The Complete Creative

Today on the show we have Michael J. Tanner. Michael is a writer of TV, movies, and comic books. You probably know him from his Oni Press book Junior Braves of the Apocalypse. Here’s a bio of him and his book from his website www.bymichaeltanner.com:

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Michael Tanner is a graphic novelist and writer living in the Los Angeles area.

He has also been an improviser and sketch comedian, as well as food blogger back when that was a thing.

The Junior Braves of Tribe 65 return from a camping trip to find swarms of bloodthirsty mutants have overrun their town, bringing death and destruction everywhere they go!

With their families missing and their homes destroyed, these plucky kids must use all their scouting talents, combined smarts, and teamwork to survive the end of the world!

JUNIOR BRAVES: A BRAVE IS BRAVE is the beginning of an exciting new young adult graphic novel series that is one part GOONIES and one part THE WALKING DEAD, full of zombies, adventure, and handy tips for wilderness survival!

I met Michael a while ago and actually interviewed him for my first live show here.

I’ll be honest, I had him on the show because of one story. It’s the story he tells about him pitching and landing Junior Braves with Oni. I won’t spoil it, but I will tell you that it’s one of the most amazing and aggravating stories I’ve ever heard. It’s quintessentially Los Angeles, and proof that you may not have to live in LA to catch a break, but it definitely helps.

Michael really delved into the creative process with me, being a tv and movie writer. His story is a lot like mine. He moved to LA to work in movies and tv, then the writer’s strike happened, and he found a new love in comics. But also like me, he is format agnostic. Whether it’s tv, movies, comics, or books Michael just wants to tell a good story.

And that’s where we really focused our attention in this episode. We talked a lot about structure. Being from movies and tv myself I love structure. I believe that structure is the basis for everything, and in the world of books it’s something that you don’t hear enough about. Everybody is focused on the story, but because of the nature of novels there is no formula.

Movies, tv, and comics don’t have that problem. There is a strict formula wWith those formats. And knowing that formula makes it easier to live within those confines. With a book, it’s a whole different animal.

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We also talked a lot about working with a publisher or a studio. I believe that the great narrative of writers standing up to studios is a flawed one which hurts the collaborative nature of the business. I believe the Shane Blacks and Joe Eszterhases of the world do a disservice to the medium by talking about how they fight studios. While it’s important to dig your heels in, it’s equally important to understand they have financial stakes on the line and also want to make a great project. Michael related a great story he heard from an editor which boils down to them needing to love your book enough to stake $50,000+ on getting it out the door. That’s a lot of money, and it’s peanuts when compared to movies or TV. But publishers deal in volume, right? Image puts out a lot more book a year than Sony does movies.

So we talked about how you can trust your publisher, and also how you can trust your artist. The bond between an artist and writer is a sacred one, and learning how to deal with the artist and make them comfortable while still giving them freedom and getting what you want is one of the tightest ropes to, walk in comics. But it’s also very easily applied to any creative endeavor. You need to be equally kind and stern. You need to give freedom and know how to reign it in to get the best result for the project.

Michael is a friend of mine, and more than once we talk about my upcoming monster anthology which he’s working on with a new artist. I love how he relates working with his new artist to working with his established artist. Those sorts of dynamics make me giddy, and they are great to see. Some of the best work comes when we can trust all our collaborators.

Go check out Junior Braves of the Apocalypse, Book 1 from Oni and find Michael online at www.bymichaeltanner.com or on twitter @mikeisernie.

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One of the biggest mistakes young writers make is getting into a terrible contract they can never leave. I’ve dealt with this several times with books I want to publish. The creator sends me their original contract and THEY DON’T EVEN OWN THE RIGHTS.

That’s right. More than one person has sent me a contract in which they signed away the rights to their book for less than it cost them to make the book in the first place. It’s a brutal lesson, and I hate being the bearer of bad news, but I have to go back and tell them even they can’t do anything with the book because it’s not their property.

Imagine that. You have poured your blood, sweat, and tears into a book. You’ve paid for artists out of your own pocket. You’ve stayed up late nights toiling away to get the pages right. You were so excited to finally be able to get the book out there…and in doing so signed away the rights to the publishing company.

That’s bad enough, but what then happens if that publisher sells their catalog to a company that sells their catalog to a company that sells their catalog to a conglomerate that sits on the books forever. This isn’t a fictitious tale. This actually happened to somebody I know.

I would much rather have you self-publish your book and reap all the profits. However, since many of you want a publisher the least I can do is give you some tips on what to look for in contract.

1. Net profits means you will never make any money

There is a big difference between gross receipts and net profits. Net profits means the remainder left after the publisher has taken out all expenses. The publisher gets to recoup their printing costs, marketing costs, distribution costs, editing costs, and just about any cost imaginable before you see any money. This is the reason why producers sue movie studios because they show Avatar is 130 million in the red even though it’s one of the highest grossing movies of all time.

Net profits is a bad deal for creators. If you must take a net profit deal, make sure it is accompanied by an upfront payment equal to or greater than the cost it took to make the book, because otherwise you will never see a dime.

Gross receipts, which is what Wannabe Press and most traditional book publishers gives, is what you want. Gross receipts come off the top of the amount made. If you have 10% of gross receipts for a book that sells for $10.00, you make $1 every book sale no questions asked. Gross receipts look less appealing on paper (usually net profits is 50% or more compared to 5–10% of gross), but over time gross receipts will make you way more money than net profits.

2. Make sure YOU own the rights to your book

Many publishers will put something like this in a contract. “Publisher and Creator will split profits 50/50 with Publisher owning 100% of the Project and paying Creator 50% of profits”. This doesn’t seem so bad on the surface. I mean you get 50% of the money still, right?

Wrong.

In this scenario the publisher owns the book. That mean they can sell the book to other companies and make changes to the book without your permission. It also means you cannot negotiate any ancillary or other deals with your book because it’s not your book. You don’t own it.

Instead, you want to make sure the project is owned at least 50/50 by you. Ideal, you will give the publisher certain rights, and you will keep rights to the underlying source material. That way the publisher can’t make changes without your permission, and the rights lie with you.

3. Make sure there is a reversion of rights clause in your contract

So often people sign deals that give publishers the right to their works in perpetuity, even if it’s out of print. There is no problem with a good publisher continuing to publish a book if it’s in print, but you want to make sure that there is language in your contract that gets you the rights back after a certain period of time, if you want it, or if the book is ever out of print.

4. Define what you can do with your work.

In our contracts, I very clearly define that a creator can create exclusive prints and other materials as long as they are in limited quantities and they do not engage a distributor. The only thing the contract forbids is making and reproduction of the work.

This give the creator the ability to at least make money doing exclusives at their table. However, most contracts forbid this entirely, or don’t define it. You will be making money tabling at shows and in person. You want to make sure that falls within the purview of the contract.

5. Make sure you have approval over any licensing deals

At the end of the day, your name is on your work, so you want to make sure you can approve the licensing deals your publisher negotiates, and that you get a piece of the licensing commensurate with your part in the process. You created the work, so you should get a large portion of the licensing monies.

6. Give yourself the ability to audit the publisher’s books.

Quarterly audits are a general rule in business when you make a deal. When you sign away your book, this is a business deal. You cannot expect the publisher to be honest with you about sales, and even if they are you have the right to make sure they are paying you fairly.

7. Define a payment schedule with penalty should you not be paid on time.

If you don’t define a payment schedule, then there will be nothing legally actionable on your part should the publisher not pay you. However, more importantly is the put a penalty to the publisher should they not pay on time. Publishers know you will most likely not take them to court. However, if they see the money piling up they will be more likely to pay you.

Contracts don’t have to be scary. You don’t have to be scared of them. I so often see artists that sign contracts without reading them, and then complain that the contract is unfair. Of course the contract is unfair. The publisher is out for their best interests. You have to be out for your best interests.

If a publisher is not willing to work with you on these points, then you shouldn’t do business with them. I’m not saying you will get any or all of the points I mentioned, but you should certainly ask for them and get clarification before you sign anything.

A contract is a negotiation. If they are not willing to negotiate, then move on.

ѺR

Today on the program we have Thomas Clemmons, artist and writer of the Robot Friday webcomic and full time graphic designer.

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Here is the profile from www.robotfriday.com:

Thomas has been a graphic designer for 20 years and owes much of his cartooning style and work flow to the profession. In 2009, while working fulltime as a freelancer, Thomas created Robot Friday which currently boasts over 550 archived and ongoing strips. You can see more of Thomas’s work at his portfolio website,www.ideasintoart.net.

I had Thomas on the program because he talks a big game about helping artists build careers and I wanted to see if he could deliver. Boy did he deliver.

Our conversation was wide ranging, beginning with his origin story as a graphic designer twenty years ago. He’s really passionate about making sure other artists don’t make the same mistakes he made growing up.

I love that idea, because it’s sort of the same thing that I try to do, which is either be a shining example or horrible warning. Obviously the breadth of Thomas’s career makes it clear he’s a shining example. His big talking point is to do stuff. He’s not a fan of that much planning. He really wants people to just start doing things.

I feel the same way of course. People are often too concerned with planning things and not concerned enough with doing things. It all comes down to mindset for me, and for Thomas. People are scared to get started because they don’t believe they can do it.

We talked about that a lot during this episode. Both of us have tried to give point by point instructions to people with less than stellar success. It wasn’t until we started delivering messages of “You can do it” and other motivations to get people to see this was possible that we had success.

I really loved talking to Thomas about creativity too. Thomas has been running is comic since 2009, and I loved talking about how he designed his strips. Both of us use this outside in philosophy when we are stuck. Which is to start with the beginning and the end and work in from there. It’s not really possible with a novel or a movie script, but it works great in comics.

Again, we mostly talked about just doing it. A large chunk of our conversation was about other webcomics like Penny Arcade, and how people judge themselves on where Penny Arcade is NOW, and not where they started. The first 100+ Penny Arcade strips were dreadful. I mean there was a little spark of genius, but it to develop the style of the piece and what they wanted to say.

Here’s the thing, that sort of stuff takes time. It’s easy to come up with an idea. It’s really hard to make that idea pop. It’s really, really hard to make the format something people want to read while still making it be something that you want to make.

And if you end up not wanting to make something over a long period, it’s okay to quit. Or to pivot to something you like better. This is a career and you aren’t stuck doing anything.

We ended by talking about his voice. Thomas has a very unique voice online and stumbled onto something I teach before we met. He developed his ideal client profile, and he really decided to hone in on them. A byproduct of talking to his ideal client is that his voice because his voice became very strong. So strong that other people started to latch onto it. That’s so key. Every voice is going to be different, but if you make it unique people will respond to what you have to say.

You can find Thomas online through Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat @ robotfriday. His websites are robotfriday.com, robotfridaysketchcast.com, designasuper.com, ideasintoart.net -

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How to get the word out about your project

So you have a project, an idea, a prototype, or a new line of business you want to get started. It’s fantastic. You know all the inner working, all the machinations, and now all you have to do is get the word out and the monies will start rolling in and piling up.

For this example, I’m going to use a question a friend posed on Facebook this week. How to do you tell people that you are open for art commissions? I’m going to use this for an example, but trust me this can be used for just about any product, whether it’s art related or business related.

Now, most of this is going to be about your pre-launch strategy because frankly if you set everything up right before you start than the launch is the easy part.

STEP 1: Set up a Web Page.

The first step to any strategy is to make sure you have a website, or at least a webpage, where people can buy the thing you are selling. Most people start posting on social media or handing out fliers before they even have an end game set up. The thing is, this is really easy. You don’t even need to use your own site (though I recommend it). You can set up a PayPal page, or an Etsy store, or a Storeenvy page. But you need to send somebody somewhere in order to complete the buying transaction.

The reason I recommend using your own page is because you then have control over the layout. With any page, you want to create a sort of sales letter. These would be the reason that people should buy from YOU instead of one of the other thousand people that are doing the exact same thing.

Now, you might be saying “Russell, I already have fans. They already want my stuff. I don’t need this.” To which I say that you might have fans, but very few will immediately buy from you. Those diehard fans you will probably be able to find without any other work. It’s the people on the fence that will want to see what you have to offer.

Thus the web page. You are going to want to show your best work, your best art, and convince people why you are the one they want to make a commission for them. Not everybody is going to buy at first, which is why you will also need a mailing list pulldown from somewhere like Sumome or MailChimp. This is something you can only do on your own web page, but a pulldown with some free wallpaper or other free stuff will help get a base of business. These are people who aren’t ready to buy, but they are interested in what you do.

STEP 2: Find where your audience is.

This is going to take a little digging for some of you, but you basically want to find out where the people that want your product already are on the internet. For some people it’s Pinterest. For others it’s Snapchap. For artists, it’s surely going to be Instagram. Instagram is the best place to find people who want art, bar none. That is one of the main markets for art. So for an artist, you are going to need to set up an Instagram account and load it up with at least 20–50 images before you start pushing hard. You can find a lot of awesome hashtags like artvsartist that can help expand your intended audience.

STEP 3: Set up a publishing schedule

This is the last real step before you get to the selling of stuff. You want to make sure you have some content ready for these social sites, and you want to make sure you can keep creating for these sites on a regular basis. Whether it’s once a week or once a day, having a schedule is key. That schedule is going to keep people coming back to your content, and it’s going to get more people coming to your content over time as your audience grows. The more people that go to your content the higher it will rank and the more people will come to your page organically.

A Note About Sales Funnels: This is all about the sales funnel. You are trying to get the most amount of people to know about you so that some of those people will like you, some of them will trust you, and then some of those will buy from you. The most people at the top of your funnel, the more people at the bottom.

STEP 4: Find your ardent backers

So once you have your bases set up, you want to find your most ardent backers. These are the ones you know will want some art from you. You probably already know a few of them right now. You’re probably thinking about them as you are reading this. Those are the people most likely not just to buy your work, but to talk about your work with others. And that’s what we are going for. You want people to talk about your work so other people find it. So what you do at this point is offer them a steep discount on your work as long as they refer 5–10 other people to you.

STEP 4: Maintain your presence

Once you have these for systems set up, it’s about maintaining them. Once you have that initial rush of people wanting your work, it’s normal for a lull to happen. It’s normal to fizzle out, but you can’t. You have to keep up your mailing list. You have to keep putting up new work. You have to keep engaging the audience. You need a top of people at the top of your funnel in order to whittle their way down to the bottom, who are the buyers. Once you get that first trickle of people coming in as new business, all you have to do is keep feeding the top of the funnel and you will get more and more. The trick is in keeping the stamina. Most people will quit in a month or two when they aren’t getting the returns they want. However, the longer you are at it, the easier it will be. The higher you will rank on platforms and search engines, and the more work you will get.

And that’s how you get the word out and continue to get the word out over time. There are little tricks specific to your industry, but that’s the overall layout of how you build a social strategy. If you want to learn more about your social strategy, head on over to www.thebusinessofart.us/consultation and book a free strategy call today.

And if you love our work and free stuff, we’ve just launched a new Kindle Scout today for our new book Spaceship Broken, Needs Repairs. All you have to do is head over to www.spaceshipbrokenbook.com, nominate our book, and if it gets chosen for publication you get a free copy. Easy peasy!

This week on the show we have Amanda Meadows and Geoffrey Golden from Devastator Press on The Business of Art. These are two of the  small press people I remember most from when I was attending shows without exhibiting, and it's awesome to see them make good. Here's their bio straight from their website (www.devastatorpress.com) 

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"The Devastator is a comedy publisher founded in December 2009 by Geoffrey Golden and Amanda Meadows, two comedy writer-editors from Los Angeles. Together, they launched The Devastator book series, a geeky, full color mix of comics and written satire. We're distributed around the world and sold in over 35 stores across the United States, UK and Canada. Not only do our books get around, but Geoffrey and Amanda travel across the continent exhibiting at pop culture conventions, at shows like San Diego Comic-Con, Emerald City Comicon, and Toronto Comic Arts Festival.

We never lose sight of one thing: that it all started with a mouse an online fundraising campaign. To print the first issue, we shot a trailer video with our friend James Urbaniak (The Venture Bros, American Splendor) and took it to what was then a new creative fundraising platform, Kickstarter.com. Amazingly, strangers clicked and gave us money on the promise of potentially being cool. We published The Devastator: Cartoons in June 2010. A year after that first book, we became a self-sustaining enterprise.

Our writers are enormously talented folks who've worked for The Daily Show, The Onion, Adult Swim,McSweeney's, CollegeHumor, Funny or Die, UCB Comedy, and countless terrible places too! Our illustrious artists are published by comics giants like Marvel, DC Comics, Fantagraphics, Top Shelf, Drawn and Quarterly, and BOOM! Some of them have even won Eisner and Ignatz awards. We maintain a full list of contributors here.

We've garnered positive word from Wired, The A.V. Club, Bleeding Cool, ComicsAlliance, The Escapist, CBR's Robot 6, Los Angeles Magazine, The Beat, Electric Playground, The Daily Cross Hatch, cartoon historian Jerry Beck; and an endorsement from Bullseye's Jesse Thorn. You can read all our favorite press quotes here.

In April 2014, The Devastator formed the Devastator Press imprint to create awesome stand-alone humor books. We've published several #1 bestsellers on Amazon, including Grosslumps, Restart Me Up, and Frankenstein's Girlfriend." 

So I remember then from doing The Devastator, a quarterly humor anthology and the cool sign with the hands of several pop culture character on it.

I remember vividly that if you guessed all the fists right you got a prize. It was an awesome and inventive way to get people to stop by their booth.

And that's where we focused most of our conversation, on conventions. Conventions are such a huge part of any young artist's life, and they do it as well as anybody I've met. More importantly, they've been doing it as long as anybody I've met too.

We talked about how to get seen and noticed at shows, how to cut through the noise, and how to make a decision on what shows to attend. They are also responsible for the wonderful wrap-up that Comics Beat does every year to see how well shows are for selling and how much exhibitors made. You can find all the goodies from last year's survey at http://devastatorpress.com/exhibitors2015/

 

Long story short, they know cons. But they also know books, and we talked a lot about how to grow your publishing company. They started by doing anthologies and moved into stand alone books. That's a huge transition, but what came to light was how doing the work gave them clarity about what they should be doing and where to take their company. 

Since shifting away from anthologies and into single stories, they've gotten a distributor, been recognized for their work, and supercharged their business. 

Clarity is so important to your business and growth. 

We ended by talking about how to submit to companies, and the submission guidelines for different companies. However, the thing most of you will want to know is how to build your first book and build the rest of your career.

I will tell you, we talk about business especially toward the end. Well we talk about it throughout, and how business is so important to get your company off the ground. I love how Geoffrey ends, but saying basically if you are just trying to do this as a hobby…then you can do things on your own time. However, if you want to make this your career, you have to know business.

You can find devastator online at devastatorpress.com. Geoffrey is on twitter @geoffreygolden, and Amanda is on twitter @amandonium. You can find Devastator Press on Twitter @getdevastated

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Today we’re going to do something fantastically different. A good friend of mine how I pitch my material and sell so much. We sell a lot at shows. We sell more at shows than anybody else around us by a massive amount, and now I’m going to show you exactly how I did it. If you like this episode, please click here and rate, review, and subscribe now.

In order to do this, you have to know a little bit about how our table works. Right now we have two main books at the front of our table: Katrina Hates the Dead is on one side. Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter is on the other. Katrina is like Buffy on steroids. Ichabod is like Johnny The Homicidal maniac with color. Behind Katrina, I put Gherkin Boy, the book I write and draw about a pickle. Behind Ichabod, I put my first novel My Father Didn’t Kill Himself, which is a psychological YA thriller. All of this is on top of bright green clothes with our Wannabe Press logo on it. On one side of the green, but not touching it, you have all of the all-ages books.

All of this is intentional to move the eye around the table. The books up front are our heavy hitters, behind are for people if they aren’t enamored by either of those books, and all-ages ages books are specifically for people with kids.

So the entire table has a sales flow. Now that you know how our table is set up, let’s talk about the steps.

The first step is to get somebody’s attention and make them stop at your table. You can use any number of statements to get them to stop, but my favorite is “Do you want to see a cool comic?” I literally say it 1,000 times a day constantly until somebody shrugs and stops. Just by saying this I’m weeding out the people who like indie comics, and engaging with a target audience. This is more than any other person does already. The fact that 80% of people will completely ignore me doesn’t matter, because I’m focused on the 20% that stop.

However, I go deeper. Once they stop I try to narrow their focus by pointing to both Ichabod and Katrina and saying “Do you like girls that kick ass or psychological mindfucks?” Depending on what they say, I then put either Ichabod or Katrina in their hand. It’s so important to get a book in people’s hands. Just by giving a customer something to hold you increase your chance of a sale by 50%. However, even with that at least 60% of people will leave my booth with a smile and nothing.

Only if they don’t show interest, do I ask them whether they like novels (at which point I hand them My Father Didn’t Kill Himself) or weird books about pickles (in which case I hand them Gherkin Boy). However, it’s important to note that I only show this to people AFTER they have not shown interest in my biggest sellers.

Now, if they say BOTH, I hand them Katrina because I know that Katrina outsells everything else on my table 3 to 1. I only hand them that because Katrina has the best chance of making a sale.

Once they have a book in hand, I give them a one line pitch. “Katrina is about a girl who gets sick of living during the Apocalypse so she sets out to kill the devil and end it once and for all” or “Ichabod is about a psychopath that escapes a mental asylum and becomes a monster hunter during the Apocalypse but you never know if he’s killing monster, humans, or it’s all in his head”.

Then I let them read. As they read I fill them in on some facts about the book. “The artist for Katrina went on to draw for Dark Horse, Star Wars, and others,” or “The Ichabod artist helps launch Charles Soule’s career. Now he works on all sorts of stuff for Marvel.” I always make sure to mention that everything is a complete story. For many people that buy my books, a complete story is really important.

Once they look at the back cover, I know they are looking for pricing, so I tell them that books are 1 for $20 or 2 for $30. By that time they usually ask what the second book is about, or about everything on my table. Once they go for more books, I tell them more about everything, but I know I have them for at least one book. I want to upsell them into as many books as possible because the more books they buy the more likely they will be to read the books and come back for more. Bundling is really important for that, because it also allows you to drop the price of one book if they say no.

If they say no to the $20 price point, I tell them that I will do a one time deal. If they buy the book now on their first time through the convention, I will sell it for $15 instead of $20. Again, this doesn’t get everybody, but it gets some people. I do this because I know if I let them go there’s a 99% chance I will never see them again. About 1 person per 100 people that tell me they’ll come back actually do.

If you get through all this, then the maximum amount of people will buy from you because people want to buy cool things from people they like. And if you can be engaging about your product, passionate about it, and ask for the sale, then people will want to buy.

That’s all for this time. If you like this episode, please click here and rate, review, and subscribe now.

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Today we

interviewed Rachel Dukes. I have to say that I knew Rachel was awesome before I

turned on the mic, but until I heard her talk about everything she’s done I had

no idea how awesome.

Here’s her

bio from her website;

Rachel Dukes is a MFA graduate from The Center for Cartoon

Studies (2013) who self-publishes on her website Mixtape Comics. Despite

attempts to avoid being a cat-lady, her most popular strips always feature her

cat. Her first self-published mini-comic of those strips, Frankie Comics #1, was a winner of the 2013 Art

Exchange program by Marc Calvary.

 

Rachel draws comics for Boom Studios (Garfield, Steven Universe), Silver Sprocket (As You Were), and

is a regular contributor to anthologies and fanzines by other indie

cartoonists. She is secretly working on her first graphic novel, slated for a

2017 release.

 

For ten years, Rachel ran the small press mini comics and

distribution company, Poseur Ink (2003-2013). During that time Poseur Ink

published collections of Dukes’ journal comic Intentionally Left Blankand

the anthologies Side A: The Music Lover’s

Graphic Novel and Side B: The Music Lovers Comic Anthology. Poseur Ink

also distributed work by cartoonists Megan Rose Gedris, Colleen Frakes, Box

Brown, Josh PM Frees, and Ed Brisson.

 

During that same decade, Dukes also ran the custom badge/button

website Mod Buttons where she created custom merchandise for other

artists/companies such as: NIS America, John Fluevog Shoes, Saddle Creek

Record, and VampireFreaks.

Rachel is currently settled in Los Angeles where she

self-publishes comics and comic anthologies. She is thankful for coffee,

gingham, and readers like you.

 

We went all

over the place with this interview man, and I think it’s because Rachel was an

indie publisher just like me for so long, and she’s gone through some things

that I’m just going through now, like the idea that there is no gatekeeper, and

then the idea that you are suddenly looked upon as the gatekeeper. I still

can’t tell you how weird it is that I get submissions and people see me as an

authority in this space.

Rachel got

to where she is today not only because she’s talented, but also because she

just did it. She didn’t wait to become an awesome artist, she started her first

webcomic years before she was “qualified” to do so. And she started making

minicomics because she thought they were cool. And she made an anthology

because she and her friends wanted to work together. And it was well received.

Well received enough that people like Jeffrey Brown (Clumsy, Star Wars) graced

her second anthology.

She’s been

submitting for anthologies forever, and she knows that you have to submit to

hundreds of places to be accepted at one, especially where you are starting

out. I love that Rachel doesn’t take any of that personally. She knows

rejection is a part of the game, and she knows that just because somebody

rejects you today doesn’t mean that they will reject you in a year, and it

definitely doesn’t mean they don’t like you. It probably means you weren’t a

good fit for that project.

I don’t know

where that came from, but it’s not luck. However, hard work can look like luck

to an outsider. Did she happen to be in the right place at the right time?

Sure. But that’s because she was in the right place at the wrong time or wrong

place at the wrong time even a lot more times. One of the things I always

preach is that you have to show up. You have to be there, and you have to

outlast the other girl.

There are

people who are more talented and better than you that will give up, but if you

keep going you can make it. We talk in business about runways, which is how

much money you have left. I like to tell me wife that I know Wannabe Press and

BOA are good ideas. I just need them to take off before the runway ends.

Another

thing she hit on and hit on over and over was this idea of her friends being

successful, and I think that’s so important, because her friends weren’t always

that way. She had a friend circle, much like most of you, that wanted to do

something. They weren’t working on comics full time. They weren’t

professionals. They just wanted to do things. She banded together with them for

her first anthology, and boom, years later many of them are working

professionally.

She told a

story of looking at one of her friends a couple of years ago and saying “We are

now the industry. How did that happen?” I think that’s so cool because I feel

the same way. A lot of my friends are now working in the industries we came up

aspiring too…and all because I surrounded myself with passionate people who wanted

to do something.

We ended by

talking about just doing things, and asking for what you want. This isn’t

asking for permission. It’s asking people to join you in something awesome. For

instance, Rachel posted the first Frankie comic as a joke. It was on a break on

her thesis from grad school. And it immediately went viral. But she wouldn’t

have known people liked it if she didn’t put it out there and ask people about

it.

It’s hard to

be vulnerable as an artist, but Rachel is about to handle that line between

creative and business, tough yet able to put herself out there at her most raw.

There are thousands of things she’s done that didn’t work. However, by putting

it all out there she was able to find what did and work on some of the coolest

books out there like Steven Universe!

Find us on Itunes.

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you can do to make sure we reach more people.

You can find

her at frankiecomics.com or mixtapecomics.com, and she’s across social media as

@mixtapecomics. Thanks for listening and thank you Rachel for being on the

show!

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Earlier this week on Medium I promised a deep dive into planning your career, using the example of a woman I met on a flight back from Vegas. You can read that intro article by clicking here.

Basically, I was on a flight and met a model and host who you would recognize if you saw her face, but maybe not if I said her name. She is the kind of minor celebrity you meet all the time in LA. Like all minor celebrities, she wants to take the next step in her career.

We talked for the hour flight from Vegas to LA, and eventually, I asked her who she wanted to be. Without blinking, she said Giuliana Rancic, a host on E! who interviews celebrities. That’s what she wanted to be, an interviewer and host.

That might sound like a pipedream, but for somebody of her status and celebrity, it’s not that big a leap from where she was to celebrity interviewer, especially when you take into account that she knows lots of celebrities from hosting events at night clubs and around the world.

So I asked her. “What are you doing to move from where you are to where you want to be?”

She was stumped. It’s not uncommon, most people don’t even know where they want to be, let alone are making conscious choices to get there. Luckily, I had a couple glasses of wine in me and I was feeling pretty good about life, so I broke it all down for her, the steps to go from modeling and hosting club events to interviewing celebrities and hosting television shows on a massive scale.

And since I only have one day to record this between flying in from Vegas and out from Awesomecon, this feels like the right topic to cover for you. So here it is, the step by step guide to getting from where you are to where you want to be.

Step 1: Figure where you are

Most people don’t take this step seriously, but it’s really important. There are skills that you currently have that will serve you well in wherever you are going. Whether it’s logistics, or budgeting, or writing or something else. You need to make a list of your hard and soft skills that you currently have.

Step 2: Decide who you want to be.

The next step is deciding the celebrity avatar you want to embody. Every celebrity has a different thing. Tony Robbins is a very different celebrity than Rachel Ray who is a very different celebrity than Bruce Willis. You need to pick a specific celebrity that you would be like if all things were equal.

Step 3: Make a list of all their hard and soft assets, then compare them to yours.

Next, we are going to compare their hard and soft assets with yours. Some of them might be internet celebrities. Some might be great on camera. Still others might be great on radio. You need to know where they are strong and where they are weak. Honestly, this does two things. First, it shows you what you need to work on and what skills you need to acquire in order to be your ideal.

Second, it shows you if your celebrity avatar is reasonable. Look, I’m not going to be Rachel Ray for many reasons. I don’t know how to cool. I’m not folksy. I’m not great explaining things on camera. I could be Anthony Bourdain though because I love to travel, eat weird things, and talk with people.

Even though those two celebrities are both foodies, they are very different in hard and soft skills.

Step 4: Plot Your Celebrity's Career Path

Now that you have their strengths and weaknesses plotted, you need a direction. So it’s time to get in front of a computer and plot the career trajectory of your celebrity avatar. You need to see where and when they make their moves, so you can make a plan in order to make similar moves.

Step 5: Work on the skills you need

This is probably the hardest part because you will need to make a list of the skills that you need (along with those you already have) in order to get where you want to go. You might need to learn how to cook or take an on-camera class. You might need to take writing seminars. Whatever it is, before you move on to step 5 you need to acquire some base level skills.

Step 6: Exploit every skill you have in order to boost your recognition

Now here is where you bring your skills to bear. If you are a great coder you can make a killer website. If you are amazing at marketing, you can bring people to your site. If you have celebrity friends, you can use them to help promote your product (or be on your show).

Step 7: Keep working toward that goal

By having a celebrity goal in mind, you will be able to make a road map for success. You will be able to know what projects to follow and which projects to move away from. Remember, most of these celebrities have multiple streams of fame, but they broke in with a very specific niche. You need to follow that initial niche until success.

And that’s the general breakdown. Obviously, this was a very, very brief overview. I go through more when I train you one on one. Just head over to www.thebusinessofart.us/consultation and book your free session to move your career forward today.

The great thing about this method is you can pick any celebrity, from Steven Hawking to Mark Zuckerberg to Kurt Vonnegut. It’s better to pick somebody more current, but since knowledge is ubiquitous you can make it happen with just about anybody from today or the past.

I will say that you will need to make changes. This won’t necessarily be a straight line. You might find another celebrity fits you better. You might find that a different field fits you better. However, you don’t need it to be perfect to get started. The first three steps of this exercise take a couple hours of reflection before you can get started and move forward.  A good plan executed is better than a perfect plan unrealized.  

If you like this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review it by clicking here.

Today on the show we have Christie Shinn. Christie is a fantastic artist. Her books are weird and wonderful.

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She has worked on ‘DISintegrate’, ‘Caligula’ and San Diego Comic-Con 2015 story ‘Today’ in Bare Bones publication ‘Pocket Book Heroes’, Self-Published - ‘Sepulchre’ and ‘Personal Monsters: A Compendium of Monstrosities of Personality for San Diego Comic-Con 2015’. Cover for 'Kickstarter for the Independent Creator' for M. Holly-Rosing. *http://www.horatorastudios.com/#!artist-cv/c21xa

She is also experienced in video games, fashion, beauty, web, and tech. She’s really built a really cool career and I had her on to talk about it. Boy did she make an amazing guest.

In fact, everything she said in about the first minute of the podcast framed the whole conversation we had. She talked about pushing and pulling work, cutting people out of her life, and putting work out there even if it scares you.

We started by talking about what pushing vs. pulling work meant and how it leads to people’s success. Christies believes that even though you don’t have to be as passionate about client work as your own personal work, you will always work better on things that you are passionate about. If you aren’t passionate, then the work shows.

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I had this similar experience with a recent book I wrote. I wasn’t 100% behind is, and it showed in the work. It also took me forever to finish the book. I’m used to 5-10k words in a day once I get going, and I was lucky to do 1k, and that was pulling teeth.

Christie puts a big premium on working with somebody she can collaborate with. She wants to be able to communicate with them and feel heard. This is so important even if you are paying an artist. It’s not just your project anymore. You are paying for their experience and knowledge as much as their artistic ability. So it’s bad business to discount it or treat them just as a contractor.

You also risk turning off the artist if you don’t involve them in the collaboration. Especially on a long term project this is critical. You need the buy-in of everybody if you want to have amazing output.

We also talked about putting stuff out there even if it scares you. I loved when Christie talked about being miserable not putting stuff out there, so she decided it was better to just put it out there because she couldn’t be worse than miserable.  

But the crux of our conversation was on cutting people out of your life and the power of positive thinking. This is not a mindset show, but mindset has so much to do with business.

If you keep negative people in your life, it will lead you into a spiral of negativity. You will think your work sucks, and stop putting new stuff out.

However, if you surround yourself with positive people who encourage you and raise you up, that leads to good things happening.

We talked specifically about shows, where thinking about the positive always leads to more sales. If you think about how you aren’t making any money, less people will come to your table, and you won’t be as engaging to them, and they will walk away, and you will make less money.

However, if you are instead focused on the positive and how you are talking to people that are responding to your work, you will end up making more because your passion shows through.

I tabled next to Christie @ Zinemelt in March, and I can tell you she was hustling. She put books in people’s hands and smiled as they asked her questions. She seems so interested in what they had to say, and at the end of the day people bought her stuff.

I love this mindset shift, and it’s one I use all the time being a relentlessly negative. Focusing on the people that respond to your book, and nurturing those, is such a great way to have more fun.

But cutting negative people out isn’t easy. It’s even less easy to see yourself in that negative light, especially when we start out. When we start out, we are naturally going to attract people who think we can’t do things. In fact, most of your friends will think you are crazy, especially if they have stable jobs with stable incomes. There will be some of them that even resent you for showing them there is another way.

However, there will be people you have unbridled encouragement. They will buy your projects, but more importantly they will be cheerleaders. Those are the people you need to gravitate toward, because as artists we are full of self-doubt. If we allow those negative people to get into our lives, we will be in a spiral of self-hatred that will lead us to having worse or no output.

However, if we focus on the positive people then we will be encouraged to make more because they will think we can do anything. Christie’s book Personal Monsters was her attempt to cut these negative people out of her lives, and I encourage you to check it out.

Christie also told me about the quarter system, which I loved. The basic idea is that 25% of people will love you, 25% will grow to love you, 25% will like you and grow to hate you, and 25% of people will just hate you off the bat.

So it doesn’t make sense to focus on the last 50%, when there is 50% who love the heck out of your work. This is definitely the most “self-helpy” episode we’ve ever done, but this mindset shift is sooo important.

Check out Christie’s website @ http://www.horatorastudios.com/ or follow her on Instagram or twitter @horatorastudios.

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Sometimes you have to jump even if you don’t have a parachute. I know because it’s happening to me right now.

If you’ve been listening to the show then you know we are profitable, even if barely so, but it’s been a struggle to get through most months because our production costs are so high.

Right now we are paying $6/book and selling them for 1 for $20, 2 for $30, or 3 for $40 at shows. If you look at that profit margin, it’s not very good.

Max we are making 3.5x our margins. Since we have con costs and operational costs, or profit was non-existent even if we sold a TON of books.

A good, nice, healthy profit margin is 10x production costs. If you can 10x production costs, you are going to be able to make a decent profit after operational costs, at least at scale.

Scale is when you grow your business over time. That growth is scaling your business.

So long story short, we had to make a change. A big change. If we are going to be successful, we had to somehow find a way to either charge more for books, make them for less, or both.

In order to do that, we had to order a mass quantity of books. See, short run books are expensive. However, if you can order more books then you can get that cost down significantly.

We found a printer who can do that. We found a printer who can get Hardcover book costs down to $3/unit AND we can sell those hardcovers for 1 for $30 or 2 for $40 at shows. So now we are spending less per book AND charging more for them.

That’s a twofer!

But in order to do that we need to spend THOUSANDS of dollars more than we have right now. We already talked about our profit margin being razor thin, and this dips us far into the red. Far enough into the red we can’t even see black anymore.

We can’t afford it, but we had to do it. We have to do it if we want our business to succeed. Any business hits this moment at least once if not several times. In order to scale even a creative business, you need to take risks.

Now, if this doesn’t pay off I’ll have several thousand books and a huge debt. But for me that’s worth it at this moment because I sell a lot of books at cons and I know if I can charge more and pay less then I will be able to make more money at shows. If I can make more money at shows, I will be able to move from slim profit to healthy profit, and instead of teetering we can grow.

But it’s a risk. A calculated risk but a risk none the less. Is it time for you to take a risk? I don’t know. I can’t say. I would love to talk with you about it through our new FREE strategy calls @ thebusinessofart.us/consultation though.

I will say that saying you don’t have money isn’t an excuse, because no business ever has money. Every business is funneling their money into growing their business whether they make $2 of $2 billion. There are so many ways to take calculated risks. Some risks are worth it, and others aren’t.

It’s tough to know the difference, because even the best risks can fail while even the worse can pay off. The trick is in talking the most risks with the best chances of paying off, because over time they will work out more than taking gambles.

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