From Detective to Full-Time Artist: How He Rebuilt His Dream at 40 with Tim Packer
On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Tim Packer, a celebrated Canadian artist, former police detective, and creative business mentor whose story is as unlikely as it is inspiring. From the time Tim was 12 years old, he knew he wanted to be an artist. He took commercial art in high school, studied graphic design in college, and was so eager to get started that he was sitting in a college classroom at 17. But after two years of entry-level jobs in the industry that left him feeling like he just didn’t have what it took, Tim did something that would define the next two decades of his life. He joined the Toronto Police Force, where he spent 18 years, eventually working as a fraud detective in the commercial crime unit investigating cases over two million dollars.
Ty and Tim dig deep into the moment that changed everything, a single article Tim read featuring Canadian artist Harley Brown, who made a bold claim that talent isn’t something you’re born with, it’s something you build. Tim didn’t fully believe it at first, but he made a deal with himself to act as though he did for one year. He committed to painting three times a week, stopped avoiding the things he wasn’t good at, and started attacking his weaknesses like a detective working a case. By the end of that year, the results were undeniable. Within three years, the conversation with his wife had shifted from if he would leave the police force to paint full-time, to when. In 2000, he cashed in his pension and never looked back.
But the first five years were anything but a highlight reel. Tim opens up about the struggle of figuring out not just the art, but the business of art, and how every few months he was convinced the conversation about putting the suit back on was right around the corner. It wasn’t until year five that he found his voice and things truly took off, culminating in a gallery opening in Toronto in 2015 that looked like something out of a movie, with people lined up at the door, red dots going up on every painting, and Tim realizing he was on track to make over a quarter million dollars that year from his art alone. And in that moment of success, what hit him wasn’t pride. It was responsibility.
That responsibility led Tim to start his YouTube channel, sharing everything he’d learned with artists who were struggling the way he once had. Then in 2020, after a pair of near-death experiences with a thyroid condition left him lying on a gurney with his wife by his side, Tim came away with one nagging regret. He’d been playing it safe with his teaching. He launched the Tim Packer Art Academy, which has since helped over 10,000 artists, and recently released his book, You Can Sell Your Art, with one clear mission: helping artists make a living doing what they love.
Ty and Tim also get into the power of the word yet, the danger of comparing your chapter one to someone else’s chapter thirty, the myth that doing what you love means you’ll never work a day in your life, and why being an artist and being an entrepreneur are exactly the same thing. Tim’s message is clear and it hits hard: talent is not a gift you either have or you don’t. It is the sum total of your skills, knowledge, experience, and creativity, and every single one of those things can be developed, earned, and grown without a ceiling.
If you’ve ever talked yourself out of a dream because you didn’t think you were good enough, this episode is exactly what you need to hear.
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