Today I talk to Rob Szabo — a four-time Juno-nominated (and one-time Juno-winning) musician, producer, and composer who has spent over thirty years making a living doing the thing most of us are told to give up on. He's played in bands since before he was legally allowed to be there, sold thousands of tapes out of the back of a car in the '90s independent music boom, produced some fifty albums, and — in a plot twist nobody could have planned — writes music for the Paw Patrol movies, including a hair metal song he sings as the villain.
Rob and I grew up in the same town, a year apart, and somehow never crossed paths until a couple of months ago at Peter Katz's songwriting retreat. He was the first person I met when I walked in the door, and I've been wanting to have this conversation ever since.
I came into this thinking I'd ask Rob about the Junos and Paw Patrol and the fairy-tale career. Instead we went straight down the rabbit hole I've been obsessed with lately — creativity as a practice, not a talent you're either born with or not. We talked about the childlike well of creativity we all get told to bury, learning to be comfortable with waste, doing the work as an end in itself, and the constant negotiation of showing up to the practice even when you don't feel like it. If you've ever told yourself "I'm just not a creative person," this one's for you.
Please enjoy, Rob Zabo.
Key Takeaways
- Creativity is a practice, not a gift. We're all born with a deep well of it — it just gets dulled over the years as we're told to be serious and grow up. The good news: it's still there, and you can rebuild access to it like any other habit.
- The things worth doing are the ones you don't run a cost-benefit analysis on. Rob's most meaningful work came from committing to things as an end in themselves — not justifying the means to an end. If you're trying to justify it, it's probably not the thing.
- Beware getting really good at something you never wanted to do. Chasing security by doing "adjacent" work is how you wake up an expert at the wrong thing, with no time left for what you actually care about.
- Get comfortable with waste. Most creative work never gets seen — the sketches, the fifty songs recorded so twenty make the album, the dozens of revisions. In a productivity-obsessed culture that demands immediate results, learning to tolerate waste is one of the hardest and most essential shifts.
- Faith is part of the deal. Sitting down for two hours with no idea whether anything useful will come out — and doing it anyway — is an act of faith that the reps eventually produce fruit.
- Lower the stakes to beat resistance. "Let's write a shitty song today." Some of the best work comes when you're just fooling around and the pressure's off.
- Novel settings short-circuit the inner critic. Nature, water, a boat on a lake, a walk, a shower, driving — occupying your conscious brain just enough gets you out of your own way.
- Recognition matters less than you think — to everyone but you. The Junos, the followers, the accolades: nobody's paying as much attention as you are. Rob flags his Juno on LinkedIn knowing it eases a client's mind, while holding lightly to the fact that it doesn't mean what people think it means.
- Once you release something into the world, what happens next isn't about you (a Rick Rubin idea we both wrestle with). We're hardwired to crave the validation anyway — which is exactly what makes social media so insidious.
Connect with Bob Mathers
The Restless Leader Newsletter on Substack: https://bobmathers.substack.com/
Links & Resources
Rob Szabo’s website: https://www.robszabo.com/
The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin: https://sites.prh.com/thecreativeact
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/97395/bird-by-bird-by-anne-lamott/
Peter Katz's Heartstrings Songwriting Retreat: https://heartstringsretreats.com/
