The Complete Creative

Find us on itunes here. If you love the show

please review, rate, and subscribe.

Today on the show we have Alex Echols. On top of being a

writer, Alex is also a coach and a marketer. So he knows online marketing more

than most of our guests.

He’s developed his ideal client avatar, built an audience,

and has a team working with him to launch products. This is a much more

business focused interview than we normally do because Alex, well he knows

business. Here’s his bio straight from his website alexechols.com:

Earlier in his professional career, Alex helped build several

multi-million dollar entertainment brands (The Dark Knight, Shrek, Harry Potter 6),

but these days, that’s not what gets him to jump out of bed each morning.

Today, he is best-selling

author, speaker and mentor for millennial entrepreneurs.  His biggest

passion is helping people to create epic online businesses based on their

passions with Ultimate Biz Builders. By living out his

dreams and impacting others, he hopes to inspire millions throughout the world

to do the same (or bigger).

 

The best-selling author of Abundance Now and the co-author of ‘the

Secret,’ Lisa Nichols says that Alex’s bestselling book, The Two-Week Notice(http://amzn.to/1JjWiZ8), is “your guide to

unapologetically stepping into your greatness in your business and life.”

 

Throughout his career, Alex has been blessed to learn from some of

the world’s top entrepreneurs, business leaders, coaches and political leaders,

helping him to build and share his message with the world.

He has spoken about pursuing a

passion-based life at Fortune 500 companies, conferences, universities and

leadership development programs, and he writes about personal growth and how it

fits into millennial entrepreneurship.  His writing has been published on

Under30CEO, Addicted2Success, ThoughtCatalog, Prsuit, among many others.

He is a proud graduate of

Vanderbilt University and can be found traveling the world sharing his message

and living a life of deliberate intention and purpose.

 

I’m going to be honest with you, if you come here for the

discussions about creativity, like we did with the fantastic Lila Ash, or for

long form discussions about how to build a career in the arts like we had with

Les Garner, this is a very different type of episode, but I think it’s one of

our strongest. Alex is a master at the game of building a creative career.

What I love most about Alex is that he wants to show you

that it can be done from just a couple of steps ahead of where you are right

now. Most marketers or marketing books talk about million dollar launches and

mastering all the things, but not Alex. Alex knows the hustle because he’s

still in it.

I love this idea because it’s what I try to bring to this

show. I want to show you who to aspire to be, but I also want to show you boots

on the ground, people doing it right now.

We started our discussion really focused on the ideal client

avatar, and Alex showed me something I never thought of before. He showed me

that I was thinking of avatars only one sided. While an ideal client avatar is

important to have, it’s also essential to know you are the ideal client for

other people and the ideal people aspire to be like. That two way street was

really eye opening for me.

Then he showed me how to go about making an ideal client

avatar, which is very different than the way I made mine. He says to make a

circle in the center of a page, and fill the corners with the hopes, dreams,

strengths, pain points, and weaknesses of your avatar. This is so important to

find, because otherwise you are flailing, trying to find out who wants to

receive your message.

I shared with him that what I coach is to find your ten most

engaged Facebook friends and basically interview them about why they respond to

your message. They are your first ideal clients.

We really dug deep into his book, Two Week Notice, too,

which you can find on Amazon by clicking

here. The crux of his book is that Alex called two of his friends who all

went from working corporate jobs to entrepreneurship and they made a book about

what it’s actually like to quit your job and how to build your empire.

I love this idea so much. As I talked about before so many

books are written from people at the top of the mountain. Those books are

essential reads, but it doesn’t do much for people at the bottom of the

mountain trying to climb it. There aren’t lots of actionable plans people can

use in the moment. That’s where this book is different. I highly recommend clicking

here and trying it out.

There is so much meat in this interview, I feel like I should

quit typing and just let you listen. If you want actionable advice about how to

build your audience, find your ideal client, or get the creative juices

flowing, this is a must watch interview.

Alex talked about a really cool website to help you redirect

people back to your site from a retweeted piece of content. That is snip.ly. I tried it out and it’s pretty cool. If you want to

connect with Alex, head on over to www.alexechols.com.

And if you really like this show, please review, rate, and

subscribe to it on itunes here.

 

Thanks so much. I hope you enjoy this episode.

Russell

Stephen King is a loser

This is my 51st show, so bear with me for a minute before you throw a fit about me hating on a living legend. I do have a point I promise. I know it’s crazy to call Stephen King a loser. I mean that’s insane. He’s one of the most popular authors on the planet.

But he is a loser and I’ll tell you why.

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

Here’s the deal. Stephen King does very well for himself. He sells between 1-2 million copies of every book he writes. I mean every book. He could write a book that is titled I Hate All of You, and sell a million copies.

The man knows his way around the written word, and many people love what he has to say. But still, he is a loser.

Why?

Because even though he sells 2 million books, there are 7.4 billion people in this world!

Now, let’s just assume for a moment that every single one of those 2 million books is sold to a brand new customer. That means nobody is buying a second copy and libraries aren’t buying multiples either. This is a fantasy world of course because fans often buy dozens of books as do libraries.

Let’s also assume that half of the world’s population are old enough to buy a book. That’s 3.7 billion people on this planet that are old enough to buy a book.

Then, let’s remove the 800 million people who are illiterate out of that. So we have 2.9 billion people on this planet who can buy a book and are literate enough to read.

I’m going to be a chum and cut out another 900 million people to give us a nice round number of 2 billion people. Stephen King has a potential audience of 2 billion people.

And he only sells 2 million books. That’s 1/1000 of the population who buys his books. Which means that 99.9% of people in this world DON’T buy Stephen King books.

That’s pretty pathetic, right? Well not really. It’s actually amazing that .1% of the population DOES BUY his work.

And that’s really what I want to get at here. Stephen King doesn’t concern himself with the 99.9%. He concerns himself with the .1%. He isn’t worried that most people don’t like his work. He’s just trying to find the people that do.

And we as creatives should be doing the same. We need to stop focusing on all the people that won’t buy our work and realize that is just 1 in every 100,000 people does like our work we can have a very nice little career.

But in order to get 20,000 people who like our work we need to talk to all the people. We need to talk to as many people as possible. Most of them will turn their backs away, but if 1 in every 100,000 says yes then you’ll have 20,000 screaming fans.

But you can’t find that if you worry about rejection. So I want you to go out and talk to 100 people, and understand that 99 of them are going to say no to your work. However, one will say yes and you will light up their lives. That’s precious. That’s worth the rejection.

Today on the program we talk to Lila Ash. Lila is a LosAngeles based artist. Here is her bio straight from her website: www.lilaash.com:

I was born in 1989 in NYC and lived in Georgia and Los Angelesas a girl. In 2011 I graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design. Now, Ilive in sunny Los Angeles once again.

My cartoons and comics havebeen published in LA RECORD Magazine since 2012 and I have exhibited at MOCA inLos Angeles and at the Society of Illustrators in NYC.

I don’t know Lila that well. We met at Zinemelt a couple ofmonths ago and hit it off. Her art is incredible and she’s tabling at all theshows I love from Comicarts LA to LA Zinefest. I wanted to have her on to talkabout zines and making art, but we ended up taking a left turn and focusing oncreativity for almost the entire episode.

See, Lila is in a creative rut. She just finished an awesomeamount of work in the past two years and is trying to find her next project…butshe’s just not loving anything. She’s liking a lot of stuff, but there’snothing that is making her say FUCK YES!

I actually have a similar problem with my own work rightnow. I’m trying really hard to find something that I love, but the last twoproject I’ve worked on have fallen flat. I’ve completed one and am going tocomplete this new one, but there’s just nothing that’s making my heart sing. Iknow that might sound weird, but it’s true.

Lila is having a similar problem, and we dive deep into whythat happens and how we get out of it. There’s something about talking toartists that is so comforting. I think it’s because even though we’ve done 20episodes now, the artists all have the same problem. They are all tortured.They are all trying to find what moves them. They all are walking that fineline between art and business.

It’s really hard to find that perfect medium between workand art, especially when you rely on your art to survive. I know Lila has a dayjob now, but she wants this to work, and she’s finally starting to see somemoney from her art; real money. That’s tough to deal with. It’s tough tobalance making money with making art.

That is the focus of our conversation. It’s a littledifferent than most of our discussions, but I think it’s incredibly powerful.You can find like on Instagram @Secret_hotgirl and online @ www.lilaash.com.

Enjoy the episode.

Find us on Itunes. If you like the show please subscribe, rate, and review it. It’s

the #1 thing you can do to make sure we reach more people.

Today on the

program we have Bryant and Barbra Dillon, the amazing team behind Fanbase Press

(formerly Fanboy Comics). They just went through a rebranding to better align

their brand with their vision. Here’s what they are about, straight from the

source:

Fanboy Comics is all things geek! 

Founded in 2010 by Barbra and Bryant Dillon and Sam Rhodes, Fanboy Comics (FBC)

is a comic book publisher and an online community supporting other creators and

fans through daily reviews, interviews, and podcasts that span the pop culture

spectrum. 

FBC seeks to provide an outlet for

up-and-coming artists and writers with a desire to create new works and media.

By facilitating in-house collaborations and providing support and empowerment,

FBC hopes to enable the production of professional and marketable creator-owned

works. 

Fanboy Comics’ graphic novels, Something Animal, Identity Thief, The Arcs, Fearworms: Selected Poems, and Penguins vs. Possums, are available online at www.fanboycomics.net.

I make no

bones about how much I love both of these people. The fact that they gave me my

first positive review of Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter oh so many years ago

doesn’t hurt, but they are two of the most welcoming people I’ve ever met in an

industry full of welcoming people.

But that’s

not the reason I had them on the show. I had them on the show because they have

been doing things the right way since 2010, and they really embody everything I

teach creatives about how to build a business. Here are just a couple examples:

·        

They started

reviewing comics while they waited for the art on their first book Something

Animal to be drawn. That’s so brilliant. So often creatives wait until a

project is done before they start building an audience, but Barbra and Bryant

decided to get their community building happening immediately, even though they

didn’t have any product.

·        

Their

mission statement is really about helping indie and small creators, which gives

them a perfect niche market to focus their energy. Since they themselves are

indies they can speak the language of creation to creators. On top of that,

they build deep bonds with people starting out that can pay off when those

people blow up.

·        

They focus

on positivity. They don’t want a review on their site that is all bashing. They

want to make sure everything at least has constructive criticism. It’s so easy

to go negative with reviews, and focusing on giving constructive criticism is

something different that makes them stand out.

That’s just

a couple of examples of the kinds of nuggets they drop in this episode, but what

really got me jazzed was how their built their brand over time. They didn’t

wait for somebody to give them permission. They started reviewing stuff once a

week. Then they started podcasting. Then they started doing audio dramas. And

they started making comics. Nobody told them no, and frankly they didn’t ask.

That’s the

exact right attitude. But they went even further with it, because they had been

fans of comics their entire lives. They read comics. They studied comics. They

read review sites. They didn’t just go into it blindly. They were strategic

about what sort of business they started.

They told me

a story about how their first book, Something Animal, was going to be a short

film. However, budgetary constraints and time constraints forced them to look

another way, and since they all loved comics they decided to look into a medium

they all loved, which was comics.

This is

funny, because it’s the exact reason I got into comics. I was doing movies and

TV, with budgets ballooning to sometimes millions of dollars a minute, and my

manager at the time showed me comics. When I found out how much more affordable

they were to make and still get a fantastic product, I was sold. On top of

that, the artistry behind them had me enthralled.

I want to

take a second too, and mention how glowing they were about one of their

founders that left the company, Sam Rhodes. They talk very positively about how

their company would be nothing without him being there from the beginning. They

spent a lot of time on this around the 20-30 minutes mark, as we talked about

what it’s like to have partners.

I look at it

quite glowingly b/c I have no partners. I’m doing this myself with the help of

freelancers, and it always seemed like their partnership worked so well.

However, like anything the grass is greener on the other side. They were able

to scale faster b/c they had three people, but they also had to get consensus

from three people, and everybody had a different opinion on exactly what should

be done in order to make the best product.

Then we

finally moved into talking about their rebrand. Since 2010 they have been

Fanboy Comics, and a rebrand is incredibly hard to pull out. It should not be

considered lightly, and they mention how no company should constantly pivot b/c

then nothing will ever get done.

However,

like all their other moves I think this is a good one. See, Fanboy Comics

brands them a) as fanboys (of which there are many girls among other reasons)

and comics (which they are so much more, putting out a book of horror poetry

and doing an audio drama). By moving into Fanbase Press, they fix all of that.

First, they are the Press. Second, they are a publishing company (thus press)

so it works on two levels there. Additionally, they are still fans of things

which is the basis for their company. On top of all that, they build the word

BASE into their title, so people subliminally think of it as a base of

operations.

Having a

base of operations is the biggest thing you can have in your business. Social

strategy means nothing if you don’t funnel it back to a base of operations

where you can have your audience gather.

All in all,

I think if you had to pick a company that embodies the ideals of what I teach:

providing value, just doing it, building a fanbase the right way, you could do

much worse and not much better than Fanbase Press.

I will end

with this. What I think Fanbase does best, is exemplify the idea of providing

incredible value for their audience. They have an amazing ability to build

people that know, like, and trust them. Those are the three pillars before

somebody will buy from you. Bryant and Barbra are masters at that.

Find us on Itunes. If you like the show please subscribe, rate, and review it. It’s

the #1 thing you can do to make sure we reach more people.

Enjoy the show.

Russell

Today we have a very special episode. We are going to talk about the reasons the Kickstarter didn’t go as well as we would have liked. If you like this episode, please go rate, review, and subscribe to it on itunes by clicking here.

I know some of you are thinking "What the heck? Your Kickstarter funded and you are complaining? I would kill for $2,000 on a project!" I hear your concerns, but we expected to raise about $5,000 on this campaign and I've successfully run three before. Besides, we can always get better. This is me trying to get getting.  

Before we get to the 13 reasons that I think the Kickstarter failed to live up to it’s potential, let us say the good stuff.

We funded!

Yay!

We raised $2162 from 65 backers to make this project a reality. I love you all for backing. It’s because of our amazing fans that we were able to fund at all.

Here’s the thing. You helped us fund DESPITE our bumbling of this campaign. I mean we had 13 days where we raised $0. That’s horrible! I’ve never had a campaign go more than 1 day without funding at least $1.

We also raised from 65 people, which is under half our lowest total backers from the past three campaigns. However, we funded!

Now, let’s look at the ways we could have done better, because even though our campaign funding goal was $2,000 we thought that $5,000 was absolutely within our grasp.

I just ran a Kickstarter in February, which ended in March. Starting a new campaign in April is just too soon. I mean it’s too soon by a long shot. I would say you need at least 6 months between campaigns if you are looking to raise money. Now, you can do smaller campaigns quicker as long as you don’t care about raising a lot, or anything. The Kickstarter platform is to fund projects that need funding, and if you use it too much you are going to dry up the well. That doesn’t mean you can’t launch other products between those times, I just wouldn’t recommend using Kickstarter.

 

We didn’t do anything stuff like in the past campaigns. Kickstarter campaigns should be events. Books can launch on any platform, including Amazon. Kickstarter should feel like a convention experience online. There should be exclusives, and it should feel like everybody is working together to make something cool. This campaign was just a kind of flat campaign, minus the awesome artist doing some new promo images throughout.

 

Product-market fit with our own expertise.   None of us were kid’s book people and we weren’t active in parenting groups. I thought my market and audience would want the kid’s book just because they had kids, but that was not a valid assumption. We should have made a plan to get into parenting groups and start talking the book up for a month before the campaign at LEAST. Luckily we got pulled over the finish line by you awesome supporters.

 

We didn’t have a promotional plan. Honestly, my promotional plan was email our backers and they would support. Luckily they did enough to push us over the finish line, but that is absolutely not enough. It was my own hubris to think I didn’t have to push as much as other projects.

Time of year. We talk about this in our Free Kickstarter Course episode about The Best Time of Year to Launch, but April is a dead zone. I can’t really blame this b/c I’ve seen a couple of Kickstarter in mine and other spaces KILL it. However, April is traditionally a terrible time to launch a product.

 

The rewards were overpriced. The paperback probably should have been a $15 product instead of $20. The hardcover should have been $20-25 instead of $30. Even though I did my comps, talked to my audience, and found that $20 was acceptable, it was clearly at the high end of acceptable. I mean we sell paperback trades of comics for $20. In fact, I’m going to have to give more free stuff to people to make myself feel better about charging $20. I just don’t think that the value was there for $20. You have to listen to your gut.

 

I should not have been running the one running this campaign. I am not one of the creators of the book. I am the publisher. So often people asked me why I was running the campaign instead of them. For sure I will not be doing that again. I see why other publishers don’t run their own campaigns. People buy from the creators.

 

Children’s books are an ephemeral product and impulse buy. People need to touch and feel kid’s books. They need to see them in the marketplace and get recommendations from other people. None of us are known as kid’s book people. Even though the parent buys the book, the kid has to have a reaction to it. Without seeing that reaction, I can imagine many people were turned off.

 

The subject matter turned some people off.I knew that this would be a niche book. Lots of parents don’t like The Gas We Pass or other books like that. We are hoping it does well with comic people at cons.

 

The book wasn’t genre and it had nothing that would be a big draw. People like genre books online. If you make an apocalypse book you will sell big numbers, or a fantasy book. If the book has a public domain character or animals it will sell. You need to have something to ground the audience to make them understand what you are selling. Without that it’s a much harder sell that most people won’t back.

 

I should have had a prototype before the book launched. All our books are done before launch, but for this I really needed a prototype. The video probably should have included a kid being read the book to judge reaction, or it should have had us reading the book to the audience. That would have helped so much.

 

We didn’t update enough or involve the people that did back the book. Successful Kickstarters average 11 updates a campaign. We didn’t come close to that. You have to keep your audience engaged throughout the experience.

 

The category we picked isn’t one known for big audiences. Publishing isn’t a category lots of people browse through to find new stuff. People in the community don’t really use Kickstarter as their discovery vehicle of choice. Comics, films, and others do have a large community of people discovering their book, but not the publishing category.

 

So there you have it. 13 reasons why our Kickstarter didn’t perform up to our standards. Remember, we are so appreciative to all of you who supported. We are always looking to do better next time. If you like this episode, please go rate, review, and subscribe to it on itunes by clicking here.

Today on the

show we have Christine Hipp and Mom. No, not her mom, the artist Mom. Mom is

the head of the Woman’s Creator League and the Ladybug Creator Group which

meets every week at the Comic Bug in Manhattan Beach.

I had them

on mostly because they are launching a new anthology featuring all women

creators and artists featuring women’s empowerment and helping women find their

voice.

They don’t

have a theme for the book, but both Christine and Mom told me that just by

giving women the mic they got amazing stuff you wouldn’t expect women to write,

like a piece about pooping.

These are

two young artists, but two amazing ones too. Not only are they finding their

way, but they have a good head on their shoulders about what makes a great

comic.

The side

note of why I wanted them on the program is because they found their “tribe”. I

talk all the time about tribes and finding a group of people that are

like-minded. Sometimes those are Facebook groups. Sometimes they are friends.

Sometimes they are a group of people that meet in the same location and have

the same goals.

Mom and

Christine talked about how being in the Sketchy Bug group helped them find a

voice and give them a way to express themselves. More so, it gave them the

courage to show their work even when it was hard.

One of the

big things we talked about was the Ira Glass quote. You know THE Ira Glass

quote among all the amazing ones. The one that’s been animated dozens of

times. 

“Nobody tells this to people who are

beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into

it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple

years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has

potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game,

is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of

people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do

interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t

have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if

you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its

normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put

yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only

by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work

will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do

this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take

awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

Here’s the

thing with creative work, you have to do it. You have to do it even when you

aren’t good. Having people you respect to help mold your journey is such a

blessing, one that both Mom and Christine shared with me.

We also

talked a lot about zines, and how much I love zine culture because it allows

such a greater freedom of expression that standard comics. Even though I didn’t

know it at the time, Gherkin Boy was a very zine-y type of book influenced by

Devon McMindes of Thigh Man.

We talk

about a past guest, Rachel Dukes, and how she is able to do a webcomic and

print zines out as well, and how much I admire the ability to do something

avant guard and still find an audience.

What I love

about zines is that there is no judgement. Everything is art in zines, so even

if you suck at drawing, you can be accepted into this weird little community.

Even if you can’t draw, you can make something.

With zines,

and anthologies too, there is also a much wider diversity of people. In

mainstream comics you get a lot of white, middle class, dudes. In zines you

have everybody. I love that. Mom said it had to do with the counterculture

movement of the 70s, and how zines were rebellion against the mainstream

culture that shunned women and minorities.

I don’t know

if that’s true, but it really sounded good.

I loved the

long ranging conversation we had, and I think you will too. If you want to find

Mom, she’s online on tumblr, facebook and twitter @momcomics and Instagram @mom_comics.

You can find

Christine on twitter @thehippchipp, on tumblr @chipphopapopolis, and on

Instagram @chipp.endales. However, she says she’s going to change it all to

@christinehipp in the near future.

You can also

find the sketchy bug group and ladybug group on Facebook if you want to get

involved. And don’t forget to check out their anthology either! The release

party is May 11th!

Today on theprogram we have Lee Kramer. Lee is the President of Aftershock Comics. This ishis first podcast interview and he kicked its butt.

If you haven’theard of Aftershock comics, you will. They’ve only been publishing sinceDecember, but they’ve got a list of creators that will make you giddy.

Here’s theremissions statement: Launched in April 2015, AfterShock Comics is a comicbook company that combines the creative edge of an independent comic bookpublisher with the strengths and experience of a traditional powerhouse.

And boy dothey have the power behind the scenes. You might know Aftershock if you followcomics from the big splash they made hiring Mike Marts away from Marvel to betheir Editor-in-chief.

However, Leeand publisher Joe Pruett have been working on launching this company for years.You might know Joe as the Eisner and Harvey winning writer who wrote for tonsof book for Marvel, or his own publishing company Desperado which had dealswith Image and IDW.

Long storyshort, they have a lot of muscle behind them that legitimizes them. Enoughmuscle to land our good friend Paul Jenkins to create for them, along withEnnis (Preacher), John Layman (Chew), Brian Azzarello (Dark Knight III), Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti(Everything good in the world) among others.

That’sreally impressive for a small press publisher, but we’ve seen that before.There have been tons of publishers with tons of muscle, who get into the gamequick and flame out. They get some steam, make some deals, have some bigcreators, and in a couple of years they are gone.

And I wantedto talk to Lee about what makes Aftershock different. Boy did he deliver. Forthe first few minutes he rattles off his impressive lineup of books coming out.Every single one of them is a gem with a fine pedigree, but what I reallywanted to know is how he attracted such amazing talent, especially with thetrack record of indies coming into the space and flaming out.

What itcomes down to is really the idea of being a family with their creators andfans, treating them better than any other company does, and being publishingfirst.

Let’s behonest, most people get into comics to turn their books into movies and TV.That’s the main thrust of the company, and the comics are a byproduct. However,where Aftershock is different is in this idea that the comics come first. It’san idea that even Marvel and DC struggle with these days. It shows in a lot oftheir numbers.

Aftershockbelieves that in order to generate all that other interest, you must have apublishing company that works, and if you have that rock solid foundation allthe rest of it will come. I think this is an amazing idea, because it’s one wetry to implement with Wannabe Press. In fact, Aftershock sounds a lot likeWannabe Press with money backing them.

I actuallymet with a couple of producers recently and told them exactly that. I amfocused on making Wannabe Press the best publishing company it can be. If weget enough fans and people following us then the rest of it will follow.However, it won’t happen until we can get an audience built. And that onlymakes sense, when you think about it, because if you don’t have fans nobodycares. If they option your book you will get almost nothing from it. However,if you have some oomph behind you, then you are in a different ball game. Ifyou can show there is interest them you won’t only get offers, but those offerswill be much bigger.

It all comesdown to building the audience though, and focusing on doing your thing well. Ifyou are in the game to turn everything into a movie and aren’t in it for theprocess, people will see that and turn off.

This idea offostering your creators as a family is an incredibly valuable idea. In fact,the creators and fans are your most valuable commodity. They are the reason youwill be able to grow, and most indie publishers don’t see that. In fact, theybelieve the property is the most important thing, and end up taking on too manyproperties at the detriment of the creators.

Then thecreators get pissed and quit creating content. Without content the structurecollapses and there is nothing left. It’s a tale as old as time.

We alsotalked about building an audience, and he said something that rang so true forme. You have to rely on the weight of your creators first, and then once youare buoyed and people know you, then you can start to support the creatorsmore. It’s this idea that a rising tide lifts all boats. They started with thebiggest, baddest names first, and made sure that once they were establishedthey could lift up younger creators. I mean that is incredibly business senseto me.

Then we sortof shifted into this world of indie, and how can you stand out from the crowd.It comes down to just one thing, honestly. It’s about building your audience.If you have more audience, you will have more power and leverage. It’s not thatyou don’t need amazing content. That is a given. But the more you have onlinethe better chance you can be found and the more power you have when pitchingideas.

Aftershockdoes not take submissions at all. However, it’s important to see behind thecurtain and what they would look for from an indie creator. Bar none, it camedown to content. If you have content online then people can find you. So getout there and create.

If you wantto find Aftershock online, check out their Facebook page @ https://www.facebook.com/aftershockcomicsand on twitter @aftershockcomix.And of course their website is www.aftershockcomics.com.

They arebuilding a great brand and I can’t wait to see how high they climb.

Today on the podcast I had on Paul Jenkins, writer of all the things.Paul was the third employee on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, right when Eastman and Laird were about to explode into an empire. He’s worked with almost every known writer as an editor, and every artist as a writer. He’s written for Hellblazer, Spider-man, Batman, Inhumans (which won him an Eisner), and so much more…and that’s just on the comics side.

Paul is really a transmedia kind of guy. He works in every medium. Aside from writing movies, he’s written several video games including the Legacy of Kain, Twisted Metal Black and God of War series.Most recently, Paul is credited as writer on Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, created with RadicalEntertainment and The Darkness, created by StarbreezeStudios (source: Wikipedia).

On top of that he runs Meta Studios, and does his own creator owned comics Fairy Quest,which went on to raise $95,100 from 1,642 backers on Kickstarter, and is one of the prettiest books you’ve ever seen.

So long story short…Paul has some creds. And because of that we were able to go allover the map. He started by talking about his passion, which I found interesting…because he said he can find passion in anything. I love that idea,because it’s one that I use all the time. I hates marketing and sales before Istarted doing it, and by doing it I found something to love in it.

Paul’s big thing in that segment was in coming to work and doing it full force, and the idea that If you come full force at something, you’re going to be able to find something you love about it. Paul could choose anything to work on, and I’m sure he has people throwing projects at him, at least sometimes. He could phone it in, yet he still comes with the same work ethic that made his career.

Over and over it seems that these successful guys, talented as they are, come from a place of work ethic, and incredible work ethic. We saw this all the way back in the Les Garner episode and echoed in other episodes like Erik Lervold when he talked about every day being a fist fight.

These are incredibly talented guys, but there are thousands of talented guys. What separates the talent from the success is work ethic. It’s so much more important than talent. The world is littered with talented, lazy guys. If you can just outlast and out hustle, you will be a success.

Then we talked about Pixar’s 22 rules ofstorytelling, and how important they are. We touched on a lot, but mostly talked about endings, and how without an ending you have nothing. Lots of times people think they’ll figure out the ending as the go, but without an ending,Paul said, you are lost.

We also touched on some structure stuff. I talked about my way of designing a story and writing it sort of ends into the middle, where I take each issue and work from page 1 and page 20, toward page 10, and end on page 10-11.

What we really talked about though was whether writing comics gave him structure when he was writing his new novel, Curioddity,which I’ll plug now. Here’s the synopsis, pulled from Amazon.

Will Morgan is a low-budget detective after quitting his job and hardly ever has any work. When one day a mysterious man named Mr. Disndale, curator of an even more mysterious Curioddity Museum (a museum that houses legendary relics of history), visits him and asks him to find a wooden box made of teak, with a mother of pearl inlay that contains the world's largest sample of levity, Wil thinks it is all a joke. He accepts the task and before long finds a worthy substitute to meet Mr. Dinsdale's specifications.What Wil soon learns, however, is that there is a whole other world out there,a world he can only see by learning to un-see things, and in this world thereare people who want to close the Curioddity museum down. With the help of his new girlfriend Lucy, Wil will do everything he can to deliver on his promise to help Mr. Dinsdale keep the Curioddity Museum in business.

Curioddity is Paul Jenkin's debut novel...exciting, fast-paced, and uncanny. A must-read.

 

Honestly,when I asked we sort of skirted around the question, because I was much more interested in his answer. He told me that most novelists and screenwriters have a hard time in graphic novels because so much is unseen and unread. I’m  fascinated by that, because I found that comics made complete sense to me.

That’s when Paul dropped another truth bomb; he said it’s probably because I’m adaptable and not afraid to fail, so when I went into comics I was ready to figure out how to make it work.

And that made me think, because I always think that people are like me, but most people aren’t like me. They aren’t proactive, and in this business you have to be proactive. You have to be adaptable too. And when I went from movies to television to comic books, there was a comfort in that structure for me. I knew that every issue needed a cliffhanger, and every page and two page spread needed a cliffhanger, so I understood it all immediately, in fact I welcomed it.

Funny story,Paul blew me away when he told me writing for Marvel and DC is totally different, in that you can’t end every page on a cliffhanger. Why? Ads. You never know where ads are going to come, so you can’t rely on having every two page spread end on a beat. That’s something unique to creator owned books these days. The only way to guarantee you will get that beat you want is by doing a two page spread, because then you have to run the pages back to back.

I always wondered, with digital, why people still did so many two pages spreads, and now I think I have an answer. So when you write mainstream, you don’t have that freedom.

We also talked about Teenage Mutant Ninjas Turtles, and the phenomenon that accompanied it.TMNT is a violent book made for adults, and how it became a household name associated with children is fascinating. I’ll let you listen to the story Paul tells for yourself.

We ended on Paul talking about his creator owned books, like Fairy Quest, and indie vs.mainstream. I still don’t think it’s possible right now to break in the wayPaul did, basically by asking an editor for a shot, but I love that idea.

And it’s in that idea that I want to end: asking. Paul was an editor who wanted to be a writer. So what did he do? Asked an editor for a shot…and he made the most out of it. But even if he didn’t get the job, the worst that would have happened was a no from that editor.

I love asking. I love Amanda Palmer’s TheArt of Asking, and I’ve pretty much built my career on asking for things.It’s the only way I had Paul on the show. It’s the only reason I had successful projects. It’s the only reason we’ve had success at all, and the more I do these shows, the more through lines I see. One of them being that asking is one key to success. If you don’t ask, you’ll never know. 

Hope you enjoy the show. Go follow Paul on twitter @mypauljenkins.

Find us on Itunes. If you like the show please subscribe, rate, and review it. It’s

the #1 thing you can do to make sure we reach more people.

Today we have Jasmine Sandler on the show.

Jasmine is a digital marketing specialist and ad agency executive who

specializes in working with a lot of artists. We talked about a ton, but first

I want to let Jasmine talk about the show in her own words, straight from her

site:

Jasmine Sandler is a global keynote

speaker, trainer, author and consultant in Digital Marketing and Social Selling

for global organizations. She is the Founder and CEO of Agent-cy Online

Marketing, a Manhattan-based Online Branding agency, specializing in SEO since

2006. She has been named (2012, 2013, and 2014) as a Top 40 Global Digital

Marketing Strategist in the industry, Top SEO consultant on Twitter and Top 17

Digital Influencers in Content Marketing.

Jasmine has over 15 years’ client

Digital Marketing experience in helping corporations such as Citibank,

Intercall, Doublerock, ISO and countless others use the web to drive online

visibility and generate leads that have resulted in new business online. She

started, developed and sold a social network before social networking was a

widespread term.

As the lead Digital Marketing

Strategist for Agent-cy Online Marketing, Jasmine has led online marketing

programs in Web Design, Web Development, Search Engine Optimization, Pay per

Click Advertising and Online Marketing Campaigns, Social Media Marketing

Strategy and Online PR for B2B professional services companies. Currently, she

manages all SEO and Digital Marketing Strategy for the firm’s top clientele.

Jasmine has also consulted in the area

of Online Personal Branding for C-levels and Sales Directors for over 5 years.

Through her own developed process, she has helped global executives build, grow

and protect strong online reputation that have led to developed new business

for their organizations. She writes and trains C-levels on Personal Branding

at Fast Company and on her own website www.jasminesandler.com.

As a Digital Marketing Trainer, Miss

Sandler has developed and delivered workshops to corporations in the areas of:

SEO Basics, Advanced SEO Marketing Techniques, Lifecycle Marketing, Online PR,

B2B Social Selling, B2B Social Media Marketing Basics and LinkedIn Sales.

Particularly on LinkedIn, Miss

Sandler is well known by LinkedIn and by business professionals around the

world for her training programs in LinkedIn Sales. As a corporate LinkedIn

Marketing Consultant & Sales Trainer since 2011, she has trained

professionals from such organizations as: Northwest Mutual, Signature

Bank, Regus Corporation, Berdon LLP, Fox Rothschild LLP, KRS Management

Consulting, Emerge 212, Crown Advertising, Interactive Edge and

more. Jasmine is a LinkedIn Author of “Branding & Sales: The

LinkedIn Way”, a manual for using LinkedIn for Selling, as well as

multiple papers, reports, whitepapers and presentations on the subject.

She is a Lead Digital Marketing

Instructor for The Knowledge Engineers, The Marketing

Executive Networking Group, CEO Club International, Incisive Media, Search

Engine Strategies, PRNEWS, The Association of Strategic Marketing, The Direct

Marketing Association, Vistage International and countless

other B2B member-organizations.

She has been interviewed and is a

regular contributor on the subject of B2B Social Marketing and Sales to WPIX, NBC, PRNEWS Digital Guidebooks, SES Global Conference, OMMA,

The New York Times and other B2B media. She is a regular lead

contributing writing to LinkedIn Pulse, ClickZ.com and

SearchEngineWatch.com on Social Media and LinkedIn Marketing.

Prior to her career in Digital

Marketing, Miss Sandler was a B2B Solutions Sales Trainer for IBM Global Data

Services for a period of 5 years. She also spent several years as a Media Buyer

for Foote, Cone and Belding Advertising. Jasmine holds a dual MBA with the

highest honors in Marketing and Computer Information Systems.

Details of Jasmine Sandler’s Social

Media Marketing and SEO Training programs can be found on www.jasminesandler.com Follow Jasmine’s articles on

the LinkedIn Pulse platform to

learn the latest insights on using Social Media to drive sales. Information on

her next speaking engagements, services and client work is available at http://www.jasminesandler.com

Find us on Itunes. If you like the show please subscribe, rate, and review it. It’s

the #1 thing you can do to make sure we reach more people.

So as you can tell from her bio, Jasmine

knows a TON about online branding and marketing. The best part is she

specializes in helping artists, so her advice was really pertinent…especially

since most of us don’t have much money to invest in our online strategy.

Jasmine started with talking about how thing

have changed since she started in the Mid-90s. These are all things I say so you

don’t have an excuse anymore, and to make this look more attainable than ever.

·        

The bar of

entry lowered a ton since the 90s. I mean it used to cost thousands or even

tens of thousands to develop a website and get in front of people. Now, there

are templates online. There are low cost developer. You can do it all with a

few hundred dollars or less.

·        

Social media

was something that didn’t even exist a decade ago, at least not in a meaningful

way that can help your business. Since then, it’s possible to connect with

billions of people without spending a dime.

·        

Mobile also

allows you access to people much quicker than before. Mobile helps you connect

with your audience even more.

Jasmine told me that her personal brand is

about 70% time and 30% money, and she has an awesome brand. So you can imagine

what you can do with more time and less money. That’s what it’s always about

too. Life is all about exchanging time for money.

Then we got into talking about branding and

social strategy. To Jasmine, the most important thing is focus. You have to

know exactly what you are doing, who you are targeting, and where you want to

go. This is a long game. The good news is, all of this can be done online

through data mining social media and google. You can go to Google, type in your

favorite artists who you want to be like, and see where they are strong. Then,

you can build your audience and your focus from there

Jasmine brought up a good point too. She said

that online is all about storytelling, and we as artists and creatives are

storytellers. So really, we have a huge leg up on the competition and in other

businesses, because we know how to tell stories.

Then, she talked about the most important

part of social strategy, where to involve yourself. Did you know Behance was a

thing? Because Jasmine loves Behance and I never even thought about it much.

She says Behance is integral to a social strategy. Then she also brought up

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Youtube. I would through Twitch in

there as it seems to be building up some steam.

You can find Jasmine @ www.JasmineSandler.com and on twitter @ @Jasmine_Sandler. She’ll

also be speaking @ the Long Island Business Expo on April 21st at

Hofstra University and Surtex on May 15-17 at the Javits Center.  

And she offered all of us a free gift, which

is the first quarter of her Intro to Social Branding Course…absolutely free!

You can find it here!

We had a great conversation, and this doesn’t

even skim the surface. I hope you enjoy it! Find us on Itunes. If you like the show please subscribe, rate, and review it. It’s

the #1 thing you can do to make sure we reach more people.

Today we talk to Nathan Lueth, illustrator, artist, and hustler. Here's what I love about Nathan, he has no shame in doing all of the things. Most artists look down their nose at doing caricatures or logo design. Not Nathan. That's the basic of Nathan's business. 

And business is good. He can make $100+/hr churning them out at country fairs, and he's become a bit of an institution at these fairs. People come from an hour away or more to get him to draw them. It's pretty insane, and it's a line of business most people won't even consider. 

Nathan makes his living being good, punctual, and nice. Yes, you only need 2 out of 3, but he's got the whole package, which is something I preach all the time. 

Look, you aren't going to start out being good. However, you can always be punctual and nice. There isno reason not to be those two things. And then, when you get really, really good you can still be nice and punctual. 

Then, you won't just getsome jobs. You'll get all the jobs, and build lifelong clients, and that's something Nathan comes back to over and over again. He has these couple of clients he has worked with for years. 

That’s where he build his business, on these few clients that have consistently given him work over the years. In fact, he’s the first guest I have interviewed that specifically told me he still works with his first two clients.

That’s incredible. Most clients feel that they outgrow their clients, but not Nathan.Nathan is still doing caricatures and churning out temporary tattoos as if it was his first day on the job.

That part he’s got down pat, but he also spends his time searching for new clients,never satisfied with what he has and knowing that at any time the work can dry up.

And that’s what makes Nathan special. Most people either get a couple of clients and coast, or they think they have to find hundreds of clients. However, it’s a mixture of both new clients and existing that make a successful career.

Then,we got into talking about his webcomic Impure Blood, which was a finalist in the old Zuda contests back in the day. If you don’t know Zuda, they were a digital imprint of DC that I absolutely adored. They were years ahead of their time. The recent Kickstarter success Black had some Zuda guys on the team.

When he didn’t win the contest, he didn’t stop though. Instead he and his wife(Impure Blood writer Nadja Baer) went out and started their own webcomic, which now has over 300 pages done, and will be wrapping up at 400 pages.

Their site gets 700 unique visitors a day on the strength of the story, the writing,and the art. They’ve parlayed their success into printed trade editions oftheir books, with three available at shows.

I’m so excited for our conversation. I hope you love it.

You can find Nathan at http://nathanluethillustration.com/Nathan_Lueth_Illustration/Portfolio.htmland Impure Blood at http://impurebloodwebcomic.com/