Avatar

Janis Ozolins - How to create viral visuals without design skills

Creator Heist

Hosted by

Alex Llull

In this episode, we sit down with Janis Ozolins.

Janis is well-known for creating simple visuals that convey complex ideas in an easy-to-understand way. Thanks to his visuals, he has gone viral countless times and collaborated with renowned creators like Shaan Puri and Dharmesh Shah.

In today's episode, he shares his entire process plus his view on becoming a full-time creator.

Here’s what we are stealing from him:

• Janis’ process for creating his visuals

• Where Janis finds inspiration for his visuals

• Why you should NOT focus on aesthetics

• His top tips for creating visuals without design skills

• How Janis monetizes this unique skill

• And much more!

You won’t want to miss this one.

Sources and sponsors

Mumbler is the all-in-one tool for audio creatorsSign up for free

More about Janis

Transcription

Hey thieves, before today's heist, I've got something exciting to share with you.If you're an audio creator or have ever thought about starting your own podcast, you're goingto want to hear about Mumbler.Mumbler is changing the way we create and monetize audio content, whether you are aseasoned podcaster or just starting out, Mumbler makes it easy to host, promote, and sell yourpodcast or audio series.The best part?You can do all of this through their usual friendly platform, where you get powerfultools for audience growth like email marketing.But here's the kicker, Mumbler offers a free plan that allows you to host your podcastand other audio content.That's right, for free.It's the perfect way to dip your toes into the world of podcasting without any upfrontinvestment.So why wait?Visit mumbler.io slash heist to learn more and get started.Join the community of creators who are turning their passion for audio into success.That's M-U-M-B-L-I-R, Mumbler, the all-in-one tool for audio creators.Now back to our show.Hey everyone, welcome back to Creator Heist.Today we have with us my good friend, Yanis.How are you, Yanis?Hello.I am doing well, Alex.I'm doing well.It's good to see you again.Awesome.For anyone that, I mean, I know you a lot.So I mean, it's hard for me to introduce you because I know a lot of stuff.So, you know, can you give us like the short version, like one or two lines of like whoyou are, what you do?And yeah, that's it.Yeah.Like super brief intro would be that around eight years ago, I just got the, you know,the Tim Ferriss book, The 4-Hour Workweek, got the 4-Hour Fever and just wanted to havethis laptop lifestyle and do this creator type of thing online and did want to quitmy nine to five, et cetera.So I just started to study around those topics, failed for several years, tried many differentthings.None of them worked, felt like an uphill battle.Around three years ago, one of the content creation formats I really enjoyed was creatingvisuals, which is just kind of communicating interesting ideas through very simple visualsonline.And that's kind of where I got my little niche creator fame.And from there came some freelance opportunities.People asked me how I do this stuff.So I built a course where I teach this thing.And yeah, I've been doing this full time for around three years.And yeah, just living the dream right now and just continuing to sharing what I'm interestedin and doing this stuff full time.It was a bit all over the place, but that's how my life actually looks like.And my work is a bit all over the place.Yeah, no, that was pretty good.That was a pretty good intro.Yeah.So for anyone that doesn't know Yanis, he's like really well known for his visuals, likethese super simple visuals that convey a complex idea in a simple visual.I think that's one of the best ways to describe it.For anyone that wants to take a look, they run to your Twitter, your Instagram accountand see what you have there.You have built quite a big following thanks to it.And you have worked with a lot of interesting people thanks to it too.So today I wanted to bring you on to talk more about these visuals.How do you make them?What's the secret?And all of that.So if you want, I can start with...I guess this is one of the most common questions that you get is where do you get your ideasfor these visuals?Where do you find this inspiration and all of that?First of all, it's just about capturing just regular ideas.Before we even go into creating visuals, et cetera, there is a certain process you canapply.But first thing, I think you need to actually look for ideas.Because most people, when it comes to like, hey, I don't have any ideas, I think theyhave the perception of that ideas will just come to their mind like, hey Yanis, thereis this great idea and here is the idea.But it doesn't work like that.You need to kind of tune up your awareness a bit and really look for ideas.If your intention is content creation, whether it's writing or visuals, you listen to thosepodcasts, you read those books, you read an interesting line, which may be trigger somepast experience or whatever, take a note of it.Note taking is just a very crucial part of this whole process.Because we all know how hard it is to start with a blank page.So that's just something that is very useful habit to develop.But when it comes to converting those ideas into visuals, there of course is certain prompts,certain brainstorming kind of framework that you can go through to come up with these visuals.Because you can take whatever a super random idea that I feel very stressed before interviews.And then you can start to come up with like, okay, what other ideas comes around this thing?What type of advice I could give to this type of person?What things I could say to my friends when I'm feeling this way?So you start to come up with more elements around the central idea.And then of course, if you have seen my visuals or other visuals, there are certain thingshow you can represent things.You can think about what metaphors I can come up with here, how I could paint the scenein this scenario.And that could be like, maybe I can illustrate a calendar and make that, hey, I have thisimportant meeting here.And before it, I feel super crazy.So you can put some sort of illustration there about like thinking bubbles or something likethat.How I can illustrate this idea or some elements of this idea in some sort of when diagram,or all these visual elements that we are familiar with.And you just go through that brainstorming process and you start to come up with thingsand connect the dots.But of course, it's not like, it's super straightforward, it is messy, it is all over the place.The same that you are more familiar with writing, when you come up with a really good snappytweet, I'm sure it took you many iterations to figure out that perfect phrasing and puttingwords in the right place.And it's very similar with visuals as well.I think that's super interesting.I like the point about tuning up your awareness, being super aware of consuming a lot of information,I guess.And it's just not consuming, but doing something with that information in the sense of like,oh, this gave me an idea.Let's just write out this one sentence here in my notebook or in my iPhone notes or whateverpeople are using for this.And then just come back and revisit those ideas.And that's where the process starts, I guess.Like something like that.So I think that's super cool.I remember you once telling me that one of your, I think it was like super early in yourjourney, that one of the first ideas that you got for a visual was like reading a book,one of your kids, like a children's book.And you saw like a visual of like, I don't even remember what it was, like a machineor something.And you were like-Yeah, it's like this drum roller that they use to smoothen out the tarmac or whatever.So yeah.And that's exactly, as you said, it's tuning up of areas, you know, if I know I am in thevisual game and if I see this drum roller, it instantly like, okay, this could smoothenout things, you know?And there's a lot of like ideas around smoothing something out, you know, because whatever.And like the original idea was there that meditation and mental clutter, you know, andyou can kind of ride over it and that's like an interesting visual metaphor.That's super cool.I mean, I'm curious, like now that you are explaining like that, it's super cool to seehow you, you know, you see like this machine that makes things like smoother.And then you are like extracting the idea of like smoothing things.Just like, it's super cool to see how you make those connections.Like another thing that I've seen from your visuals is that it's super easy for them togo viral.And not because they are like, you know, it's not like, when we speak about these visualsagain, it's like a simple thing.Let's say, I mean, I'm not saying like it's low quality things, like it's a simple drawing.It's not like the Mona Lisa, for example.But it goes viral because of its simplicity, but also because of the concepts that it represents.It's usually like, in your case, I think it's usually like general concepts or things thatpeople can relate to like a lot, you know?So would you say that's one of the secrets that, you know, makes like this type of contentcreation like so easy to go viral?Yeah, for sure.That's a big aspect of it.Because like one of my general principles initially, and in general as well, is like,I want to kind of respect my audience's attention.And to me, these visuals, I'm not that interested in making extremely pretty pictures or whatever.Of course, I like to make them look decent and nice.So it's like pleasing to look at, you know, so it's not absolutely super crazy, thoughI really appreciate other creators, you know, like Tim Urban from Wait But Why, who createsthese super like kind of ugly childlike drawings, you know, but it works for communication.And that's what visuals is to me.It's just a vehicle for effective communication for some particular ideas.And it's exactly as you said, you know, it's kind of similar why memes work super well,you know, these super relatable random images that kind of communicate a lot, you know,you put two words there, and it's just relatable, and you can digest it super fast.And that's one of the beauties, beauty of visuals is, you know, we all know that weperceive, I don't know, I don't know exactly the research or whatever, but that we perceivethings visually way faster than it would read, you know, you can look at something big andsomething small.And if I write two words there, you know, you know that this is big, and this is small,but maybe writing through text, it would be a bit longer to explain or it's just, youknow, metaphors work there really well.Because when you see metaphors, you instantly like understand like the general idea there.And that's how you decrease the time, how fast people digest that particular idea.And of course, for things to go viral, it's, I think it's a big part of the puzzle thatit should be easier and fast to digest because people these days are super lazy.And, and yeah, and this is especially important if like your credibility is rather low.You know, if your credibility is low, people will not really want to pay attention to youbecause whatever, you know, you have not established yourself as a, as a credible source or whatever.But when you can communicate something that takes you, you know, a split second or onesecond to digest, it's more likely that everybody will pay attention to it if they will seeit.And as you said, if they can relate to it, if you make them laugh, if you give them aninteresting insight in like a novel way, it's very likely that it will, it will go viral.Yeah.I think the point you made about feeling like, like a meme, you know, I think that's a reallygood comparison because memes are like, they are not really well crafted.Usually they are usually like ugly pictures or like, you know, screenshots from like aTV show or something like that.They are like crappy quality, but they managed to convey an idea like super fast.And when people do that, like, you know, click on their heads, it's like super easy for themto share it, you know, versus like a, you know, 1000 word blog post.I mean that you need to, you know, sit down for like five minutes and actually read it.In your case with these visuals, it's like, you know, I can literally consume it in likethree seconds.So that's, I think that's one of the coolest things about these visuals.So, you know, for anyone listening to this, it's like, okay, I'm convinced, you know,visuals are like a cool thing that I should do, but I have like zero design skills.Like I have, you know, no, no idea how to do these drawings.I never drawn in my life.Like, what would you say to these, to these people?Well I think one thing which you kind of mentioned as well, you know, that all these memes, etc.They are kind of ugly, but they work because again, you need to have this reframe in yourmind that use it as a vehicle for effective communication.Forget about visuals and fancy art, etc, etc.Like forget about it.It's not important.And then like, just as an exercise, you know, go to my Instagram or some other visual artistsInstagram, take a marker, take a paper and try to recreate just the idea with your markerand paper, and then snap a picture of it.And you will communicate the same idea, of course, in more scrappy, raw type of way,but it will work.You will communicate that idea.And that's, that's kind of where you can start.You can just recreate things with your hands, with pen and paper.You know, maybe you, you have iPad and you know, some basic drawing app, and you canjust scribble things down.All that works.Of course, if you want to get more fancy, you know, just, I personally use Figma.It's a free tool that everybody who's watching this can have access to.Go on YouTube, listen to like 15 minute tutorial, how to use pen tool, basics of Figma.I basically just use like five tools.You need to know layers, you know, colors, basic stuff, and then just try to like recreatethings, you know, that's how you will kind of master the technique.And then you'll start to kind of adapt and innovate and create your own stuff, etc.So it's not that hard.You're just kind of holding a belief that, Oh, I'm not a designer.I'm not this.I'm not that.And it just holding you back.It's all peanuts.And now like these days, you know, with AI, you can, you can really like, I think askfor more tailored advice.And I have not really explored that much AI and I'm sure it's like, can be very helpfulas well.So yeah.And again, when I say about like, you can draw things with pen and paper and take apicture of it.There's many examples where images like those go super viral.So if your intention is just to communicate ideas and just having this type of format,just as an additional type of way, how you communicate things, and you don't care tobe like a freelance, like visual artist or whatever, or anything like that.If you don't care about that, you can keep it like crazy and scrappy like that.People do enjoy this behind the scenes look, you know, where things are kind of ugly andthat's why those memes work, et cetera.So that's kind of the, what, what I would say to that.Yeah.And I personally think that right now, like a scrappy looking content is actually trendingin a positive way.Because it's like, as I see it, it's like a go to like the, all of the AI generatedcontent that we see out there.Usually like AI generated images are like super over the top.You know, they have like a lot of elements, a lot of colors, a lot of like everything.And when you see like an ugly drawing here, you know, with the pen and paper, it's likethe total opposite.And it may be that draws more attention than the, you know, like the over the top design.So that's another thing, you know.Yeah.And that's kind of one of the reasons why I have started, you know, a bit trying toshare a bit more like behind the scenes and show maybe the human side of me, because thatis like kind of my, I would say not a big fear, you know, but I think that like it'sharder to just be an idea content creator who just kind of generates content secretly.And if the ideas especially are not super interesting or novel or whatever, you needto add that like personality or whatever.So there's definitely a point of like kind of AI taking over.But if you just create content, what AI could do, I think that's not smart, like how youneed to figure out how to create that whatever behind the scenes vibe or just bring yourpersonality or I don't know, I don't have a good answer to this, but you have a pointthere.And I think it's something that content creators should think about.Yeah.Yeah.I mean, I've seen you also like starting to do more of these behind the scenes content,like sharing me more about like Giannis the person and not so much of like, I'm just thevisual guy.I'm like, I do these visuals, but also like, oh, today I did this thing on my website ortomorrow I'm going to do this thing or last weekend I was, I went surfing or whatever,you know, but I think it's cool to like mix those two types of content.I think that's something that everyone should do because sometimes when we create thesepersonal brands or whatever you want to call it, like everyone is on like the work aspect,like I'm super good at like marketing or whatever, but you know, there is like 10,000people that can do marketing as good as you are, maybe better than you, but you know,no one can do it as you, because there is only one you, right?So show that part.It's way harder for people to like relate with you, I guess.Yeah.And I also think, you know, I think there's, I don't know if it's that trendy anymore,but in YouTube, you know, there was this behind the day in the life of this and that,you know, and, and these are super, so it was a super popular trend and I think it haslike, because I don't know if like creators I admire even like super big ones, like let'ssay Tim Ferriss, you know, I'm extremely interested when he shares like very, like super weirdthings that kind of maybe are not even good ideas or whatever, but I'm just very interestedhow he operates.What, what does he do in his free time?You know, I don't know what, what he feeds to his dog or whether all those, those thingsare interesting because I like the guy, you know, I've gotten some value from him andI don't know.It's just interesting.Yeah.That's super cool.Let's talk about like, because some people might be wondering, okay, so this guy doesthese visuals, they go super viral, you know, he's growing like this audience or whatever,but you know, he needs to pay the bills.And I don't think visuals, you know, I don't think you can give a visual to like the, youknow, to the water company or whatever.So I'm curious to hear a bit more about like the monetization aspect of what you do withthese visuals, you know, because I know that it has opened like a new, entirely new worldfor you because you used to have a nine to five that had nothing to do with visuals.And now you leave because, you know, you pay your bills with visuals.I mean, not directly with visuals, but thanks to the world with visuals.So can you tell us about, about, you know, you know, what you do for money right nowwith these visuals?Well, yeah, it all started, I was in a kind of good position when it started because likeI was working in nine to five and it was whatever, you know, we managed to save up some money.So basically I started to gain some audience.I was quite stressed, stressed at work.You know, some people reached out to me on DM, hey, I want to hire you to do these visualsfor me.And I said no at the time because that was not my, my intention was not to quit nineto five in exchange for a freelance.But whenever, like we, we said, we sat down with my wife and kind of did run the numbersand we understood, okay, even if we earn absolute zero, you know, with all the like whatevergovernment support, when you quit the job, et cetera, et cetera, with our savings, ifwe don't earn anything, we can maintain our like lifestyle for like two and a half years.So that was like, okay, you know, I'm not like my, my skillset or whatever in the corporateworld was pretty in demand as well.I thought, okay, what's the worst case scenario if nothing will work, you know, for a yearor whatever, I can try to go back, et cetera.And it wasn't like I was burning the bridges and the companies or, or whatever.So I wasn't in a need to make money from creating content early on, which I think is prettyimportant because I don't know if I would be where I am now, if I would be in extremeneed to earn money right away, because I think it's very cool if you can create froma place of where you just don't need, where you create from a place of intrinsic motivation.I want to do this.This is interesting to me instead of trying to like create everything as a funnel andjust try to get people to convert or whatever.So that was very, I think, good place to be when I created content and, you know, I justgenuinely engaged with others, tried to do my best work.You know, my audience grew.I had a decent reputation online.Some people reached out to me like on DMs, offering freelance.So I did here and there some sort of freelance, but very occasionally.But one thing which happened was just like people asked me, hey, Janis, how do you dothis? How do you do this?And I understood, okay, this is kind of the, of course, one of the ways how a lot of contentcreators earn money is through courses.And that's what I did as well.People asked for it.I thought, okay, you know, I will package everything I know, all my process, templates,et cetera, et cetera.And I just made a course on it.And that has been the primary revenue driver for the past, like almost three years, I wouldsay, a bit less.And yeah, occasionally I do freelance.I currently illustrate the book.I have illustrated some other books.And I think, yeah, that's pretty much my revenue apart, of course, like some super smallnewsletter sponsorships or some workshops here and there where I teach this stuff aswell. But one thing which I would say I don't think a lot of people are using is, forexample, on X, I get tons of DMs from these ghostwriters.Hey, Janis, I can write content for you.I can write your newsletter content.I can do this. I can do that, et cetera, et cetera.And I think a lot of people do that very poorly.You know, I have no intention to hire them.But I think a really good advice, I think guys from Ship 30 and 30 share, like NicholsCole, I think his name is, he shares like really good advice how to get ghostwritingclients. And I think a lot of people are using that and a lot of people are earning a lotof money in that type of way.But I don't see a lot of people doing this from the visual standpoint.Like, hey, Alex, I see this is your content, by the way.I created here like three interesting visuals.These are for free for you.Go, go, go have fun with them.But by the way, you know, I charge this and that if you want to maybe hire me.And of course, like Target, you can target certain, certain people.And I think this is a good way how to earn money because in our bubble, you know, ofcourse, more visual starts to appear, you know, because I teach them, some other peopleteach them as well.But I think there are so many different niches where this is absolutely not used at all.And I think it has a lot of a lot of potential because, again, it's just a vehicle foreffective communication.And it's a nice addition how to stand out online, you know, even with your super greatwriting or whatever.So, so, yeah, I would, I would say something like that.Who would like to earn money with this?Yeah, definitely. I think it's like a good, very good niche to be in because there isnot that many competition as versus writing, as you said, for example.And again, you don't need to be like a super skill designer.I'm not a skill designer at all.I have like zero artistic skills.And I took your course actually early on when you when you dropped it.I did start make making visuals and some of them really went like, I think if you go outand look at my top 20 tweets, 10 are like visuals, you know.So, you know, it's a vehicle that really works to convey ideas, to share with the world.So if you know how to do that for yourself, it's super easy to do it for someone elsealso. And a lot of people are willing to pay a lot of money for that, for sure.And not only like creators, I'm also talking about like companies, you know, or somethinglike that. They have like, you know, a pitch deck or whatever, or like internalpresentations, all of that.You know, I think that's like a super interesting if I were to do this for a living, Iwould go to companies like B2B, stuff like that, because I think that would be like bigmoney maker, you know.I think so. Yeah.Well, one thing which I would disagree a bit on what you said is that it's easy to dofor others. I think it's a lot easier to do it for myself, because let's say if I talkabout creator economy, you know, a bit of like personal development, productivity typeof stuff, I have this infinite directions where I can go and basically I can come upwith ideas and like, OK, this is interesting, you know, push it out.But if I get an assignment, hey, Janis, illustrate this book, I really need to pushmyself to come up with these concepts that go really well with what other people havesaid. And that's a bit harder.But at the same time, it's a super nice kind of constraint because it really forces youto push you and like unlock some other concepts, other templates to come up with.You know, all that is a nice forcing function to come up with new stuff.But it's not necessarily easy in general.It's a bit harder. But of course, you can charge money for that, et cetera, et cetera.And the more you will do, the easier it will be.But yeah, no, that's really, really, you know, I think it makes sense, actually.So, yeah, I think that's super cool.Your course is also really good.I mean, I shout out to your course, you know, we'll plug you later if you want to.But I think honestly, while I really good, it really helped me, you know, because at thesame time, it was also like not really long, you know, so I actually could learn theskill in a short amount of time.So if anyone wants to take a look, I will leave a link somewhere.But, you know, we will also mention it at the end of the episode.But I wanted to before we we end, like go through a few of few concepts that you haveshared here and there that were like super interesting.One you already mentioned, which was the respect your audience's attention.You know, I think that's a really good and that's one of the first things that resonatedwith me when you share this.So what do you mean exactly by that?You know, to anyone that has never heard of that, like, how do you explain like thisrespect your audience's attention concept?Yeah, I would say this is particularly important when you are starting out and whenyour credibility is low, because like if your goal is to, you know, build a following, ofcourse, you start on socials because it's easier.There are people, you know, then you can funnel them into newsletter, et cetera, etcetera. But if your goal is to grow on socials, just imagine, you know.If I scroll and I see something long from you and the hook is not good and I just, thisis overwhelming, I'm keeping scrolling.If you share something novel, something interesting, something snappy and good, OK,what does this guy, whatever, is sharing here?I'm like, OK, interesting, nice.I can relate to this idea.It's actually a cool idea.You hit like, you know, you maybe check comments.I click on your profile.I scroll a bit your profile.What do I see?Do I see how you are constantly like retweeting others and I don't know, maybe goinginto like crazy politics or whatever, you know, is it just full of fluff and crazy stuffor I see, wow, you are sharing interesting novel ideas.I feel you are respecting my attention.I can get value from you just like by seeing what you do here.And that's how people follow you.That's how they will maybe even put like notifications to see your stuff.And that's kind of just how I would think about this.Not super complicated, you know, and you can check out like who are you following?Why are you following them?I assume it's like a similar type of reasoning would go on there.So, yeah, that's essentially what I mean by it.I just I really appreciate it when others respected my attention.But of course, again, like this changes a bit over time because now I go in a bit morelike behind the scenes and sometimes I really like when somebody shares something longerand shares about whatever, you know, so it's a kind of balance.But especially at the beginning, if you will not respect your audience's attention, youwill you will have no audience.Yeah, I think it's very important to do that, as you said, like when you I mean, Isee an interesting piece of content, you click on the profile and then not everything isabout that topic is about like a bunch of topics.Like yesterday's football match and tomorrow's politics or whatever.It's like, you know, you quickly lose interest.So it's a balance, as you said, like, OK, it's OK to share like personal stuff, I think.Yeah, for sure.For sure.There needs to be like a big balance of like that personal stuff with the your main topic,whatever that is.I think I think like 80-20 rule is a good one to apply here.You know, 80 percent do this, 20 percent, you know, go crazy, do your random stuff orwhatever.Yeah, but I think not that many people follow that early on.And that's why their audience doesn't grow that much.It's not because their content or what they're saying is not good.It's all over the place, you know.So, you know, early on, we just want to follow people before, you know, after a whilethey you might even start to like the person.But when you don't know them, you need to follow them for one reason.Maybe it's like because he talks about marketing and I'm super interested in marketing,you know. OK, but if he talks about marketing today and football tomorrow and politicsthe next day, he's like, yeah, I don't care about that that much.I mean, I don't know you, you know, but if I know you for a while and then you share apic of your dog, then I will like the pic because I like you and I like your dog.Exactly. That's exactly how it happens.Yeah, exactly.It's the same way I think about it as well.And that's I can apply this and say that it's true for most people I follow online andfor liking their dogs.I didn't start to follow them because they shared their dog because they shared somethingand gave value and I kind of fell in love with the person, you know, and then you startto like more of whatever they do.Yeah, I love that.There is like one more thing that I want to comment with you.One of your most viral tweets probably like ever is this visual that you shared wherethere is like four loops that cause creative struggle.I think you are pretty sure you know which one I'm mentioning.What can you tell us about that?Because I know that you are a procrastinator.I would say, you know, I don't say it in a bad way.You are a pretty procrastinator.You told me like you tell me almost every day.You told me before this call.You're like, yeah, I've been listening to podcasts.Oh, you know, I'm not doing too much.So like this creative struggle, it's a bit like that, too.So do you have like any advice for people that are like that?You know, because you are a procrastinator, but at the same time, every day you get contentout, you do your freelance stuff, you do everything.Even if everything feels like it's outside of control, it is actually under your control.So, you know, do you have like any advice for procrastinators out there?Yeah, I guess I do.And in general, it's not like I'm super productive every day.Sometimes for a week, I just like not doing much and just watching some videos and seeingthe waves and the sea and go surfing, you know, and just don't work.So it's not like all the time.But I really like this idea of, you know, having sprints, you know, OK, I have likea freelance client, you know, no, just put a bit more effort.You know, it's all good.Let's hustle a bit more and then relax and all that is fine.And I'm definitely pretty good at, which is kind of a blessing and a curse at the sametime, but I think I'm pretty good at not blaming myself for having like, oh, I didn'twork today, so now I feel shitty.I'm just like, whatever, you know, we'll get it tomorrow.It's fine.So I'm not beating myself up.But like the biggest thing when it comes to like productivity for lazy people, as I wouldkind of consider myself like that, but I don't know, I don't think there are that many lazypeople. Actually, I think there are just people who do the wrong things, who don't do thethings that they are meant to do.You know, it's like because most of the stuff I do, it's really intrinsically motivating.I love this stuff.When I started it, of course, now I don't wake up at like 4.30 in the morning anymorebecause it's like I don't feel the need for it.But when I worked in the nine to five and I started to go to bed early, I quit thealcohol. I stopped watching Netflix, you know, that was around the same time I had myfirst kid. I started to wake up at 4.30 in the morning to work and do this stuff beforemy nine to five because it was just so interesting.I was so obsessed with like this goal and having this freedom that I'm having now.And all that was primarily, I don't think because I had tremendous discipline, becauseif you would look back like, you know, man, you honestly build this lifestyle or whatever,you do this now full time, et cetera, et cetera.You must be tremendously disciplined.I wouldn't say so. I really can't say that looking back some days really felt likeextreme grind. Maybe some periods, you know, when I built out the course and set thispublic deadline, you know, and I was like, oh, shit, this is bad and I need to refilmthis. And it was crazy and stuff.There was some intense periods, but most of it is like intrinsically motivating.So I guess for most people, I would say just really try to find that connection.What do you really enjoy?And I don't know, for some, I think it's a crappy advice.Some people need to say that, like, hey, suck it up, you know, and just do it becausewhat's the alternative?But I don't know.I think you need to quit a lot of things, try a lot of things in order to find whatyou're kind of meant to do, and then just kind of take it from there.I know it's a bit all over the place otherwise, but yeah, don't be so hard onyourself. Just try to find the stuff that's really interesting to you.And what I would say, like a little plug for visuals, you know, it's not a plug, butthat was the case for me.When I tried YouTube, I tried writing, I tried this and that, and all those things tome felt like an uphill battle.But for visuals, most of the work is in the brains.It's like researching, having ideas, jotting something down on paper, you know,having sticky notes, putting them on the wall, like all that stuff usually is fun forpeople. And in corporations, everybody wants to go to the whiteboard and sketch someideas and stuff. And that's like the main work for these visuals to actually sit downand design them in Figma.You know, of course, first couple of visuals will take a bit more time, but they cantake like 15 minutes and you're done.So it was a very easy content creation format to be consistent, you know, whicheventually really helped with the growth, etc.So I still I'm trying to fall in love with writing.I want to write better and it does not come easy for me.That feels a bit harder, but I'm kind of trying to figure out and hack my way intoloving writing. But yeah, that's just a rant on this topic.No, no, I think that's I think that was really good.And the last point of like, you know, find the format that you feel that you can beconsistent with. I think that's where a lot of people fail to like a lot of peoplemight fail with like, I want to be YouTuber, but doing like a YouTube video takeslike at least like how people envision YouTube videos is like you need to script,you need to record, you need to edit.And that takes like two weeks.And by the time you do two, you're like burned out because you have to put twovideos out and you're like, shit, I don't want to do anymore, you know.But doing a visual is like, OK, maybe it takes you 30 minutes, but it's 30 minutesevery day. That's something like manageable for most people, you know, and I can putone visual out every day and that's like way more output into the world.So you get also more feedback, you know.So even if you want to be a YouTuber, like what I said, maybe just don't think toomuch about the format and the video and whatever.Just like take your phone, record yourself, you know, in the car like we were talkingbefore about this guy that records in the car, give him life advice and he has likefive million followers. OK, do that, you know, like first test it like in a smallerformat that you can put out consistently and then you can professionalize if you needto do it. But.Absolutely. I think it's a great advice.It reminds me of the advice that I sometimes use from Tim Ferriss and he has thislittle quote, which is how it would look if it were easy.You know, so you take this question of I want to be a YouTuber, but in mind you havethese extremes, you have watched like Matt D'Avella, this super polished stuff, youknow, I'm like, oh, man, I need to create this.But no, how it would look if it would be simple, you know, and then you maybe embracemore like Casey Neistat type of style, you know, and really just vlog around and dorandom stuff and just don't do any repeat talks and just whatever.If you make a typo, just say whatever.I made a typo and continue to go on, you know.So all those are constraints that you can put, I guess, on any type of contentcreation, you know, even writing, I'm sure, I'm sure.Which is kind of interesting, you know, because I have built following, you know,through visuals and I have my reputation that I don't want to kind of mess up, youknow, etc. And now I have set this very high bar for writing.And that is kind of, I think, paralyzing me of putting out more writing because Ikind of build this reputation with visuals and I'm going into this new format and Iwant to be as good as I am in the visual game, which I'm sure is kind of delayingmy learning or whatever.Yeah, just imposter syndrome and perfectionism and just being afraid that otherpeople will think of me.We've all been there, I think.We all feel paralyzed and we all feel that we need to be better than we actually needto be. So, you know, just start writing shitty tweets, Janis, that's the answer.Yeah, we'll try to follow that.I think it's time to wrap it up.So where can people find you if they want to learn more, especially about makingvisuals?They can just go to my website forward slash course.That's where the course is at.My website is my surname and name ozolensianis.com or you can go to ozo.art.Which will just lead you to a random page that you can find on my visuals.And then I say that please don't steal them and credit me if you use them, becausethat's what happens with the visuals.When you start to go viral, everybody takes your work and then tries to go viral withit.That's where you can find me and all my socials are there.And feel free to follow and say hi.And I answer to every email I get, unless you are super weird.Sometimes just people do so weird stuff, they just try to try to instantly like pitchyou with something and super unethically or whatever.Yeah, people say nice things and just introduce themselves.It's very nice.I have most of actually most interesting conversations I have with people online is onmy newsletter.When people sign up, they usually hit reply.And I think you do the same.I kind of stole this idea from you to incentivize people to reply when they join.And some good conversations come out of it.I'm pretty slow with answering when I, I don't know, get some spikes and a lot of peoplereply.It's a bit tedious to answer everybody.But when I do, it's actually very rewarding and interesting.And it's nice to have these conversations online.Yeah, awesome.So everyone go subscribe to Jani's newsletter and reply to him.So he has a lot of emails to get back to.OK, cool.That's a wrap.Thank you, everyone, for listening.And thank you, Janice, for being here.Thanks, Alex.My pleasure.
Read more

Latest Blog Posts

Content Creator Strategy

Por lo general, los creadores y creadoras de contenido somos muy buenos en lo ...Read more

What are ad insertions and how to use them in your podcast?

Con las inserciones de audio puedes actualizar y promocionar tus contenidos o ...Read more

Generating over €11,000 in 5 days with an audiocourse - Oriol Roda

Cuando descubrimos a Oriol Roda hace unos meses, alucinamos con los 60.000 sus...Read more

What is a podcast network and what advantages does it offer?

Unirte a una red de podcasts puede beneficiar tus contenidos de diferentes man...Read more

WAV vs MP3: What's the difference and which one is better for your podcast?

Conocer la diferencia entre los formatos WAV y MP3 es crucial debido al impact...Read more

Benefits of creating a podcast if you have an NGO

¿Tienes una ONG? Estas son tres maneras en las que un podcast puede fortalecer...Read more