Stay ConnectedWelcome to the Onward Creatives Podcast. A weekly podcast bridging the gap between creativity and business.
This podcast is for the creative entrepreneur, the one’s who dare, dream and do.
Each week I help you find clarity and take action so you can make a living doing what you love. The journey onward starts here.
We all have skills, things we're gifted or naturally inclined to do well. We can build on and add to these skills throughout life through school, work, experiences, and other education. We hold these skills in our hands, all of us have them and none of our hands are empty. The question isn't what we hold in our hands, but what we see in our hands.
If I give you an apple, what do you see?
What is the difference between the afternoon snack and the endless possibilities, imagination. Success is possible when you imagine that there is unlimited potential in whatever you hold in your hand.
George Bernard Shaw said "Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will."
So look at what you have, and don't settle for the obvious, the predictable. Instead, allow the mind to dream, to explore the endless possibilities.
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Welcome to the Onward Creatives Podcast. A space to develop and grow your creative potential. Each week we provide inspiration and resources to you, the creative entrepreneur so that you can live out your greatest life story.
We're Jack and Valentina Fussell, creative entrepreneurs just like you, and each week we share insights from our personal journey and the inspiring people we meet along the way.
Your journey Onward starts here!
For more inspiration and resources for your life visit us at:
You can follow Valentina at:
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When was the last time that you let yourself imagine? When was the last time that you let your dreams just go, allowing your imagination to just go. For many of us adulthood has brought with it extreme reality, leaving little or no room for imagination. We may think imagination is just for the crazy artists or the movie makers in Hollywood. The truth is that imagination is for people of all ages and can play a key role in determining your success.
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Welcome to the Onward Creatives Podcast. A space to develop and grow your creative potential. Each week we provide inspiration and resources to you, the creative entrepreneur so that you can live out your greatest life story.
We're Jack and Valentina Fussell, creative entrepreneurs just like you, and each week we share insights from our personal journey and the inspiring people we meet along the way.
Your journey Onward starts here!
For more inspiration and resources for your life visit us at:
You can follow Valentina at:
House of Valentina Instagram Twitter Facebook
You can Follow Jack at:
The creative journey that we're on is tough, exhausting and at times overwhelming. What would happen if you quit? Seriously, what would happen if you called it quits? This a group of creatives: some of us are in existing businesses using our creativity to support and grow established businesses, some of us are solo artists trying to make it as writers, photographers, artists and others of us are building a tribe about an idea or thought. All of these can be exhausting and can push us to the edge. So what would happen if you quit?
To be honest....it would probably feel great. What if we stopped moving forward and decided to stay where we are, doing what we've been doing? We would probably feel relieved.....and then we wouldn't. Our ideas for business, art and creativity are not some frivolous thing we pursue out of boredom or restlessness, they're birthed out of the depths of who we are. Although powering this side of us down would feel good for a brief season, as soon as we caught our breath we would once again feel the call to pursue these ideas Onward.
What would happen if you quit? Play it out....write it down....and every time you want to give up and go back, replay this story and allow the regrets of not pursuing your ideas, dreams and art to flood your heart and mind. You were made for this, what would happen if you quit?
Join our Private Facebook Group!
Welcome to the Onward Creatives Podcast. A space to develop and grow your creative potential. Each week we provide inspiration and resources to you, the creative entrepreneur so that you can live out your greatest life story.
We're Jack and Valentina Fussell, creative entrepreneurs just like you, and each week we share insights from our personal journey and the inspiring people we meet along the way.
Your journey Onward starts here!
For more inspiration and resources for your life visit us at:
You can follow Valentina at:
House of Valentina Instagram Twitter Facebook
You can Follow Jack at:
Megan Huntz had a desire and she designed a life to fit it. In this episode I interview Atlanta fashion designer, Megan Huntz. Megan had a passion for a different type of fashion and charted a course to gain the experience and insight she needed to launch her own label. She takes a few minutes to share her journey and the insights she gained along the way.
Join our Private Facebook Group!
Welcome to the Onward Creatives Podcast. A space to develop and grow your creative potential. Each week we provide inspiration and resources to you, the creative entrepreneur so that you can live out your greatest life story.
We're Jack and Valentina Fussell, creative entrepreneurs just like you, and each week we share insights from our personal journey and the inspiring people we meet along the way.
Your journey Onward starts here!
For more inspiration and resources for your life visit us at:
You can follow Valentina at:
House of Valentina Instagram Twitter Facebook
You can Follow Jack at:
16425 days. I just celebrated roughly 16425 days on this amazing planet. This weekend we celebrated two birthdays, mine and Landon's. Landon asked me how many great days that I've had and I had no problem coming up with several that were unforgettable.
16425 days. Not all of them have been amazing. Some have been spent on tax returns, studying for tests, waiting for car repairs, jury duty, dealing with down websites.... But mixed into these are the amazing days....days with family, close friends, new jobs, creative breakthroughs, weddings, births, vacations....these are the days sprinkled among the 16425 (and growing) that make for an amazing life.
So no matter how your week starts, breakup or breakthrough, don't give up, don't lose heart, instead celebrate. Celebrate the amazing days you've already experienced and celebrate in anticipation of the next great day coming your way!
Join our Private Facebook Group!
Welcome to the Onward Creatives Podcast. A space to develop and grow your creative potential. Each week we provide inspiration and resources to you, the creative entrepreneur so that you can live out your greatest life story.
We're Jack and Valentina Fussell, creative entrepreneurs just like you, and each week we share insights from our personal journey and the inspiring people we meet along the way.
Your journey Onward starts here!
For more inspiration and resources for your life visit us at:
You can follow Valentina at:
House of Valentina Instagram Twitter Facebook
You can Follow Jack at:
Until we define our purpose and what we actually want we'll always struggle with the time we invest in our work. Many of us are frustrated with work/life balance because we don't see the reason why. Why do we work? What's the purpose behind the traffic, the long hours, the hard work?
Viktor Frankl said "Life is never made unbearable by circumstances but only by lack of meaning and purpose."
So if we want to discover how to succeed with purpose we need to ask three key questions.
1. What do you want?
2. What do you want to be known for?
3. What do you want the ending to look like?
"Those who have a "why" to live can bear with almost any "how." -- Viktor Frankl
Join our Private Facebook Group!
Welcome to the Onward Creatives Podcast. A space to develop and grow your creative potential. Each week we provide inspiration and resources to you, the creative entrepreneur so that you can live out your greatest life story.
We're Jack and Valentina Fussell, creative entrepreneurs just like you, and each week we share insights from our personal journey and the inspiring people we meet along the way.
Your journey Onward starts here!
For more inspiration and resources for your life visit us at:
You can follow Valentina at:
House of Valentina Instagram Twitter Facebook
You can Follow Jack at:
It's time to celebrate! Of course there's still more to be done, more dreams to be realized, more art to create, more business to be built....but today, we celebrate.
We celebrate three key things:
1. The privileges we have as creatives.
2. The progress we've made in the last year.
3. The breakthroughs we're currently having.
Join us in the Free Private Facebook Group and share your reasons to celebrate!
Join our Private Facebook Group!
Welcome to the Onward Creatives Podcast. A space to develop and grow your creative potential. Each week we provide inspiration and resources to you, the creative entrepreneur so that you can live out your greatest life story.
We're Jack and Valentina Fussell, creative entrepreneurs just like you, and each week we share insights from our personal journey and the inspiring people we meet along the way.
Your journey Onward starts here!
For more inspiration and resources for your life visit us at:
You can follow Valentina at:
House of Valentina Instagram Twitter Facebook
You can Follow Jack at:
Melanie Villeneuve is the Nomadic Wife and she is leading a movement to inspire and resource people to eat plant based meals. Melanie is less than a year into her startup and is already creating amazing content and more importantly, she's enabling people to live a more healthy life. She does all of this while creating her own recipes and photography that is truly breath-taking.
In this interview Melanie clearly lays out the steps she took to transition from her previous career as a wedding photographer to her new role as the Nomadic Wife. There are four key steps to her process:
1. Start with an interest. She wanted to change her own life by replacing unhealthy foods with more plants. At the same time she started picking up a few food photography jobs. When these two interests came together from different parts of her life she paid attention and noticed the trend.
2. She launched a site. "Your no one without a website." The website provides a home base to create content for various social media channels. This site also serves a significant role required for any movement, a place to build community.
3.Chose creating over marketing. Within six months she had created around 250 recipes. This focus on content over sales allows for her message and ideas to saturate her work in more significant ways without the immediate pressure of making sales. Often times we decide to launch a business or project and start with marketing, Melanie chose to focus on creating first. Not only does it allow for a deeper saturation of message but it also allows her to go into "auto" mode on content creation when it's time to launch.
4.Make it a goal to be rejected. It doesn't matter how great the product or message is if no one knows about it. Instead of playing it safe Melanie continually seeks out rejection. Each week she submits content to 5-6 places. Her rejection rate of 50% is worth the fact that the other 50% pick up her content.
This mass approach plus the sheet volume of content is positioning the Nomadic Wife at the epicenter of an evolving movement.
You can find out more at The Nomadic Wife
Join our Private Facebook Group!
Welcome to the Onward Creatives Podcast. A space to develop and grow your creative potential. Each week we provide inspiration and resources to you, the creative entrepreneur so that you can live out your greatest life story.
We're Jack and Valentina Fussell, creative entrepreneurs just like you, and each week we share insights from our personal journey and the inspiring people we meet along the way.
Your journey Onward starts here!
For more inspiration and resources for your life visit us at:
You can follow Valentina at:
House of Valentina Instagram Twitter Facebook
You can Follow Jack at:
Whether you're starting your own business, building out an existing business, launching a creative career or relaunching into a different career path we all find two companions for the journey....doubt and rejection.
As we set out on the journey we soon find that the fanfare and enthusiasm subsides and is often replaced by doubt, rejection, failure and the ominous music in a minor key.
We can take heart in the fact that countless others have gone before us and faced the same thing. Whether they faced self doubt, direct rejection, or indirect rejection they still had to choose between listening to the rejection and giving up or staying true to their dream/idea and pressing onward. Thankfully they pressed on and we can walk in their footsteps.
These are just a few of those who were told to give up, to give in:
Walt Disney Bill Gates Colonel Sanders Lucille Ball Marilyn Monroe Albert Einstein Claude Monet Elvis The Beatles Oprah
Thankfully they didn't and neither should you!
Join our Private Facebook Group!
Welcome to the Onward Creatives Podcast. A space to develop and grow your creative potential. Each week we provide inspiration and resources to you, the creative entrepreneur so that you can live out your greatest life story.
We're Jack and Valentina Fussell, creative entrepreneurs just like you, and each week we share insights from our personal journey and the inspiring people we meet along the way.
Your journey Onward starts here!
For more inspiration and resources for your life visit us at:
You can follow Valentina at:
House of Valentina Instagram Twitter Facebook
You can Follow Jack at:
There are few subjects as divisive as work/life balance. We definitely live in a world of polarizing opinions on what this means and what is the proper balance. On one side of the equation is the group idealizing working from the beach, living life to it's fullest all the time. On the other side is the "I hustle and work while you sleep and play." Both sides are loud mouthed, opinionated and mostly motivate through guilt. You deserve better than this!
It's time to rethink the whole work/life debate (which includes redefining these stupid words).
1. There's not just one definition of work/life balance. It's not the fewest amount or the most amount of hours which wins, because each of us is different. It's time that we let go of the guilt and the manipulation and realize that proper balance varies from person to person.
2. Stop seeing work and life as opposing factors. The fact is that life is everything. Life is family, work, play and us as individuals. Hotwire president Henrik Kjellberg has reframed the discussion around work and leisure. He works in order to enjoy leisure and his leisure refreshes him for his work. There's no separation between the two and they're not always opposing factors.
3. Succeed with a purpose. Jim Bird thinks of this as achievement and enjoyment. You work for a purpose which is where you find enjoyment. This step is probably where most of us struggle because we've never taken the time to define what we really want, or we're afraid to admit it to others. Until we define our purpose and what we actually want we'll always struggle with the time we invest in our work.
Join our Private Facebook Group!
Welcome to the Onward Creatives Podcast. A space to develop and grow your creative potential. Each week we provide inspiration and resources to you, the creative entrepreneur so that you can live out your greatest life story.
We're Jack and Valentina Fussell, creative entrepreneurs just like you, and each week we share insights from our personal journey and the inspiring people we meet along the way.
Your journey Onward starts here!
For more inspiration and resources for your life visit us at:
You can follow Valentina at:
House of Valentina Instagram Twitter Facebook
You can Follow Jack at:
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