Creative Overflow with Jenny Kiehn

Authenticity is essential for an art practice and art business.  In this episode I talk about all different stages of it and share some of my personal stories and experience.  Here are the stages that I’ve experienced:

Accept who you are (especially if you’re different than the people around you!)
Show up authentically in your creative practice.  Put in the time to create the artwork to eventually find your creative voice.
Continue showing up so that your creative voice evolves as fast as you are evolving as a person.
Start sharing your work (you don’t need to have it all figured out)
Ask for continuous feedback from the people who enjoy your work so you can better understand their perspective
Refine your artistic message as you learn more
Share your story, with an emphasis on the parts that affect the message of your artwork
Whether to share or not share any trauma you’ve experienced.
Provide avenues for people to really get to know you (I explain about my live artist talks)
Trust that all of this compounds

I also recommend two books that expand on this topic:

The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann
Go Giver’s Sell More by Bob Burg and John David Mann

I’ll actually be doing a live artist talk today on Instagram if you get this message in time.  It will be at 12:00pm ET on Friday April 10th, 2026.

If you miss that talk, I’ll be doing a live artist talk on Facebook next week at 12:00pm ET on Friday April 17, 2026.

If you enjoyed this episode, definitely tune in every Friday because I will be releasing a new episode each week. 

If you're interested in a conversation on how you can bring more abundance into your creative life, leave a review of this podcast, take a screenshot of it and email it to [email protected]. I'll invite you to a free group coaching class about exactly that!

You can also join my podcast mailing list or check out my coaching options at jennykiehn.com/podcast-coaching.

As creators, we have a treasure trove of life skills that can be used to make a beautiful life.  Through making art, we’ve learned to follow a feeling or vision, create safe space for it, stay in Beginner’s Mind, suspend judgement, and see it through to the end.  Then, we we learn from the experience, hopefully laughing about it along the way!  We understand that every artwork is a stepping stone to the next artwork.  We don’t expect completion and if we’re wise, we don’t expect absolute perfection either, even though we might be chasing it.

All these skills are exactly what you need to create a beautiful life.  We have the whole toolkit.  It’s just a matter of applying these same skills to life projects instead.

For instance, what if you allowed yourself safe space to try out different tactics to improve your relationship with your partner?  What if you didn’t take it too seriously, figuring that something would eventually work out?

What if you allowed yourself safe space to build a business, starting it as a small experiment that you show to only a few people, then gradually build up from there?

What if you were willing to take a new step in life just to see what happened - suspending  judgement and not worrying about it?

Beneath all of this is threaded a truth that children know deep down.  When they play, when they jump into things because they know everything is supposed to work out for them.

They fight things that are boring or aren’t fun because they know they deserve joy.

When you step back and look at your life from a broader perspective, it’s easy to see when things that you thought were failures turn out be the best thing that could have happened.

Everything is working out for you all the time.  This is the most powerful truth to know.  It is working out for you, whether it seems like it at the time or not.

When you operate from this knowing, it opens the door to opportunity.

If you enjoyed this episode, definitely tune in every Friday because I will be releasing a new episode each week. 

If you're interested in a conversation on how you can bring more abundance into your creative life, leave a review of this podcast, take a screenshot of it and email it to [email protected]. I'll invite you to a free group coaching class about exactly that!

If you’re interested in deeper weekly support, email me at [email protected] to ask about the Creative Abundance Circle.

In order to create art at all, you’ve got to create safe space for yourself.  It’s one of the most important ingredients for building a creative practice, especially when you’re trying to bridge from making art in a classroom environment to making art out in the world.

But what most artists might not realize is that by making safe space for you to create, you transmit that safety into your art.  You end up making safe space for the people who look at your art as well.

Art is a vessel that holds feeling and experience.  When you make safe space for your feeling and experience, you also make safe space for your viewers feelings and experiences.  The joy, inspiration, sadness, or anger they feel has a safe space to be.  You help people feel known.

To me, this is a pure act of love.  You are putting unfiltered love out there when you put your art out in the world.

The interesting thing is, to really take it to the next level, you’ve got to create safe space for your marketing as well.  

Doing this is the same process as it is for making safe space to create your art.  You’ve got to stay in Beginner’s Mind, allow time to learn new skills, trust that the seeds you’ve planted are going to grow and laugh at yourself when it doesn’t work out.  

Most of all, you’ve got to listen to positive voices that help you keep the faith that this is going to eventually work.  Also, continue to search for the fun in the process.  How can it be more fun??  This will help you find success.

All of your efforts compound, so really it’s a matter of learning to support yourself through the process until the compounding starts to add up.

The coach with the lighthouse metaphor that I mentioned is George Bryant.  

If you enjoyed this episode, definitely tune in every Friday because I will be releasing a new episode each week. 

If you're interested in a conversation on how you can bring more abundance into your creative life, leave a review of this podcast, take a screenshot of it and email it to [email protected]. I'll invite you to a free group coaching class about exactly that!

If you’re interested in deeper weekly support, email me at [email protected] to ask about the Creative Abundance Circle.

This episode is ironically about consistency because I’m posting it a week late!  The truth is I was so inspired after having created a whole year worth of podcasts that I attempted to apply that same consistency to lots of areas of my life at once!  I fell into the trap and then got a little behind on most things, lol!

There is no doubt that consistency is a super power.  It creates certainty, trust, and helps people feel safe to come closer to you and your creative practice.  It helps relationships blossom and allows a fertile, safe space for new ideas to develop.

However, it can definitely be hard to apply, can’t it??  In this episode I literally demonstrate how you’ve got to take baby steps to apply consistency to your life and how to be understanding and generous with yourself in the process.  I also give tips for getting yourself going.

We also talk about consistency as it relates to human design types too.  If you don’t know your human design type yet, go here to get your free chart.  Then, google your profile, authority, and type to learn a ton about how you operate.  You can literally search for it all at once such as 5/1 Sacral Generator (that’s my human design) and get a clear breakdown in one fell swoop.  This will reveal a ton of super useful stuff that is helpful for your creativity and business.

If you enjoyed this episode, definitely tune in every Friday because I will be releasing a new episode each week. 

If you're interested in a conversation on how you can bring more abundance into your creative life, leave a review of this podcast, take a screenshot of it and email it to [email protected]. I'll invite you to a free group coaching class about exactly that!

If you’re interested in deeper weekly support, email me at [email protected] to ask about the Creative Abundance Circle.

This is my 52nd episode which means this podcast is a year old!!  Happy Birthday, Creative Overflow!  

Today I want to talk about the power of conversation.  Conversations about anything - you could be getting to know each other, selling them a painting, sorting out complications in a commission, or finding out how their experience was.  All of them are a tool for deeper connection, which is the name of the game!  

When you have conversations, it helps to start with positive assumptions:

Assume you will like each other
Assume they will like your artwork
Assume they will eventually buy something and it will be a fun experience for both of you

When you lead with these assumptions EVERYTHING gets easier. 

It also helps you relax so you listen more.  Listening is the most important thing you can do as a sales person.  Giving someone your attention and listening to them is a generous, rare act that people really appreciate.  It deepens your connection like nothing else, as long as it's genuine.

One of the most inspirational business books I’ve ever read is called The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and David Mann.  It lays out a way of doing business with giving as the focus.  It’s a beautiful way to do business that is also very profitable.  In The Go-Giver, they emphasize that when you sell to people you need to give them more than just the value of the product.  You also need to give them your attention, care, respect, support and even friendship.  The emphasis is on making someone a part of your network whether or not they buy from you.  Your network is the army of people who support you, refer people to you, help you out of a tight spot, and advocate for you.  In essence, you aim to make everyone into a friend.

So my advice is to read The Go-Giver and use the philosophy to help you make positive assumptions in your conversations.  This is one of the most powerful tools an artist can use in business.

If you enjoyed this episode, definitely tune in every Friday because I will be releasing a new episode each week. 

If you're interested in a conversation on how you can bring more abundance into your creative life, leave a review of this podcast, take a screenshot of it and email it to [email protected]. I'll invite you to a free group coaching class about exactly that!

If you’re interested in deeper weekly support, email me at [email protected] to ask about the Creative Abundance Circle.