Overcoming uncertainty as a creator

Need a boost of encouragement? In this episode of Backstage with Patreon, we revisit top tips from Hot Topics: Doubt, a Patreon workshop on contending with uncertainty. Abigail Thorn, actress and creator of the web show from Philosophy Tube, and rapper Ben Miller, known as Wrekonize, share their strategies for how to deal when things get spicy.

Listen for highlights from their conversation on anticipating, weathering, and even thriving in times of doubt.

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Episode transcript

Brian Keller:
Hello Creators! You are Backstage With Patreon, where we open the curtain on how to build a thriving business on Patreon. I’m Brian Keller from the Creator Success team.

Today we’re bringing you another concentrated dose of creator insights from a live event hosted for Patreon creators. This one is from our workshop series called Hot Topics where we tackle the spicy and timely issues at the heart of being a professional creator. This workshop dove into Doubt — how to recognize, handle, and thrive in the face of uncertainty. We get into how to shift to a positive mindset, commit to your craft and wellbeing, and stay accountable along the way. Special thanks to the event’s organizer and host Posadas.

Let’s get started on Backstage with Patreon, and go back to the beginning for our amazing creator guests as well, when they first experienced doubt in their work

Ben Miller:
Absolutely. We can go all the way back. We can go super back, if you like. Probably the first real instance I can think back in my musical journey or my professional career.

Brian Keller:
That's Ben Miller, also known as Wrekonize who has diverse musical talents and endeavors.

Ben Miller:
I am a musician, producer, performer. I've been a Patreon creator since 2019. I'm most known for being one of the lead vocalists in a band called Mayday. We're like a hybrid hip hop, reggae, folk rock. We do a lot of different music genres in one band. And then I also do solo work as well. I'm known as a solo MC.

Brian Keller:
And doubt for him started close to home.

Ben Miller:
When I got around the age that I maybe about 7, 8, 9 years old thinking, "My dad, looks so cool doing what he does, and I really want to be a part of that. I want to make music too." My dad struggled a lot with trying to break into the music industry. He never really attained commercial success. He still makes music to this day. He enjoys it. He gets joy out of it, but he never really found a commercial wave that he could ride. When I came around the time that I was approaching 10 saying, "Yeah, I want to be just like you dad." My dad's first reaction wasn't so much to deter me from doing it, but he just wanted to really stress to me how hard it was to do it as a profession. The first thing I was met with was, "Yeah, that's cool. You want to do it too, but you should just know that it's difficult for all these reasons."

Brian Keller:
For other creators, doubt might start when taking your creative talent to a more serious level.

Abigail Thorn:
I went to one of those British drama schools that really breaks you down and recreates you into a new person. Wonderful, fantastic training at East 15 Acting School, but it's the drama school that you imagine in your head, strict teachers that none of them were Russian, but in my head, they had Russian accents and, "Stand up straight," all this stuff. One of my fellow classmates was being asked to play a scene and he was finding it difficult, and he said, "I'm just not very confident."

Brian Keller:
That's Abigail Thorn, she/her, who creates Philosophy Tube on YouTube and Patreon, which teaches philosophy in a fun, theatrical way. It's no surprise her doubt origin story starts in the academic theater setting.

Abigail Thorn:
And head of the course said, "Confidence is bullshit. Confidence is bullshit that is used to sell self-help books. What you need is entitlement. Have you done your character research? Have you learned your lines? Do you know your objective in this scene? If the answers to those questions is yes, then you are entitled to take the stage and the audience's time. If you have not done those things, then you are a professional actor and you know what you need to do to get ready. If you're ready, you're entitled. Take the stage and do it. If you're not ready, go away and work. There's no confidence. Confidence doesn't come into it. Either you're entitled to it or you're not." And I always remember that it was a very powerful moment, and he went on stage and he was a fantastic Macbeth and he did a great job, and he was one of the people in my year who was really forever changed by drama school. His personality really was reconstituted pretty much in that moment. It was a very powerful experience, and I'll always remember that.

Brian Keller:
And Abigail has turned that insight into a keen awareness now of how to evaluate if her videos meet the exacting standards she has for her art.

Abigail Thorn:
In the last few years, I've tried to have three criteria for when I'm happy with the video, and if it fulfills those three criteria, then I go, "Okay, I'm going to leave." It doesn't matter what the feedback is, doesn't matter what the numbers it did about these three criteria, and they are, was it made from curiosity, not ambition? Did I make it out of compassion for myself and others? And is it my unique creative vision? And if it fulfills all of those three, then I'm happy with it.

Brian Keller:
But doubt will inevitably rear its head along the way as a creator. What are the tactics that Abigail and Ben have developed to tame doubt before it gets overwhelming?

Abigail Thorn:
Every time I make a video, I do a post-mortem live stream on YouTube and I talk about the feedback that I received. I talked about this issue in the post-mortem live stream, and I thanked some of my subscribers for writing in and telling me that, and I thought, "You know what? I don't think it has ticked all three of my criteria off." Even though it did really well, could have had more compassion for others.

Ben Miller:
One of the biggest ones for me is external forces. When I sit in the studio, it's just me. If I'm with the band, it's just me and the band, but when we're making the music, we're not online, we're not going through the comment boxes, we're not looking at past comments of other songs. We're just in that moment making that piece of art at that particular time. And the best, most pure creations I've ever been a part of are always when you have those external forces completely blocked out.

Brian Keller:
All creators aren't going to have a perfect record. They're going to struggle at times. It's all about how you handle those inevitable setbacks.

Abigail Thorn:
You fail a bunch and you survive and you keep creating. I remember a couple of years ago I released a video and it bombed. YouTube tells you out of 10 how well your most recent video did, and it was a down at number 10, it bombed. I worked really hard and I did put all my heart and soul into it, ticked all three criteria, and it still just crashed and people weren't interested, and I was really disappointed. In fact, I was so anxious and disappointed that I curled up on the floor. I wanted to be sick. But you survive and you fail a bunch and you survive a bunch and you keep trying and you succeed a bunch, and then you keep failing a bunch and you just sort of get used to it, really. You realize that things don't get that bad.

Ben Miller:
I've seen people, especially in music, fall out of the game completely because they get so shut down that but they miss that next opportunity that goes right by their face because they're feeling so sorry for themselves at that moment.

Brian Keller:
This is especially challenging as a creator now, when you have a public audience, when you have your audience and comments as well as reactions and content made about you.

Abigail Thorn:
If somebody is coming at me with abuse or aggression, then I have a total zero tolerance policy for that, just completely block it. If they're criticizing me for who I am or how I was born, then again, total zero tolerance that goes. Also, this is a little controversial rule, but if somebody makes a YouTube video about me, I don't watch that video, and I'm aware that sometimes I miss out on really good constructive criticism because of that, but I'm like, "You know what? If you are making this as a piece of content for your audience, then I don't think I can fully trust that you are totally being constructive about this." And if somebody misunderstands what I say and gets angry, then really they're upset at the thing they've created in their head, their own misunderstanding.

Really the fault and the mistake and the harm is with them, not with me. I'm trying to get better about just letting that go, really, if somebody's not coming at me with constructive feedback, and I can go, "Okay, well, there's plenty of people who will." And by listening to them, I get better. But by listening to people who come at me with unconstructive feedback, I only make myself sadder, which doesn't help me get better.

Ben Miller:
95% of the comments you're going to read online are coming from a place of projection. They're coming from people's experiences, whether good or bad, for better or for worse. I found that going over the years, I have artist friends who always read the comments, and I have artist friends who never read the comments. And you have to identify, I feel like it's good, and you can do it either way, and either way is fine, neither way is wrong. But you have to identify within yourself, "Am I the person that can grow a thick enough skin to take negative feedback or take even disrespectful comments without completely folding in or having it disrupt to your creative process? Or am I the person that goes, no, I'd rather just pretend like that's not even there and let me not go into that section?"

And then you can operate how you feel you want to operate from there. I found a lot of times that another thing that I try to keep in mind is you can read 50 positive comments, "That new thing you did, amazing. It's so great. Changed my life. Oh, well, it's wonderful." And then one person comes in and goes like, "You're ugly," or says something completely unrelated, unconstructive, whatever it is. And then you go, "My video was terrible." It completely breaks you down. And I always try to remind myself, letting that get you is such a trick. It's a trick the devil plays where it's like, "Why did that one negative comment have more power than 20 or 50 positive comments?" I always try to feel almost defensive to not let that mechanism click in, because that negative comment is one comment that is probably not even really related to the work. And 50 people before that loved the work and said all this great stuff.

Brian Keller:
How can you build not just the reactive tactics, but a doubt resilient, creative practice?

Abigail Thorn:
I find that having more than one creative outlook really helps stave off burnout. And also, I've gotten to know my mind and my body fairly well over the last 10 years as a creator. And I know when I am too close to the edge, and I know when I'm burning the candle at both ends and I need to ease up a little bit.

Ben Miller:
Often what I find helps is something as easy as just walking away for a minute. For years, I used to tell people, "Just fight through it." And then I started to find that I had long stretches where I didn't really feel a proper burnout. And when I did finally start to feel those feelings, I found it was better to either walk away completely and do something radically different. Whether sometimes people take for granted that creating involves some fuel that you need to put in the tank, which is living life in general. You can't just create all the time without at least going out and seeing something or doing something or just even as something as simple as going into the city or downtown or wherever, and just people watching, seeing what's going on around you. You'll find inspiration if you just stop for a minute.

Brian Keller:
And both Ben and Abby emphasize that you have to be assertive and adapt when inevitably, there will be times where you are being pushed out of a space where you deserve to exist.

Abigail Thorn:
Listeners who weren't already aware, I'm trans and in my country, the entertainment industry is entirely dominated by cis people. Every director, every producer, every reviewer is cis. Every TV and film commissioner, every head of every newspaper and production company, it's entirely cis people. It's very, very common to go to see a play in the West End or to turn on a TV show or a film, and the entire cast will be cis. And that's so thorough that a lot of cis people don't even notice it. It's very tough sometimes, and, some people are shocked to hear this, there are theaters and people in TV and film who in my country do just refuse to work with me because I'm trans.

The people who've shut me out previously haven't come back yet, but I have found that building my own audience has opened new doors. My play that I wrote last year succeeded, did very, very well in large part of thanks to my YouTube audience. And the success of that has gotten new people involved. Now I'm talking to producers who are like, "Hey, we saw how well you did. Tell us about this."

Ben Miller:
The genre that I'm primarily in is hip hop. Hip hop's not an old genre compared to all the others. What we're experiencing now as a 40-year old hiphop artist is ageism is a thing when it comes to hip hop. A lot of times it's a very young art form. People are only now just starting to see artists entering their fifties, sixties, even up to their seventies. It's a weird space to be in because the genre is so primarily jazzed up by a younger audience. Then when you get to middle-aged and start to turn that corner, I've had a weird battle with, "Do I have to change what I'm doing or how I look?" These things all also feed into that doubt cycle when you're online, because I've been on the road and people have met us, loved our show, and then gone after, "How old are you anyway?"

And I'm like, "I'm 35." And they go, "35." And I'm like, "What? What's wrong with 30?" The ageism thing has been a big feeder of doubt for us approaching these later years because it's unprecedented in that genre. I find again, closing off from those windows and just being like, "I just make work and I just make art and music that I feel that I love, and some aspects of that music might not be the trendiest, but that's not really why I'm making it. I'm making it because it moves me. And if you enjoy it, then come on, hang with me, and that's cool. And if you don't, that's fine too. It's all good." That prevents any of those roadblocks from building up the creative process.

Brian Keller:
Doubt is a reality for creators. From the early commitment to pursuing your art as a career to the ongoing need to stay centered and deal with the external and internal challenges along the way, Abigail and Ben shared their best practices to have clear principles for what you publish, find balance through multiple creative outlets and commit to coming back stronger after you fail and embrace your identity even when there's pushback from the status quo. Thanks so much to them for sharing their vulnerable stories and well-earned insights. Check them out at Philosophy Tube and Wrekonize on Patreon and other platforms, and you can learn about upcoming workshops and catch up on previous events from creatorhub.patreon.com.

Tune in next week to Backstage with Patreon when we'll have Hunter Thomas, co-founder of Foundation Disc Golf. They're a physical and online retailer of gear and apparel for the sport of disc golf, and we dig into the experience of running a membership business at the intersection of passionate fans in a fast-growing sport and blending retail sales and content creation.

To catch every episode of Backstage with Patreon, follow or subscribe in your podcast app and leave us a review. We also have transcripts available at patreon.com/backstage. You're growing as a creator by listening to the show, so why not share the insights from this episode with another creator on Patreon or who is running a creative business? We'd love to have you as an active collaborator with Backstage with Patreon. Come join the discussion in the Patreon Creator Discord. Follow the link in the episode notes and you can get answers to your follow-up questions directly from the guests and weigh in on what topics we'll be covering next. Editing by Tyler Morrisette. I'm Brian Keller. See you next time, Backstage.