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Episode #2 Find Your Pottery Partner
74 Plays4 years ago
One of the best things you can do to get good at making pottery is to find a pottery partner. Your partner will help you get better and you can help them get better as well. In this episode I talk about the Importance of finding a partner for making pottery
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Transcript
00:00:00
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Welcome
Introduction and Theme Setup
00:00:01
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to Shaping Your Pottery with Nick Torres. In this podcast, we talk about all things pottery from making pottery to selling pottery. Now, in this episode, we're going to be talking about friendship. I'm half kidding about that, but allow me to tell you a story so that my point makes a little bit more sense. Back
Nick's Pottery Journey Begins
00:00:23
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in 2018, I started pottery for the first time. I was a junior in high school.
00:00:30
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And during this time, there's about four of us, four to three of us that really focused in on pottery and we were more serious about pottery. While all four of us were pretty serious about making pottery, we all had different skill levels. Some were better, some were worse. I was among the people that were worse. I was probably at the bottom of the four that were taking pottery serious and
00:00:58
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I
Improving Skills and Competitiveness
00:00:58
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didn't really like that too much because at heart, I am a competitive person. I like to win and I find out ways so that I can make pottery easier for me or just do things that I could make it easier for me so that I will be able to win. Even though it wasn't really a competition at the time, I just really wanted to improve my pottery so that I can make it look better than theirs, I guess.
00:01:27
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Because I was at a lower level, I wanted to get to where they were at. They were making such better pottery than I was, and it frustrated me. So I would dissect everything and anything to really improve my pottery, especially the following year when it was just two of us that were really focused on pottery.
00:01:53
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Everything changed when he was able to get his wheel. And that sparked me to get my wheel as well. Now, while I wasn't incredibly competitive about it, I still wanted to get better so that I can be able to match his level. I would look at his pottery and I would see that, wow, he is so much better than I am. How can I get to where he is?
00:02:20
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And
Collaborative Growth with a Pottery Partner
00:02:20
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because we were doing it at the same time, both of our skills were growing left and right because I would talk to Pottery about him and we would both give each other tips on maybe try doing this. For example, I once gave him a tip on
00:02:41
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slowing your wheel down a little bit and see if that will help you or not and he would also give me tips as well and together we grew together we were able to see our progress because we were doing it together at the same time and because of that we were able to grow a lot faster and it helps our pottery really start standing out and at the same time he had his own kiln so we would
00:03:12
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I would go over to his house and we would glaze together and we would just do pretty much everything together when we were first starting out. Now, he doesn't make pottery all that much anymore, but he still loves it and we still talk about it all the time. And because we are talking about it all the time, we get new ideas that help us to make our pottery look better. And that brings me to my point.
00:03:42
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When you're making pottery, try to find someone that will make pottery with you. This not only helps you grow, but it helps the other person grow as well. Typically, I would suggest that you find somebody that's a little better than you so that you are gonna be able to grow with them as you continue this pottery journey.
00:04:08
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Now, it doesn't have to be somebody that is your friend that can make pottery with you. Just find somebody that is willing to make pottery and want to try it. Just try it with them. And you'll notice the benefits of that pretty much right away. You'll notice that you'll start to start coming up with ideas and you start talking about pottery a lot.
00:04:34
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And when you just do it that way, when you have somebody else to, along this journey, it helps you stay more focused and it helps you grow so much.
Benefits of Pottery Collaboration
00:04:46
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Think about it like this. Let's say you're on a sports team and you are working for a goal to be the best team, whatever it is, let's say it's baseball.
00:04:59
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And let's say there's one person that is doing a lot better than the rest, but other people are more likely going to start trying to do better because they don't want to fail him. They don't want to fail themselves. So if you work together with another person, you're going to see drastic improvements with your pottery. And doing that, it allows you to explore more as well.
00:05:28
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You can find stuff that makes it easier for you and stuff that makes it easier for him. So I suggest finding a partner to make pottery with. That is the easiest way and most fun way that you're going to be able to stay in this pottery game for the long run.