Ever wonder why some creatives always seem to be in the right place at the right time? In this episode, Nick explores how to get luckier by increasing your surface area for opportunity, putting yourself in the room, saying yes before you feel ready, creating your own opportunities, and giving those lucky breaks more places to land.

At some point in your creative career, getting better at design stops being the whole answer. In this episode, Nick explores how to uncover your X-Factor, the skills, experience, personality, and strengths beyond design that make you uniquely valuable, memorable, and harder to overlook. If you’re a mid-career designer wondering what it takes to get unstuck and reach that next level, this one’s for you.

Jacob Paris has been a sewer, a screen printer, a graphic designer, a streamer, and now an Adobe contractor. Somehow the biggest turning point in his career wasn't a job, a client, or a big break. It was a DM.In this episode, Jacob traces his creative path from teaching himself to sew on TikTok during the 2020 lockdown, to tie-dyeing a viral Travis Scott shirt that hit nearly a million views, to running a screen-print shop in Philadelphia that printed for acts like 100 gecs, Online Ceramics, and Nine Inch Nails. He opens up about the boss who told him, on his way out the door, that "not everyone's cut out for the art world," and how that one sentence lit a fire that pushed him to freelance full-time and land clients like Microsoft, Adobe, and JBL.Then the story takes a turn nobody sees coming: a nurse named Joanna slides into his DMs, they bond over Magic: The Gathering, and nine months later Jacob is on a 13-hour flight to meet her for the first time. What started as an internet friendship turned into a relationship, a marriage, and a full relocation from Philadelphia to Calgary, Alberta, a move Jacob describes as "exclusively beneficial," despite starting completely from scratch in a new country with zero followers or credibility.We dig into what Jacob calls the "medium fish in a smaller, less crowded pond" effect: how leaving an oversaturated market like Philly for a tighter-knit, less gatekept creative scene actually accelerated his growth. And we get into the mindset that's carried him through all of it: comparison as the thief of joy, doing things first instead of best, and the belief that the fear of failure is scarier than failure itself.This one's a masterclass in staying durable, not by having it all figured out, but by staying curious, staying humble, and saying yes to the DM.Guest LinksWebsite: https://www.byjacobparis.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-paris-798547306/🚀 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dgdcpod/🚀 Explore more at: linktr.ee/dgdcpod🚀Our Shop: deeplygraphicgoods.printful.me#GraphicDesign #DesignPodcast #CreativeBusiness