We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Joe Martz a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Joe, thank you for being such a positive, uplifting person. We’ve noticed that so many of the successful folks we’ve had the good fortune of connecting with have high levels of optimism and so we’d love to hear about your optimism and where you think it comes from.
I’m not entirely sure where it came from, but I’ve always been that person that has a smile on his face. Being someone with a glass half full mentality is just a way of looking at things that I’ve just naturally done. And that’s not to say I’m never negative about things, I just tend to gravitate towards the positive. I’ve had my fair share of obstacles in the past and I’ll no doubt face more in the future, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve learned to change my perspective and to look at things from a more positive side. Deep down I believe it gives you a better foundation for going forward. Being negative tends to take more energy and the results are almost never there. I don’t know if there’s any cosmic power out there that helps with this, but lately I’ve found that the more positive energy you put out, the more that tends to come back to you. My work situation changed over the last year and it was pretty daunting at first and I admittedly was pretty down about it. The more time passed and the more I worked on things that I wanted to do, the more opportunities seemed to come to me. Again, cosmic power? Maybe. But I did find that the more I worked on putting a positive spin on things, the less stress I had.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
My whole life has been full of creative work. I excelled in art class growing up and I’ve tried to incorporate some sort of creative work ever since. In high school I didn’t love the traditional art classes (I despise painting) but made up for this by taking a few drafting classes which stems from my love of architecture. Like George Costanza, I always pretended to be an architect. I took graphic design in college which was my main source of income for most of my life. I also got into photography shortly after college and learned what a fun—and expensive—hobby that can be. Over the last year, my full-time job as a graphic designer went a bit sideways and I took on working for myself, while also taking on more architectural and built environment photography.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
You need a deep belief in yourself. This has actually been very hard for me to do, but I’ve gotten better at realizing that I have talent that I can share. I also like to have side projects to keep me busy. Even if it ends up going nowhere, I like to try things, just to see where they might go. I have some long term projects that I started that were often never planned just a thing that I randomly did one day. You also need patience and never, ever compare your current situation to where you want to be (or where someone else is). You need to play the long game!
Looking back over the past 12 months or so, what do you think has been your biggest area of improvement or growth?
I’ve learned to be more confident in myself. Deep down I think I’ve always known that I’ve been a very capable creative person, but I can also be a bit shy and find it a bit difficult to fit in in some situations. This is an obstacle that I’ve always struggled with and in the past has made me feel like I wasn’t worthy of the success that others had but I’ve grown to realize that just because you’re slightly different—in my case, not super outgoing and fairly introverted—doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy being successful at what you do. When I started doing my own thing I didn’t know really where it was headed, but the more I kept at it, the more things came to me and the more it helped my confidence grow.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.joemartz.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joemartz/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joemartz/
Image Credits
Joe Martz
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