Inspiring Conversations with James Bogans III of Bad Creative Media

Today we’d like to introduce you to James Bogans III.

Hi James, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’ve been creating for as long as I can remember, although for most of my life I didn’t necessarily understand that creativity was the thing connecting everything I did.

I started writing and recording music when I was young. Over the years, that expanded into audio engineering, video production, editing, graphic design, writing, speaking, teaching, and eventually publishing books. At the same time, there was another major part of my life developing alongside all of that: ministry.

I spent about 20 years in ministry and seven years as a youth pastor, then pastor. For a long time, I thought ministry was the central thing and creativity was something I did alongside it. Looking back, I think I had that backwards.

In October 2023, I resigned as pastor. I remember saying in my resignation that there was something I had to do, something I had to create. The interesting part was that I didn’t completely know what that meant yet.

So I started rebuilding.

I initially thought the next chapter would be about becoming a professional speaker. I built the website, took the pictures, started reaching out, and began learning an entirely different world. But the more I explored it, the more I realized speaking wasn’t necessarily the destination either. It was another tool.

Then came BAD CREATIVE.

BAD CREATIVE started as a book, but it became much bigger than a book. I started studying why some incredibly talented people create freely while others, with just as much ability, struggle to move. That led me into questions about identity, authority, fear, perfectionism, authenticity, decision-making, and eventually what I now call Creative Authority.

I realized that a lot of creatives don’t actually have a creativity problem. They have an authority problem. They’re waiting for permission from an industry, an audience, a parent, a leader, an algorithm, or sometimes an older version of themselves, to become who they already know they are.

The funny thing is, while I was developing that philosophy to help other people, I realized I was also documenting what had happened to me.

Today, I describe myself as a creative communicator because it’s the first description I’ve found broad enough to hold everything I actually do. I’m an author, recording artist, speaker, creative coach, radio host, filmmaker, editor, and creative director, but I don’t really see those as separate careers. They’re different languages I use to communicate ideas.

BAD CREATIVE has become the umbrella for much of that work. Through speaking, workshops, one-on-one Creative Authority sessions, books, media, music, and experiences, my work is centered around helping people create from their identity rather than simply from their gift.

The simplest way I know to say it now is: I help people remember their creativity.

That word… “remember” has become incredibly important to me because I don’t believe creativity is something most people need to find. I think it’s something we slowly learn to forget. We become responsible. We become afraid. We become concerned with being good, accepted, profitable, appropriate, or realistic. Somewhere in that process, many of us surrender authority over parts of ourselves.

My work is about helping people take that authority back.

And strangely enough, I think that’s what I’ve been doing my entire life. I just finally have language for it.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Smooth? Absolutely not. I’m not even sure I would call it a road. It’s felt more like I’ve been building the road while trying to drive on it.

One of the biggest struggles was realizing that leaving something doesn’t automatically mean you know what comes next.

When I resigned as pastor in 2023, I was leaving something that had given me structure, responsibility, community, and a very clear identity for years. I knew there was something else I was supposed to create, but knowing that and knowing exactly what to build are two very different things.

There was also a practical cost to that decision. I’ve experienced financial instability, periods without traditional employment, and the reality of trying to build something meaningful while still needing to take care of a family and pay bills. There’s nothing particularly romantic about that part of entrepreneurship. Sometimes you’re developing an extraordinarily big idea while simultaneously trying to figure out how you’re going to handle a very ordinary expense.

But I think the harder struggle has been internal.

I’ve learned that freedom is expensive. It costs time, maintenance, attention, unlearning, education, courage, and love. We talk about freedom as though obtaining it is the difficult part, but I’ve learned that sometimes freedom costs more to keep than it does to acquire.

That realization eventually became connected to my work around Creative Authority. I started recognizing how often talented people surrender authority over themselves because being told what to do can actually feel safer than deciding who you are. I recognized it because I had done it too.

But I don’t think I would remove those struggles from my story. BAD CREATIVE, Creative Authority, and much of what I teach now came from having to wrestle with those questions myself.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Bad Creative Media?
BAD CREATIVE MEDIA is a creativity and development firm built around a pretty simple belief: most people don’t need to become more creative. They need to remember that they already are.

That’s where our phrase, “Create Like You Remember,” comes from.

A lot of creativity education focuses on developing the gift; how to write better, speak better, design better, make better content, build a better brand, or become more productive. Those things are valuable, but I became fascinated with a different question: What happens when someone is incredibly gifted but doesn’t believe they have the authority to use that gift authentically?

That question sits at the center of BAD CREATIVE MEDIA.

We specialize in what I call creative authority, the relationship between identity, authority, and creative behavior. Sometimes what looks like procrastination, inconsistency, perfectionism, fear of failure, or even a lack of discipline has something deeper underneath it. Somewhere along the way, we gave another person, institution, expectation, fear, or even a previous version of ourselves authority over what we’re allowed to create and who we’re allowed to become.

Our work is designed to help locate that.

We do that through coaching and Creative Authority Sessions, speaking, workshops, books, media, and creative experiences. The mediums may change, but the objective remains the same: help people understand who they are, recognize where they’ve surrendered creative authority, and move from knowing what they want to create to actually creating it.

Ehat sets BAD CREATIVE MEDIA apart probably isn’t any one framework. It’s where we begin.

We don’t begin with, “What can you make?”

We begin with, “Who are you when nobody else gets to decide?”

I believe behavior is preceded by identity, and identity is preceded by authority. So if we only address someone’s creative behavior without addressing the identity and authority underneath it, we might make them more productive without ever helping them become more free.

Ultimately, everything comes back to one sentence:

We help people remember their creativity.

Creativity isn’t reserved for artists. It’s present in how we solve problems, communicate, build businesses, navigate change, imagine futures, and express who we are.

Sometimes you don’t need someone else to give you permission to create. Sometimes you need to remember that the authority was yours in the first place.

Any big plans?
The biggest project immediately in front of me is Bad Pastor: The Compendium. I believe in being the first to partake in what you offer. I took myself through my own framework and this is artists being produced from it.

Bad Pastor: The Compendium is a multidisciplinary production that involves and exists as a book, an album, visual art, and a theatrical performance connected as one.

It’s part theater, part concert, part book reading, part keynote, part sermon, and part conversation. It’s set to appear in a theater near you spring of 2027.

On the BAD CREATIVE MEDIA side, the next phase is about taking the ideas I’ve been developing and building real infrastructure around them.

That means expanding Creative Authority beyond one-on-one sessions into workshops, keynote experiences, curriculum, and tools that can serve creatives, entrepreneurs, organizations, schools, and other communities. It also means continuing to develop our creative archetypes and the larger body of work around identity, authority, and creativity.

I’m also working toward the next evolution of the BAD CREATIVE book itself. Long-term, though, my vision for BAD CREATIVE MEDIA is to build a genuine creativity and development firm—a place where ideas are researched, developed, tested, taught, published, performed, and turned into experiences that help people understand themselves differently.

And through all of it, the mission remains remarkably simple:

Help people remember their creativity.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jammes.co/p/bad-creative-media.html?m=1
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bad_creative_media?stkn=MXV1eGs0ZTd0NHI3aQ==
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@BadCreativeRadio
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/jammescreates?stkn=MW9lMTR3N2VnYWt0ZQ==