Creative Collaboration Is the Missing Commodity

I told my in-laws I was going to leave my job. That is what came out of my mouth. What I was actually saying, in my spirit and my body, was something closer to a confession. I am not going to be able to provide for your daughter and your grandkids. I had two little kids at home. I had been married almost fifteen years. And I was sitting across a dinner table in Chicago about to walk away from the most secure thing I had ever known with no real plan for what came next.

They were kind about it. My wife was already there, a step ahead of me, the way she usually is. I was the one who was scared out of my mind. And looking back, the fear was not the problem. The fear was just the toll you pay to cross into the next thing. What I want to talk about is the thing I almost got wrong on the way across, the thing I see a lot of talented people getting wrong right now. I thought I had to build it alone.

How I Lost Art the First Time

Here is where that instinct came from. Long before any of this, I was a creative kid. My dad was a cop, my mom was a math teacher, both of them lived in a pretty black and white world, and somehow they raised a kid who saw every shade of gray there was. They let me chase all of it. Piano, then trombone in the school band, then bass guitar, then drawing and photography. By the time I finished high school I had enough art credits to walk into college with a minor already half done. So I declared an art major, and I lasted less than a semester.

The reason matters. I have never been good at being told what my art is supposed to be. In high school I had a teacher who would reach over my shoulder and draw on the work I was making, and it made me furious. Then I got to college and a professor started telling me what counted as art and what did not. This was a color theory class, not some grand search for meaning. I was not painting a Rembrandt. But I would get made to stand up and defend why what I made was art, and friends would find me afterward and ask what I had done to make him so angry. Something in me shut the door on it. I walked away from visual art and did not really go back for years.

I want to be honest about what that cost, because I think a lot of creatives carry a version of it. When someone with authority tells you your work is not good enough, or not real enough, you do not just lose a class. You lose a piece of how you see yourself. For a while I told myself I was fine, that I would simply pour all of that creative energy somewhere else. And I did. I poured it into music. I played in bands, did fill in sessions, did some studio work, and eventually ended up leading worship and building creative teams inside the church. That was real, and I loved it. But there was a part of me that had quietly accepted a smaller story about what I was allowed to make.

Art Was Never Just Decoration

The work I did in those years taught me something I did not have language for at the time. Art is not decoration. The right painting changes the room it hangs in. A song you have not heard in thirty years comes on and it moves you, it puts you back in a moment, it connects you to people you have never met who are singing the same words. There is a line Dave Grohl said once, that for the length of a show none of the divisions matter, everybody is in unity around the same thing. That is what good creative work does. It is not about getting famous. It is about staying power and connection. It is a movement.

The Weekend I Walked Away With No Plan

Eventually the restlessness I had been ignoring got loud. I had been running a small design business on the side for years, first under one name and then renamed around something that meant a lot to me, a line from Psalm 40 about having a new song to sing. That new song idea would not leave me alone. And not long after, my wife and I both felt our season at the church was finished. The instruction we kept landing on was simple and terrifying. Just go. I will show you when you get there. So we went. We made the decision on a weekend, and by the end of that same weekend I had a full enough client list to do the work full time. I still do not totally know how that happened.

The Day I Realized What I Actually Do

The thing I had to learn next is the whole point of this. It took me close to two years to catch it. I had been trying to figure out how my love of music and my love of helping people build their brands connected, and one ordinary afternoon it landed. For generations, stories got passed down through songs, because a melody is how people remembered them. A song is a bunch of separate pieces, melody and rhythm and instrumentation, that only work because they play together. That is what I actually do. I help people write their songs. The website, the logo, the brand, all of it is me playing the producer, helping the pieces fit so somebody’s vision gets amplified. I am not the artist in that room. They are. I am the one helping their art get loud enough to be heard.

Why the One Man Band Never Works

And you cannot do that alone. This is where so many of us get stuck. The temptation, especially when money is tight, is to be the entire band yourself, to play every instrument at once like Dick Van Dyke strapped with a drum and a horn and a cymbal between his knees. It never actually works. Even the people we hold up as solo geniuses are not really solo. The first Foo Fighters record was basically one guy, and the band only became what it is because he kept bringing the right people in, Pat and Chris and Taylor and Rami, each one changing what the whole thing could be. The point was never doing it all himself. The point was knowing the direction and then surrounding it with people who made it better than he could alone.

So I built my business that way on purpose, even though at first it happened by accident. On paper it is just me. In practice I have a video partner, a social media manager who runs her own business, people who handle SEO and web development, a whole loose network of creatives I trust. The fearful moments in my work are always the ones where I get in over my head and try to white knuckle it solo. The breath of fresh air is always the phone call. Hey, how are we going to do this. Help me figure this out.

The Lie That’s Quietly Poisoning Creative Work

Here is what I most want you to hear if you work in a creative field. There is a scarcity mindset running through our industry that is quietly poisoning it. I have to hold onto this client, I cannot collaborate, because if I let this other designer or video person or writer in, they might take what is mine. That fear is understandable and it is almost always wrong. There is so much more room than the scarcity story admits. When a peer wins, you can actually celebrate it. If you both pitch the same client and they get it, you can be genuinely glad, and trust that the next thing might be even better suited to you. Creative collaboration is quite possibly the biggest missing commodity in creative businesses right now, and the people who figure that out are going to build things the lone wolves never will.

The Antidote Is Almost Too Simple

The fear at that dinner table was real. The imposter voice asking who I thought I was, that was real too. But there is an antidote, and it is almost embarrassingly simple. It is movement, and it is not being alone. You take the next step, and you take it with people who will actually hear you, who have either walked the road you are on or can see it from an angle you cannot. Go find your wise counsel. Go find your band. The work you were made to make is not meant to be played by one person anyway.

Create your art. The world is waiting.

#createyourart

---

Full Transcript

PJ: That’s why I couldn’t buy the domain the other day.

Darren: The guy that was selling it was asking a million bucks or something.

PJ: I had this epiphany moment where I’m like, oh my gosh, this is what has to happen. We have to do this. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ll flip burgers if that’s what it means to pay for my family. Okay, let’s go.

PJ: Creative collaboration, I think, is quite possibly the biggest missing commodity in creative businesses right now.

Darren: Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Create Your Art Podcast, where we believe that you are an artist and you need to do the hard work of bringing that out into the world, because we need your voice. So do it already, okay? I’m here with my good friend. I would say business connection, partner, colleague, mentor.

PJ: Better looking friend. Bearded.

Darren: Exactly. One of my good buddies that I get to talk to all the time, who has helped me in so many awesome ways. I’m so pumped to either introduce you to PJ, or let you get to know him a little better. Dude, thanks for being here, man.

PJ: Yeah, man. It’s about time.

Darren: I know. So let’s just get this all out. We have been talking about your Create Your Art podcast for years. Here we go. So, what year did you step away from full-time vocational ministry to go do your own thing?

PJ: Wait, are you interviewing me?

Darren: Yeah, we can do that. Give me your phone. Give me your questions.

PJ: It would have been around 2022, right?

Darren: So back then we had a conversation about doing a podcast called the Create Your Art Podcast, to the point that I went out and bought the domain.

PJ: Oh, you got the domain. That’s why I couldn’t buy it the other day. The guy selling it was asking a million bucks or something.

Darren: No, that’s not true. It’s a very low value target. But I got it for you. It can go down when you’re ready.

PJ: That’s awesome.

Darren: Whether it’s been a long time coming or not, glad you’re here. I always love working and talking with you. We do that a lot, to the point that my wife goes, “You’re talking with PJ. It’ll be a minute.” And she gets up and walks out.

PJ: She’s gone.

Darren: You run forty:three creative, which is an awesome agency here locally where you help people do amazing things, and I want to hear you tell us about that in a little bit. But before forty:three became your main thing, you spent close to 20 years in creative work inside the church, leading worship, running creative teams, all of that. For those who might not know that chapter, what did that work mean to you? And when did you first start to sense there might be something more for you outside the walls of the church?

PJ: Outside the walls of the church. That’s a loaded question, right? Are we talking about the church, the building? Or the church, the people?

Darren: In the ministry sense.

PJ: So we kind of have to go back. I can’t really do anything in short stories, which is why Angie always leaves when I call you. I grew up in a family that really pushed me to explore my creativity. My dad was a cop, so very black and white. My mom was a math teacher. Even though she was a feeler, she was still very black and white. On the Enneagram she’s a nine, or a one, a nine wing one. A lot of black and white. When you’re a cop, it’s right or wrong. And then they’ve got this artist kid who sees all the shades of gray. Not just 50 shades of gray, all the shades and all the colors and all the different things.

But they let me explore that. They got me in piano lessons early. It’s nerdy, but when I got into middle school and joined school band, I started playing the trombone, because my favorite character from Star Trek played the trombone.

Darren: Okay, we’re just letting it all hang out.

PJ: My mom said she didn’t know that until a month or two ago. She’s like, “I didn’t know that.” I’m like, “Oh yeah, totally, 100 percent.” Anyway, they let me explore all of it. I always drew, I always colored. I think I was a pretty decent artist. My extended family always built into that too. And much like you, I did the high school youth band thing at church, and that sparked my love for playing music live in front of people. I started learning bass guitar.

Darren: Ooh, the bass.

PJ: Started on the bass. I broke this finger playing baseball in high school, so if you zoom in, you can see it hitch a little. I never thought I’d play real guitar. But fast forward through high school, playing bass and singing, just exploring what creativity meant. And then at 16 or 17, I felt a call to ministry. Didn’t know what that meant. Still don’t, even now. But I leaned into it, and I still had this huge love for art.

My dad is a photographer, so I learned a lot from that, and I was doing independent study photography classes in high school. The year I moved into our high school, it was a brand new school, and the art lab had a Macintosh iMac for everybody in the department. By the time I graduated, I had enough art classes that I could have gone in with an art minor. So I actually went to school a declared art major, because I’m thinking, I’m supposed to do ministry, but I don’t know what that means. You always have a backup plan.

Darren: What are you going to do with an art degree?

PJ: Deliver pizzas. That’s kind of what I thought I was getting into. So I went to school a declared art major and was going to do a ministry minor, because, you know, practical skills. I really didn’t want to be the guy working at a church. That was just not my plan. I was less than a semester into the art program and realized the department hated me, I hated the department.

Darren: I know, as you were doing your prep, you read me your notes: “So you went to school a declared art major, that did not go well.”

PJ: No, it did not. What it boiled down to was, I’ve never been comfortable being told what to do with my art. I had an art teacher in high school who would reach over my shoulder and draw on what I was doing, and I hated it. It made me so mad. So I get to college and I’m getting told what is art and what is not art. If you don’t know me, I don’t do well with that. I tend to speak my mind when I don’t do well with something. So I let everybody know. It got to the point where one particular professor kind of killed my interest in it.

Darren: Didn’t like it anymore.

PJ: I would have friends after class coming to me going, “What did you do to make them so mad? He’s making you stand up and give a dissertation on why you think what you did was art.” It’s a color theory class. It’s not anything deeper. I’m not Van Gogh painting a Rembrandt. It’s just color theory, bro.

So that killed it for me. I walked away from it, but I still had all this pent up creative energy. And I realized, if I switched my major to Christian ministries and got a ministry degree, I would graduate a semester early. So I’m like, let’s save the money. That’s practically why I landed in that major. It really did serve me well.

Darren: What I hear is a lifelong journey. A creative kid doing this thing, gets to school, art major, all this stuff, and then there’s this moment, whether it’s a certain professor or just the sheer experience, where you lose the love of it. Talk to me about what that was like emotionally. What were you feeling when all of a sudden it was like, everything I thought about where I was headed, even though ministry was tucked behind it, the art just fell out?

PJ: Well, are you ready for a therapy session? Honestly, I don’t know that I’ve ever thought about it like that before. There have definitely been those identity-driven changes throughout my life, and that was one of them. It was like, well, you’re telling me here that what I’m doing is not art. I’m just going to go do whatever I want anyway, whether I graduate with your degree or not.

For me, there was a freeing moment in that. Because of the release, I could still draw, I could still paint, I could still create stuff. I was terrible at clay. I can build stuff with wood, but I am not a ceramics person. Where it all ran down for me was, well, if I’m just not going to do that piece anymore, then I’m going to turn it around and find other ways to be creative. So I walked away from it. If you went back through all my journals and notepads and drawing pads, that’s probably the timeline of when that left.

But I was playing music. So that’s when it was, oh, let me put all my creative juices into this. At that point I was already playing in a couple of bands in college, doing gigs, fill-in sessions, some studio work. I absolutely loved all of that. And when I’m getting ready to graduate, I’d just gotten married, and I’m like, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I’m about to have a wife. What do I do? I only have one semester left because I’m graduating early. What am I going to do with my life? I knew I was going to do something in ministry, I just didn’t know what that meant.

Then I was in a college small group led by a guy who was the young adult pastor at one of the churches in town. He transferred into being an executive director for Youth for Christ. He’s like, “Hey, I’m doing this, we’re starting these new clubs. Why don’t you come do one? It’s a full-time job, you have to do some fundraising.” At that point I was like, cool, I don’t have to work in a church, I can work with my family, I can still do ministry.

I realized I was a terrible youth pastor. Youth was not my thing. Little kids, sure. You know that scene in The Santa Clause where Tim Allen is starting to get fat and his beard keeps growing in, and the little kids line up to sit on his lap? I’ve always been that guy. My wife told me, “By the time we have grandkids, I really hope your beard is all white.” Cool, thanks, love you too. Anyway, I’ve always been good with little kids, but teenagers, even then the teenagers were fine. It was their parents. I didn’t really want to do that for the rest of my life.

At the same time, still playing in a band, leading worship for events, playing shows outside of church too. And the church I grew up in calls me up and says, “We want to hire you to do the contemporary thing.” Back in those days, the split of 2003, 2004. “We want you to come grow our young adult connection, lead this service, be as creative as you want. Everything’s on the table.” I said no. I had already decided we were leaving Youth for Christ, because we didn’t feel like it was the right fit. Lots of prayer, lots of discussions. And then they kept coming back. The third time you come back, maybe I should actually think about it. So I ended up taking that job, moved back to the Indianapolis area, and did that for three years at a church.

It was awesome, because everybody knew me, they trusted me, I’d been around. From birth until that point, I’d attended that church. They’d seen me lead worship, they’d heard me pray, which is a big thing in some places. Can you speak in front of people? Can you not just sing good, but pray good too? Interesting thing, though, I took that worship job and I couldn’t even play guitar yet. I was just a bassist. But I’d learned over the years how to surround myself with the right people. So I built a team, grew it, had a lot of fun, lots of art related stuff.

Back then, for people who go to church now, they’re used to seeing art on the screen with lyrics. Prior to the early 2000s, that was not a thing. It was the projector screen with the clear transparency, and little Lois sitting in the front row would change them around, fix the word she misspelled with a dry erase marker. This was all new. Being on the forefront of that was super awesome. It was a way to connect creativity to an experience, to enhance someone’s experience, and make a connection that would hopefully grow their faith or help them ask questions. I absolutely loved doing all of that.

Darren: I love that. What you just outlined is that art has a purpose and an expression beyond just being creative. My five-year-old loves to draw and live in his imaginary world. That’s fine and good, but how does it actually translate to an experience? You’re speaking about it in the church context, but what is that thing that lives in people that gets them excited to move somebody down a journey? That’s the whole Create Your Art thing I stand for, that there’s something inside of somebody. A couple episodes ago I sat with my buddy Sean Kirby, who’s in finance, and he outlined very similar things, walking somebody through a journey to unlock an experience, a connection. It’s so cool to see those things tie together.

PJ: And take church out of it. I think that’s the artistic spirit as a whole.

Darren: That’s what bands do.

PJ: The good bands out there, they’re not just up there to play music and get famous and do drugs. If that’s your thing, maybe. But do they have the staying power, the impact that the bands we all love have? A song that’s 30 years old comes on and, oh, that’s so good. It moves us. That’s what it boils down to. That’s what gets me excited about the imagery of art and bands, because it’s a community, a connection, a movement. It makes me think of a quote by Dave Grohl in some interview. Somebody was talking about his political leanings, and he’s like, “It doesn’t matter. For three hours we’re all in unity together around this thing.” That fires me up. That’s so beautiful. And probably some of the church work we got to do over the years was good for us because we got to see that. We might not have had language for it, but that was what it was.

It’s not just bands, it’s also artists. A lot of artists and musicians have struggles they’re working through, processing through. I heard somebody say one time, no offense to any counselors out there, a lot of people who go into counseling are trying to fix themselves. It’s the same kind of thing. When you’re going on a journey, a faith journey, an art journey, a finance journey, a video journey, a branding journey, whatever, when you can make those connections relationally, those are the things that make a difference. In the faith context of what I was doing, those things change atmospheres. The right painting in your room changes the room.

Darren: To quote the Big Lebowski, the rug really ties the room together.

PJ: Anyway, in the whole context of it, that’s what art is supposed to do. That’s what the creative spirit is supposed to do.

Darren: That’s so good. Walking through, let’s call it the loss of that, and then figuring out how to shift it into something else and make a difference with it, that’s kind of where I have always lived too.

PJ: If you get into fivefold, or APEST, or the business term they use for it, it’s all the same thing. I’ve always been in that apostle, pioneer space, going out and starting new things. I know you’re in some of that too. And then really high creative is in there. So I’m a pioneer creative, the creative pioneer. In a lot of ways, the things we work on dovetail that way. Even figuring out how to work on those things together by accident is a whole extra thing.

Darren: It’s so fun, because I love that what you’re talking about gives language to something I haven’t even shared here, that it’s really about the artist spirit, finding that artist spirit within each of us. There are so many times we’ve heard people say, “I’m working this job, I really don’t love it, it’s just paying the bills.” Maybe it’s good money, maybe not, but they feel stuck. And there’s a thing pulling them into something deeper, something bigger. That’s really what that artist spirit is. It might not play out how you and I do it, with guitars or music or painting, but it’s a place where that artist spirit can live. And I think if we all lived in that artist spirit, that’s the way we make the world a better place.

So. You’ve been on this journey, you were in ministry for a while, and then there’s this whole thing we know you as today, forty:three creative. That was kind of a left turn, you went back into art, but also a business, graphic design. Talk me through the start of forty:three. When you started it, did you feel ready for something like that, or was it a test run?

PJ: Again, I have to start before the start of forty:three.

Darren: I try to get you up here and we just go right back. We’ll get there.

PJ: In 2007, I left the church I had grown up at and helped plant a church in Fishers. The whole intention was basically to do the same thing, be super creative, come be our creative director. My wife and I got really excited about that, because we had just moved to Fishers. We were introducing people who were going to be part of it to our friends who were not connected to church. That “bring the right people around you” attitude I’ve always tried to do started to happen again, more naturally.

We launched in 2007. At the same time, I’d just started doing some freelance projects. I’d been doing art again for about three years, art I’d kind of walked away from because of, what’s his name, the professor. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. One of the guys who’s part of that church plant is a teacher in Fishers who is also just starting to do some freelance work. We’re walking the same path accidentally at the same time. So we start picking each other’s brains. “Will you critique this logo? I’m doing this layout, give me some pointers.” Neither one of us had art degrees. We were doing full-time jobs and doing this on the side. After about a year of that, we were like, maybe we need to start a business together.

So we started a business called PM Design, because it was our night job, and our initials started with a P and an M.

Darren: That’s what I was originally going to guess, but it’s your initials.

PJ: We were sitting in my home office at the time, before kids, kind of scheming and dreaming, and I said, “We could call it PM Design, because we have day jobs.” And we both went, “Wait a minute, those are our initials.” That’s what we ran with for four years.

So we’re running this agency, primarily working with nonprofits and churches, because marketing agencies are not cheap. This is 2007, almost 20 years ago. Churches do things on a much different budget. So we asked, how do we still bring that professionalism of creativity and brand management to them? We started doing branding and brand management for nonprofits and churches. We did that for seven or eight years together. All as a PM job, just on the side, because I was still working full-time for the church and he was working full-time for the school. The goals were super low hanging. I wanted to pay for summer vacation and Christmas presents. That was my legitimate low hanging fruit goal. It was going fine.

Then my buddy Mark got really into the print side of things, spinning off to work with schools doing yearbooks. So he went off and did that, and I kept PM Design as a side hustle periodically, same goals. Then it was really in the summer of 2017, I started getting this weird, “I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do when I grow up.”

Darren: And you’re still in ministry, still doing this, still have this side thing.

PJ: By this point I have renamed it forty:three creative. 2017 was probably the year I did that. It’s actually forty colon three. Out of Psalm 40 verse 3, which is, “I have a new song in my heart to sing.” It was this moment where I was like, something new is happening, and I don’t really know what that means or where it’s coming from. To play it back to bands with staying power, multiple times I have seen U2 live, and they have a song called 40 that is literally singing that chapter of scripture. One of the most profound religious moments of my entire life was standing on the floor at the United Center listening to tens of thousands of people sing scripture, and going, they don’t even all know what they’re doing right now. It’s this beautiful picture of, here’s a new song that everyone is singing. So for me, those things connected, my love of music and my love for art and connections.

Less than a year later, I was leaving that church, because my wife and I both just felt like our time there was done. Not to be overly spiritual, but I have a hard time compartmentalizing. We both really felt like God was telling us, just go, I’ll show you what’s next. Start walking, start moving, we’ll figure it out. And I’m like, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I have a very particular set of skills. I can play some guitar, sing, make some visuals, make logos and videos. The week we decided to leave, my goal for forty:three creative was still really low. We make the decision we’re leaving that weekend, and by the end of the weekend I had an entirely full client book to pay me full-time. We’re going, how does this work? Some worked out, some didn’t, but here we are eight or nine years later, and that’s what we’ve been doing.

Darren: I want to touch on that point. The message we’re getting a lot in the conversations I’m having on the Create Your Art podcast is these moments of folks finding themselves at a crossroads. Usually that crossroads goes from what is comfortable and easy and what I know, into a very uncomfortable, unknown conversation. For you, it’s, “I feel like God just told me to go do that, and now I’m going to follow it.” Other people go, “I’ve been burning with this thing for a long time, and I don’t know.” I want to talk about that moment of, okay, we’re making this decision, leaning into what forty:three creative is after a long time in this other thing. Emotionally, how were you feeling?

PJ: Scared out of my mind. There’s no other way to say it. I’ve got two little kids at home. I’ve got a wife. We’d been married almost 15 years at that point. I’m going, I don’t know what this means. I was in Chicago for a conference when it really became, no, this is what we have to do. Angie and I had already talked about it, and she was kind of already there. She was ready. I wasn’t.

Darren: Wow. You normally don’t hear it that way.

PJ: I was in Chicago and I had this epiphany moment. From the movie Hook, an apostrophe moment. I’m like, oh my gosh, this is what has to happen. We have to do this. And I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ll flip burgers if that’s what it means to pay for my family. But okay, let’s go. Let’s start walking. God, show me where you want me to go. That was my prayer.

That night, because my in-laws lived in Chicagoland, they came in to meet me for dinner. I’m going to get emotional. This is the business one, where it makes sense that I get emotional. I’m a four on the Enneagram, I’m okay with crying. I sit down with my in-laws, and I remember looking at them and going, “I think I’m supposed to leave this church job.” What I was saying was, “We feel like we’re supposed to.” But in my mind and my spirit and my body, I felt like I was saying, “I’m not going to be able to provide for your daughter and your grandkids.” That’s what I was feeling. And they were super supportive. Angie was super supportive, because she was ready. She’s always been a little bit ahead of me, as many a good wife are.

So legitimately, we were scared. We didn’t know.

Darren: Quick pause here. If you are thinking about starting a podcast, or have already started one and it’s not driving business results like you’d like, we would love to help. At 1898 Creative, we install a proven podcast system, a strategy that helps you leverage your message to attract premium clients without adding more to your plate. So if you’re ready to turn your podcast into an authority engine, book a call over at 1898creative.com and let’s build something awesome together. All right, now let’s get back to the conversation.

So you have this journey, you’re feeling something stirring, praying through it, the same thing’s happening with your wife, and it all leads to this moment of saying it out loud. Once you said it, and it sounds like you hedged your bets even saying it out loud for the first time to your in-laws.

PJ: I think what I said to them was, “It’s time for us to do this.” That’s the way I actually said it. But in my mind I’m like, I don’t know that I can. Of course, we weren’t leaving for bad reasons. There’s all the church politics and fall from grace stuff we see happen. There was none of that. Everything was leaning positive. Leave on a high note.

Darren: So do you feel like you were leaving a job, or choosing a different career?

PJ: Good question. I don’t think I was even thinking about it from a career standpoint. But I also didn’t feel like it was leaving a job. I felt like it was stepping into the next adventure. I’m not a very risk averse person, which is odd for a firstborn. Usually we’re the rule followers. My parents got my little brother, he’s five years younger than me but everybody thinks he’s older, a t-shirt that says, “That’s a terrible idea. When do we start?” Because that’s his personality. The same year they got me one that says, “Sarcastic comment loading.” It fits. But I’ve always been the “let’s go build something, let’s go make something, if it doesn’t work we’ll build the next thing” kind of person. So as scared as I was, there was also this excitement of, okay, God, what’s next? Where are we going?

Darren: I love that distinction. Sometimes you leave a job, and sometimes you step into something bigger. You’re saying there was something about the adventure that called you out there.

PJ: There’s a story in the Old Testament where Abraham is called into a new land and he doesn’t know where he’s supposed to go. It’s just go, and I’ll show you. I’ll tell you when you get there. Trust me. It’s the same thing we’ve been talking about with you recently with your house sale. Watch me, watch me show up. So that’s kind of what we did. There was definitely some identity shift and loss, because my creativity had been coming out primarily in music and some graphics, but it wasn’t tied to dollars. I was working for a church. Now all of a sudden I’m turning and making some of the same things my livelihood. Still playing in a band, still leading conferences. But all of a sudden, now I’ve got to work, I’ve got to build. How do I help people create?

The exciting part, and it took me a while to get there, is that it’s not about me coming in and telling you, “I made this thing for you.” It’s about getting to sit down with somebody, get to know them, tell their story, help their vision get amplified. It was just a couple of years ago, I think right at two years, when I finally caught it. I remember the moment. I called you, you were the first person I called. It was the middle of a day, you were at work, and I’m like, I’ve got to tell somebody this, I just figured it out. I’d been trying to figure out how to connect the forty:three that talks about the new song, and my love for music and tattoos, with my love for helping people in this creative branding and marketing world.

That moment where I finally figured out the connection was this: for generations, stories have been passed down through songs, because that’s how you could remember them. There’s a melody, there’s instrumentation, all the different pieces play together to make these songs. And all of a sudden it was, oh my gosh, I’m helping people write their songs through their visions for their businesses, their startups, whatever, whether that’s a website or a logo. I’m helping their vision come to fruition. In music speak, I’m playing the producer role. I’m helping all the things fit. So when I was trying to figure out my catchphrase, my line, I finally caught it. Amplify. I’m helping them amplify their stories. That’s a connection to guitars and to amps and to music. And it was finally at that point, in 2023 or 2024, that I was able to actually do something with my own website. I’d built all these other ones for everybody else. Let’s do mine, the one that’s going to be the last thing. I’m spending all this time and energy helping other people, and then finally, oh yeah, let’s go.

Darren: I love all of that. What was the scariest part about building all of this? Was there a time you went, “I shouldn’t have done this”?

PJ: Only in the morning.

Darren: I might have been on the other end of some of those phone calls.

PJ: You absolutely have been. The thing for me, I’ve always been collaborative. I always want to bring people around, find the right people, find the good connections, whether it’s a drummer in a band or a good bass player. You can’t do all of it, or you end up looking like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, doing all the things, and it never really works.

Darren: And the second Dave Grohl reference of the podcast, being that he was a one-man band on their first record, and he still had to find the people to surround himself with to make the Foo Fighters what they are today.

PJ: Right, and there are lots of stories where it’s like, no, he’s leading the direction. “Those drums aren’t right, I’m going to re-record them,” which makes the drummer mad, so he quits. I don’t want to be that kind of leader. I do love Dave Grohl, though. But in that context, I could do all these things, but I need the right people around, and I didn’t know where or how to do that, or how to pay for it. One of the scarier moments is when you say yes to something. Because, not risk averse, I’m willing to give it the college try. And the college try, well, I tried art in college. But if it’s not going to work, I have zero problem going, “Hey, help me out, help me figure this out.” So the scariest moments have been the ones where I get in over my head. But that’s where people like you, our good friend Dustin Pead, lots of people in different ways have helped me figure those out. It becomes this growing network.

Today, forty:three operates as a co-op agency. On paper, forty:three creative is just me. But I have you as a video partner. I can do some video and hand it off to you and your team to edit, or bring you in on a client project. I have a social media manager, Anna, who runs social for all the clients I work with on social, but she has her own business doing that. Same with SEO, same with some WooCommerce and website development. So now I’ve got this team that, is it fully relying on me? Sure. But there’s still collaboration. I’m trying to figure out how to collaborate even better. Sometimes it’s real easy to go, “I’ll just figure it out.” But it’s never as good as when you bring everybody together. Your Foo Fighters reference is a perfect example. That first record is great. But as you go down the line and bring in Pat and Chris and Taylor and Rami, all of a sudden you’ve got something different, that plays into different connections because of what everybody brings to the table.

So to take the fear out of something, the fearful moments are when I get over my head. The breath of fresh air is when I call you and go, “Hey, how are we going to do this?” Or I call Anna and say, “Here’s what we need to do to make this better, help me figure this out.”

Darren: It’s funny, I was on a podcast this last week, a leadership podcast, walking through defining core values. He walked me through a process of defining a core value, not core values. He had three questions to put it through. If you say yes to all three, it could be a core value. I’m going to remember the second one. There’s this idea of, what do you enjoy? Music, guitar, coffee. Well, what’s a passion? A passion is something you rearrange your time around. I ended up walking through this and getting to the word collaboration. He asks three questions, and the middle one was, “In chaos, do you run to it?” And I was like, oh. Because a lot of times we say family is a core value, but a lot of the chaos is coming from your family. Do you run to the family? That question stood out, because collaboration was, oh yeah, I do run to it when chaos hits. There are so many times I go, “PJ, I need collaboration, I need you to think through this with me.” What I love about forty:three and the way you’ve built this thing is, yes, it’s these siloed agencies that come together under one, but ultimately it’s the collaboration piece. I don’t have to be the everything for everybody. I can just show up and do what I do best. You call me about video, we figure it out, we rock it out, and I don’t have to figure out the marketing strategy or the social media too. That’s what’s beautiful about what you’re building. There’s community and collaboration.

PJ: Collaboration is one of my core values in my business. After that leadership podcast this week, I’m like, I think that’s one of my major core values. And he said, “Come up with a visual representation.” For him it might be a scripture. He goes, “What’s a visual thing that stands out to you?” And as soon as he said it, a band came to mind. For me, I was like, oh my gosh, I never thought of it this way. It takes me back to the first band I was in. I was telling the stories of that band. Why was that such a big moment for me? Why do I have sushi on my arm? Because that was the first band I was in, called Sushi Bar. I’ll tell that story later.

Darren: Can I be on that episode?

PJ: Yeah, that’d be fun. That moment had such a lasting impact, because it put that artist spirit in me. Oh, I can connect with myself here and see why I can do something in the world. It connects me in collaboration with other people. It connects me to God in ways I never thought possible. So the band is now that representation. I used to think I was the goofy guy who at 42 is still talking about bands. Why are you talking about that? Because that was the moment that literally changed everything for me and installed that artist spirit within me.

Darren: Here’s something else to play into that collaboration piece. You said community. One of the things I’m passionate about is people. Always have been. I was an extrovert growing up in a family of introverts.

PJ: Have you met my family? They’re awesome. And then I marry an introvert. Both of my kids are extroverts. We sit at dinner and the three of us are just going, and my wife’s just sitting there eating, like, “You guys are wearing me out, I’ve got to go take a nap.” But the idea of community, and the way you’re talking about the creative spirit in general, I think we just coined a phrase for you to keep bringing out, the creative spirit. The way you’re talking about it with your other guests, you’re really talking about building community with people, showing there are different ways to create your art. To speak specifically to people in creative industries right now, there is such a scarcity mindset. “I’ve got to do this and hold onto it. I don’t want to collaborate, because I’m afraid somebody’s going to come take my client away.” There is so much space for all of us to find our stuff and work together. Creative collaboration is quite possibly the biggest missing commodity in creative businesses right now. I think, unintentionally, that’s why I built forty:three creative this way. I wasn’t intentionally going, “I need to find creative people to be in community with.” It was just happening naturally. But to go, “I need this help, and is it somebody I would know, like, and trust? Is this somebody I’d love to go have drinks and wings with, or have over for family dinner?” Those are the questions I ask. If we can get to that community space where creatives in creative industries are not fighting against each other, that would be such a huge win. Other designer friends, web design friends, video friends, we can all celebrate each other when they have a win. If we’re both pitching to the same client and one of them gets it, cool, let’s celebrate that other person, and know something else is going to come down the road that might be better for us.

Darren: How do you do that? I love the concept, but there are so many times you scroll Instagram too long and see somebody in the same field celebrating something or showing their highlight reel, and you almost go the opposite way.

PJ: Absolutely. But you’re also not seeing the 70,000 fails on the back end of their feed. Nobody’s posting the bad stuff. I think it’s Simon Sinek, anytime he gets up to talk, he always starts with a confession. He humanizes himself. So much of what he talks about is building into people and relationships, those soft skills. It’s not about business building, it’s about people building. When he humanizes himself with a confession, all of a sudden you go, “Okay, I can relate to this guy,” and you lean in. As opposed to Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, where it’s all just the positive getting slammed in your face all the time, which is a form of addiction.

Darren: What I hear you saying is, maybe there’s a moment of stopping. A moment of going, “I feel like I’m not doing something I should be, because I see this person getting the award or the client,” and bringing yourself back to the abundance mindset. Remembering that all of us on this journey of building something that matters and lasts are filled with a lot of pushback, resistance, unknowns. If we can keep pressing into that, and when we find ourselves up against that lack of imagination, we come back to, there’s got to be an abundance mindset, there’s got to be more here. If we could simply remind ourselves, I think that would be a good place to start. So often we’re caught up in the algorithms and we miss the fact that we’re in this together. That’s why the community piece is so important, whether it’s collaboration, friend groups, work, church, being in a band, you have somebody who sees a different perspective and can say, “Hey, hang on, take a breath.”

PJ: I’ll be honest, sometimes the hardest person for me to hear that from is my wife. Not that she nags, but you know what I’m saying. If we can hear it in the context it’s being given, which from my wife is always coming from a standpoint of love and care. Same thing when I sit down with clients who bring me in to talk strategy or branding or website. Because I’m not an employee, I’m trying to help them grow and reach their vision. That’s my goal. Let me help you reach this. If I’m not the one, let me help you find the person who will be. It gives you an opportunity to speak differently, because you can say, “All I’m trying to do here is help.” In a community aspect, that’s why you can call me and be like, “Hey, have you thought about this? You said this thing, but I think what you were trying to get to was this.” Whether it’s relational or business, even this morning when we were kicking some stuff back and forth on one of your products. I have zero remorse in my life. If somebody asks me for help to process through something, and they win, all I want to do is celebrate that, help them achieve it. Whether that’s in community, in client work, or in my family, that’s what we want, to see that celebration come to fruition.

Darren: I love that. As we’re here in this point of the conversation, let’s turn toward somebody out there who might be wrestling with the idea of where you were when you were leaving a secure job for something more unknown. Or somebody who feels there’s something deeper inside them they’ve got to go do, and fear has crept up, insecurities, the little imposter syndrome that says, “Who are you to try to do that?” What would you say to somebody like that?

PJ: If you’re watching the podcast and feeling that, email Darren to get my contact info, and we can sit down and have coffee. No, in all honesty, I think what I would say is, go seek wise counsel. Not necessarily from somebody in that space, either. Maybe it’s a mentor, maybe a family member, maybe a pastor, maybe somebody you met. Probably not just some Joe Schmo off the street. But reach out, be open, have the conversation, see what’s next. This is probably not just an Instagram or Facebook algorithm problem, but I grew up with a cop dad who, for his job, had to be emotionally distant in certain aspects. I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to compartmentalize. That’s why I can get emotional on a podcast talking about something I said to my in-laws however many years ago. When I look at that, it feels weird to me, because my dad wasn’t that way. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen my dad cry. My uncles weren’t that way, my grandparents weren’t that way. So the authentic side of it is, I have to say it to process it. I have to get there. So in all honesty, whether it’s me or you, go talk to somebody who has either experienced what you’re going through or can help you look at it from a different perspective, process it.

Darren: What I love is that it’s an exclamation point on what we said before. It’s community, connection, collaboration. That’s how you get through that, how you get beyond the “I’ve got to do something and I don’t know what to do.” That’s how our relationship plays out so many times, where it’s just, “Bro, I’m struggling, I’ve got to call PJ and just talk at him about what it feels like.”

PJ: And sometimes you need to be able to hear. I find the people you’re most comfortable talking at about the real stuff are usually the ones who have something to say back to you that’s impactful. I can talk at a blank wall.

Darren: I’ve seen you try a few times.

PJ: But I don’t expect the wall to respond. That’s why I seek wise counsel, because it’s somebody who is going to hear you and respond to you and not judge you and help you process. The fear factor is real. But there’s always an antidote, and it usually comes by not being alone.

Darren: Movement and not being alone. I’ve heard you say those a couple of different times, and the story you unfolded for us today is movement, and don’t be alone. That’s so cool. I appreciate you sharing your story with us today. Whether we know you well or not, there are lessons to be learned in the journey. That’s what’s beautiful about it.

PJ: Think how many things we didn’t talk about.

Darren: Oh bro, we skipped over so much. There are probably notes in here I should have hit. But man, I just appreciate you, your friendship, your connection, your community. The fact that I can still call you and you don’t just go, “Ooh,” and hang up.

PJ: Don’t undersell your part in that. Even when we were talking about how we connected through music back in 2018, to look at it and go, oh, we were talking about these things over here, and really what that was doing was setting us up for all of these things over here. Our buddy JJ said to me when I was leaving, one of the parts we didn’t talk about is we were both on staff at a church planting multiple campuses, doing the same job at two different places. As I was stepping out of that role, JJ goes, “You and Coop just need to start something together. That’s what you’ve got to do.” I was like, I don’t know, I’m doing this thing over here, he’s doing this thing over there, and he’s still staying at the church. And here we are. It’s not just because of this podcast, but all the other things where it layers over. The two weeks where I just came off vacation, I think that was the least amount we’ve heard from each other in eight years.

Darren: “Oh, he’s on vacation.”

PJ: There were a couple of times I was like, oh man, I should send a picture of this meal to Coop. But I don’t want to rub it in that I’m on vacation and he’s not.

Darren: So many kids around, and you’re eating the nice meal.

PJ: My two teenagers are like, oh man. We’ll get there eventually. But no, man, I appreciate your friendship, and your wisdom that you’ve shared with me over the years.

Darren: I appreciate you. Thanks for tuning into another episode of the Create Your Art Podcast. Before you go, I want you to remember that you are an artist, and that your voice is needed in this world more than you know, and you’re loved more than you could ever imagine. So go out and create your art, and we’ll catch you here on the next episode.n swinging.