Origin Story: Janis Ozolins

Welcome back to Starting Now. I'm your host, Jeff Sarris. This is a show where I talk to entrepreneurs and creatives of all types to reveal the unexpected paths to where they are today.

Today, my guest is Janis Ozolins. He is an amazing creative artist, whatever you want to call it, but he takes concepts and condenses them down into single illustrations and also teaches people how to do the same thing. And he does a phenomenal job of synthesizing larger ideas and delivering them in a way that is a way that he would want to consume, but also that really helps other people.

This is a great conversation. I love diving into his story, some that I've been following since the very beginning of his journey. So, without further ado, my conversation with Janis.

So, I saw that we both had the same spark that got us on these journeys, and it was The 4-Hour Workweek. I wanted to talk about that. That is what started me with everything.

It was right after the book came out. So, it was maybe like '08, '07, whatever that was. I don't know what year it was, but that was the moment, the light bulb moment.

And I saw you've talked about it similarly. So, I was curious if you could dive into that just a little bit.

Oh, that's cool. Oh man, that book is just It has changed so many lives. That's just crazy, because there's so many people like us, too.

Yeah, my initial story, it was kind of like that A bit before that, I was just I was stuck in my 9-to-5 job and one guy said, "Hey, let's go to this university and learn business psychology." And I was like, "Yeah, whatever. You know, let's do it just to broaden our perspectives." And then, we went to that school, and there was one particular subject, which was like business basics or something like that, but basically the thing that we needed to do was like, "Hey, class.

In 1 week, you need to present here a business plan." And I don't I don't kind of remember exactly, but I remember there was this click in my head, and I was like, "You know, I always has been I have been this wannabe entrepreneur, you know, and just this idea guy, but never really doing anything." So, but at that moment, when I got that assignment, somehow I felt like, "You know, Janis, figure something out.

Create a presentation. Figure something out that you can start now, you know, without having any capital, that you can do along your like 9-to-5 job." So, there's basically no excuses, and I can actually do it. And I remember then for that week, I started to research and I stumbled upon like online business, you know, and all these scheme-y type of things back in the days.

I don't know, it was like 6, 7 years ago now. And that really kind of got me really hooked. And, of course, the business plan was shit, nothing of that really happened, but it created this spark and curiosity, and I kind of kept digging.

And then I remember this 4-Hour Workweek book just It just kept popping up, you know, when you Googled online business and stuff like that, it just kept coming up. And I was like I never actually read books, you know. I've never Still in my life, actually read a thick whatever, a thick normal book like to this day, I only listen like to audiobooks, still, you know.

I don't know, I find reading just hard. It's it's It's a struggle for me, but listening is like super, super cool. But back in the days, I didn't even know like a thing Audible existed.

And I was like, "Yeah, okay. Whatever. There is this like 4-Hour Workweek book, but, you know, I don't read books, so fuck it, you know.

I'll I'll just not read it." And then, a bit later, I remember I was just listening to some YouTube video or something, and just guys were discussing their top whatever productivity apps or something. And one of them mentioned Audible, and I was like, "Oh sh- Holy shit! You can listen to books!" And I was like, "Oh my god, amazing!" Then I downloaded The 4-Hour Workweek, and still to this day, I remember I was I was standing in my bedroom back in Latvia in one of my apartments and I was around 2 hours into the book, and I was saying to myself like, "Holy shit, Janis.

You've been such an idiot." And basically, that in that moment, what I realized, you know, I was like young 20 early 20-year-old like kind of a bit I was I wouldn't say I was arrogant, you know, but I had this feeling, you know, "I understand life. You know, I'm pretty smart and stuff, you know." So, you have this fake confidence.

And at that moment, I really understand that, "Oh my god, there is so much to learn. It's so exciting. I don't know shit.

I want to learn, you know. Let's go. Let's figure this stuff out." And that just created this Yeah, many audiobooks later, you know, podcasts, trials and errors, various different like businesses and small creative type of things.

And yeah, now we are here. It was It was around 4 years of just learning and kind of failing with various small projects, and then a bit more than 2 years ago, kind of things started to kick off with visuals. So, that's kind of my intro to this creative world.

How it was How it was for you, by the way? Was it Was it kind of similar? So, yeah, mine, I was working a desk job, and it was I always had that dream of And I appreciate you asking, by the way.

I'm I'm here to interview you, but I'll dive into it just a little bit. I this is very nice.

Please do, please do.

But I had a desk job all day, like the 8 to 5, whatever. Just I remember feeling that like, "Oh wow, this is it?" Which is weird for me to think about now, but I remember just one day it sort of clicked. I'm like, "Wow, there's nothing else.

Like I have the job. Like this is all I'm going to do forever." And it just It didn't feel good. So, I was like, "I need to make the next like Facebook.

The next thing that would be a multi-million dollar idea." That's the only way to get out of a day a day job. And then I feel like I know who it was that shared The 4-Hour Workweek. That it was like, "This is a brand new book.

It just came out last week or this week," whatever it was. And then I was like, "I don't know. 4-Hour Workweek, that sounds nice." So, I picked it up, and it was the same thing.

I had never read a book before that. Like I would read CliffNotes in school. So, just the little quick abbreviated everything and never read a book cover to cover.

That was the first one that I actually picked up and read. And it clicked. And I couldn't unsee it after that.

Once I was like, "Oh, there's a world outside of this? This isn't what everyone does?" It just completely opened my mind in a way that, like you, it led to a waterfall of a bunch of other books, other creatives and entrepreneurs, and just education that I wouldn't have sought out if it wasn't for that spark initially. But yeah, it really It meant a lot to me.

That's cool. I really like that you said this. Like, when this new door opens, you just You are unable to close it.

It's just You can't. It's just that the dream is it's too good. It's too good not to chase it.

Yeah, and that's the tough part is we don't all have maybe the role models in our lives that were doing things outside of the norm because I didn't. And it's nothing against like family, parents, whatever. It's purely just I hadn't been exposed to it.

And once you are, then you're like, "Oh, there's a different world out there than I thought." But I want to go back to you. This is all about you, focusing on your story. What type of job were you working or jobs, or job before you had that spark to go back to university and take the business class?

-. Yeah, I was like more or less my corporate career was in IT. I was like 3, 4 years in a bit more like technical type of roles, but very specific technical type of roles.

I'm not like developer or anything like that. It was just a very random niche-y thing to do.

So, what type of roles? 'Cause that's actually what I did, too.

What was the those technical roles?

Yeah, like the type of stuff you did.

I was I was I was I was Windows application packager. So, basically, I was just preparing, you know, there's these all these applications, you know, Skype, Zoom, whatever, all these things you can install on like Windows machines, and I was preparing and packaging them in a way so you can make these mass deployments, you know, in companies like whatever, HP, and deploy all of them at once for on I don't know, whatever, 10,000 computers, you know, with same configuration and maybe some security policies and stuff like that.

So, that was just my technical job for a couple of years. And then I moved into more like managerial type of positions. Yeah, and before that, it was, you know, bike salesman, digging stuff, you know, doing just all these teenage type of jobs, dirty jobs.

So yeah, that was basically just 8 I think 8, 9 years in IT, 5 years in like project management, and pre- before that, this application packager.

Yeah. So, then what were some of the things you were trying then on the side from your job when you were like, "I'm going to do things where I can balance a job and do this?"

Yeah, I was You know, it's almost hard to remember everything I tried, but there's definitely one some probably various types of blogs, which didn't end up anywhere. I remember I created like a very random journal, which was like with some quotes from some authors, and then you were able to like scan the QR code and it led to a home page where there was like my three favorite videos with some snippets from videos where they I don't know, are or some TED Talks or something like that.

It was like an interesting concept, but, of course, nobody bought it because nobody knew about it. And maybe it wasn't the best idea. So then I remember I had this domain, learninseconds.com, and I kind of was a bit obsessed about it because I'm like really, you know, same as you, I kind of don't read books, you know.

I like to maybe listen to books and stuff like that, but I was kind of like lazy and I liked this concept about like learning in seconds and just this snappier type of thing. So, I remember I created some sort of podcast, which was like 2 minutes long, that was just absolutely terrible, did a couple of episodes, completely cringe, and just vomited on my microphone from how I sounded, and all that sort of stuff.

Then I remember I was just, you know, Matt D'Avella was just my Netflix, you know, I was just listening to him. I absolutely loved his videos. I kind of like filmmaking, but at the time I thought, "Okay, you know, I will be similar as Matt D'Avella, you know, I'll create these crazy-ass production high quality videos and whatever, all about around this self-development stuff." And I and I think I created around four, five videos.

You can probably still find them online, super cringey. But like the production quality was actually pretty good for a guy who is who is doing it for the first time, was taking it really seriously. But I remember, yeah, I was just cringing, you know, from filming myself and that type of stuff.

And I just felt that with my current obligations, this is not something I'm able to kind of sustain. I really like the filmmaking process, but I would be like it can't be my main thing, you know. I could pump out a video maybe every now and then when I feel the inspiration and I want to make something cool, just kind of, you know, whatever.

But it didn't feel sustainable for me. So, I kind of I quit on it as well. And I think after that, the visual part started kind of slowly to come in through various triggers.

Yeah, and it's that Learn in Seconds, I mean, it actually connects back because you create these pieces of art that also teach people concepts in literal Like you look at it, and you get it right away. It's something that immediately, as soon as I saw what you were doing, I was like, "I wish I was doing this," because it's just so good.

It's so tight and concise, and you get the message across so effectively that, yeah, it's It's awesome. I love it.

Thank you, yeah. And it And it does actually kind of, yeah, as you as you say, connect with a bit of my traits, you know, and strengths and weaknesses. So, yeah, it really it really came together pretty well, and I'm really happy that I can I can turn this thing into career.

So, so it's really nice.

Yeah. So, how did it start then? What Was this another experiment?

Did you see it as something that could turn into a business?

So, there was there was three initial triggers. The first one was, you probably have read the blog by James Clear, and you probably have seen in some of his blog posts, he sometimes add these illustrations, you know. It might be simple x, y graphs or something, but sometimes he adds them and they are like really nice additions to the to the to his blog posts.

But I remember there was there was some sort of illustration from him, I was like, "Okay, I even without reading his whole blog post, I look at this and I understand this concept." And that was like the first time ever it kind of hit me that, "Hey, you can actually like deliver an idea through a visual, you know. You don't Maybe it shouldn't be," because I thought always like visuals are this supplementary thing, you know, to whatever, to a blog post or something.

It can't be a thing on its own. So, that was kind of the first trigger when I started to play around with it. I saw it on James Clear's blog and I was just, you know, trying things out and just seeing how and where this could go.

But it was still like kind of playing on my own, didn't publish anywhere or anything. And I think a couple of months later, or weeks later, I discovered Jack Butcher, which you probably know, with his like black and white super simple illustrations. And he was he was like a year in, I think, into his journey, and he was already like kind of making it as a full-time thing.

And that was like a real moment for me. I was like, "Holy shit, like he is actually doing this and visuals are his main thing, you know." He kind of proved to me that there is a market for it and it can be a thing on its own, you know. Something that I kind of had in my head like, "Maybe this could be," or whatever, and now I was finally seeing a person who actually did it, you know, in a similar way how I wanted it to happen, or whatever.

It just felt more real, you know. He kind of proved it to me. So, that was the second big trigger, which kind of led to this visual journey.

And the third one was around that time my yeah, like second child was born or whatever, and I was reading a lot of listening a lot of these parenting books. And if you read If you pretty much read any parenting book, which is more or less decent, all of them kind of mentioned that, "You know, you need to acknowledge kids' feelings, you know, before like start to like whatever, argue with them or teach them, you know, what they should or whatever, you need to acknowledge those feelings." That was just These books are just looping this over and over and over again.

And I was like, "You know, that's kind of true for adults, you know, because I don't know, you know, you come home, you know, maybe you had a hard day at work, and you just come in the door and your wife is saying like, 'Well, you should go to bed earlier and, you know, you should not drink beer in the evening or something,' like who wants to hear that, you know?

But if your wife says like, 'Oh honey, you had a hard day at work,' you're like, 'Yes, I had a hard day at work!' And then you're like Then you are on common ground and then you maybe, you know, whatever, a conversation can start there." And yeah, kind of I'm saying this, and at the same time, I was finding this Instagram account, which is like two amazing One of one of them are illustrator, the other one is just kind of co-author.

There is this account Liz and Mollie and they share illustrations around pretty similar illustrations like I do, just in like a different style and what not. But really good stuff. They share illustrations around feelings at work, you know, and acknowledging a lot of these feelings for people who are like in our desk jobs or corporate worlds.

Like the most theme is the Like the main theme is about that. And that was again like kind of proof that this exists and it could be a thing. And yeah, after that, I kind of committed on sharing on Twitter daily.

I was like, "Okay, let's do this." I started a bit to find my voice, my like style, or whatever. And mostly I started to create visuals around like creative struggles, you know, because I had this big baggage of 4 years of creative struggles, so I kind of I think I understood aspiring creators, you know, or early-stage creators, and I created a lot of content around that.

And that's kind of how it started. And that consistency on Twitter, you know, led to some followers, led to some opportunities, led to more like fate, more It fueled my motivation and what not. And like a couple of months later, some freelance gigs started to roll in, but I was kind of pushing them back because I didn't really need or wanted to commit.

But, yeah, I think if I If that started at around end of 2020, at around April of 2021, I kind of sat down with my wife and she actually said, "You know, maybe you want to quit your 9-to-5 job?" Because around that time, there was like COVID and we had a bit money saved up, you know, because nobody was going anywhere or whatever.

And we had some like child support from the government, you know, because of the of the new kid that came into our lives. And when we kind of sat down and put everything on paper, we had like a runway for around like 2 years, you know. And I was like still, you know, "No, no, no.

I don't I don't I don't want to do this." But she kind of pushed me like, "You know, maybe do it because, you know, some audience starts to grow. Nothing like this have ever happened to you, you know. Some people are reaching out to you to do like visuals for them, people want to pay money for this, you know.

Maybe there this could be something." And, yeah, I kind of pulled the plug at April and left my job, still didn't take on any freelance at the moment. I just took on gigs which really felt like, "Yeah, hell yeah! This is This is something I want to do." So, I started to do some freelance, and I think a couple of people started to reach out, "Hey, how do you do these visuals?

Can you teach me?" and stuff like that. So, there was a little bit of validation for a course. And, yeah, I put up a course, and that was if at the end of 2020 I started creating, at the end of 2021, I share I like created my course as well.

And that brought pretty good income. And, yeah, since then, those two things have been like my income stream, and I have not made anything new. But I plan to.

Yeah, that's That was a pretty long answer, but that kind of covered how it started and how I kind of found the business side of it, as well. I kind of just stumbled into it, and it kind of more came to me, not I was seeking it out, which is like the best place, I think, a creative can be when opportunities come your way.

Yeah, it absolutely is. Yeah, having people come to you. Like you've You've proved You've proven what you could do and the effectiveness of it, and then have people be like, "Oh, will you do it for me?" and being in a spot to turn it away to the point where you're like, "Maybe I should start bringing these in." That's awesome.

Like that is That's like the dream scenario. You couldn't You couldn't plan it out better if you went in with that plan. And yeah, I just I love that.

What was the difficulty Did you Did you face difficulty, I guess, in turning down the opportunity as it was coming in when you were still working?

Not that Not that much because at the very beginning, there wasn't like any like extremely compelling Like at the same time, I still I took on everything that felt like a "Hell yeah!" Like, "I really want to do this like whatever." But there was some gigs where I was like, you know, when some of the initial gigs start to come in, you feel a bit that FOMO, you know.

"Oh my god, never Anything like this has never happened to me. You know, you're a bit scared like, "Oh my god, if I will turn this down, nothing new will come in." but I was just kind of starting to chat and explaining, you know, that, "Hey dude, I'm like not really a designer or whatever, you know. I create these illustrations in my style.

You are asking for like very specific thing. I don't think I can really do a good job for you." So, I was like really honest and careful with what I take on. But yeah, it ended up like really good.

That I was mostly just working with people I really like.

Yeah. Yeah, that's the way to do it. Did you consider yourself an artist at that when you started this?

Well, I don't know. I don't know. That artist terminology, yeah, whatever.

You know, I don't know. It's It's It's Sure, you know. I don't know, I don't know.

What's What's What's a definition of artist? So, but I guess I guess so, you know. Definitely a creative, you know, because you're making something out of nothing or just connecting some random ideas and dots.

But, but yeah, I'm sure people would call me an artist, and I would consider myself an artist, creator.

For sure. When you started, would you draw and do things like that just on your own? Like, or was this something that you saw the connective tissue, and you're like, "This could work really well in this way.

I want to I want to learn this skill"?

There I think there never I have never like really sketched anything on my own or nothing like that. I think the main driver for all of the things I do, like the illustrations and the design, is kind of secondary. Mostly, it's about communicating ideas effectively.

That's like the primary thing. It's if I don't know, if whatever, if I would draw like extremely pretty picture, but the but the message will be vague, you know, I will not probably push it out. I will be like, "No, this is not the stuff I want to do, you know." I'm not interested like in creating Mona Lisas and this fancy aesthetic art, which makes you like, " make give these feelings." I can appreciate those things, they are awesome, but it's not the thing I do and the thing I want to do.

I'm more interested in just communicating ideas effectively. That's That's where the kind of obsession lies and everything else is kind of work whatever.

Well, yeah. I mean, that's what spoke to me immediately because that simplicity, like that's where I come from. I want everything I want to optimize the things I do, I try to optimize as best I can because we do a lot of different things and we don't contract out, we do everything in house.

So, it's like if I don't find those optimizations, I won't be able to achieve the things I want to. And just looking at your website, you're just doing crazy amount of things, like you're just all over the place. Yeah, there's always new things, new opportunities, and it's just like I really like building businesses and working on strategy and helping people build a business, a successful usually tiny business.

And yeah, it's just it's fun, something I like. But that's why it spoke to me, though, because you have that simplicity. You focus on the communication, nothing super–if I said that right.

But you don't You don't add in just for the sake of adding in. You're going to convey a message, which is which is awesome. I love that.

Definitely. That's That's a Yeah, that's a very important constraint which I always remind myself, and that's something like I teach people in like these feedback sessions on the course, as well. Like, "Hey, do you really need this?" Like it feels like it's just cluttering the message, you know.

Probably remove this, and it will be better, you know. I always say, "If, of course, you want to like If I'm like the how effect- effectively the idea is communicated is here, and like the aesthetic thing for me is here, you know. Maybe for somebody else it's it's like this, you know, and if it's true, you know, then it's then it's fine.

But if you're like this as well, then probably, you know, remove the fluff and the clutter and just try to try to, yeah, make it make it clean and effective."

Yeah, and how does that balance now? So, you have the course, you have some freelance. Is it sort of split down the middle?

Do you focus more time on one or the other?

You know, of course, the dream, the goal is not to do freelance, probably, at all, unless it's like something that you just really want to work on, maybe even, you know, for free or something like that. So, the main attention goes kind of to course and just, you know, building the audience and creating new content. I think one big, big, big part recently, which I have started to do is like doing my weekly newsletter where I kind of elaborate a bit more on these ideas and just try the game of newsletters.

I'm kind of kind of enjoying it, but I'm not like writing too much, so it's so it's fun for me. It's a nice new medium where to express myself a bit a bit differently. And that starts to build as a new income stream as well because there some sponsorships coming in as well.

So, so, so that's really nice and I see a lot of value in building that because, of course, you know, all the content creators know, you know, social media not your not your followers, or whatever, you know, build the email list. The good old saying. So, that is something kind of I'm doing.

But, yeah, more on that, I plan I'm now in discussion with some publishers to work on a book. That's actually like I think I think like the one of at least currently it feels like the ultimate dream would be, you know, just explore a topic, create content around it, share it on social media, get some feedback, validation, and I really want to create these coffee table books, which would be like, you know, maybe a bit of text, you know, an illustration, and then something that can sit on coffee tables, which could be like a nice a nice gift to your fellow creatives or something like that.

It's just a nice It feels like a nice summary for a specific topic or whatever. So, kind of my first book, I think it could be called like Creative Struggle or something like that. And that could be like the summary of my work to this date in some nice way.

So, we'll see how that goes, but that's something I'm pretty I'm pretty excited about so yeah.

Yeah, that's exciting! Yeah, did they reach out to you with the idea or how did that work out?

It was a really good It was a really good thing that I was working for like this Friday actually, there is a launch for this new book from Ana L- Lorena Fabrega, who is like this edupreneur. She shares information about like the new way how to how to how to make schools and teach kids and what not, and she created this book and she hired me to be an illustrator for that book.

So, basically, I created the illustrations for that book, and she was working with this publisher. And Oh yeah, this is actually a good story. So, yeah, I was I was just working with them, and like it was really pleasant to work with those publishers.

They really, you know, if usually you hear the publishers like the Hay House and if you usually hear these stories where kind of when people go with publishers that they take away a bit your creative control and they really like kind of take your work, you know, and then give you peanut money. And kind of take the ownership of your book and hard work, but they are really like, "Hey, you have the last saying." You know, the it was really pleasant to work with them.

They really respect creators, I think, and so on. And then at the end of at kind of when the deal ended, the book is kind of done, you know, the launch will be this Friday, I think, of course, earlier when this podcast goes out, so it will be probably out. But one of the like main editors just emailed me something and I emailed them back and I have this when I send emails, I have this I stole this from Derek Sivers, you know, I have the link to my Now page, and like Twitter, Instagram, and what not.

And in my Now page, I was writing that I'm kind of trying to decide, you know, which will be my next project, like a Creative Fundamentals course, which is a another thing I want to do, or this coffee table book. And that publisher that editor actually like opened my Now page, he read it, and he was like, "Hey, I see you're like planning to write a book.

So, you know, if you decide to make a book, like please reach out." So, I had this warm connection inside those publishers. So, so yeah, now I'm just kind of creating a proposal and we'll see how that goes and where it will end up. But yeah, it was

That's awesome.

It was a nice connection from that freelance gig.

Yeah, and just having the little Now link in the footer of your in the signature of your email. Like that's amazing. I love that.

First, just the concept of a Now page, just, "This is what I'm doing now." Derek Sivers just sort of led that charge with things. It's really smart because we tend to write an about page like, "This is everything about me forever." But just to be like, "Here's a snapshot. The snapshot will change always." And Yeah, I wonder now how many other people who've done the same thing have been connected to opportunities as a result of that one little link in a signature.

Yeah, it's It's It's interesting. But yeah, now I definitely agree, I think Now pages are so much better than About pages. Of course, you know, I still need to like update mine.

I went to write some and it's like low on the priority list, but it's so much better. It just It feels so much human. It feels so much relatable that you are not making this, you know, fancy talk about yourself, you know, and what great things you have done, but it's like really honest, "You know, this is what I'm working now, you know, just this and this really sucks, and I'm kind of struggling with this." If you can really write it like honest, it's really nice.

I love when people have Now pages. I really go and check them out often, and it's really nice thing, so I have a Have a Now page.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I need to make one. I never did, but eventually I will.

Like you, it's so far down the list of all the things that I want to work on and I'm working on that just never got there. But you had people coming in for freelance. You said you have sponsors coming in for the email newsletter.

The huge question I feel like for anyone starting is, "How do I price anything that I do?" Because it's such a black box, I feel like, when we're a creator, like if we're offering services, or the sponsorship in the email newsletter. The These are all just mysteries. Like, there's not a lot of conversation about it.

Like, there's not enough conversation about it, I think. So, I'd just be curious maybe how you've gone about figuring out pricing for yourself, whether it's product, sponsorships, clients, whatever it is.

Oh, there's definitely no rocket science. I think what most people do is just look at your fellow creators, you know, who maybe do something similar. So, so what they do, you know, and then you kind of, "Okay." Try to understand like value like how much my thing is valuable versus them and so on.

So, that's kind of how I how I just went about. I don't know, when I priced my course, I was like I was really compelled about like the model which like Justin Welsh had and like Jack Butcher, they had a bit like lower price courses, and it felt like they sell really well. Of course, they have like 2x, 3x, 4x bigger audiences, and I was really compelled to do something like that.

But I remember I had so much imposter syndrome when I created my course. Then I created like this community. I promised like there will be these feedback sessions.

So, I just like, "Take everything," you know, "and I'll I'll charge you X amount of money." So, I think I started with $280, and it was pretty like 290. And that kind of sold, I think, all right. But later on, I just increased it a bit because it felt like it felt like reasonable, but I don't know.

I don't know what's the right recipe. I think, yeah, if I will make like a full-on self-paced course without like community and my input or whatever, then it definitely will like drop significantly, because that's what others do and it seems like it sells well, and, you know, if it's if it's self-paced and if it doesn't take time from me, you know, I'm completely fine to give it for pretty cheap.

When it come to newsletter, again, I was just, "Hey, I see you do sponsorships. How much you charge?" And they said to me, I was like, "Okay, sounds reasonable, you know." And that's kind of how you go about it. So, maybe at the beginning you put a bit lower just to see like what are the conversions.

You again, you feel the imposter syndrome and then kind of your confidence grows and what not. But yeah, it's just looking around, no rocket science, the pricing is just a mystery.

-huh. Yeah, and I think that's important to touch on because we all think everyone else has it figured out, but basically no one has it figured out. We're all winging it, and everything's changing, like markets and just the whole space in general.

It's not the same day-to-day.

Yeah, but yeah, it's definitely just Googling and asking around. I remember when I got my one of my big freelance gigs, which was with Sean Puri, who is the host of My First Million podcast, I was like, "Holy shit! This is big!" And like I remember he was asking, "Okay," he wants me for like a month and kind of part-time or something.

And I was just like, "I have no idea." And I'm from Latvia, you know. My like the salaries in Latvia versus US is just tremendous difference. So, I was like, "Okay, average salary in San Francisco." That's like I was like, "Okay, this seems reasonable." And I and I remember I spit out like a pretty big number.

I was like sending like this. And he reached out and we did just a bit back and forward. So it dropped a bit, but it still was like a big number for me.

So yeah, I was kind of trying to aim high and really get out of my surroundings, you know, because if you're like living in Latvia for 30 years, you are surrounded with these salaries, and that number is ingrained in you. And when you just understand that whatever somebody in San Francisco like earning 10k a month is like completely like reasonable, you know, it feels insane for you, you know, it's like half a year of my salary, you know, back in the days.

So, so, so, so yeah, it's kind of

Yeah, that's That's really valuable that you did step outside of your bubble, because so many people underprice.

Yeah, it was so hard. So hard. That was just It was like, "Should I do this?" It was just insane.

But yeah, worked out well.

Yeah. And we tend to feel that imposter syndrome, and it's like, "Oh, I can't charge this much. I haven't been doing this.

I'm new." Or even if you're not new, it's like, "Well, no, I've never charged this much, or this big of a client. Like, I need to cut them a deal." It's I don't know if you deal with that, but like that's something that I struggle with. Amara, who produces the show, she's over here off camera, but she Like it's We always want to cut someone a deal because we want to be friends, we want to be supportive and help one another, but I always try to keep in my mind, "No, my time is valuable." It's obviously very valuable for all of us, and I need to make sure I'm pricing accordingly, but it's hard.

It is It's a struggle with every single quote or anything.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I guess I guess in my case, I was a bit lucky, you know, that I wasn't in the position that I needed that gig, you know, I need that money, you know, at all costs, and then you are in a shitty situation where you're like, "Oh my god, what?" Because I need it, you know, then you can If you can walk away from things, and if you are not like desperate in that type of sense, then it's then it's a good position to kind of price high, I think, so yeah.

Save up money, have a buffer. That leads to better freelance gigs in my in my opinion.

Definitely. So, imposter syndrome is something that is It's something that everyone struggles with, and you're putting out these pieces that are condensing information. Do you ever feel that imposter syndrome, like, "I'm not I shouldn't be the one saying this"?

Like, I know because we all learn from others and we sort of take other ideas and we rework them. Have you struggled with that in the actual the work, the art itself when you're creating?

Yeah, for sure. For sure, definitely. Yeah, I don't know.

Imposter syndrome, it's just always around. I think one thing which I have found really helpful, I think in my field, one thing which a lot of people struggle with, and it's very normal, you know, because where is the line between kind of stealing, being a bit of a rip-off, you know, and that type of thing? Because you can see a lot of things.

And it's and again, it's so individual, you know. Somebody might think, "No, that's not a rip-off," you know. "It's it's kind of a different concept," or whatever, you know.

Somebody think, "Oh my god, he just stole whatever his like template or idea or whatever." So, it's a very I think, individual thing. And I don't know, usually one of one of my kind of things how I how I go about things is I really look at how I would probably feel if something like this would be done, you know. Okay, this is a bit different concept.

Like one of my things is like, I stole this from like Tim Urban. He has this analogy of like that he creates content for himself, you know. He imagines like 10,000 Tim Urbans in like a basketball field and he kind of writes for them.

So, that's the same approach kind of I apply when I when I create content. And then I just always kind of filter like, "Am I proud with this? Do I feel like a fraud if I like publish this?" because maybe you got an inspiration there or there, you know, and then maybe you were like too close to somebody else.

So, yeah. I kind of always try to filter that and see like, "Do I feel like a fraud by publishing this? Do I feel bad?" And that's kind of one of the reasons why I actually don't consume like anymore a lot of other visual creators.

I really try to seek inspiration completely outside this field and then bring in something fresh and new to the to the market. I think that's really helpful because if you're consuming your same niche content all the time, obviously, you will be pretty similar to them. But it's really nice if you can find like in whatever, look for your style or whatever from, you know, famous web designers, you know, or some pages.

I'm sure you can kind of pull something from there, and then maybe you look for concepts completely somewhere else, you know. There's just, yeah, the world is a big playground, and there's loads of places for different inspirations, so I think if you are very close to your peers, then you might feel a bit this imposter syndrome.

At least, that's pretty common thing in my in my field, and that's something a lot of people in my community ask me like, "Hey, how do you how do you think," you know, and so it's a it's a it's a tough it's a tough it's a tough game. But anyhow, what I've definitely noticed is like frauds don't get anywhere. If you if you just You need to be original, you need to stand out a bit, you need to put in your heart and a bit more effort, and then you then you actually can go somewhere.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, short-term gain at the detriment of long-term success is always a thing that people will do. When you're doing it, and you're genuine about it, and you're deliberate, there's so much potential, long-term potential, for sure.

So, when you go outside of the space, what are you using for inspiration? Do you Do you reach for particular things? Like do you sort of have like a self-help genre, and you mentioned math earlier, and like different things.

Are there areas that you that you gravitate towards? Or do you just find it sort of a broad umbrella that you're just you're just out seeking?

I would say I would say it's a really broad umbrella. There's no specific place where I really go. Yeah, I think one of one of the things which I usually say is that, of course, one thing is like always, you know, take notes.

I have like so many times before we go to bed, we have this idea, we don't write it down. Next page Next day, we wake up, we just have forgotten about the idea, so I always take notes. I always, I always, I always take notes.

That's just a an extremely important part of my creation process. And the other thing is like kind of tune up your awareness a bit when you go about your day, you know. Because now I'm I'm like in the other side of the apartment in the kitchen, you know, I can I can I can look at things and I can see, "Okay, you know, coffee, cup, you know, there is this pipe, and then there is oil, and then there is blender, you know." And if you think about, "Okay, what I could do with blender?

Okay, what something could be in the blender, you know?" And you think about these things with a bit a bit more awareness and kind of really pay attention to things, you know. You're in a living room. There's carpet, you know, and everything looks so clean, but actually under the carpet, it's completely dirty, you know.

And that starts to create some sort of ideas for you.

Is that the direction you normally go? Like visual items that then you put together with concepts?

That is That is just one part of it. Yeah, this is one thing, you know, I might go down the street and I might see whatever, some interesting graffiti, you know, with something interesting, and I will just snap a picture and add to my notes. But the other part is, you know, I listen to podcasts, I listen to audiobooks, and then, "Okay, interesting idea." I quickly write down the idea in my words.

Or I listen to a podcast, and it reminds me maybe some of my personal story or something like that, you know, again, I r- write it down. I sit at the laptop, you know, whatever, you know. You have seen probably the illustrations where I have these many tabs open or something like that, and then I figure out some interesting concept around it, you know, it's same, it happened just when I sit and I observe that I have this huge amount of tabs open, you know, and that's something probably a lot of other people can relate.

There's definitely some sort of concept we can like figure out of it. So yeah, I take pictures, I write those type of notes, and then when I sit down, "Okay, let's make a visual," you know. I open my big idea file and I just scroll around and I see, " I really like feel there's something here.

I want to take this further." And then you just take it to whatever, Figma, and just start to play around with it, write some write some quotes, analogies, and try to kind of make sense of it. So, that's kind of more or less my creative process.

Yeah, and is Figma your tool of choice?

Now, yes, but I have gone through like Procreate on iPad, and Illustrator, Affinity Designer, I think something else, but, yeah, over time I understood I was using iPad less, less, and less, and I think Figma is like when I work on desktop, Figma is like one of the best tools, I think, there is. It's just, because I use just only a couple of tools.

If you go to Figma, there is this pen tool, and just, you know, change text, change colors, and that's that. You can like pretty easily create this stuff the stuff I create. There you don't need to be a designer or rocket scientist.

It's just go watch one tutorial how to use pen tool in Figma and try to recreate something, and then you can just start to make your own stuff.

Nice. And are you using like a tablet with Figma or are you using the mouse? How do you do it?

It's I know it's very specific, just curious.

No, no, no. Not anymore. Previously, I was I was I was using iPad.

Like I started in Procreate, which is a full-on iPad application. There is no desktop version, you know. Then you just draw and it's in raster graphics, so it's like a bit blurry and stuff.

And then I understood I want to do vectors because I want to like copy-pasting, you know, and it's a bit easier to create. You don't need to like recreate all the ways all stuff from like zero, you know. With vectors, you can just move things around and stuff, so I wanted to do vectors, but I still wanted the iPad capability.

That's why I went to Illustrator and Affinity Designer because they have like desktop versions and iPad versions and I can maybe draw some sort of metaphor, you know, on iPad, which is with more lines and more like shapes and stuff, and then take it and finalize it on the desktop. But over time, I understood I was just using 90% desktop and 10% iPad, and I understood I was not really happy with Illustrator or Affinity Designer as a desktop tools, they were just too cluttered because I really needed just couple of tools, and Figma was, I think, the best as a as a desktop tool, and I understood, "Okay, fuck it.

I will I will not use iPad." I still use it just to capture some ideas or notes, just to sketch it down in the notes, but when I illustrate something, it's fully on Figma, and if it's something fancy, it's still kind of with pen tool. You just work through the image and make it happen. So yeah, that's that's the tool story, which I know a lot of creators like, "Oh, please talk about tools!"

And it's still just the free Figma version, right? You don't even need the premium or anything?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it's It's Yeah, it's a it's it's all free.

Isn't that wild?

Yeah, it's It's a good question you asked, because if I would say, "What's the most common direct message you get?" it's like, "Hey Janis, what tool do you use for your illustrations?" That's just the most common question.

Yeah, it makes sense. And it's sort of like photography, everyone's like, "Oh, what camera are you using?" Because it's like it's easy to think that the tool is the is the creative, but it's like you are the per- Like you are what creates this, and then the tool is It's irrelevant, but you've found your way. You've found your path to the thing that works best for you, which is awesome.

And I'm sure the members of the course love that it's a free tool. They don't have to spend more money on buying Like Illustrator is not cheap, especially when you get a subscription and all these things. So, to be able to go to Figma is great.

Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. But, you know, people are a lot of people are using Procreate, a lot of people are using Affinity, because, again, different needs, and I kind of have explained like, "If you want to pre- like optimize for this and that, then maybe this is a better, you know. If you really go very hard on analogies and metaphors, and very fancy drawings, then probably you need iPad, you know.

It's pretty hard in Figma like to do all of that, but I do them every now and then, so it's not that often. So, so it's kind of fine."

And the beauty of doing vector work, too, is you're ready for the book. You're ready for any sort of sized print, which is awesome. Like not having to recreate past work if you if you're using certain pieces.

Yeah, it's a great a great move. So, what does it look like actually in the course for the interaction that you 'Cause you said Did you say it's reviews? How did you phrase that?

Like how is the course structure or whatever?

Or sorry, for you, because you do it was like work reviews or I forget exactly how you phrased it, but where you're looking over what they're doing.

In my Explain Ideas Visually course and community, like since now, it was always like you log in, there's this self-paced course which you can self-paced course which you can core modules you can binge in around 2 hours, you know, and maybe look one of the behind the scenes videos where I kind of create visual from scratch and just explain how I do and why I do it and why I do this here and there.

And then people start to create, and then they just publish that in the Discord community. And every now and then, I do these Loom video sessions where I just review the work and I kind of explain, "Okay, I think this is good. Maybe this could be better, you know.

This phrasing is a bit off, you know, and do whatever, the sizing here a bit different because of this and that." And that's how I do those feedback sessions. But actually now, next week I will do my first cohort. I kind of want to experiment this year to do every month like one live week where basically just in a live way, I still cover the main modules and we just have like a meet-and-greet session on Friday, and then on Sunday, we do like a live review session where it's not just only my opinion, but, you know, there's a lot of people in the community who are like now experienced as well, and so it's not just my opinion and we can have this back and forward, and it could be more fun.

So, it's just a another experiment I will do I will do this year, and we'll do it every month like a live session as well apart of the.

Is that within Discord or you're using another tool for that?

The community is on Discord. It's It's really nice. But…

But for the live review, though?

For the live review, I believe it will be just on Zoom, oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'll just have schedule scheduled sessions on through this there's this tool, Luma, like lu.ma, which is like really nice, you can batch like the whole events at once, you can create you like your live week and there's these all events, and people can just download it and get an email with and add everything to the calendar, which is like super nice and convenient.

But yeah, all of that is in the Zoom, but I will do I will be doing that for the first time. Previously, I was just doing these on Loom, which is a super nice tool to do these recordings and share them super quickly. Really nice, nice tool.

Yeah, it's amazing how many Yeah, how many tools have come out now that make all of this stuff so much more attainable. Like you, as 'Cause it's just you, right? You don't have like a team or employees or anything.

No.

Yeah, it's just you?

It's It's just It's just me and tools.

Yeah, which is awesome. Like that is so amazing. It's Like I just love that because the barriers to starting and building something great are so low now, and it comes down so much more to the actual the thought, and creativity, and the creating side, where all the tools can just sort of get out of the way, which is really nice.

I still remember it was like, I think, 2 years back or 1 year back, I was just re-listening I think 1 year back, I was re-listening a bit to the Tim Ferriss's 4-Hour Workweek book, and, you know, he used these like old-fashioned tools, and there's a lot of this crazy mixture of random tools, but now it's so easier, and so better to do these things.

And yeah, most of them are not really expensive, and you can easily get going with zero cost on everything. There is so much great tools, which just cost nothing, you know. Again, illustrations, take Figma, watch a YouTube tutorial, try to recreate some of the stuff you see online, by recreating, you will learn some of the techniques, you know.

It's a very similar kind of technique how I think people call it copy work, where you kind of write out famous authors, or famous sales copies, you write out by hand, and that's kind of how your brain starts to understand, you know, how to how to make these things. I think it's very similar with visuals. You can quickly just learn couple of tools and then try to recreate some stuff, and then start just to create new stuff.

But you will learn kind of the techniques and how to make things happen, and it will not be that overwhelming. Just commit, and in 1 week, you will be off to the races.

Yeah, absolutely. And have you, 'cause right now you don't do a subscription. It's not like a monthly thing for the course, right?

No.

Have you considered doing anything like that if you're doing sort of cohort-type maybe longer-term things?

I don't know. This will be a good experiment to see how it goes, but currently not really not feeling comfortable with that because asking recurring revenue would be definitely I would feel I need to put more effort from my own time, but that's something I want to more move away from and really be like this whatever, creative spirit running around and creating these coffee table books.

That's That's the ultimate goal, you know, and just pop on a call with friends and, you know, you and somebody else, just to when I want to talk to somebody, but it would be nice to detach from the community as a mandatory thing, which is required from you, you know. It's nice to do it when I want it and like so it's a free input and just kind of going on its own, but tying my like commitment and whatever.

Yeah, you understood what I mean.

Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, and it's so important to define that for yourself because it could be optimizing for consistent revenue, but that isn't like the only path. Like knowing that you want the freedom from having to be there all the time, and it was something that came up earlier and something I was reading like freedom from versus freedom to.

Like a lot of times we think like "freedom to travel, freedom to this," but at the core of it, it's like "freedom from a day job, freedom from having to get up early, commute 3 hours every morning," like whatever it is. And that's a lot more times many times more powerful than the freedom to. And like you said, having the freedom from having to really be there all the time is That's the dream.

That's perfect to have it as your sort of your calibration of where you're heading.

Definitely. Yeah. At the I think one thing as a recurring revenue what comes to mind is like newsletter is something where I'm aiming at, because if it will grow bigger, you know, if the sponsorships will come in more, more frequently, and there will be like really a backlog of them, like I don't know, like Justin Welsh have, if you if you know him, you know, he's like has 6 months ahead of him is like he's booked, and it would be nice to build the newsletter in a way where it could basically like, you know, cover your main expenses and it's pretty predictable, and then, you know, I think I'll still be creating content, you know, and the more like content I create, the more people discover my work, some of them like convert into like course sales or whatever, and then that's like the cherry on the top, but the newsletter could be like the thing that kind of covers the bases, but I think I'm still like at least a year, two, to get there, I think,…

But yeah, that's kind of the where I'm aiming at with some sort of recurring revenue, more or less predictable.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's good to have that long-term plan, too, and be thinking You're not trying to force anything like that in a month or two. It's saying a year or two.

It's like that's It's feasible and it's the patience is what a lot of us lack, unfortunately. So, having the patience to know that I can connect all these dots and get to where I'm going is huge. So, what's inspiring you right now?

Like, are there any books you're listening to, any podcasts you're really loving, anything that's really like sort of been in your ear lately?

I don't know. I really enjoy My First Million podcast. I just love those two guys having a blast, and just talking random stuff, but that's more like not really for ideas, it's just it's just fun.

It's like watching somebody will go and watch Netflix in the evening. I'll I'll maybe listen to them. But I think that coffee table book idea is really itching me and making me very excited to work on it, because, yeah, it would be really cool to work with like professional publishers who can help you kind of outline the whole Let's say the book cover is, you know, Creative Struggle, and kind of outline the whole concept of it, and then I can kind of find where my work is already created, you know, where I need to fit in some gaps.

It would be a really interesting project, which I'm really excited about, kind of to put it all together. That would be pretty cool. That's, I think, the main thing which is which is driving me at the moment, and feels like the most exciting thing.

Yeah, I really like it. So, appreciate you taking the time, like I this is a great convo, and I love just diving in to everything. But I don't want to take too much of your evening, I assume, right?

It should be evening by you?

It's evening, it's evening, but it's completely fine. I planned for this, so I still probably will do a bit of work, so it's it's completely okay.

Perfect. So, where should we send people to follow along, or check out the course, or where would you like people to go most specifically?

You know, socials is just they will lead to my website, or you can just go to my website and there are links to my socials, where I share the most frequent stuff, and my newsletter, which is ozolinsjanis.com. It's I don't know, maybe you can put it to show notes.

Oh yeah, it'll be in the show notes.

Or they can Google my name from the from the from the title, and probably my website will pop up, or some sort of socials, and just, yeah, go there, say hi, send a DM. I pretty much answer everybody unless you are just a weirdo, or a crypto scammer, or somebody just. If people send me normal messages and just ask some questions, I always try to reply.

So, if you have any follow up questions, please reach out. I will reply. And yeah.

Thanks for thanks for asking me to come on. I really enjoyed this conversation.

Oh, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, it's a long time coming, so I'm just really glad you had the opportunity and you were you were up for it.

I want to thank Janis for joining me on this episode. You can find the links to his website, his course, his social media, in the show notes or the description, wherever you're watching or listening now, but it is ozolinsjanis.com. So, did you over there, Amara, enjoy this episode?

How are you doing? There's the eyeballs.

Yeah, I'm a little sleepy today, but…

Oh no, it's all good.

No, it was really good. I enjoyed it a lot.

Yeah, no, I just…

He's living my dream.

Well yeah, and that's something that we had tinkered with around shortly after he did that. I was like you did some illustrations for some of the things I was doing because I was like it's such a great idea. And you being an illustrator and artist and everything, I was like, "Oh, I might as well give it a shot." But I love that he's kept going, built something big in terms of freelancing, but also the course and everything.

So, I don't know.

Yeah, I'm really excited to see the coffee table book.

I know.

We might have another new book in the house.

Yeah, I'm sure there'll be a little a little leeway until it's available, but that is exciting. But anyway.

I will pre-pre-pre-pre-order.

But anyway, thank you. That's good timing. I was like glancing, "Is it Did it cut over yet?

Did it…" Okay, but anyway, thank you for tuning in. Thanks for watching the show. She's laughing at me again.

That's totally fine. But thanks for watching the show.

When you don't die.

I'm Jeff Sarris. This is Amara Andrew.

Yo.

And thank you again for liking, subscribing, tuning in, commenting, everything, and we will see you next time.

Bye.