🌹 The Deep Integration of Art, Business & Friendship — with Kening Zhu

Amelia Hruby [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients. Hello, and welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast about leaving social media without losing all your clients. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. And on this show, I share stories, strategies, and experiments for creating a thriving, sustainable business with radical generosity, energetic sovereignty, and no or minimal social media presence.

Amelia Hruby [00:00:48]:
If you're new here, welcome to the show. I want to encourage you to head back to the first four episodes where I share my journey leaving social media, including the process and the tools that helped me do it. Those episodes are paired with a wonderful free resource that I've created for you. It's called the Leaving Social Media Toolkit, and it includes a five step plan for leaving any social platform, my list of 100 ways to share your work off social media, and a creative marketing experiments database to help you plan for what's next when you step back or away from social. You can get the toolkit for free at offthegrid.fun/toolkit or just head to the link in the show notes to grab it today.

Amelia Hruby [00:01:30]:
And if you've been around here for a while, welcome back, dear listener. I am so glad you're here, so grateful you're listening. And honestly, I'm especially happy that you're tuned in today because this is a really special episode. I'm sure I say that every episode. They're all special to me. But today's episode is especially special because I am joined by one of my longest, oldest friends. So I have known Kening Zhu for over 15 years. We met in high school, and we have grown, evolved and transformed together from our 17-year-old, big feelings, poetry writing selves to our now 30-something-year-old business artist creators that we are today. So I'm really thrilled to have Kening here with me, and let me introduce you to her.

Amelia Hruby [00:02:33]:
Kening Zhu is an artist who guides creatives and entrepreneurs to build worlds on the Internet. She is Chinese by birth, raised in the American South, and moved to New York City when she was 18. Nine years later, she packed a suitcase and slow traveled the world, visiting nine countries before she landed in Istanbul, where she now lives with her beautiful giant white dog, Luna. Kening is a writer, a visual artist, a poet, an animator, a teacher, and a web designer. She has a deeply scorpionic spirit with a fiery Aries mind, which to me means that she's both an underwater traveler and a high flying phoenix.

Amelia Hruby [00:03:13]:
As a friend, I can say that Kening is incredibly caring, generous, and loyal. I also appreciate that she is very reflective. She's always so clear about how she feels in any given moment and open to those feelings shifting quickly and often. Kening is one of my friends that I think of as an artist's artist, by which I mean her work is multifaceted, multimedia, and all about process. I love seeing her shape shift while remaining uncompromisingly true to her vision, and I'm grateful for how transparently she invites us into every step of that journey. My friendship with Kening is very sacred and special to me, and I was telling her that I was feeling hesitant to bring it to this public platform, but I also can't keep this wonderful human being from all of you wonderful human beings listening. So hi, Kening. Welcome to Off the Grid.

Kening Zhu [00:04:13]:
Hi, Amelia. Thank you so much for that amazing introduction. It was so moving.

Amelia Hruby [00:04:19]:
What an honor to have a friend join me where I'm not just copy pasting a bio of someone I have yet to meet, but I get to introduce someone who I've known for a really long time.

Kening Zhu [00:04:28]:
I'm also so grateful to be here and to watch you grow after all of these years through all of this.

Amelia Hruby [00:04:35]:
I want to take us right into your story. As your friend, it has been an honor to witness you on your artist entrepreneur path over the past decade or so. I've seen you transition from 9-to-5 job to part time work in art making, to leaving New York City in travel writing, to the wonderful web design courses and projects you create now. But I'm wondering, can you invite the listeners in and tell us a bit about the stages of that journey and your career and artist evolution over the past 10 years?

Kening Zhu [00:05:13]:
Thinking about this question can be pretty overwhelming because it was such an intense saga. I think the first jump, I would say, is from the traditional path of what a good Asian daughter should do. And declaring my major in creative writing in college was a big jump to that point. I decided that I wanted to just get a small day job and try to be a writer, whatever that meant. But I think as I was exploring how to be a writer, how to be an artist, how to pursue my other interests in design, and then realizing that, actually, I don't like working for other people. Actually, I'm really not suited to that. My soul feels like it's in anguish while spending hours working on other people's labors of love, which is great for them, but not my labor of love. And I quickly jumped from figuring out how to be a writer with a day job to how to be a business person, how to have a business, how to work for myself.

Kening Zhu [00:06:21]:
And as I was figuring that out, I read a lot of entrepreneurial books from mostly white tech males about how to run a business. And I wish I discovered you back in the day because I feel like there were so many shoulds and so many of the traditional path of not even just being a writer or being creative in the world, but also just having a business and being an entrepreneur and promoting yourself on social media or on the Internet. And then from there, I jumped to, well, how do I figure out how how to grow my career as a writer, how to be a designer, how to gain creative skills, how to share my work on the internet, how to gain a following, how to sell my work, how to market myself, how to be on social media, which you and I have talked about, but was such torture.

Kening Zhu [00:07:13]:
And I think I talk about torture because I have such extreme feelings about everything, everything that I think I have to do, everything that I'm doing. And, basically, one jump to another jump to another jump left me with nowhere to jump to. And then at that point, it was like jumping into the void of my own process. It was like trying on all these different ways of being, different costumes, different paths, and then ultimately deciding I would just jump into nothing, which I mean, it felt like nothing, but it's jumping into myself.

Kening Zhu [00:07:51]:
And from there, which lasted several years of being a hermit, being in the process, I started finding a way of existing on the Internet and having a business and having a public art practice that felt nourishing to me. And in retrospect, I can say I learned how to build a world or I learned how to be a public artist. But in the moment, it was just, what can I do that feels like something I want to do, not something I think I should do?

Amelia Hruby [00:08:30]:
I love how you framed this as a series of jumps. I think that's something I've tried to articulate in different ways throughout the show, these moments when we get free of something. It is a jump. And we're not necessarily fully free of it, but we're trying to step away from it, do something differently. As you were talking, I also just kept seeing this image of shedding skins. Along the way, you just had to take off all of these stories, all of these identities until you get to the core of yourself and your practice. And it's an incredibly vulnerable, raw place to be, that moment when you've jumped into the nothing that is yourself.

Amelia Hruby [00:09:14]:
Having followed your journey, having been able to kind of see this happen, I can cosign, but it was definitely tumultuous, and it was not this linear path to the success that you found today. There were so many conversations we had about not knowing what you were doing or wanting to give up or just being really caught in a lot of these challenging feelings. And it's been really beautiful to watch you kind of persevere and continue to recenter in yourself. So if we can fast forward a bit, could you tell folks a little bit about what you're doing now?

Kening Zhu [00:09:51]:
I think what I'm doing now feels hard to describe in just a few words, but I would divide into three identities or ways of being. The first one being an artist, and I think my vision and mission as an artist is to express the full deluge of my creativity in all its forms, writing or visual or animation movement and new experiments. The second is that of being a guide, and to be a guide is to have a vision and to pursue that vision. And my vision is a different way of being on the Internet, that the Internet can be a digital space that really holds the holistic self, the holistic creative self. And that giving us creative, emotional, relational, spiritual, as well as material nourishment and guiding other creatives and other artists to basically work through the process of creating art and sharing it in public in a way that feels good to the soul. And the third is as an entrepreneur, I build website worlds and brand identities for private clients, and I also teach courses and work with people, guiding them, advising them one- on-one in their own process.

Amelia Hruby [00:11:19]:
Something I really love about your work right now is that you have these really clear containers, or as you put it, different ways of being, different modes of practice, we could even say, I think. And what it allows you to do is tap into all of your greatest skills and have space to do the artist things that don't make sense for business or the visionary guide things that you can't turn into an art piece or a product to sell. Through these containers, you're able to explore these different ways of being.

Amelia Hruby [00:12:01]:
And, also, they are deeply integrated. It's not that they're totally separate selves, and so you feel fragmented or alienated from different parts of your practice. And I think that that's something that a lot of artists struggle with, myself included, times when I couldn't figure out, even now, I've quit writing. I used to identify primarily as a writer, but I can't figure out how it fits into my new ways of being. And I'm curious, have you felt that sort of fragmentation in the past? How did you land on these containers with such clarity and integration?

Kening Zhu [00:12:42]:
I feel like I spent most of the last decade feeling fragmented and feeling like it was such a dichotomy and so much tension between making art and making money. I think the first voice in my head from teenage and childhood years is, oh, I wanna make art. "How are you gonna make money?" is the response. And so that fragmentation is built in into the culture. And the process of integration was a really messy journey. I think it starts with centering in what art means and what service means to you. And in what ways can art serve still while being a portal for personal expression? How can that expression distill the truth to such a personal level that it becomes universal, that other people can relate, can feel it, and can feel a little less alone in the world.

Kening Zhu [00:13:44]:
And I think this integration between being an artist and being an entrepreneur, it started with a lot of unpacking around my relationship to money and what money means. And I think there's this false dichotomy that the artist needs to sacrifice themselves for art and give up money and to think that they're going to be a martyr to pursue the truth, which is art, which is life and spirituality, not the material goods of existing in the world. And I had a big revelation that the way I was relating money was rejecting it because I believed it made me less of an artist if I were to pursue money. And I would choose art over money any day. In fact, I did choose art over money for many years.

Kening Zhu [00:14:32]:
And at the same time, I noticed that there were people in my Internet community that were emailing me asking for guidance, telling me that something I shared about process, about morning rituals, about building, about creation really changed the way they experience their days. And those emails and those messages meant so much to me. And I realized that perhaps I'm being invited into the world as a guide, and yet I couldn't figure out how to make money because part of me didn't want to make money. And so the integration of being an artist means just being in full expression.

Kening Zhu [00:15:19]:
It's like rain because I'm a water sign. How much can I rain? Can it be a deluge? Can it be a tsunami? Can it be a storm? How can I unblock all of the water blockages, whatever they are, such that I'm in full expression, full water, full storm? Being at that place and holding space to be able to guide others in their own journeys of discovery. How do I show up as a teacher to give to others and to give to myself and feel nourished? And how can I think about that relationship of reciprocity? Because I think at the end of the day, that is what business and entrepreneurship is. How can I express, give, share, serve with my fullest self and be willing to receive in a way that is energetically and materially sustaining to my ecosystem and feeding back into the cycle as a whole?

Amelia Hruby [00:16:21]:
That was so beautiful. And you just launched a new podcast. And on the first episode, you're talking about this journey as a journey of dancing fluidly between opposites, art versus money, or perhaps even integrating them, understanding this cyclical orientation. And I wanted to read your list and kind of take us into that conversation a little deeper. So in that first episode, this is the list of oppositions that you share: Structure versus flow, art versus money, solitude versus community, feminine versus masculine, linear versus cyclical, work versus rest, stillness versus movement, creating versus consuming, commitment versus freedom, being versus doing. You've already shared some of the ways that you're thinking about art versus money. But I'm curious with these other tensions, how have they arisen in your practice and how are you dancing between one, more or all of them?

Kening Zhu [00:17:38]:
Anytime I wanna do something really extreme and just lean on one end of the spectrum, even if I want to do that, I know that the pendulum is going to swing. And to take a really extreme point of view, for example, there were a couple years where I consumed very, very little. I just went on my own website and nothing else. I lived under a rock. Or years in which I just practiced a lot of meditation and I didn't move. I didn't want to move. Or years in which I was I was rejecting the masculine and I just wanted to be in my feminine. Or I rejected community and I just wanted to be alone and everyone to leave me alone.

Kening Zhu [00:18:19]:
I think there is possibility to be both in the extreme and to move and integrate between them. And the way to do that is through extreme presence. It's asking of the moment, what does this moment need of me? It's not partitioning yourself, not creating a wall inside yourself, and allowing the linear and cyclical, the feminine and masculine, allowing these dichotomies to intertwine and sensing into which end of the spectrum will help me most, will serve me most in this moment.

Kening Zhu [00:18:58]:
And so these days, sometimes I might binge watch some TV series just to move my mind off of obsessing about work and being in creation mode, or I might take a long walk just to not be in this stillness at my computer of working. And finding that nonduality, finding that nondichotomy, actually, is like opening the kaleidoscope of possibilities. It's opening all the parts of your brain, your mind, your skills, yourself, your psyche that you can access. It's being one thing to its extreme and moving to another thing at any moment, anytime the moment calls for it.

Amelia Hruby [00:19:45]:
I love this emphasis on presence, and it's just reminding me of a core practice, I think, for both of us, although I don't know if we've really articulated it this way, but just of constantly, often asking ourselves, what do I want right now? What do I need right now in this moment? And being very open to the answer being something totally different than it was a day ago, an hour ago, a moment ago. And trying to give ourself those things. Because one task is learning to ask, another task is learning to hear the answer, and then another step is actually trying to provide those things for yourself and not shutting yourself down, not limiting yourself in the process. And it's really powerful when you can step into that.

Kening Zhu [00:20:35]:
Yeah. And you've taught me a lot about that asking over the years. I feel like anytime I came to you with a freak out or a quandary or paralysis, you always had a very soothing, "Well, maybe you need this. Maybe you need that." And I'm like, "No. That's not what I need." And I'm like, "Okay. She was right. Maybe I'll do this. Maybe I'll do that." And yet also trusting that I know what I need. And I think that's something that I hear you say often for each of us to sense and be present with what they need individually.

Amelia Hruby [00:21:12]:
Yeah. And I think that our friendship is a testament to the ways that we are each deeply responsible for being in touch with our needs. And, also, we all need these sacred mirrors of people that can reflect back to us over time. So a funny moment in our friendship over the past few years was Capricorn season would start December, January. Every year, you would be like, "Amelia, I'm gonna work on my business now. I've figured it out. I've got it." It happened like three or four years in a row. And finally, I was just able to reflect back, "Have you maybe noticed that this season, every year, you're really into business?" And that's great. We can work with that because every summer, you would come to me and say, like, "I don't even know what I'm doing, and I don't wanna do a business anymore, and I hate this."

Amelia Hruby [00:22:03]:
So what I can do as your sacred mirror, as a friend is just help you track the cycles, help us see these patterns. But, of course, I can't tell you what you need in any given moment. I can perhaps offer things that I've experienced or that I've now, in this capacity, seen support other people. But once you come to me and we share in that process of mirroring and reflection, you then take that back into your own experience, and you go through, like, "Is this for me or not for me?" And sometimes, you're like, "Yeah. Amelia's advice was great." And other times, I assume you'd be like, "Absolutely not. That was not for me at all." And then you go do your thing, and it's amazing.

Amelia Hruby [00:22:47]:
And that to me is part of what makes our friendship so important to me is that we're really able to show up with our needs and desires intact, share those with each other, reflect back. And then also, it's not about me telling you what to do or you telling me what to do. It's just about seeing what the other person does and celebrating how that goes. And I'm just really grateful, and I know that many, many people don't feel like they have that in their personal life or in their business. And I don't know where I would be without it. Without friends like you, it wouldn't work.

Kening Zhu [00:23:24]:
I feel the same. Friends are like time capsules, and friends that you can talk to about personal life and business is such a rare gem, and I treasure them so much.

Amelia Hruby [00:23:37]:
Something I love about our shared journeys is how differently we find success in our businesses. And this maps onto our human design types. So I'm a generator, and I find so much success in responding to other people, going out into the world, putting myself up for opportunities. It's a really active process for me. And in contrast, you are a projector, and so much of your success has come from creating your art, sharing it in your worlds on the Internet, and really waiting for the invitations for work to arrive. So could you share a little more about how this receptive process works for you? And I know that learning about your human design unlocked a lot for you in business, so I'm just really open to any reflections you'd like to share around that.

Kening Zhu [00:24:34]:
Actually, learning about my human design was the thing that unlocked or broke the compartmentalization between artist and entrepreneur and art and money for me. Because learning about being a projector and at first, it feels kind of disempowering. It's like, "Oh, I have to what? I have to wait? What what am I supposed to do when I wait?" And I think that maps on to how the sort of more receptive passive, the yin energy, is sort of misunderstood and not really appreciated in our sort of active culture of going after the things and the dreams that we want.

Kening Zhu [00:25:12]:
And as a projector, I learned how important it was to pay attention to my energy and my sense of alignment. And I no longer did things that felt out of alignment. And this sounds so simple, but it is so hard to do. And I realized how many times and how many situations I was bending myself, either backwards or just a little bit, a little bend, to fit into the model of what I thought I should be doing. And learning about being a projector, which was very similar to learning about astrology for me, gave me permission to be uncompromisingly myself, which meant no more cold emails. I never really sent cold emails in the beginning, but I always felt the pressure to send cold emails. I always felt the pressure to outreach.

Kening Zhu [00:26:09]:
In fact, Amelia, I think, like, many, many, many years ago when I was just starting my business, I had asked you what I should do. And I was like, "I have the urge to write 30 blog posts, one a day." And you responded saying, "No. I think it's better if you email 30 people in your network," which makes total sense and I think works. But I think tuning into my projector-ness is allowing myself permission to let go of anything that didn't feel nourishing and to give myself permission to have emptiness, to wait, and to trust that the opportunities, the right opportunities, will come.

Kening Zhu [00:26:52]:
And I think when you work for yourself and you're not doing anything to go after new jobs, you feel this sort of anxiety, like, oh, what if the next job doesn't come? What if I'm just in the desert of nothingness? And really leaning into my human design and my projector-ness, I learned how powerful energy is. And I think being a projector and being a Scorpio gave me a sort of framework to just be in my cave and create things and let people wander into my cave and stay if they want. And I can be there to support them and create with them.

Kening Zhu [00:27:39]:
It's like hunter gatherers. I don't need to go out and hunt for work. I don't need to go out and gather work. In fact, I just be in my own work. Be in my more, let's say, magical shaman work, we could say, in my cave, and trust that the work that is aligned will walk into the cave and knock on my door and ask for me.

Amelia Hruby [00:28:10]:
I think witnessing your journey has definitely taught me a lot about the many paths towards success and highlighted for me the way that I think our society rewards a more generator type of activity and being out there and being visible and putting it out there. I think that's really rewarded, promoted, supported, and taught, even by myself. Something else I've witnessed through your journey is that the task of the projector is to understand that it's going to take time and to endure through that time of waiting. It's the patience. It's the ability to keep going even when it seems like no invitation is arriving because, as you said, only in the past year that your decade worth of work being in your practice, sharing it on your website is really coming into fruition in a way that's more materially supporting you.

Amelia Hruby [00:29:20]:
And between then and now, you found so many other ways to support yourself financially and materially, but you had to kind of endure through that time and through consistently and constantly aligning to your practice and to your center and to your work to get to this point. And I think that on that journey, as you've shared, as I see for other people, there's so many urges to step into generator-ness, go be active and do something. But the projector's role is just to keep receiving, keep waiting, and keep sharing. If there's no sharing, there's no openness to reciprocity. You can't receive if no one else is seeing your work and if they can't find it anywhere.

Amelia Hruby [00:30:09]:
So it's like the projector's role, whether or not you know your human design for listeners, if you're realizing this more active, out there approach doesn't work for you, you have to find the ways to stay in your practice, keep sharing, and keep going as this sort of energetic momentum and reach builds behind the scenes. And this is where kind of that story that you shared about us comes through because I also think if you needed money in that exact moment, years ago, probably sending the emails might have brought in some money, but it also takes you off your path. And so it's this balance of how to make it all work together. It's hard.

Kening Zhu [00:30:53]:
I will definitely say I did not take the short path. I took the long winding road through the mountains, and I got, like, dirt all over my face, scratched everywhere. I think I'm envious of generators such as yourself who can go out and get the work. And I think the slowness and the sort of holding out in feast or famine kind of mode in the cave is not an easy one. And it's something that you have to contain yourself, contain all the urge and the anxiety. I had years in which I would wake up with such intense anxiety of what was I gonna do about money and art, and what does this all mean, and what is the purpose of this? And embracing the cycle and also understanding that going through the journey is something that I needed to get to this point And to trust in the timing of material fruition for each individual and for what works for me. It was such a process.

Amelia Hruby [00:32:07]:
And once you tap in, it's feeling good. But I am hearing you. It did not feel good for a really long time. So this is part of what I love about Human Design is it unlocks that anguish for us a little bit. And as you shared, it becomes this way of allowing ourselves to be ourselves. And being yourself is both a deeply fulfilling and challenging path.

Kening Zhu [00:32:38]:
One projector principle that I really applied is to being an artist and having a business is to only share in ways that felt energetically aligned and to look at where I had conditioning and to work on that deconditioning or that energy shadow work all the time. And part of sinking into my projector-ness was a thing that gave me permission to completely forget about social media. It's not even a question anymore because that way of sharing didn't feel nourishing to me. And for many years, I made a lot of work. I posted on my website, or maybe I didn't. And then that was it. I didn't send newsletters. I didn't make offers. There was no kind of opening of reciprocal flow.

Kening Zhu [00:33:27]:
And recently, I wrote down in a post about how do I share my work as an artist who wants to hermit as an introvert, as a projector. And for me, it's just three things. It's creating the work, sharing it on my website, and sending a letter. And that's it. And I think realizing my projector-ness gave me permission to distill down to its minimalist essence to not have to send outreach emails, not submit to places, not apply for things unless I want to. Unless I'm feeling called to. I'm not saying it's out of the question. But to be centered in the act of waiting and to feel the act of waiting could also be a place of empowerment. Because while I'm waiting, I can do my own magic and create my own art and work in the energetics of things.

Amelia Hruby [00:34:29]:
When I'm thinking really practically here as well, I've now I've got my business strategist hat on, but part of how this has worked for you is it all dovetails together. That money work that you've been doing has allowed you to pitch bigger contracts to the people who arrive and that you're working with so that you can work on a handful, a few, a dozen, whatever it may be, projects a year and feel materially supported and financially resourced. And all of that plays into the projector-ness of you're not running a business where you need to get thousands of people's attention a month, a week, a year, whatever, so that you can really stay in your hermit mode, share in your worlds, wait for people to arrive.

Amelia Hruby [00:35:16]:
And that's not to say that a hundred or thousands of people won't arrive, but you're not dependent on that with the business model that you're working with. And I've been able to see that your model has shifted a lot in your journey, and it's just all been about alignment, getting to this point where the marketing or sharing practices that you have actually match the size of community that you need to be magnetizing the number of clients you need per year toward you. And all of that is now in alignment, which is part of what is making it feel so supportive and and work so well for you.

Kening Zhu [00:35:54]:
Absolutely. And I think the way you framed it and stitched it together was so on point. It's through that money work and self worth work, I'm able to align with the question of what is the amount that I that I would need to charge on this project, that I would need to ask for and be willing to receive in order to give myself fully to this project and to feel nourished by it, such that I can share and give in other ways that aren't necessarily client work, and all of it connects. And I think in the past, client work feeling less than nourishing for me was me not honoring my energy.

Kening Zhu [00:36:40]:
And I think this goes back to being a projector because realizing that I don't have a stable source of energy, which sounds kind of bad, but, actually, it's a gift also. Because when you have such limited energy, you have to be extremely deliberate with how you use it. And when you're extremely deliberate with how you use it, you would say no to the majority of things so that you can say yes to the opportunities and projects that really feel aligned. And your sensitivity to what is aligned becomes sharper because you're at once limited in energetic resources and replenishable if you choose the right projects to work on and to be replenished by.

Amelia Hruby [00:37:24]:
Yeah. I often think that for generators, it's all about the sacral yes or the sacred yes, and for projectors, it's all about the sacred no. I think that's one way to frame the difference. Generators have to be so in touch with what is a hell yes for them and say no to everything else, but they're focused on the yes. But I think projectors have to be really clear about the no's so that they have space for the yeses. Because as a generator, if a yes arrives, I can find the energy for it. Even if I'm already overbooked, even if I'm already tired. The energy will arrive if it's really a hell yes. But for projectors, it won't. And so there is the sense of I love how you put that, of being really willing to say no.

Amelia Hruby [00:38:12]:
And I've watched you become more and more boundaried and clear in your projects, in who you work with, in realizing that there are people out there who want spend tens of thousands of dollars to build a website, and that's beautiful, and you can work with them, and you don't have to just say yes to the people who only have $500 to invest who arrive. And that's not to critique those people. It's great if you have $500 to build a website, there are people out there who wanna support you with that. But that doesn't have to be, Kening, in your practice.

Amelia Hruby [00:38:49]:
Hi, friends. Amelia here taking a quick break from this soul nourishing conversation with Kening because I want to invite you to join me in the Interweb. The Interweb is our annual membership for creatives, artists, small business owners, freelancers, influencers, entrepreneurs, and creators who want support sharing their work and making money without social media. When you join, you get access to on demand courses taught by biz friends across the Internet and quarterly live events with me. I was thinking about the Interweb during this conversation with Kening because there are quite a few things in there that can help you navigate the sorts of tumultuous times that many of us have when we try to start a business.

Amelia Hruby [00:39:42]:
For instance, there is a course from Jessica Lackey on deeper business design and how to choose the right business model for you. There's also a visualization for uncovering and discovering your relationship with social media and helping you release any negative aspects of that that you might be struggling with, including potentially stepping away from the platform altogether. And then, of course, there's my signature mini course about business success without social media, where I guide you through my process for mapping your business ecosystem, uncovering your core offers, channels, and community so that you have the foundational aspects of a business, such that you can know what you're offering and decide how you're going to share it in the ways that will bring and invite the types of people that you want to find your business in, whether you're going with my approach of going out and getting them or taking more of Kening's projector method of making the most beautiful digital space that you can and magnetizing them to you. So all of that is inside the Interweb and if you enjoy this podcast, if you enjoy this episode or any other episode, I hope that you will join us.

Amelia Hruby [00:41:04]:
When I'm recording this in spring of 2024, the cost of an annual membership is currently only a $129, so it's very affordable. I made it that way so that more and more of us could create our own businesses, could make them more sustainable, and feel supported in that process. So you can learn more about the Interweb at offthegrid. fun/interweb or the link in the show notes. I hope to see you at one of our live events in the future. And for now, let's get back into this conversation with Kening.

Amelia Hruby [00:41:40]:
Let's talk about the Internet. We both love creating and sharing on the web, but I will say that your website is a masterpiece and a treasure trove of a decade or so's worth of writing, drawing, animating, creating, process documentation, all of the things. And lately, you have been writing a lot about online world building and the Internet as a creative practice. And I'm so curious about that last piece. So could you say a bit more about how the Internet is your creative practice?

Kening Zhu [00:42:20]:
I think when we think of the Internet, it feels like a place you go to consume or maybe be consumed by. Because when you arrive on pages, it's oftentimes you're bombarded with ads and conversion funnels, and it doesn't feel like a place that I necessarily wanna spend a Sunday afternoon lounging leisurely. And part of my philosophy around building a world and the Internet as a creative practice is to think of the Internet as a space, as a digital environment, not unlike a house that we live in or the community that we are situated in or the country or the park, not unlike your favorite national park. It's an environment, or the earth itself, shall we say. And it's an environment that requires active nurturing. It's an environment that requires us to imagine how do we want to spend our time.

Kening Zhu [00:43:24]:
And I think I want the people who visit me in my physical house to feel nourished, to feel inspired, to feel cared for, to feel intimately connected with what it is that I'm sharing. And in that creating of an environment, the act of creating space, of creating digital space, a digital ecology is the act of creativity, is the act of creation itself. The metaphor that has really resonated with me, that came to me, is to think of a website as not only a garden, but also a mirror of my mind, of my psyche that I'm choosing to make public.

Kening Zhu [00:44:19]:
And this is when I started dreaming that I was inside a website and experiencing my mind as a website and then sort of being curious about code and being curious about how it is that we build and what are the containers, what are the boundaries, and realizing that despite, website builders or templates or these five step landing pages, there are actually no boundaries that we just choose how it is that we want to share and give and how it is we want to receive other people into this experience.

Kening Zhu [00:45:01]:
And so centering into the Internet as a creative practice, I think, for me, was the solution to how do I be an artist and share my work uninhibitedly in a way that feels good and nourishing as if I'm creating a more beautiful world, And in this case, digital. But also because we spend so much time on the digital world, that is our psychic world, that is our real world as well.

Amelia Hruby [00:45:37]:
I love this so much, and I want listeners to go to your website and be in it with you because it's so present there, your practice. And I do feel like I'm stepping into a room or a world with you when I'm on your website, which is like a gift to as your friend who lives thousands of miles away from you. I was so struck by where you started, is the Internet a place we wanna spend a leisurely Sunday afternoon? Because one of my favorite things to do on like a good weekend afternoon is to surf the web like it's 1996 or something. But what I mean by that is I go through a series of blogs that I have loved for over a decade, places like A Cup of Joe or swissmiss that are really personally sharing, curating, creating things that matter to them. They're linking me out to other places. I spend time on sites like Arena, which are also about personal creation and curation because I want to be amidst those acts of creation, and I wanna connect with them.

Amelia Hruby [00:46:47]:
And I think that what the web does is build this connective tissue between our creative practices. And it's so beautiful to witness, and I love nothing more than when I stumble into a website that is a world and that feels like it's really been crafted by a visionary because I think we have to be visionary to create a world. And when I'm able to step into that world and feel into how I can plug in or where are the moments that I feel deep resonance and the moments that I don't and how can I take that back to my own creative practice? That's my favorite way to spend a Sunday.

Amelia Hruby [00:47:30]:
But it does mean that I'm avoiding a lot of the things you're talking about. I'm not on news sites where I'm getting constant ads. I'm not on business sites where I'm being pushed through funnels. It's about play. It's not the sites that are fully constructed to get me to take a specific action, but sites that are full of invitations for exploration and connection, meaningful connection with an actual person or people I can identify. That's where I like to spend time on the Internet. And I think this also maps on to a difference between art and content, between sharing and marketing, these sorts of dichotomies we've been talking about the whole time. We see that spectrum online as well.

Kening Zhu [00:48:13]:
And I think it's beautiful that you have a Sunday afternoon web surfing practice. I think I haven't found enough of the websites that keep calling me back again and again, and I used to do a lot of consuming back in my early twenties of different blogs. And then one day, I just pulled the plug on everything and went under my rock. And I think now I'm slowly venturing out and looking for the worlds that feel like places I want to return to and linger in, that feel really intimate, like I'm not just reading someone's diary, but also exploring their mind. And I think Arena is a wonderful example of that that I'm definitely very curious about.

Amelia Hruby [00:48:57]:
I know it's your personal journey to have pulled the plug on a lot of that Internet consumption, but I also think that maps onto sort of the evolution of the internet in many ways. As blogs became all about monetization and then shifted to social media platforms, we really lost a lot of the sense of these digital worlds or different worlds on the Internet. Even some of the blogs that I used to love don't publish anymore or have stepped back through all this pressure to stop world building and start brand building, I think we just like lost a lot of the creative practice.

Amelia Hruby [00:49:35]:
And that maps onto the ways that in our physical world, our finances have been squeezed. There's so much more pressure for things to make money if we're gonna spend time on them through the creator economy, the attention economy, all of these things. And I just think there has been a period over the past, you know, 10, 15, even 20 years where we watched all this play out, and people are just at a moment of deep dissatisfaction with that. And I think that's why so much of your work and other digital worlds that I'm stepping into are reemerging because we've realized this whole detour to this other direction, and people are like, "Wow. That was really disconnected and dissatisfying."

Kening Zhu [00:50:17]:
I think visions are born from discontent, and discontentment and dissatisfaction is the repulsive force that pushes us into new possibilities. And I think for me, I created my own world as I was in a period of overconsumption, and I created my own world as a way of retreating into my self and being in my own practice and process. In the culture of everyone wanting to be viral or everyone wanting to be an influencer or to monetize, a word that I really dislike because I think it takes the wrong approach towards money as well as passion, like how to monetize our passions.

Kening Zhu [00:50:59]:
I think that kind of oversaturation, of everything being commodified, is bound to push the pendulum into the other direction and to leave people with a craving, a soul craving to do things that may or may not have a direct relationship to money, to feel like I'm allowed to just exist without needing to monetize whatever it is that I create, that I don't have to build an audience. I can build a world for myself first and foremost because it nourishes me and because the personal, at its deepest level, connects to the universal experience. What nourishes me, I can trust will nourish other people who resonate with me and who don't.

Amelia Hruby [00:51:55]:
I feel like this part of our conversation is really speaking back to another conversation I had on the podcast with Jay Acunzo about resonance. And in that conversation, I shared that when we're deep in our work, like in our creative practice, I personally don't think the attention economy is that relevent. When I step into someone else's world, they have my full attention. Attention is not a scarce commodity there. Similarly, when I really love something, when it resonates deeply, I have an abundance of attention for it and care and I want more. And all of that time that I didn't have moments ago suddenly emerges because I have been pulled into their world. And I think that's what I really want to step into and through with world building, with visioning, with creation more broadly.

Kening Zhu [00:52:57]:
And I think suddenly all that time emerges out of nowhere because you feel this desire, this hunger, this curiosity to consume something or absorb something through your pores that really feels exciting to discover. And I think a lot of people try or want to create a formula or recipe for this, like how to backwards engineer that thing that they can't get their hands off of. And I'm always a little bit hesitant about any kind of recipe that tries to backwards engineer the experience.

Kening Zhu [00:53:37]:
And I think that when you yourself are creating the thing from the deepest well of your being, that maybe feels scary to share or maybe it it feels necessary, essential, to share. That feels so resonant that you can't not birth it forth into the world. I think chances are there is someone else that is vibrating on the same string as you are. And for them, they'll recognize a part of themselves in what you create. And so I would say instead of focusing on any sort of backwards engineering recipe is just to be so deep in your process and to speak from a place of such truth that your truth will be like a magnet to other people who are tuning into that same frequency of truth.

Amelia Hruby [00:54:36]:
And sometimes there are 10 people on that frequency, and sometimes there are 10,000 people on that frequency, and that's not within our control. And I think that this is where the viral pathways to a success, and those narratives really do us wrong because they make it seem like we can just find that frequency if we do enough. What I think of as memeification. That's really what I see happening everywhere. It's like people see one person's success and they're like, okay, if I just make a variation of that theme, if I meme it, then I can get the same success. And sometimes it works. People love memes because they do this really dopamine surging familiarity thing that we love. But after a while, the memes die for us. They're not interesting. It's just copies of a copy of a copy, and it doesn't work.

Amelia Hruby [00:55:35]:
And I can say that this is something I confront even with Off the Grid in the sense of sometimes I can feel that people come to me because they want me to give them the formula for how to have a podcast that's successful like this. And while I have a lot of podcast experience and I can really help you create a show, launch it, get it out there, I can't produce the sort of magical alchemy of Off the Grid finding the right audience at the right time, and me having spent the decade building community in these ways, learning these things, loving these things, and the passion I have for doing this on nights and weekends.

Amelia Hruby [00:56:16]:
I spend many Saturdays editing these episodes, making them sound even better. There's no formula for that. It's all part of the process, the practice that I have, and I can't package and sell it. And we see so much of that. But also because there's no clear way to be, like, "Go within you and find the truth. Peace out." That's not a satisfying answer to a lot of people, but it is the answer.

Kening Zhu [00:56:42]:
It's not satisfying. And I know that listening to myself like three years ago, I'd be like, "What am I supposed to? Just tell me what to do. Give me the prescription. I just need a 10 step because I'm suffering, and I'm lost." And what I've learned is that if I feel so much pressure for one thing, one project, one course, or one podcast, or one creation, one offering to give me success in a bottle, that is the recipe for deep disappointment because it's banking all of your hopes and dreams on one thing and expecting that thing to give you that stability, that recognition, that validation. And I've been through this process many times. I've experienced this many times.

Kening Zhu [00:57:42]:
And I know that when I'm in that energy of needing something to prove something to myself, that's when nothing lands. That's when I get stuck. That's when I can't even move forwards. I can't even launch this thing because I put too much pressure on myself for this thing to give me some holy grail of security or validation. And instead, what I would have told myself then, and I do tell myself now, is just to continue creating what feels true. And it feels so unsatisfying, but I think to continue creating what feels true if you're aligned with service, if you're aligned with radical generosity, with giving, with your own inner composition of how you want to be and share and create and give to the world, that truth will resonate, will attract the right people, will create the right opportunities for you, that in turn, will nourish you.

Amelia Hruby [00:58:51]:
And that takes time. And something I heard you say on another podcast that I thought was really helpful is what we can do during that time is find ways to take the pressure off, which often means financial pressure, familial pressure, all the societal pressures we've been talking about. The best thing we can do for ourselves during that time is take the pressure off. And I know part of that for you was leaving New York City, which has an incredibly high cost of living and puts a lot of pressure on any creative practice or artist entrepreneur. And similarly for me, when I started my business, I moved to Nebraska, which has a much lower cost of living than anywhere else I've lived in the US. And these have been ways of removing some pressure that allow me to play more and to be in flow and to have the patience to take the time it takes for the work to attract the people that it's going to bring in.

Kening Zhu [00:59:58]:
And I think that impatience, that hurry to be somewhere other than where you are, to get somewhere other than where you are, it feels like it takes me away from what I have here, what I can create here. And there is power to feeling motivated and fueled to go after a big dream or vision, but, also, I think rearranging your life such that the pressure doesn't feel suffocating. It doesn't feel like a death choke hold. And instead, you can create a little bit more room for yourself to explore and experiment. And that requires some very practical decisions of how much you're spending and how much you're receiving. And, also, I think at the same time as being practical and grounded is having a vision of possibility, of wanting more, and also giving yourself enough spaciousness to be in the creation mode of whatever more looks like for you.

Amelia Hruby [01:01:11]:
I don't know if it's another dichotomy, but I think that so much of our practice as artist entrepreneurs lives in this space between really letting ourselves want more and really interrogating why society tells us we should always want more. It's in that. What is the more that you want? Because the world we live in, the world I live in, in the US, this like white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist society, I should want more than that for myself, for my community. We're offered so little, and we should want more. But it's not the more that society tells us we want. It's not the more money, more fame, more followers. It's not that more. What is the more that we are orienting toward?

Amelia Hruby [01:02:02]:
I love your post on your site. You said this earlier, the vision that moves between desire and discontent. It's like finding the discontent with those societal mores, using that word in so many different ways, and then seeking out our desire for what is the more that we deeply need and letting our art take us there.

Kening Zhu [01:02:27]:
It's so beautiful of thinking about the meaning of more, and asking ourselves what kind of more would actually feel like more in the end, at the end of the day, not not enough. And what comes to mind is the essay by Audre Lorde, Poetry is Not a Luxury, and thinking about that I want more poetry. I want more beauty. I want more presence. And that can come with more material sustenance. And material sustenance can create all of those things, all of those mores.

Kening Zhu [01:03:08]:
And I think at the end of the day, when I get kind of existential and I think about "what's the point of business and art and if we're all gonna die anyway," just being sort of scorpionic about life, I think about what is the more that will actually nourish? And I keep coming back to this word nourish because so little of our society structures are built around nourishment and instead around capitalist accumulation or commodification or exploitation, and how can more actually feel like more in a soul way? I think is the ultimate question for me.

Amelia Hruby [01:04:01]:
Well, I'm starting to feel complete in this conversation. I'm curious if there's anything else that you would like to share with listeners today.

Kening Zhu [01:04:14]:
I think part of my vision for Internet as creative practice for world building, for creating your own house on the webs, is to give ourselves permission to be multifaceted, multidimensional, contradictory, to be multiform, and to not hold ourselves to one identity of being a a, b, c, d, e, f, g, one thing or one mode of practice. And that is to not have to not feel the pressure to package ourselves neatly, to define ourselves inside a box so that we can hit the right niche or attract the right audience. And I believe in a Internet practice and a way of being and creating and sharing, building a world that can be a reflection of all the colors and jagged edges and parts of ourselves that don't necessarily make linear sense or can be reduced.

Kening Zhu [01:05:23]:
And I think at the end of the day, this vision is really me giving myself permission, and in turn, others that I'm guiding, permission to be uniquely themselves, to be an individual, which we're taught from a young age. But actually the society and programming and conditioning kind of leads us otherwise to not be individual to do a formula. And I think the possibility that really excites me is that as we each discover ways of building worlds, building homes for ourselves, for our minds, for our psyches and creativity on the Internet, especially as artists with so many modes of expression, with so much feeling and and passion for the world. I think artists have that power to expand the possibilities of being an individual and giving other people permission to be individuals so the world is filled with more individual individuals instead of replicas or prototypes of how a human should be. And I think that biodiversity on the Internet, biodiversity in selves is what will create a more, this sounds cheesy to say, but beautiful world and beautiful Internet.

Amelia Hruby [01:06:56]:
It's almost coming to me as a practice of refusal. I don't think that's how you would think of it, but it is one way I see it as a refusal to be a personal brand, to be a singular, cohesive, understandable Internet personality. And I think for many artists, it's just not possible to be that. And striving to be that is just a life ruining, self ruining, painful process. And so releasing that striving, not trying to be that sort of capital P, capital B, personal brand. Because so much of that is about being consumable by other people, and it's about, I think, inviting other people to project themselves onto you. By becoming a personal brand, you make the surface of who you are so slick that anybody can project themselves on and stick on.

Amelia Hruby [01:07:58]:
This is something I didn't understand until I was someone who was speaking to hundreds or sometimes even more than a thousand people a week. When you're growing a community, when you're courting an audience, when you're inviting them in, that is the mode we've been trained to find these people we admire, put them on a pedestal, and then stick our dreams and desires to them, like project.

Amelia Hruby [01:08:17]:
But what I'm hearing you say is, actually, we can all be developing the textures and ridges. And you can't stick onto that. You can't put a suction cup on a really rocky surface. It doesn't work. But you could find so many grooves and depths and interesting things that you can bounce off of and reflect back toward yourself through those experiences. And I'm just taking that into how I think about sharing and presenting myself online because you and I built a beautiful website for me a few years ago that I have outgrown and I have not figured out how to be myself on the internet again. And what are all the like textures and differences and unique things I wanna show up as.

Amelia Hruby [01:09:12]:
And in some senses, I do feel like I've flattened myself as just like "host of Off the Grid podcaster," but there's so much more that I do and do want to share, and I'm just rediscovering how to do that in this new stage of myself and my life. So thank you.

Kening Zhu [01:09:35]:
Of course. It was such a pleasure to build that brand with you. And I think as you're speaking, it reminds me of your original logo, "ah," like the sound and the way that I see branding as a process of distillation, but also a process of singing a chord, choosing which chords you want to sing and project. And it doesn't have to be the same for different platforms. You can decide which parts of yourself you want to distill down, which parts of yourself you want to share, and you can change chords. You can access different parts of your brand. And I think branding, personal branding, sounds like creating a packaging or a box or a straight jacket and putting yourself in it so that you'll magnetize and attract the right people.

Kening Zhu [01:10:33]:
Whereas I really see it from the other direction. I see it from the core, starting from the essence, starting from within, and moving outwards. And perhaps, especially in your case, being a little deliberate about what do I want to keep public and what do I wanna keep private, and how can I express myself in a way that feels aligned? And also knowing that this expression of brand is like a perfume and that it will change. It will change over time. Different notes will linger. And in a few years, you will shift. If you're not shifting, if you're not morphing, actually, something is actually wrong, I think. And that shifting is part of embracing a more fluid way of being a human being that is just happening to express yourself through a visual language that is a brand.

Amelia Hruby [01:12:25]:
Well, dear listeners, if you would like to work with Kening on a brand, on a website, first, go explore her website, keningzhu.com. It's linked in the show notes. Enter her world, see if it resonates, and then there are many different opportunities and ways to work with you, including a course that you teach called House on the Webs. You also have a brand new podcast. Tell us about that and where listeners can find it.

Kening Zhu [01:13:04]:
I just started a podcast called Botanical Studies of Internet Magic, and it's about being on the Internet as creating digital ecosystems, as a creative practice in a way that is about nourishment and nurturing and tending and gardening more than anything else.

Amelia Hruby [01:13:29]:
It's a beautiful show. I love it. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, all the places people get podcasts. And I think on that note, we can close this beautiful sacred friendship business podcast portal we've opened together. Thank you so much, Kening, for joining me. Thank you, listeners, for joining us and enjoying, hopefully, this conversation. If you're still here, I'm assuming you enjoyed it. I hope that this window into one of my dearest friendships has nourished you in some way.

Amelia Hruby [01:13:56]:
As always, if you wanna support the show, you can download the free Leaving Social Media Toolkit. You can leave us a rating on Apple or Spotify. You can join me on the Interweb. And for now, I think we'll say goodbye. And next week, once again, I will see you off the grid and on the Interweb.

Amelia Hruby [01:13:59]:
Thanks for listening to Off the Grid. Don't forget to grab your free Leaving Social Media Toolkit at offthegrid.fun/toolkit. This podcast is a Softer Sounds production. Our music is by Melissa Kaitlyn Carter of Making Audio Magic, and our logo is by n'Atelier Studio. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby, and until next time, I'll see you off the grid and on the Interweb.