Paul Mencel

speaker

2,431 appearances 11 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 10 Aug

Paul Mencel’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 11 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 4.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

The Handcrafted Podcast: The Business of making things · The Invisible Ceiling: Pricing, Systems, Creativity & Knowing What to Say No To · 13 Jul 2026 podcast

Oh, OK. voice-verified

Hey, Paul, I've heard you say a few times that we're not our audience and that really stuck with me. voice-verified

I'm an illustrator and lately it feels like I'm spending more time trying to make. voice-verified

content than i'm making art every piece i'm halfway through i catch myself thinking well this will this do well on instagram instead of do i actually like this how do you balance creating work you believe in while still making content that brings in customers have you ever felt like marketing started taking the fun out of making love the honesty of the show thanks rachel voice-verified

Um, so as many of you guys know, in my past life, I was a musician and we were signed to a major label. voice-verified

We were signed to RCA. voice-verified

And at that point, my passion for making music turned into quote unquote corporate art, right? voice-verified

You start thinking about, you start thinking less about what it is that you enjoy and more about what the audience starts to enjoy, right? voice-verified

And from my personal opinion, what ended up happening was the quality of our art and the quality of our music started going down. voice-verified

And inevitably, we ended up leaving RCA and we actually made what I think are our two best records after that. voice-verified

And they're the ones that have like performed sort of the best once we left the label, because we said, hey, the label really forced us to think about the audience versus like leaning into like ourselves. voice-verified

And this is a big thing. voice-verified

There's a podcast that Rick Rubin does called Tetragrammaton. voice-verified

He talks about this whole idea of like creating things for yourself. voice-verified

Now, that goes twofold, right? voice-verified

Because like if you're making something that nobody really wants, that's kind of tough. voice-verified

Like you're going to have to try to find an audience for it. voice-verified

So I think there's kind of a little bit of a happy medium or it's a matter of creativity. voice-verified

Right. voice-verified

I'm never thinking about, hey, this is going to look good on social media. voice-verified

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