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Welcome to my Podcast, where I interview founders and creatives, bridging the worlds of business and art.
My show explores the intersection of entrepreneurship and creativity and aims to be a beacon of hope for artists and solopreneurs navigating challenging moments in their careers.
The Solopreneur and Arts worlds are connected - but all too often, there is a lack of meaningful exchange between the sectors.
By learning from those who have thrived at these crossroads, I hope to pass on stories which give us renewed strength for our paths.
With a special interest in the opportunities of the digital economy and the creator world, this podcast deep dives into the challenge of building a life for oneself.
This is me, your host Jim, signing off - by saying:
WELCOME!
Jim
HOW TO START A CREATIVE PROJECT FROM SCRATCH
Do you have that one thing that you just can’t get going? That no matter what you do, you just can’t seem to get to it, can’t make that first move, can’t build that first momentum.
So look guys, I’ve been there and know how tough it is to move from feeling paralysed to experiencing real progress.
That's why today, I want to share the process that I use when I’m feeling stuck but desperate to activate myself creatively.
This method is the crucial building block I use to propel myself into the main stage of all my creative endeavours.
It’s been instrumental in initiating each of the five documentaries I’ve directed and the five albums I’ve produced.
For those of you who don’t know me, these projects have been bootstrapped on a shoestring budget but have still made their own impacts, with the films screening at a hundred film festivals worldwide, the music reaching a sizeable audience and over 50,000 raised for humanitarian causes.
Today, I’m not promising a magic formula for success but rather sharing ten practical steps to get you moving forward. These are the nuts and bolts of how I tackle creative projects, focusing on what I call the 'First Movement.' This critical phase is about transforming a spark—an idea brewing in your heart or mind—into tangible action.
Sometimes the challenge isn’t riding the wave but capturing the dam thing in the first place. Let’s dive in:
# Step 1: Clarify One Thing
So the first step is to clarify the one thing you are setting out to do
This may seem obvious, but when you pause and observe your thoughts, you'll notice they're often scattered—like a "mad monkey” as the Buddhists call it. When you dream of achieving something, it's easy to imagine the complete, successful outcome instead of focusing on the necessary first steps to get there.
So the question is, are you willing to narrow this? Can you clarify one thing?
Look, many of us creatives want to develop as holistic beings and believe me; I get it; it’s a noble pursuit.
However, the danger is that we dissipate our energy between so many things that we end up making no progress in one single area.
So ask yourself, what is the one thing you’re going to channel your energy towards?
You are not sacrificing all the
different things you want in your life; rather you’re choosing one area of focus that will act as a catalyst for your future.
A reminder: Choose one path. Whether it's a new hobby, a dream, a side hustle, or an instrument—you must make a decisive choice. It’s tough, but limiting yourself now allows for greater expansion later.
In the words of Bruce Lee "I don't fear someone who has practised a thousand kicks once, but I fear someone who has practised one kick a thousand times.”
Focus your mind.
Dial in.
Clarify one thing.
# Step 2: Start a new journal
The clearest way to commit to your singular goal is to start fresh—with a new journal. This isn’t just any journal; it’s a Journal of the One. Unlike a daily journal used for scattered thoughts, this one represents a fresh start and a focused path.
I love these Muji journals, which are less imposing than Moleskine journals - which I use for my deeper reflections. The simplicity of a Muji journal aligns with the clear, uncomplicated steps you’ll outline here.
This journal is your commitment to move beyond confusion, distraction and second-guessing.
You are no longer daydreaming.
You are not in the formulation stage.
This new book represents resurrection, commitment and renewal.
You get to put aside where you were and start moving into what you are becoming.
Next, give your journal a precise title that reflects your current project. If you’re learning to play the piano, call it “Piano Book.” If you’re launching a startup, name it “Start-Up Steps.” If you’re recording an album, perhaps “Album Adventure.” This title should mirror the clarity and purpose you are striving for—not abstract, but direct and practical.
This journal serves as a place for self-accountability, where each page is a step towards realising your goals. In a world full of distractions, it’s your space of defiant clarity—a blank canvas not of emptiness but of immense potential.
Remember:
Everything you need is inside you and it’s time for you to stop being so down on yourself because there’s good stuff out there for you and an adventure ahead.
“A blank page is no empty space.
It is brimming with potential. It is a masterpiece in waiting - yours.”
― AA Patawaran
# Step 3: Brainstorm it.
On the first page of the journal, turn it sideways.
Now’s the time to embrace a bit of chaos. When you’re overloaded with ideas, it’s crucial to get them out of your head.
- Log ideas chaotically.
- Allow it to be messy.
- Scribble, doodle, write—just let it flow.
- Note down tasks, people to contact, skills to learn, and actions to take.
Don’t judge or second-guess yourself. Let this process be fun and unconfined.
You know nowadays people are always trying to do everything digitally in apps but the problem is you’re writing in logic and sometimes ideas need to be analogue free from chaos.
You’re an artist, man; act like one.
Remember:
People do great stuff!
Taking action is a joy unto itself.
Whatever has held you back:
It’s time to let it go.
So let it go!
"The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing."
- Walt Disney
_______
# Step 4 - The List of 5
So out of this brainstorming page, you will likely have a deep sense of where to start.
But if you don’t, then no matter.
The next step is to choose five specific things to focus on.
No more.
No less.
If you know what they are, great; if not, pick them at random.
The important thing is that you pick just 5 and integrate this limitation as a discipline.
The clearer the task before you start, the greater the development will be once the day is done.
Remember:
Overwhelm destroys.
Overwhelm is the enemy.
Keep it simple.
Something I like to do is to create a new brainstorming master list at the beginning of each week, but then to keep it separate from the 5 daily tasks which should always be assigned to a new piece of paper.
"Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step." - Martin Luther King Jr.
# Step 5 -A Thing a Day
With the fifth step, we're gearing up for the greater challenge.
Now the problem a lot of people make is that their vision is so big that as soon as it comes to actually pursuing it they feel either too exhausted to start or too overwhelmed by the scale of the ambition to know where to begin.
To counteract this, when I start a new project, I focus instead on a **minimum daily expectation.**
The greatest challenge we all face is consistency.
But why?
We fail at consistency for two reasons:
First; we try to do too much too quickly
Second; we fail to have the humility before the task before us.
Our ego sees the great vision yet can’t take the very first step to move us towards it.
The way you counteract this is by having courage. Not to pursue the totality. Instead, you need the courage to believe that the small task before you is the most important thing you will ever do.
To build consistency, take your new journal and pose these two questions:
1) When are you doing it?
2) Are you ready to do it everyday?
It is not about committing your whole life to it.
It is not about doing it all at once.
It is inviting your dream into the fabric of your everyday life.
So all I ask is this:
Commit to 10 minutes a day.
Sounds easy, right?
But the reality is most projects fail because we start by doing two hours a day, skip it once, and then beat ourselves up for “failing.”
Why not instead have the humility to build a chain of days, all committed to your deepest purpose?
“You don’t have to be good to start … you just have to start to be good!”
Joe Sabah
# Step 6 - Build a Sequence Chain
Your goal now is to build out the habit of 10 minutes a day.
Why 10 minutes?
Because you know you can do it.
If I’d played piano every day for 10 minutes over the last 20 years, I’d have achieved over a 1000 hours of piano.
If I’d managed one 1 hour and 22 minutes I would have achieved 10,000 hours - enough to be a Grand Master at virtually anything.
The point I make is that we with 10 minutes a day over a long period of time you underestimate where it can take you.
The problem most of us have is that we are too big to actually believe in the validity of those 10 minutes.
So why not just look at maths?
Would you bet 10 minutes today if it were to give you your future, to realise your dream?
You know you would.
So then the question becomes, how can I guarantee that I will really go after this?
Well it’s not about the passion of the day, it’s about the discipline of the long term.
So let’s go back to the journal we invested in earlier.
The plan now is to commit to the discipline of logging.
Let’s revisit the journal with the following pages:
Page 1 - Brainstorm
Page 2 - The List of 5
Page 3 - Log Book
This loop—brainstorm, list, and log—creates a powerful feedback system.
The brainstorming session is about getting stuff out of you for the future.
The list of 5 is about committing to what you are doing in the present.
And the logbook is about about reviewing what you’ve done in the recent past.
The log is about reviewing the past by jotting down progress, your pain points and your to-do’s.
So often the reason why we fail to build consistency is because we are unwilling to review our own process.
The more conscientiousness about your own creative process, the steeper your arc of improvement.
Writing it down is about being accountable to yourself.
# Step 7: Kill the Excuses
If you are going to start something, then start.
Kill the excuses.
When are you doing this? Are you committed to doing it every day?
Any creative project suffers from the same limitations of:
- Money
- Resources
- Time
- Energy
The first two, money and resources, are difficult to control. But time and energy we can be smart about.
Now the reality is that most of us fail to gain consistency with our new goals, and then quit them.
If you are going to integrate them you need not only to discover your own humility before the task but also to bring in a bit of tough.
To do that means to resolve to in advance to stop making excuses.
But why do we make excuses?
We make excuses almost always because we are either too tired or too busy.
So, to avoid being too tired or too busy, we have to act smarter.
You act smarter by safeguarding the one thing you are trying to do. And you safeguard it both at the front end of your spirit and the backend.
The front end is by being smart- by writing it down, by brainstorming, by logging.
The back end is about determination and heart.
Are you dam well going to make sure you get that 10 minutes in per day as if your life depends on it?
Because your life does depend on it.
What you are dissatisfied in yourself today is not because of something that’s not in you. It’s because what’s in you is as yet unrealised.
But this potential needs to be coaxed out of you, and yes as Chris Martin sang, nobody said it was easy.
Get smart on the front end. Get tough on the backend.
Kill your excuses.
Make your 10-minutes you’re non-negotiable.
"The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide you’re not going to stay where you are." - J.P. Morgan
# Step 8: Prioritise the Priority
So in your journal you are now writing down the 5 things a day.
I want to now go into a methodology for how you achieve that list of 5.
Simply put: the only thing that matters is that you prioritise the priority.
Look, at any time life is always speaking to you. Are you willing to listen to it?
It says: this is the one thing you need to do to move forward.
And yet, we find ourselves listening to everything else and wondering why we are so confused.
You counteract this by making the decision to always make the first thing on the list the priority.
Even if you get nothing else done that day, get that one damn thing done.
Show some guts.
Show some heart.
Do the doing.
Get through it.
When it comes to my list, I have one rule:
I never ever do the second thing on the list until the first thing is done.
It’s a way of getting used to doing hard things because, all too often, we move on from a task not because it’s done but because it’s too challenging.
What about thinking about that moment instead of our moment of revelation?
When we get to show who we are in life.
You are always your own laboratory.
And though it feels good to move on from a tough task, we know really that its just a tactic of avoidance.
So suddenly we live in a world dominated by distraction. And distraction is usually about looking somewhere else for someone to motivate us. Rather than building our own muscle to motivate by going through the hard stuff.
So remember, distraction is the excuse we use not to move our lives forward.
Bin it.
Instead:
Prioritise the priority.
"Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
# Step 9 - Bring people on a journey with you.
The final step is about our relationship with the world. Many of us are either working from home or going about our creative projects with a sense of cut off or loneliness.
I know many of us have a queasy relationship with social media, but I want to challenge you to rethink it.
Instead, how can you bring people on a journey with you?
I will focus on this in a future piece. But for now, why not open up your spirit again?
Accompany your new start with one post a day on one platform.
Again keep it simple.
And make it both a log about what you are doing a gift to offer others.
What are you doing?
Why are you doing it?
What is your pain point?
How are you solving it.
Is there something you need help with?
Have you found a solution which might help someone else?
For now, don’t worry about likes or results.
At this stage it’s not about outcome or an expectation.
It’s about release and joy.
Do it for these three reasons:
To make yourself publicly accountable
To log your journey
To help others
Your new project is an adventure.
Sharing it is joyous.
As well as a helpful discipline.
# Step 10:The 30-Day Challenge.
And so, we’ve established some basics.
Now we’re going to put a date in the diary.
And it’s in 30 days.
Whatever happens, we’re doing this every single day for the next 30.
There is a certain freedom which comes in the act of consistency.
Rather than being terrorised by what we are not doing, we feel the lightness of binding ourselves to something beyond ourselves.
Commit to consistency.
The next 30 days will prove to be the most important of your life.
If you want them to be.
“We want things to go perfectly, so we tell ourselves that we'll get started once the conditions are right...it'd be better to focus on making do with how things actually are...”
― Ryan Holiday
Your challenge now:
Build out your sequence chain of 10 minutes per day over the course of one month.
Trust me, it’s a gateway into the next version of yourself, building out your dream and changing your life.
"You may delay, but time will not."
Benjamin Franklin
**SUMMARY OF STARTING:**
Clarify Your Goal: Focus on one specific project or goal. Choose wisely now to expand later.
Set Up Your Journal: Create a journal specifically titled for your goal, like "Piano Book" or "Start-Up Steps."
Brainstorm Freely: On the journal's first page, write down ideas chaotically—tasks, contacts, skills, and actions.
Create a Priority List: Identify five key actions from your brainstorm. If unsure, choose randomly.
Commit Daily: Dedicate five minutes daily to your project, building consistency with small, manageable steps.
Establish a Routine: Develop a three-page cycle in your journal: Brainstorm, Priority List, and Log Book for daily progress.
Eliminate Excuses: Set a regular time for your project to ensure consistency and overcome procrastination.
Focus on One Task at a Time: Always complete the first item on your priority list each day to ensure progress.
Embrace a 30-Day Challenge: Commit to your project daily for the next 30 days to build momentum and integrate it into your life.
Share Your Journey: Document and share your project on social media for accountability and to inspire others.
“Start before you’re ready.”
― Steven Pressfield