QUESTION:  What if you only made work that YOU loved, and you were certain that you would be paid top dollar if you did...Would you do it?  Of course! Most sane creators / entrepreneurs would jump at the opportunity - and such is the topic of Srinivas Rao’s new book: An Audience of One: Reclaiming Creativity For Its Own Sake.  The problem is, so many of us are watering down our work making it for someone else. In fact, the path to our best work is digging deeper into who you’re creating for and what happens when you create art for yourself. In this episode we also cover… "If you’re going to take the time to learn to use a tool, take the time to make something with that tool…"  This is a fascinating POV I’d never heard before, but it keeps us creators in the building mode vs the procrastinating mode.  How to take your art+career+future into your own hands…  Srini’s view is that we must put our focus and effort into the things that you can control. You can’t control follower count, you can’t control Facebook’s algorithms. You can control your creative process. If you focus on the process, you’ll make better work which will lead to better results… Why those people who live life more deliberately are more likely to find success.  Simply by choosing what’s important to you (and leaning into it with deliberate force) is quite often the biggest thing that’s missing in people’s creative lives… Once you find what’s important?  Pour on the gasoline…and watch out. Enjoy! Today's episode is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world's largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world’s top experts -- Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.