Most of the rejection you've gotten, you handed to yourself. Before anybody else had the chance.

Alice Lemée is a writer, creator coach, and the mind behind Creator Gravity. She got rejected from every writing fellowship she applied to, decided that if nobody was going to hire her she'd hire herself, and turned $1.93 on Medium into a six-figure ghostwriting business writing for big creators and seven-figure entrepreneurs. Then she burned out and walked away from her biggest client. This conversation is about what it takes to stop waiting for permission and start acting like the person you're trying to become.

Why rejecting yourself was never your job. What she saw working up close with the top 1% of creators (they move fast, and they don't tie their ego to whether something lands). Burnout that feels like a phone battery that won't hold a charge. "Tomorrow" as the lie she told herself every day for a year. Epistemic debt, and why you have to write an idea out to actually own it. Come ready to take some notes.

💡Takeaways

Rejecting yourself isn't your job. Your job is to apply, see what happens, and not get discouraged by the silence.

When you step into a new identity, some people will try to shove you back into the old one fast, whether they know you or not.

Burnout is when a weekend off charges you to 90% and you're back at 2% by Wednesday. At that point you don't need a recharge. You need a new battery.

"Tomorrow" is the most convincing lie you'll ever tell yourself.

The top creators aren't unicorns. They act fast, they aren't afraid to fail, and they don't take it personally when something doesn't land.

If AI writes your ideas for you, you own them legally but not cognitively. Writing them out yourself is how you find out what you actually believe.

Launch before you're ready. A date on the calendar will build the thing faster than another month of planning.

Attitude predicts who makes it more than intelligence or industry does. The internet mirrors back what you bring to it.

You'll never beat the person who's having the most fun doing it.

🔗 Links & Resources

Creator Gravity Newsletter: https://alicelemee.substack.com/
Alice's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alicelemee/
Alice's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alicelemee/

👋 Connect with Drew
Drew's IG: https://www.instagram.com/drewenglishh/
Drew's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drewenglish/
Drew's Website: http://www.drewenglish.com/

Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life. Jacob Krupnick calls bullshit on that, and he's got a career's worth of proof.

‍Jacob is a director and the founder of Wild Combination, the production company behind dance films you've probably scrolled past without knowing who made them. He's spent years making personal work nobody paid him to make, and this conversation gets into why he keeps doing it anyway, even when it doesn't pay the bills.

‍We get into what winning actually looks like when there's no finish line. The unfair playing field built into this industry, time, money, and who you know mattering as much as talent. Why making unpaid personal work is sometimes just a way of processing something you haven't fully named yet. And the moment Jacob handed me back my own advice, on mic, before I'd fully earned the right to say it again.

He also gets honest about how becoming a dad reordered everything he thought he knew about ambition, more than any day on set ever did. This one goes further than we planned. Come ready to take some notes.

‍📰 Join the No Set Path Newsletter HERE - https://thedrewenglish.substack.com/

‍Takeaways

‍"Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life" doesn't hold up. Loving your work doesn't stop the parts of it that suck from sucking.

Winning is building a game you're still glad to be playing years in.

There's no end game for anything. Anyone chasing a destination just hasn't realized that yet.

Work stopped being a place Jacob goes and became just another thing he's doing, one that changes shape as his life does.

The industry runs on an unfair playing field. Time, money, security, and who you know move the needle as much as talent does.

Making personal work nobody's paying for is often just processing an anxiety you haven't fully named yet.

Becoming a parent changes your relationship to ambition more than any career milestone will.

You can preach your own advice publicly for years and still get caught not living it.

How much unglamorous, boring work you're willing to do determines how much you actually get done.

‍Links & Resources

‍Jacob's Website: https://wildcombination.com

Jacob's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jacobkrupnick/

‍Connect with Drew

Drew's Substack: https://thedrewenglish.substack.com/

Drew's IG: https://www.instagram.com/drewenglishh/

Drew's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drewenglish/

Drew's Website: http://www.drewenglish.com/

Most people who are good at marketing are terrible at marketing themselves. Mat Zucker is no exception, and he'll be the first to say it.

Mat spent two decades as a creative director at some of the biggest agencies in the world — Ogilvy, Razorfish, R/GA. Then he launched his own podcast and spent the first few years not applying a single one of those lessons to himself. Today he's a marketing strategy consultant, host of Cidiot (eight seasons, 124 episodes), published author, and somehow an amateur music producer. We talk about what institutions teach you that going solo never will, how to actually build an audience without a budget, and what happens when someone who knows the playbook finally runs it on themselves.

Brand books for your own creative work. The 10-3-1 Rule for finding the right place to move. Why consistency beats every audience growth hack. The accountability trick that cracks stop-start syndrome. And the song Mat made after selling his family home following his mother's death — a project rooted in grief that's quietly becoming something much bigger. This one's for anyone building something on the side and wondering why it isn't moving faster. Come ready to take notes.

Takeaways

Most creative solopreneurs skip their own brand strategy. That's exactly why their work feels inconsistent and their choices feel arbitrary.

Big agencies teach you something solo work can't replicate: passive growth through proximity. You get better by watching how talented people defend ideas, handle pressure, and raise their craft. Going independent means manufacturing that pressure yourself.

Freelancing gives you control. It also takes away the friction that was making you grow. That trade is real and most people don't see it coming.

Consistency of release moves the number more than almost any other tactic. More than ads. More than PR. More than stunts. Showing up on schedule is the unsexy answer that actually works.

Going on other people's shows is the single highest-leverage thing a podcaster can do to grow. Most people know this and still wait too long to start.

Stop-start syndrome is a creative person's problem. The cure isn't more discipline. Build something with someone else and it becomes much harder to quietly abandon.

A newsletter is infrastructure, not content. Own the relationship with your audience before the algorithm changes. Mat wishes he built his in year one.

Your toolkit travels further than you think. Mat can't play a single instrument. He's produced two songs by doing what he knows: writing a brief and hiring the right people to bring it to life.

Done is better than perfect — not as a consolation prize, but as a philosophy. Release it. Move to the next one. The iteration is the point.

Links & Resources

Mat's Website & Podcast: Cidiot

Mat's Song: "Ashwood Road" — available on Spotify and Apple Music

Mat's 10-3-1 Worksheet: linked at cidiot.com

Connect with Drew

Drew's Substack: https://thedrewenglish.substack.com/
Drew's IG: https://www.instagram.com/drewenglishh/
Drew's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drewenglish/
Drew's Website: http://www.drewenglish.com/