Create Your Art

Chad Temple spent 33 years as a pastor before he stepped out to launch indyNetwork, and the fear that showed up was the same one he felt as a teenager throwing a party nobody came to. In this conversation with Darren, Chad opens up about the voice that told him he was a phony, the "doorway conversations" that happen before anyone commits to showing up, and the fear he says was harder than any busi...

Chad Temple spent thirty years walking the same routes, knocking on the same doors, showing up for the same families, long after most people would have quit or moved on. In this segment, he tells Darren the stories that explain why. A pay phone in the Bronx. A neighborhood that stayed loyal after a full year of silence. A route captain who drove straight into a crime scene asking "is it one o...

Most people building something new are chasing the moment it finally looks impressive. Chad Temple, founder of iNDY Network and Darren's father in law, spent thirty three years knocking on doors in Indianapolis neighborhoods before any of it looked impressive at all. In this episode, Chad and Darren talk about the leap from three decades at one church to founding a network that strengthens, connec...

Erik Cooper started college as a music major, graduated with an accounting degree, spent two or three years at a CPA firm, and then landed in full time ministry completely by accident. Twelve years later, a phone call brought him back to the family business he now leads. He never saw any of it coming, and that turns out to be the point. Darren sits down with his brother Erik, president of The Ston...

Erik Cooper spent twelve years in full-time ministry, then walked back into the business world and could not answer one question. Why does God care at all about renting apartments? The search for that answer led him to a room in Seymour, Indiana, where six grown men wept at the front after he shared some notes he describes as terrible. It also led to The Stone Table, a giving organization that has...

At 48 years old, Dave Cooper started the work that would define the next 30 plus years of his life. Before that, he taught ninth grade business math for exactly one year, audited hospitals for a health insurance company in Philadelphia, and became a CPA only because a job required it. He never planned any of it. He kept walking through the next open door and letting the room tell him the truth. Da...

At forty-eight, Dave Cooper had a resume full of half-finished chapters and no master plan. A ninth grade teacher who quit after a year, a ketchup factory shift he never forgot, a CPA firm he walked away from over lunch. Then one dinner conversation became Community Reinvestment Foundation, a nonprofit real estate engine that now sits on more than a hundred million dollars and funnels millions int...

Most people never fail at the plan. They fail at the start. In this conversation, Super Bowl official and sales coach Bryan Neale breaks down the idea he has taught from stages for years: the first domino. It is the smallest possible action that turns a stuck idea into a moving one, and it is almost never the thing you think it is. From registering for a marathon to buying a podcast kit to his own...

Most people think the reason they haven't started the business, the podcast, or the book is that they aren't ready yet. Bryan Neale, founder of Blind Zebra and a Super Bowl NFL referee, went bankrupt before he built any of it, and he is convinced readiness was never the requirement. In this conversation, Bryan and Darren dig into the reframe that pulled Bryan out of shame, why the first domino is...

Most of us are waiting for someone with authority to tell us our work counts. PJ Towle waited too, until a college professor stood him up in front of a color theory class and made him defend why his work was even art. In this segment, PJ tells Darren about growing up the artist kid in a black and white house, the moment that rejection nearly killed the thing he loved, and how it turned into the fr...

Most creatives believe the lie that they have to build it all themselves. PJ Towle spent close to twenty years pouring his creativity into the church, lost his love of art to a college professor who told him what did and did not count, and walked away from a secure job with two kids at home and no plan beyond a single prayer. What he found on the other side was not a bigger hustle. It was a band....

Most experts assume the hardest part of building a platform is the skill. It is not. It is the moment you decide to charge for the work closest to your heart. Christine Hakkola built a multi six figure coaching company, sold it, and built again, and she still says charging for the first time was shocking, terrifying, and overwhelming. In this conversation she breaks down the idea of the responsibl...

Most skilled experts believe the same quiet lie: that one more credential, one more certification, one more course will finally make them feel ready to charge, to be visible, to put themselves out there. In this episode, Darren sits down with Christine Hakkola, who built a six-figure therapy practice and then a coaching company that served more than 6,000 practitioners, to take that lie apart. You...

This week was heavy, and Dustin Pead met it with one of the most grounded pictures of courage I have heard in a long time. We get into the difference between the fear that runs your life and the fear you actually respect, why you should plant something even when you do not know what will grow, and the image that stuck with me most, the buffalo that runs straight into the storm because the fastest...

Twenty years of creative ministry ended for Dustin Pead on a single Friday. By Monday, the reality of a wife, kids, and a mortgage was staring him down. In this segment, Dustin walks Darren through how he rebuilt his livelihood from nothing, using the one asset he already had and had never thought to count: his contacts list. It is a story about the difference between simple and easy, the network...

Dustin Pead spent twenty years in creative ministry before that chapter ended in a way he never chose. With a wife, kids, a mortgage, and no plan, he rebuilt his career one phone contact at a time. He shares the question that became his catalyst, why he runs toward fear instead of away from it, and the purpose statement that keeps him steady on the hard days. This is a story about starting over wi...

Sean Kirby grew up with a clock in his family firm's logo and never knew why. When he finally asked his dad, the answer reframed his entire approach to wealth: time is the only asset you can't buy more of. In this conversation, Darren Cooper and Sean unpack how one buried idea changed the questions he asks clients, why he's trying to hand a seven-day-a-week business owner his life back...

He spent his twenties chasing a million dollars by thirty. He got four kids instead. In this conversation, financial advisor Sean Kirby breaks down why time, not money, is the only asset you cannot buy more of. He walks through the exact goal sheet he uses with clients to stop lifestyle creep, build a real scoreboard, and decide on purpose where your life is actually going. If you have ever hit a...

Most high-achieving men are carrying something nobody around them knows about. The failed exit. The marriage on fire. The financial hit. The faith that has gone quiet. In this video of The Create Your Art Podcast, Matt opens up about the 2018 exit that wiped him out, the one line in the contract that his lawyer missed, and the part of the story he is most ashamed of, that he did not tell a single...

Most high-achieving men have an operating system for their business and no system at all for their family. Matt Balducci built two multi-million-dollar companies, lost a major exit in 2018 because of one line in a contract, and almost lost his marriage along the way. He's now launching the Lighthouse Brotherhood for high-achieving men who are crushing it at work and quietly falling apart at ho...

There's one quiet test that determines whether you're creating art in your work or just collecting paychecks: if you stopped tomorrow, would anyone be different because you were there? In this video from Episode 19 of the Create Your Art Podcast, Darren Cooper tells the story of Mrs. T, the eighth-grade biology teacher who accidentally taught him everything he knows about mastery. As well...

After 18 episodes of trying to be the "guru," Darren had a confession to make: he'd been faking it. In this turning-point episode, Darren and Dustin Pead break down why mimicking influencers will quietly kill your content, why clarity only comes through the work (not before it), and why every single person (even your eighth-grade biology teacher and your CPA) is an artist, whether th...

Most coaches publish a podcast episode and wonder why it's not growing their audience. The problem isn't the content, it's the foundation underneath it. In this segment, Darren Cooper breaks down what 1898 Creative calls the Poor Man's SEO: a simple, free, repeatable process that turns every episode into a compounding content asset on your website. From the three-part website formu...

Most coaches hit publish and wonder why nobody finds their content. The problem isn't the quality of what you're creating, it's the foundation underneath it. In this episode, Darren and Dustin break down what they call the "Poor Man's SEO", a simple, repeatable process that turns every podcast episode into a content asset that compounds on your website over time. From tra...

You're not running out of ideas. You're running out of places to put them. In this segment from Coaching with Content Episode 017, Dustin Pead walks coaches through the first two steps of building a content system that actually works: the brain dump that gets your ideas out of your head, and the simple three-tab spreadsheet that turns those ideas into a production schedule. Plus, how to us...