The Complete Creative

Burton Gray is a fine artist specializing in digital art. He moved away from oil and traditional media years ago, and for the last two years has lived in the digital world exclusively. His digital paintings are hauntingly original and his style is unique and refreshing. 

Honestly, I brought him on because in my world there is a debate raging on about selling unlicensed prints, and the pro argument talks about nothing selling as well as stolen characters. Well, Burton basically destroys that argument in this podcast. His business is based not just on originals, but wildly original originals. 

Check out his work @ www.burtongray.com, and enjoy the show.

There seemsto be a common misconception out there that creating a podcast is reallyexpensive. Well that’s just not true, and I’m going to show you today how tostart a podcast for $221 right now.

Don'tforget to subscribe and rate on itunes!

I know thisisn’t our usual episode, but so many creatives have asked me about this exactthing that I feel that I need to talk about it. Besides, starting a podcast isone of the best ways to grow your business for a couple reasons.

1. It gives you immediate authority in theniche you are looking to target. We’re notgoing to talk about format in this episodes, but rest assured if this goes wellI will have a follow up episode in the future.

2. Podcasts allow you to contact influencersin your space to whom you would otherwise not have access. I can’t tell you how many amazing people Iwas able to meet and connect with specifically because I had a podcast.

3. It allows you access to your fans and theability to give them incredible value for free. One of the keys to success is providingincredible value, and a podcast allows your fans and potential fans to get thatinformation in one of the most intimate ways possible: by allowing you accessto their earbuds.

Those areall great ways to start a podcast, but the best one is the unwavering desire towant a podcast. Podcasts are tons of work in booking guests, and creatingquestions, and marketing something new. They are so worth it though. I lovethis podcast in a way I never thought I would, and can’t see my life withoutit.

But I’mcheap. I wasn’t about to spend $1000-$3000 setting up a podcast though. Thatwould be crazy. I wanted to hack the system and find the cheapest way to getstarted and sound professional.

So below isthe exact set-up I use for my podcast. I’m not advocating this for anybodyelse. I’m just relaying the exact information as I’m using it to help you cutcosts by thousands of dollars and actually make your podcast a reality.

And I’mgoing to do it for $221. Let’s put $221 on the big board.

AMOUNT LEFT: $221.

I should saybefore I get started that I’m in the USA, and these numbers might be differentin other countries. This is still the CHEAPEST way to launch your podcast. Note:This is assuming you have a computer decent enough to run all of theseprograms. This is also only for the first year.

Don'tforget to subscribe and rate on itunes!

AMOUNT LEFT: $221.

STEP 1: MICROPHONE - The first thing you are going to need for apodcast is a microphone. I highly recommend the Blue Yeti.

The Blue Yeti is what most podcasts without enormous budget use. It is prettyobjectively the gold standard of bootstrapping podcasts like The Business ofArt. What’s great about this mic is there are four settings, gain control, andvolume control so you can use it for multiple people, just yourself, or anycombination in between.

Right nowthe BlueYeti is $109 on amazon, but I have seen it for under $100.

If you don’twant to go baller, you can also get the BLUE SNOWBALL for $50.00. The Snowball is also by Blue andI know plenty of podcasts that use this one. It’s only designed for one personand doesn’t have quite as good audio quality as the Yeti, but still a solidchoice.

For thesepurposes I’m going all in and buying a Yeti. You can also buy a pop filter forunder $10. I like this one. You can also buy a shock mount and a boom stand, but for thisexercise we’re not gonna buy any of that.

AMOUNT SPENT: $110

AMOUNT LEFT: $111

STEP 2: RECORDING GEAR – Once you have your dope microphone, you canset off into the wild world of recording. If you are going for perfection thenyou could buy a travel recorder, equalizer, and a bunch of other gear, butwe’re doing this the cheapest way possible, right? So here’s what I use:

Travel Recorder – My smart phone. That’s right. When I go tolive shows and do on the road interviews I use my iphone with an app called Recorder Plus. It’s how I used to record my audio before Istated podcasting for everything. This is FREE.After I’m doing recording I just email the files to myself. Note: if you aredoing that this exports a file not supported by Audacity, so you have to do somefree conversion tool you can find online.

In Studio Recording – When I’m at home, I use Audacity to record all my intros and outros, as wellas this episode. Sometimes I also bring my computer on location with me and useAudacity there as well. This is a free, relatively easy to use program. Thereis a learning curve, but there are also guides on Youtube to walk you throughset-up.  

Inadditional to Audacity, you need something to record guests. All my guests areremote and call in using Skype. Skype is free to call between Skype names, but you can pay $2.99to get unlimited domestic calling to phones (again, only in the US). I havethis, but only because some of my guests have terrible wifi.

Skypedoesn’t allow you to record audio in app, so I use MP3 SKYPE RECORDER to recordeverything. So far we’ve recorded 40 episodes and it hasn’t failed me yet,knock on wood. This is also free!

Because Ihave so many different USB plugs (computer, microphone, etc) I needed a 4 portUSB adapter to fit everything. I chose this one which is about $10, but you don’t need this. It is absolutely aluxury, but an amazing luxury.

Becausewe’re going for the cheapest way possible, I going to say you can get all ofthis for FREE!

AMOUNT SPENT: $0

AMOUNT LEFT: $111

Don'tforget to subscribe and rate on itunes!

STEP 3: MUSIC AND LOGO – Now you have all your gear. You can record atwill! However, you are probably going to at least make it sound nice with somemusic and have a cool logo right? If you don’t want to beg your friend or hirean artist, there are a couple resources that work really well.

First, ifyou google ROYALTY FREE MUSIC + GENRE, you will find scores of instrumentaltracks for very cheap in the genre you see fitting with your podcast. Whetherit’s rock like WTF with Marc Maron, or Weird Barbershop Quartet like You Madeit Weird, or techno explosion like The Tim Ferris Show, you can find somethingyou like for under $10. I spent a grand total of $15 on music by using thismethod, and only because I bought three tracks to test. I wanted chiptunesmusic like the Start-Up podcast.

I’m going toassume you can find something similar for around what I paid for 3 tracks. SoI’ll say you can find a track for $15.

Then, itcomes to graphics.

What’s greatabout graphics is there are programs out there that make you look awesome.Whether it’s Canva for PC,Phonto for Android/OS, or Typorama for IOS, you can find something that makes you look like a boss.I did my logo on Phonto forFREEEEEE! It took me about 10 minutes. You can spend a few bucks to unlock someawesome extras, but I’m going to assume you will use the free version like me.

AMOUNT SPENT: $15

AMOUNT LEFT: $96

STEP 4: PODCAST HOSTING – There are dozens of choices when it comes towebsite hosting, including self-hosting, but I didn’t want to deal with that. Iwanted somewhere who would syndicate out to as many places as possible. Yousee, itunes and others do not host podcasts. Oh no. They only pull from podcastfeeds on other sites, like Podbean.

If you gothe self-hosting route, you’ll have to make sure everything is perfect on yourend before submitting to itunes, and it’s still going to cost you money to geta site and a theme. If you are looking for a wordpress site, I highly recommendBluehost with the Podcaster theme. Bluehost allows you do one click Wordpress install ina snap and it’s cheap. I love it.

However, Ihost everything with Podbean because I didn’t want the hassle. I wanted to make sure thateverything was syndicated properly because this was my first podcast ever. Theonly reason I got another site is because sponsors asked for it. Podbean costs$8/mo, which is on the high end. If you want to get a theme and a site you arelooking at about $6 for Bluehost and $50 for the Podcaster theme. There are other choices out there forhosting as well.

I’m going tosay you go with Podbean because who needs that hassle.

AMOUNT SPENT: $8 x 12 = $96.00/yr

AMOUNT LEFT: $0

And thereyou have it, a fully functional podcast for only $221 set-up cost. Now, you’llhave to spend $100/yr in recurring costs, but even in 20 years that’s less thanmost people will have spent just to set up their podcast initially!

After youget set up, then you can talk syndication to other networks and actuallymonetizing this bad boy.

I hope youenjoyed this. If you did please sound off in the comments. Don't forget to subscribe and rate on itunes!

Russell

This week's featured guest is Afif Ghannoum. Afif works in consumer products, specifically oral germ care. His company Oasis Consumer Healthcare is in almost every retailer you can imagine and he's written a book called The Napkin to Shelf Blueprint: A Step-by-Step Guide to ACTUALLY Turning Ideas into Amazing Consumer Products, which is available at Bulk Apothecary. Honestly, that last part is why I had him on the show. The idea to focus your retailer outreach on a place no books are really being sold is ingenious to me. He's using something called the Blue Ocean Strategy here, which is the idea that if everybody is fighting for the chum in one area (red ocean), you should focus where nobody else is b/c that is where you are going to find your best customers. I love that idea, and it's something we have been looking into for a while, and will be doing more of in the future. You can find Afif on Facebook @ From Napkin to Shelf and online @ The Napkin to Shelf Blueprint. Enjoy the episode.

Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review us on itunes.

Good morning wannabes and creators! Welcome to another hard

lesson from your friend Russell Nohelty. I hope we are friends at least.

Today I want to talk about an adage that’s been thrown

around a bunch of times in podcasts I listen to: FOCUS. Or more accurately

F.O.C.U.S.

Have you ever heard of it before? Probably not unless you

listen to tons of business podcasts. It comes from one of my favorite

podcasters, John Lee Dumas. John started Entrepreneur on Fire, one of the most

popular entrepreneur podcasts in the world. If you are liking what I’m putting

down, JLD is a huge influence on what I do.

Except that his is rigidly formatted and my show is very

loose, and his is 30 minutes and mine is an hour, and he asks the same

questions every time and I pull questions seemingly out of thin air.

But I love his authenticity. He really, really loves helping

people. You can tell with every single word he says that he’s just digging what

he’s doing, and his audience is digging him.

Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review us on itunes.

His big saying, and he talks about it almost every episode,

is F.O.C.U.S. or Follow One Course Until Success. His basic premise is that you

should niche down and concentrate on one course until it bears fruit.

And it’s great advice, as long as you have a course that is

going to be successful. However, that has not been the case for my career. In fact,

usually it’s more like F.M.C.U.F. or Follow Many Courses until Failure.

And that is a recipe for failure. You will very rarely

succeed if you don’t niche down. However, if you are starting out you won’t

know what you really love UNLESS you follow many paths.

Look, I talk about this all the time. I started as a

photographer, then became a DP, then a director, then a writer, then a sales

person, and an entrepreneur. But I didn’t know what I was doing in any of those

fields for a long while.

Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review us on itunes.

In fact I did follow the path of a photographer single

mindedly, then a DP, then a director, and finally a writer. And even though I

didn’t succeed at writing at first I totally kept going with it while I focused

on learning sales to augment and supplement the rest of my writing/creating.

See, I don’t think either of those paths is a good one. I

don’t want to follow a path until success or follow a ton of paths until

failure. I think there is a third path.

So I’m going to tell you about F.U.F.T.R.S.B or Follow Until

Failure Then Relaunch Something Better.

Why do I like this better? Because failure is a guarantee.

Success is not a guarantee, and following something until success makes it seem

like success will happen. But it won’t instead, it’s going to make you keep

going down a crappy path for way too long, until it’s too long to turn back.

It’s going to cause you to keep following something that isn’t

right for you just because you are following a path expecting success.

But I want you to follow a path expecting failure. Because

then when you get failure, you’re going to pivot quicker than the next person

expecting success.

And pivoting is what’s essential to success. When you can

leave one path even though you might love it because it’s not getting you the

results you want, that’s when you’re going to break through.

I was never a great photographer, or a great DP, or even a

great director. Moreso I wasn’t about to bang my head on that door to be great.

I was willing to bang my head on the door of writing though, and when I got to

that moment I had already seen what failure looked like. I was even willing to

pivot from screenwriting, to tv writing, to comic book writing, to novel

writing, because I saw where the success was leading me.

I think we are too consumed with failure as if it’s a bad

thing. But failure can be fantastic. Failure can be the thing that leads to

success, especially because it’s hard to know what success is. It’s hard to

grasp it. But we can all understand failure, and as we get more attuned to what

failure smells like, we’ll be able to hone into what success is all about.

If F.O.C.U.S.-ing works for you great, but most of us are

going to be failing well before we succeed, and I think that we could all try

F.U.F.T.R.S.B-ing on things and perhaps be a little bit better for it.

Because there is no shame in failing, and I think that

focusing on success diminishing failure. In fact, I think failure is so much

more important than success. It’s where we learn. It’s how we adapt. It’s how we

know what works and what doesn’t.

It’s very hard to define success, and success becomes a

moving target when you have it. But it’s easy to judge failure. If nobody is

responding to your work that could be considered a failure. If you can’t make

enough for rent that is a failure, and it’s also easy to fail. It’s hard to

succeed. So if we focus on failure then we can get that out of the way, learn

the warning signs for it, and prepare better for success.

Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review us on itunes.

Today we talked to Dan Shaefer, storyboard artist on Grimm. He's worked on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, James Bond Jr., and hundreds of other projects in comics, TV, movies, and more. He has the type of career most artists dream about, and I wanted to see how he got it. Boy did he tell me.

This past weekend we were at San Fernando Valley Comic Con,and I wanted to do another live edition specifically about small cons. Whenpeople think of going to cons, they always think of big cons like San Diego orNew York, but we build a lot of our business through smaller cons. These arecons that happen at local rec centers, community centers, or comic shops even.

The reason I love them personally is because they cost is somuch less and thus the pressure is off. I don’t have to worry about outlaying$500+ for a table. The table fees are usually well under $100 for a table. Manyof them are under $20, and if you do store signing you will probably findtables for free.

And that means you can do what you are there to do, which isbuild an audience, and talk to fans. Because there are not thousands of peoplewalking through the hall you can have real conversations with your audience,and they build that know, like, trust with you much quicker. Do you get as manypeople, no. But it’s not always about quantity. It can be about quality too.

Additionally, you don’t have to fight with hundreds of othervendors doing the exact same things as you. At these smaller cons you areusually one of a couple, if not the only person there doing what you do. Sopeople what want your kind of work are more likely to buy from you.

There are also less celebrities and other big name people atthese cons, so you don’t have to fight with them for your customer’s preciousmoney. Speaking of money, it’s also much cheaper (if not free) to attend thesecons meaning the people there have more money to spend on the vendors.

Small cons are a great way to build your chops and yourbrand. If you fail at these small cons, there is much less worry than failingat a big one. And you need to fail a lot before you can get good. So the morecons your do on a small level, the better.

First we talked to Daniel De Sosa, who I actually met at SanFernando Valley Comic Con in November. He’s a great guy who’s been conningforever. Super talented too. You can find him at backwardsburd.com and bysearching for desosaink on facebook and Instagram.

Then we talked to Lenny Romero, and awesome artist at onlyhis fifth con, so it was great to see how these small cons were helping him.You can find him on instagram @lenzations.

Third, we talked to Steve Waldinger. Steve didn’t have muchof his own merch at the table, but he was sharing with the Lady Beaver. Theywere just getting started too at cons, and this was only their second show.They did Long Beach Comic Expo in February, so it was great to see themcompare. There is so much less pressure at these small shows when you don’thave much product too. You can find him on twitter and Instagram @stevewaldinger.

Fourth, we talked to Erika Lipkes, the Lady Beaver herself. Shedoes zines and paintings, stickers and other awesome art. I love seeing zinepeople at cons because you don’t see them often at bigger cons. Again, thecosts are just so high there’s very little chance of making money, especiallywith the amount of time it takes to make these things by hand from scratch.However, she did Long Beach Comic Expo too, so it was nice to see her comparethe two. I loved that one of her students came to see the show too! That’s whatyou can do when the show costs very little to attend. You can find her onlineat ladybeaver.com.

Finally we talked to Allen Carter. I see Allen at tons ofshows all over the place. Almost every time there is a con he’s be there. Heeven tells me about lots of cons. So it was great to hear him talk about hisbooks, trades, zines, and other work. You can find him online at the cartercomics or the figure of speech mongoose where he does a Mongoose Mondaychallenge every single week. Check it out.

And that’s it. I really appreciate everybody taking a coupleminutes to talk to me. Small cons are so important. The people are nice andgracious, and it’s nice to have sometimes 10 minute conversations with a singlefan.

So I’ve been working on a project for a long time now, over

a year. It’s been a year of developing characters, story, plot, and actually

writing an 80,000 word novel. It hasn’t been my only project, but there have

been several hundred brain hours devoted to this project.

And the thing is…I’ve never really loved it. I mean I loved

it in inception and concept, but it hasn’t been something that I fell in love

with like some of my other projects. I’ve always thought about abandoning the

project in full and moving on, but the further I got along the more I didn’t

want to abandon the project. The more investment I had and the more I need it

to work.

The problem, though, has been that the further I got on with

the project, the more I disliked it. So my desire to monetarily finish the book

was diametrically opposed to my desire to finish the book.

I should mention that nearly everything that I do comes with

certain amount of hatred in the actually writing phase. I have always hated

almost everything I’ve written until it got a lot further along. However, the

hatred for this project has been stronger than most.

And I thought it would be interesting in this episode to

talk about the reasons I didn’t abandon the project, which might inform whether

you should abandon yours.

1.       This is a very different format than I’m

used to, and I’m trying to train myself to write some more commercial books.

So the first reason I didn’t

abandon the project is because I knew it was my most commercial project in the

novel space. Katrina is very commercial in many ways, but this is even more commercial.

Since it was commercial, and not an intimate character study, it was a very

different thing for me to right, and I really wanted to get through it to see

whether I hated it because it was a bad book, or because I just don’t normally

write things like this.

So this one is really a business

reason. I want to get more readers to read my more intimate books, and I have

to pull them in with a more commercial book. Actors and other creatives do this

all the time. They will do a studio movie, then go and make a random art house

movie nobody watches.

I’m all about modeling what works,

and if this is a functional model I need to make sure I’m writing a commercial

work in order to fuel my other work.

2.       I saw a viable place for it in the

marketplace, where I could put my own spin on some common tropes, and I thought

that could be fun.

Another business reason. I found

there were some common tropes being used in popular genre sci-fi, specifically

YA, that I wanted to play with and enjoy. I generally like reading things like

The Hunger Games and Harry Potter and Ender’s Game, and I thought it might be

fun to play in that space and put my own take on it.

This goes back to point one, as

well, where I was looking at trends in the marketplace and seeing what I could

do that would also be successful. I’m not saying this book will be successful,

but I wanted to try this new thing. If I didn’t like it, there was no need to

write more…but I had to finish one.

3.       I want to test out a new delivery format

for my books.

On Amazon I’ve been seeing a lot of

books that are a series, but really they are just one book broken down into

four 20,000 word sections, and then bound as a full book for print. Since that’s

EXACTLY how comics work, and pretty much my exact business model for Wannabe

Press, I wanted to see if I could write something that was really good, was

broken up into 20,000 word segments for Amazon, and then bound in a print

edition for the whole book.

Again, this is a business call.

This wasn’t anything to do with content. And that’s really why I went about

finishing this book. If it had just been creative, I would have probably

abandoned it 20,000 words in. However, this book is doing several things for me

on the business side, and because of that at every step I wanted to see if it

was going to succeed as a proof of concept.

4.       After a time I passed the point of no

return

When you are on a flight, there is

a thing called the point of no return. That is the moment where fuel-wise you

must continue to your final destination. This is the same thing that happens in

creation. I had sunk so many hundreds of hours into this book over the course

of a year that my sunk operational costs were more to abandon the book then

they would be to continue. I value my time at a specific hourly rate, and I

knew that if I didn’t finish I would be out a specific amount of dollars, and

if I kept going I would be out a smaller amount. So I kept going. This is the

same reason many projects come into being, because the cost to finish them

outweighs the cost of abandoning them.

5.       If I finish the book, it can make money for

me forever.

If I abandon the book, it would sit

on my computer making no return on my investment. However, if I finish the book

it can make money for me in perpetuity. This book is supposed to be the intro

to the rest of my library. A tiny cost to get people buying my work and

enjoying it, so they buy more. And the thing about books is, you make money off

the back catalog. The more robust it is, the more ability for me to monetize

it. So not only does this book (or 5 books really) generate income for me

itself, it also helps get people to buy more of my work over time.

 

So those are some strictly business reasons why I didn’t

abandon this project. I could have. I probably should have, early on, but now

that I’m in it there is no business reason why I should abandon it…especially

now that I’m 2-3k words from finishing the first draft. If you are interested

in the artistic reasons why to abandon your project, it’s simple:

                It doesn’t feel right.

I’ve abandoned dozens of projects because they don’t feel

right, I got bored, or I lost the passion. Those are all super valid reasons as

well, but I wanted to bring business reasons into the light today.

I hope it helps. If it does please subscribe on itunes, rate

and review us, and keep listening! Thanks so much.

Russell

Today we talked to Angela Fullard, one of my favorite indie artists. She has this wonderful style that captures both cute and haunting. I can't get enough of it. But she also has this great way of thinking about social media and building an audience. She really has a deep connection with her audience, and I wanted to find out how she does it. Boy, does she tell me.You can find her at www.facebook.com/theoddityoven and www.angelafullard.com

It's over! The My Father Didn't Kill Himself campaign is over and I'm back to do a wrap-up of the things I learned throughout the campaign. If you listen to all 11 episodes you'll already know most of this, but some people just like the wrap up, so I'm going to try to oblige them, while giving new information. 

First, we ended up raising $3431 from 155 backer with an average back of just over $22.00. This is way down from our previous campaigns, where we raised $30+ per backer on average. That is mostly attributable to the fact that 88 people (56%) chose the digial only rewards, which dragged down the total backing of each backer. However, this was to be expected because novels are not a visual medium. While there are many people that like the touch and feel of books, it's not a necessity like it is with comics. I believe that comics must be felt in your hands. Even though there is research to support print books over ebooks, the ebook market is enormous. So I'm not surprised at the lower amount raised. With Ichabod, we raised almost $2000 more from almost the same amount of backers. 

The most important thing is that this is the most fun I've had running a Kickstarter campaign...ever. There was no pressure. It was all fun. I was doing humiliating videos, and posting things to vine and youtube. It was a blast, unlike all my other campaigns which were more ulcers than anything. 

-         

People still donated even though we hit our

goal. I’m not sure if that’s because we wanted 1,000,000% funded or because

people just wanted to see this project succeed. Perhaps we’ve gotten to the

place where people are preordering my work because they want it and not because

of the goal, though I think the goal is still important.

-         

Facebook and Twitter ads didn’t work this time.

Nothing really worked this time except for social and mailing list. 

-         

With this third campaign, we finally felt like a

publishing company, utilizing our mailing list, auto responder sequences,

retargeting ads, and more. It felt finally like we had a community.

-         

We did no stretch goals this time, and didn’t

see any adverse reaction. I think stretch goals are only good if you are adding

content to the book.

-         

I can’t stress enough how important it is to get

a distribution chain in place and stress test it before a campaign.

-         

I don’t recommend doing a $1 campaign as your

first campaign, because you actually do need lots of money to start up, whereas

with MFDKH we already sunk all the cost in before the Kickstarter launched. I

would never do a $1 campaign until you have a few under your belt.

-         

Because we knew the book was coming out anyway,

we didn’t have to push people. We could get them on the mailing list and knew

that eventually they could buy the book on our website and on Kindle.

I will say that Kickstarter is a visual medium, so the novels didn't seem to stand out as much, even though we did a lot of visuals inside the campaign. People seem to use Kickstarter for comics, children's books, and other visual mediums more effectively than for straight novels. 

Also, book sites didn't care or even know about Kickstarter. While comic book sites are very welcoming to the idea, in the publishing space it's not common. 

Additionally, while almost all creators in the comic space are gearing up for a Kickstarter, nobody in publishing is doing the same. They are all gearing up for an amazon launch. 

I mention the comixlaunch episode a couple of times in this podcast. Here is the link to the episode I reference about $1 campaigns. 

-         

We’re going to go more into doing extra episodes

on Fridays about business. Email us with what you want to see @ [email protected].

A

Today we talked to Erik Lervold, who is one of my favorite creators and happens to also create the Red Calaveras, which can be found on Wannabe Press. This dude is the real deal though. Honestly. He has the business stuff down. He has the art stuff down. He is the whole package and I loved talking to him about the business of his art and how he makes stuff while getting paid.

You can find his book on Wannabe Press, at www.theredcalaveras.com, and at www.monkeymanlabs.com