went oh my gosh I’m allergic so I had the

Nikki

9:28 same thing when I moved from Atlanta to Western Kentucky. I never ever had allergies before and I have in the 20 years since I’ve been here and they’re getting worse every year like my eyes are just so burning and itching

Laura

9:42 yeah it was insane so now I you know I went to the natural grocery store and like bought all the homeopathic and like natural remedies and use those for about a week and then I went I need SYSVol and I went and bought you know something like that to use to

Nikki

9:57 sponsored by

Laura

9:58 yeah sponsored by I’d say it’s gotten a lot better and I’m still enjoying being outside because I’m not going to let that stop me. But it’s been interesting.

Nikki

10:09 Just bring some fireball out there with you that’ll kill everything.

Laura

10:15 Nicky’s gardening tips. Drink bourbon.

Nikki

10:19 I mean, that’s really my tip for everything.

Laura

10:24 Yeah, so now I guess for the rest of this year now that most of knock on wood most of my house woes I’m hoping are over. And like the expenses that have been outlined for that. Knock on wood, knock on wood. I mean, last week, like all these unexpected things, right, like, I had to have somebody jackhammer through my garage floor to replace a drain pipe. Fun, I’m like, You got to be kidding me. So now that those are getting rounded out, I’ll be able to focus my energy when I have the extra time on these other things like my creative business and developing more classes, and really building community here in my new city. I’m really excited about getting more involved doing some holiday shows in town, reconcile my artwork and some painted ornaments that I’ve made. finding places where I can teach small workshops, and yeah, and really getting connected. That’s my, my hope this year. I already have a couple of workshops that I’ll be taking from people from local artists planned. And I’m really excited about that. And I’m taking my first vacation in over two years. Your first what vacation?

Nikki

11:33 What does that

Laura

11:34 mean? Right, like vacations

Nikki

11:36 and what are you doing with your vacation? Well, I

Laura

11:39 have a I have a couple of friends visiting me this year, and one arrives in about a week from Australia. My friend Leon awesome. So we’ve got all kinds of plans for the whole week. And I’ve told my work that I’m going to be unavailable. Because the only vacation I’ve had I’ve been doing things like moving, which is totally not a vacation. So yeah. Yeah. So I’m really I’m really excited to be able to be creative and just we’re gonna go to the botanical gardens or Philbrook Museum. We’re taking a really cool workshop from a local artist. So we’re really excited about you know, having that time just to relax and do fun things. So that’s kind of what’s been happening in my world. Nikki, let’s talk about what’s been happening in yours.

Nikki

12:24 Wait, I need a sip of bourbon for that one. Hang on.

Laura

12:33 That just sounded like a I don’t know what seven up commercial or whatever. Those commercials were when they used to do that.

Nikki

12:38 Yes, I do remember that.

Laura

12:40 I think I’m dating myself there. But

Nikki

12:43 well, when you’re not dating anyone else you might as well do.

Laura

12:50 Oh, it’s just harsh Nikki. Okay.

Nikki

12:52 Yeah, I know. But I’ll kick your ass if you don’t leave that in. Alright, so let’s catch up on my bus was.

Laura

13:07 Yep. So for those that don’t remember, Nikki has moved from her house. She sold her house and moved into a school bus which people call a school Lea. And so she’s faced quite a few woes since then. So I

Nikki

13:18 can’t remember when it was that we did the last catch up and I listed all the issues I was having. But I thought that they were mostly taken care of. My plan had always been to be in Paducah which I love in the spring in the fall when the weather is beautiful here and go south for the winter and north for the summer. So in December, I was getting ready to go south for the winter. I planned on spending the most most of the winter in Florida and I did I was able to Yeah, but I thought I had everything taken care of and I so didn’t

Laura

13:57 little naive Nikki on her bus. It’s all taken care of.

Nikki

14:01 Let’s see how quickly I can go through this without dwelling on everything but on the very first leg of my trip. So all the issues I’ve had with the bus. None of them have really been with the bus itself. It’s all been with the build and the systems electric plumbing, internet, blah, blah, blah. Well on my very first leg of the trip going south through right right outside of Nashville, my rear suspension went out. And that made me go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, down the road. And in all that big booming, aside from my suspension dying, the welds on my rear deck broke. So this happened, like the day before New Year’s Eve. Oh, nice. So timing. I’m trapped until after New Year’s Day. I can’t really drive. I have no suspension. My deck didn’t fall off, but it was precarious. Right $6,000 And nearly two weeks later Ouch, I got to start my trip.

Laura

15:03 Yeah, so many unexpected things and I’m feeling you because I’ve had so many of those with my house like, Oh yeah, I’m just like, wait, what this like? Yeah, just things breaking left and right.

Nikki

15:14 In between getting my suspension fixed and getting my deck. rewelded. I had to wait a couple days. My brand new electric bike was stolen off my back deck. No. Yeah. Was it locked up did though? Yeah. Oh, yeah. But they had bolt cutters. Oh, my goodness. So um, so I’m sleeping. And I start hearing noises but I’m in kind of a busy place and it didn’t really register till I kept hearing them kept hearing them finally woke up, looked out the window just in time to see somebody riding off on my bike. Carrying bolt cutters. Lovely. Love. So he climbed up on my deck, cut a bunch of ratchet straps, bungee cords, to locks and broke the mount that was mounting it on the deck. Wow. Miraculously, I called the police and got my bike back. Like 20 minutes later,

Laura

16:07 I know exactly where to look. So they hadn’t gone too far.

Nikki

16:10 They hadn’t gone too far because it turns out that there was a little tent city. little tent camp close by half a block away. And they caught the guy trying to shove my bike my brand new unscratched bike under a bunch of wooden pallets. Man, he’s like, I just found it when we got it on video. Anyway, I got the bike back. That’s good. Got my bus, fixed my suspension and my deck and drove south and I and I spent the next couple months in Florida. And I had planned to enjoy my time camping here and there. I had a couple of Schooley and Nomad gatherings that I was going to write where I would know some people meet some new people enjoy the weather, and you know, still do a bit of work because I have clients, right? You can’t ignore that. Yeah, but that kind of got a little turned around. How so? At one of my first locations, I met up with some friends and we were camping on the beach, like literally on the beach, nice, just outside of St. Pete in Florida. Okay, and it was beautiful. And my solar batteries stopped holding a charge. So you had like no power at night. I had electricity when the sun was out. And I had nothing at night. Which meant no air conditioning, no lights, no internet. Oh, wow. Yeah. So that made it hard. And it also turns out that I didn’t get as much work done before the trip started as I had hoped, on some big projects that I had that had some big deadlines, right. I mean, I was working on some of the most exciting work that I’ve done in my career. I know several episodes back, we talked about the big commission I have I had for the local airport here. Right. So I was working on that. And I was also rebranding and doing a new website for the National Quilt Museum, which is here in Paducah. So I had all these really like big exciting jobs that I was behind on because of all these bus issues. I was working on the beach, I was working at campfires while everybody else is just hanging out and drinking. And

Laura

18:40 were you killing the vibe of the party?

Nikki

18:43 No, I just sat there and silently worked on my laptop and my iPad. I did manage to make some s’mores. Yeah, nice. But the worst part not I mean, I expected to have to work on this trip. But just because of everything that was happening all at once, I just didn’t really have the time to enjoy. Like some of the coolest work I’ve ever done. Right? Like I still got it done. And I’m very proud of the work that I’ve done. But I didn’t have the time and the headspace because I was so worried about not having electricity. Well, and

Laura

19:19 also if I recall, you had to do a lot of traveling, like just to find the right places where you could park a 40 foot bus. And you couldn’t always stay in one place for an extended period of time. Yes, then you’re now having to like research places to go. You’re having to transport yourself there in the bus that may take three or four hours out of your day you weren’t anticipating, right? Yeah, I had this image

Nikki

19:40 of I would try for an hour or two in the morning and find a place to stay and work the rest of the day. But that didn’t end up working because every time I would drive it would take three times as long to drive somewhere three times as long to set up pack up. So it turns out I really need to dedicate a All day when I change locations,

Laura

20:02 right, but Nikki, couldn’t you apply that to any part of your actual career? Like it always takes a little bit more than we think it does, right?

Nikki

20:11 Yes. And with my, with my recent ADHD, diagnosis words are hard. With my recent ADHD diagnosis, I also learned that one symptom that I have always had is time blindness. Mm hmm. Where you just are so unaware of how long things take, right? And you don’t take into consideration a lot of the things around the actual task itself. Right. So yeah, so I definitely everything takes longer than you expect it to. And yes, especially in Florida, in the winter, you can’t just expect to find a place to stay because everybody’s in Florida and winter. Exactly. There are no campgrounds available. And if they are, they’re like $200 a night, right. And, but fortunately, I hooked up with a friend that I had met at the first school eat swarm that I went to last fall, and he lives in that area in a van. So he knows all the places. So he’s the one that found us places to stay on the right on the beach. Nice. And he also helped me gain the confidence to find places to park that you wouldn’t think you’d be able to, but you can probably get away with so we went to a dog park one day, just to take rocket out to play. And we were like, This is a beautiful place. And nobody’s here. So we stayed at the dog park for a couple

Laura

21:44 creative?

Nikki

21:45 Yeah, yeah. So I definitely have learned a lot. But then. So I knew that I had issues with my electrical, my solar, I knew that from the beginning, it was never installed correctly. Right. And then I think when my suspension went out, a lot of things that may not have been installed perfectly, came loose, it exacerbated. So there were a lot of things that that just weren’t attached anymore. There was a guy I was waiting for to see at this school, a gathering again, who was going to do the work for me. But he couldn’t do it until after the end of February event. So I went from the beginning of January until March with no electricity at night.

Laura

22:32 And major deadlines to me and no internet

Nikki

22:35 and major deadlines to me. Oh, and then. So at the end of this time, my wonderful Starlink satellite

Laura

22:45 internet went out, right? Which is the key to your entire business, right? Yes. So

Nikki

22:50 I have no electricity at night. And I’m trying to work using the other people’s Wi Fi. Well, the hotspot on my phone, okay, which is nice and fast for the first like three days of the month. And that slows way down. So I’m using other people’s Wi Fi I’m, sometimes I’d be at a campground and that would be great. I’d be able to plug in and have electricity at night when I plugged in. And sometimes they would have internet but it was challenging. It was really, really challenging. And then I finally in March, mid March, my I got my solar setup my electrical setup completely redone. I mean, rebuilt from scratch. And it’s amazing. Now I can run both of my air conditioners without being plugged in. Nice. It’s amazing. Well, that’s good for summer, right? Yes. Well, and also my heat too, you know, yeah,

Laura

23:52 in like July being in a metal box is like not really good if you don’t have air conditioning

Nikki

23:57 for sure. So I finally get my electric system set up working beautifully. And I’m like, Okay, it’s now I wanted to be home in Paducah by April I wanted to be gone December, January and March. And I ended up being gone January, February, March and most of April most of April. Yeah. But then at this point, I have so much work to do. I don’t even have time to drive home. It’s like it was like 800 miles which a long way you know in a bus takes twice as long as a car right? And I just I didn’t have the time.

Laura

24:32 Well, I know you had a lot of deadlines but you’ve met those deadlines now. Well

Nikki

24:35 I have so on the way home I stopped and stayed at a campground for like for one week and then another for two weeks and just knocked out so much work. I met those deadlines. I still have more I’m still have quite a heavy workload, but it’s not insane. I mean, I was working 90 hour weeks, which I haven’t done since early IBM days in the late 90s. But I wasn’t sleeping, I was sleeping three or four hours a night and that is so unhealthy, so bad for you. So now now that I’ve gotten through the worst of it, and have promised myself, I will never do that to myself again. I have started taking time to first sleep. Yeah, because that’s pretty important and, and get back to doing some things for myself. So I have never been one to do like to have a morning routine. I used to just like take slow mornings for myself, but I wouldn’t do anything really practical or intentional. I would just be slow in the morning. At the worst of it. I was like the second I get out of bed before I even get out of bed. I’m checking my email. And there’s crisis after crisis. So I’m right already at my desk working before the coffee’s is done brewing. Oh, and that’s another thing My boss has now killed for cure eggs. But I’m not gonna get into the details of that story. Just suffice it to say I now do pour over coffee, like a hipster or a caveman? Where was I? Oh, morning routine. So now I get out of bed. I don’t check my email, I take my dog out for a quick walk. And then I start my pourover coffee, which takes extra long because my microwave, I got the lowest wattage microwave I could. So it takes forever to heat it up. It takes six and a half minutes to boil one cup of water in my microwave. Yeah. But that gives me extra time. So so I get the coffee going. And while the coffee is going, I do a little cleaning of something. And then I sit down with my coffee and a journal. A journal that I got specifically to help me with morning routines.

Laura

26:50 Oh, nice kind of like morning pages. Yes,

Nikki

26:53 I sit down with my coffee and my journal. And I do a little bit of writing. And then I read something nice, which I can’t remember the last time I just sat down to read something. Okay. And it’s just a nice, slower, start to the day. And then I sit down at my desk to start working and check my email for the first time. So I’m up for like an hour and a half, almost before I check my email and that I haven’t done that in years. But are you

Laura

27:23 also getting up a little bit earlier? Because you’re in a bus in the sun and everything else does that like help you get up earlier?

Nikki

27:30 Yes, I have never in my life been a morning person. But these days, I get up. I get up between 630 and seven most days. Yeah. And I don’t set an alarm.

Laura

27:42 I have to have like five alarms to get up. And I have to get up most days around seven. And my meeting started by eight most days. And unfortunately

Nikki

27:51 I can control when my meeting started. And I will not schedule a meeting before, say 10 It used to be before 11 or 1130. But now that I get up earlier, naturally,

Laura

28:01 I am jealous. I am jealous. But yeah, so I I wouldn’t though if I didn’t have alarms going off, I would probably sleep naturally until like 10 o’clock, just because that’s what my body does. It wants to get up at 10 and go to bed at like two in the morning.

Nikki

28:14 Yeah, I used to I used to do that. I used to do that. So the other thing that I’m doing is I haven’t I haven’t drawn anything for myself that wasn’t for you know, something related to client work the airport project and yeah, yeah, in over a year. So I’m now I started a new drawing project. After drawing all the state flowers and insects. I now started drawing the state birds. Awesome. I only just started the second one, but yay, me. And I am I’m taking some time to plan how I want my business to run. Because I will never take on that much work again.

Laura

28:57 Yeah, you’ve learned a hard lesson to say this isn’t sustainable this like you put yourself in a position that was not healthy. And you weren’t sleeping there was just way too much going on. And, and plus, with all of the bus woes that you have it all just piles on top of each other. Right?

Nikki

29:14 Right. So what I need to do is and this is great advice for anybody, when you’re trying to schedule out your time, life Shit happens. So build some buffer in your life for that. So you don’t take on so much work that you don’t have time to deal with, aside from just doing the things you want to do the things you have to do.

Laura

29:36 Right so you need to you need to have a little thing on your calendar that says like

Nikki

29:39 shit, like shit. Yeah, yes, and your time blocking and your time blocking make sure you have a big chunk for life shit. And don’t even get me started about shit because I didn’t even talk about my plumbing issues. And I’m not going to… suffice it to say I have some.

Laura

29:56 I think that’s a different podcast, Nikki. That’s a different story. Listeners, we apologize if you’ve had any visuals.

Nikki

30:07 Yeah, so yeah, so I’m working on figuring out how much work I can take on to do what I need to do. But still have time to deal with life crap that comes up. And things that I actually want to do for myself,

Laura

30:21 And also giving yourself time to celebrate the things that you have accomplished. Like you’ve launched some really big websites, you have finished this amazing commission for an airport where your artwork for yours is going to be in the security area of an airport. I mean, how cool is that?

Nikki

30:36 Yeah, you will be able to see it from every part of the airport. Yeah, that’s amazing. Because our airport terminal is to gates.

Laura

30:45 To say that part Nikki don’t say

Nikki

30:48 You can see it from every part of the airport inside.

Laura

30:53 But it’s it’s exciting. It’s exciting to know that your artwork is in a public place. So even though you haven’t had a lot of time to do personal things, you are progressing with your business and you are moving forward. So I think we have to give ourselves more Pat’s on the back for the work that we have done so that you know that we we can feel that and enjoy those successes when they happen.

Nikki

31:16 Definitely. And on that note, let’s pat ourselves on the back a bit for this 100th episode of our podcast!

Laura

31:26 Right? How exciting is that? 100 episodes!

Nikki

31:31 It’s amazing. That’s bourbon Nikki, it’s a lot of it’s a lot of bourbon. It’s a lot of bourbon, it’s a lot of firepower.

Laura

31:42 It’s a lot of Yeah, it’s a lot of joy to like we’ve so enjoyed doing this all the different people that we’ve spoken with the episodes, we’ve planned ourselves, and we hope that you have enjoyed coming along on this journey with us, where we air all of our dirty laundry.

Nikki

32:04 I didn’t even talk about laundry.

Laura

32:08 Don’t need to go there. So

Nikki

32:10 we’re not going to we’ve also done more laughing at each other and ourselves than ever. And apparently some of you guys like it.

Laura

32:23 You do? It’s interesting, I think, you know, we’ve we’ve done a lot of interviews with really amazing outstanding people, you know, that we’ve admired that are, are quite aren’t famous as we might call it with their careers. And then we’ve also more recently interviewed some of our accountability group members who are still in that Startist phase. And it’s been interesting, because I think we’ve gotten a lot of great feedback that people have enjoyed those episodes,

Nikki

32:52 we’ve actually gotten more great feedback in the last little while, while we’ve been doing these interviews with our accountability partners, then we did when we did really big names, I think that I suspected this would be the case, a lot of you really like hearing from the famous people but also the people that you are closer to in your journey.

Laura

33:16 Yeah, and understanding, you know, it’s okay, if you don’t, you know, have this massive success right from the start. And it everybody has sort of this zigzag journey, right to get to the end point, and nobody’s journey is exactly the same. So being able to hear from people who are sort of on the starting side and are having small successes here and there. And also, you know, facing challenges. And I think that’s important for us all to know. And we are not 100% polished, we certainly aren’t on this podcast. Just as

Nikki

33:53 a little disclaimer here. Laura is much more of a planner than I am. I am, as you may have figured out by now. And she’s the one that wants to make sure that it’s edited to perfection every time. I have convinced her to do this one a little more off the cuff than we usually do. So there’s been more stumbling over words. We’ve been a little less planned and polished on this one. And we’ll see how that goes. Right.

Laura

34:27 But we also make some mistakes sometimes and some of those mistakes are more public than others.

Nikki

34:35 Public or do you mean pubic.

Laura

34:39 Okay, we’re, we’re gonna have to mark this episode explicit for the young listeners, but I have to fess up. So

Nikki

primarily does the website and graphic design of our podcast while I do the audio editing and the uploading to our syndication service. So if you recall, I interviewed

Nikki

not too long ago about all those great commissions that she’s done like the one for the three storey building in downtown Paducah, along with that massive digital mural for her local airport. So both of those are forms of public art. And they have just accidentally left out the L when I uploaded the episode to broadcast it to like 50 Different platforms and like people all over the world.

Nikki

35:26 I have to add, we are not the ones who discovered the mistake. We got messages from several people saying, you might want to fix this.

Laura

35:42 Like I was completely mortified. And Nikki, I apologized to you immediately, I felt horrible about it. And at the same time, I got the biggest chuckle because you do a lot of like art of naked women. Somewhat fitting,

Nikki

35:58 I have done some pubic.

Laura

36:06 Anyway, we all have our mistakes, we were able to quickly fix that one and get it get it updated in the system before we got too many notices from people.

Nikki

36:15 Aren’t you glad that we’re not doing print work? So what’s next for us, Laura?

Laura

36:24 Well, you know, we want to say how much we absolutely love doing this podcast. It’s so much fun. We do plan to continue in the future. And some of the future topics we know for our next 100 episodes, we want to cover things like common artist scams and to trend or not to trend and how to write a good artist statement. And you know, a million other things.

Nikki

36:48 And I know that I want to talk much more about AI. Mm hmm. And, and I’ve been promising for two and a half years now to do a whole series on artists websites. Yes, absolutely. That that is coming.

Laura

37:05 And also emails, having having your your email service and a series on that I think would be really great.

Nikki

37:13 But we also want to hear from you. So we would love for you to share with us what topics you want us to talk about next. Do you have any specific questions that you want us to answer? About business about mindset about artists lives about living in a bus?

Laura

37:34 Yeah, let us know in the Facebook group. Or you can go to Startist society.com/contact. And there are several ways to get in touch, including a way where you can record your own voice asking us a question which may end up in the podcast.

Nikki

37:48 That would be super fun. We’d love to have some questions asked that way.

Laura

37:53 We also wanted to give you a huge shout out and thanks. We want to thank our dedicated listeners who tune in week after week and your support and feedback have been the driving force behind Startist Society success. Your comments, your messages, reviews, they’ve meant the world to us. And we’re thrilled to have you as part of the Startist Society community.

Nikki

38:14 And if you enjoy listening to the podcast and you haven’t had a chance to do so yet, we would so love it if you would take a couple minutes out of your day and leave us a five star rating and review reviews help us reach more Startist like you and keep us inspired to create these fabulous episodes like this.

Laura

38:35 And if you’d like to support us in a small way financially, to offset our recording and hosting fees, you can go to our website Startist society.com and click on bias a bourbon at the bottom of the site to leave a small donation or you can utilize affiliate links from our show notes and Resources page.

Nikki

38:53 Yay for 100 episodes, Laura, and here’s to the next 100 or more.

Laura

39:01 And 100 more glasses of bourbon.

Nikki

39:03 100 more glasses of bourbon.

Laura

39:07 I think you’ve you’ve reached your quota of bourbon now, like we needed to make up for that in some past episodes. And you’ve done a few where

Nikki

39:13 I didn’t mention bourbon. So we’ve said it, you know, probably 87 times in this episode.

Laura

39:20 So all of our listeners, thank you again for being a part of our journey. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time. And

Laura

.

Nikki

39:27 Thank you. This has been so much fun, and it’s gonna continue to be so much fun. I couldn’t do it without you.

Laura

39:35 Maybe I couldn’t do it without you either.