Latest / The Christian Reeve Podcast / Princess Etch | The Christian Reeve Podcast | #132 |

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Princess Etch | The Christian Reeve Podcast | #132 | · The Christian Reeve Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to another episode of the Christian way.
• 0:02
  Podcast, today's guest is a returning guest.
• 0:06
  It's princess HR professional sketch, a sketch artist.
• 0:09
  All the way from the USA I believe, I can't remember the
• 0:12
  exact number. I think it was like 70 something
• 0:16
  but it was I believe it was somewhere earlier last year, I
• 0:20
  could be wrong. It was definitely maybe even as
• 0:25
  long as a year ago at this point.
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  It's been a while. Yeah.
• 0:30
  Yeah, I mean I've obviously like, you know, I always connect
• 0:33
  with the people I have on the show in the meanwhile and sort
• 0:37
  of track how they've been doing and you've been doing a lot.
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  Like, I mean, you're a busy woman anyway, like business
• 0:42
  person and overwhelmed with everything, but I guess.
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  My first question to you is this like what have been, some of the
• 0:50
  major developments in your life since the last time we spoke?
• 0:55
  Oh, that's a great question. So something that I haven't
• 0:59
  actually Like con super public about yet is that I've been in
• 1:02
  the process of rebranding entirely, I hired a designer
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  that I found through Tick-Tock and yeah, I feel like, oh,
• 1:11
  rolling the dice a little bit there, but, it's been fantastic.
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  She's doing my rebranding. She made a new logo for me.
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  And my new website is going to be debuting, presumably sometime
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  in March, so, very soon. So, that's been kind of the
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  focus of my 2022 is just kind of getting That like set up.
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  This is this is a really good point.
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  This is something I wanted to ask you about as well because I
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  saw that you did a post and I can't remember exactly.
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  When this was, it might be a couple of months ago and
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  basically you did a post where you were it was like bikini
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  shots in Winter which is just an aside note.
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  You're crazy like I play fair play, but you're nuts.
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  I admire the balls to do that. It was July - 20 or something
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  and I can confirm that. Yeah well fair play but I think
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  the more interesting thing about that was that you did a video
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  follow up to it where you sort of spoke about how this was the
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  post that got you, the most kind of Engagement and you kind of
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  you did it as like a mini experiment.
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  Also kind of an empowerment thing for yourself but you kind
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  of had like mixed feelings because you said on one Hand.
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  Okay, it's cool that to get this level of Engagement.
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  This is awesome. This is from a business
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  perspective, this is what you want but at the same time you
• 2:39
  were kind of saying that it undermines all your efforts of
• 2:42
  everything else that you're trying to achieve with your
• 2:44
  brand. Yeah and I think that, you know,
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  I want to talk to happen to that a little bit.
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  But the main thing I want to get your opinion on is just branding
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  in general because as you said in your video you have a very
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  specific brand. By all intents and purposes, I
• 3:02
  wouldn't say it's like, I would call it like a neutral, friendly
• 3:06
  or family-friendly. Brannis this call it that
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  because a lot of your clients, you know, range anywhere from
• 3:12
  just families to two kids to, you know, some of your stuff has
• 3:16
  been picked up by like Nickelodeon and, you know,
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  Brands like that. And you're always kind of
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  commissioning art for all these different clients.
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  So, your brand is very important in that respect.
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  And when I saw you did that, I was at okay, this is interesting
• 3:31
  and she's acknowledge this as well, which is what you did.
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  But yeah, obviously you mentioned before you're doing a
• 3:36
  Rebrand. So let's just kind of talk about
• 3:38
  branding both from your Rebrand and what you're trying to do
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  there and also just why it's so important in business.
• 3:48
  Yeah, yeah. Well I guess I'll start with the
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  post. You mention about the bikini
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  photos. I posted so, yeah, and that.
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  And that Instagram post which by the way, got demonetised About.
• 4:00
  That was kind of funny. Interested.
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  Yeah, in that post, I talked about how I decided to do this
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  kind of cheeky photo shoot for a product that I received from a
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  company. They made an Etch-a-Sketch pool
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  float and they sent me the product with the intent that I
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  create some kind of social media post about it and they don't
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  have any parameters and they were well, they were thrilled
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  with the post, they loved it. Bentley was because I tagged
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  them in it. And everything.
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  So like, it was probably fantastic engagement of their
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  part, probably way better than they were expecting.
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  So, you know, from that standpoint, it really helped
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  grow my relationship with this company that sells these
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  products, but yeah, I do it. Yeah.
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  I'm a big believer in like, kind of sticking to whatever the
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  Integrity of your brand is and that to me, was one of the
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  riskiest things I've ever done for my business.
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  Because on one hand, it gave me fantastic.
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  And Trip on Instagram, but on the other hand, it that single
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  post, kind of changed the perception that my audience had
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  of me before that point because while I am known for wearing
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  like silly quirky things and I'm known for, you know, being just
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  kind of colorful in the outfits I wear and stuff.
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  I'm not known for necessarily Crossing into the path of like
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  overtly sexual. I've kind of kept it, more of
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  like a cheeky koi, bubbly fun kind of persona.
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  So It was a big concern for me as an edge of sketch artist that
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  tries to keep this more kind of family.
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  Friendly, sort of look that that I might, you know, upset people
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  just by the the mere Act of posting something like that.
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  Now, you know, I did consult with my like a handful of people
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  before posting that some some people, you know, colleagues of
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  mine mentors former clients and co-workers, it's like People
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  that I've worked with in the past like does this make you
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  uncomfortable? I got mostly thumbs-up from
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  people. There were a few people who were
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  concerned that thought like I don't know maybe you should wear
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  a one-piece bathing suit instead and that was interesting to me
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  because it's like well what's What's the big difference here,
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  right? Like it's the same concept and
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  so that it was kind of trying to trying to figure out like, well,
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  why is that such a big difference in the first place
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  like and and trying to like reason with okay?
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  Well what if I what was that if I was behind the pool flow and
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  you didn't really see me but it was obscured and and try to like
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  recent with all of that and it was it was insane.
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  How much thought I had to like I really considered before posting
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  it but I think it was for good reason and And when it did end
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  up becoming my top performing post of the year on Instagram, I
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  was a bit crestfallen because it felt like that wasn't indicative
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  of what I was building for years and it was a bit it was a bit
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  disappointing to see that people responded to like a bikini photo
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  of me. More than my art or more than
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  like what I've been building. But I also concede that like
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  humans respond to base desires. So So I mean if I wanted to
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  capitalize on that I very well could and I probably would
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  experience a different kind of success.
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  So yeah. And to be fair like you
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  mentioned like before like or you know, by comparison of what
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  your brand is, maybe it's more into the overtly sexual column,
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  but you know what, when I saw them, you know, I didn't,
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  honestly think that I thought it was very just kind of I thought
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  it was more in the empowerment side of things or more, you
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  know, I didn't really get like a sexual vibe from it, to be
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  honest. That's like that here because I
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  was, I didn't want it to be about that.
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  Despite the outfit I was wearing it was, It was supposed to be
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  kind of more Tiki and outlandish, because I was in the
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  snow wearing snow boots, what it was like, for instance, if you
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  did, like, I know I've seen this before that, there's been people
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  that have like Similar Brands to yours that have maybe posted.
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  I don't know, pictures of them on a beach somewhere and, you
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  know, they're probably going to wear a bikini there and it's
• 8:23
  like, is that inappropriate? I don't think so.
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  I think it's all. I think it's all about how you
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  frame things and how you present things, you know, like for
• 8:34
  example, you're not going to set up like a no ref count.
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  For example, that would be inappropriate and that wouldn't
• 8:41
  fit in the context of what you're trying to achieve, right.
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  But with this Like yeah. You know, I suppose more
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  interesting question is, did you actually lose any business off
• 8:51
  the off, the cuff of this? Did you get any pushback at all?
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  Or was it just all Pappy days? Happy Days hoping those great
• 8:58
  questions. So I paid close attention to my
• 9:01
  metrics when I made that post because I was really curious
• 9:04
  myself. And first thing I noticed is the
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  number of DM's I got skyrocketed from companies companies or just
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  people. Oil people and then, and then,
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  you know, my relationship with a company I worked with was, you
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  know, it really fostered that in a positive direction because
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  that's the first time I ever posted a product for them so
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  that went well and then I gained a number of followers but my net
• 9:37
  follower count was pretty much the same because I also like
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  lost in equal amount of followers.
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  So 000 people who, Like to the post and people who definitely
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  dislike the post and decided, like, I think I lost maybe 20 to
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  30 people that did, and then I gained 20 to 30 people.
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  So that was, that was curious to me.
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  I think, I think a lot of people they don't like seeing that kind
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  of content if that's not what they're expecting, and I can
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  respect that. So, it's like, I don't fault
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  anyone for for deciding like, you know what, not for me
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  anymore. This isn't what I came to follow
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  this account for, which is a shame, because it's like that.
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  Only time I've done that but but like, well, I guess it's so
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  interesting experiment. You know, I think I think it's
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  some photos once, you know, you look good.
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  I wouldn't look good in that situation.
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  I'm not brave enough to do that. So that's a hats off to ya.
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  No one wants to see this. Anyway, this, let's talk about
• 10:42
  your Rebrand, you mention that before, I'm intrigued like what
• 10:46
  are the major changes going to be like it's fine?
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  If you got some stuff secret and you can't say I get that.
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  But like what what? What are the key changes what's
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  going to look different? Yeah, so to give some context
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  I've been a full-time edges sketching.
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  Now, for about five years and I've basically had the same
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  color palette, the same logo. I kind of, I feel like my Logos
• 11:08
  always been kind of busy and complicated and I've never
• 11:11
  really liked using it. So I've always been super
• 11:13
  sparing and in people even see it.
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  Most people don't even know, I have a logo, I coded my website
• 11:19
  by hand in college and it's gotten the job done.
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  Like it exists and it shows a gallery for my art and people
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  can use it as a resource, but you go to the website and it
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  just feels old, you know, it feels like okay, it really could
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  use a revamp and it's not very responsive.
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  So if you look at it mobile it's not going to look as good.
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  And most people these days are using their phones for the
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  internet. This was not the case when Built
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  my website and like 2012. Like it was, you know, happening
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  more but a decade has passed since that website was born.
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  And I felt like it was time and I wanted to Target a more
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  corporate clientele. So for me, it's the if you've
• 12:04
  ever heard of the 80/20 rule. Yes, it's yeah.
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  So, for me, I feel like 80% of my business comes from my top,
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  20% of my clientele, and those top 20% are corporate.
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  So I might spend a lot of time trying to get people to buy
• 12:19
  commission's that are, like, $100 or less, or, you know,
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  buying prints and stickers and stuff, but that's like the
• 12:25
  bottom 20% of my Revenue. So I'm recognizing that it would
• 12:29
  behoove me to put my focus more into tapping into the corporate
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  Market that pays the majority of my bills.
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  So that's what I told my designer and what she had in
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  mind when she proceeded with a developing, Brand.
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  So yeah, I'm super excited. I've started kind of teasing it
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  a little bit. I just dropped my new logo in a
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  video of mine and I didn't even announce it but I'd like to make
• 12:56
  like an official whole, you know, Rebrand reveal.
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  But it's been, it's really exciting and I feel like it's
• 13:03
  much more indicative of the direction that I want this
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  business that I've created based on this like, Persona of myself
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  to go. So it's like got these Be fun,
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  bright colors but it's still it looks professional and clean.
• 13:20
  It's silly but not like too deep into the silly category.
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  She had a real man. No no, I thought I get where
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  you're coming for, he's difficult when you spent so long
• 13:30
  building up it's a particular brand.
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  And then yet to be fair I've been thinking about the same
• 13:36
  thing recently. Take for example the podcast
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  like you know I've had slightly controversial people On the
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  podcast before. I've had, like, political people
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  on the podcast before and people in my community, kind of said,
• 13:50
  well, is this direction you want to go in?
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  Because if it is, you know, you're going to put yourself up
• 13:54
  to criticism and stuff and, to be fair, whatever you do, you're
• 13:58
  going to get criticized for it, but about it.
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  Yes, for me. I'm a massive hippie and I look
• 14:05
  at politics from afar. I have a, my new interest in it,
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  but it's not really what I want this to be, but I guess and it
• 14:14
  made me think like, what Okay. Well, what is this?
• 14:15
  Exactly what am I trying to achieve with this?
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  And I think for me, I guess what I'm trying to do is talk about
• 14:23
  topics that I'm passionate about their connected to me or I have
• 14:29
  some knowledge on and to share stories and stuff like that
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  because I'd like to think of myself as a Storyteller though
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  you know some for judgment. Yeah I mean I agree.
• 14:39
  I definitely agree it's been but when it comes to the guests that
• 14:42
  appear on this show I think what I'm I guess what I'm looking for
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  is people with stories to share with things that they're doing
• 14:49
  that, a particularly extraordinary.
• 14:51
  It doesn't, it doesn't have to be amazing by the way.
• 14:53
  It's not like, oh, I'm And in the world with this sometimes
• 14:56
  some of the people I've had on the show, a surprising like I
• 14:59
  always give the example of it. Was a guy that came on my show
• 15:02
  quite early on and he was a fellow podcaster and that's what
• 15:05
  I thought we were going to talk about.
• 15:07
  But then somehow we got into the topic of like alcohol and he
• 15:11
  very briefly mentioned that he'd recovered and going through that
• 15:16
  process and came out the other side and I was like, cool, would
• 15:18
  you be willing to share that story?
• 15:20
  Wow. And he did and then for a good
• 15:23
  ten minutes, I had that story and I was blown Whales like this
• 15:25
  is amazing and but it got the cogs turning in my head and I
• 15:31
  started thinking about, okay, maybe that's the kind of
• 15:35
  Direction I want to go in with this, you know, I want to
• 15:38
  interview Fascinating People and really put them over in the
• 15:43
  right light. And you know, I I guess what I'm
• 15:46
  trying to say is I'm not really the person to like people to
• 15:48
  task, which is what you would need to do with politics.
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  Plus you need to be very well informed in that you need to
• 15:53
  know both sides. Know what Talking about sure
• 15:57
  there's nothing like I'm good at living and having a conversation
• 16:00
  with someone and getting getting something out of someone but I
• 16:05
  can't be that person. That's like gin.
• 16:08
  And I mean there's someone else. You want that love someone else.
• 16:11
  Yeah. Absolutely.
• 16:12
  But that's I mean, that's one of the reasons why I was interested
• 16:15
  in returning to your podcast because I felt like it was
• 16:17
  really easy to kind of keep the conversation flowing with you in
• 16:21
  a really organic way. So I could totally understand
• 16:24
  you To lean more into those strengths.
• 16:28
  And, you know, maybe dabbling in the occasional political guests,
• 16:33
  but not necessarily wanting to Rebrand your podcast, to go in
• 16:37
  that direction. That's a pretty tough Direction.
• 16:40
  The reason I bring it up as well, it's like with us talking
• 16:44
  on the context of Brandon, like, it has to be kind of consistent
• 16:50
  across everything that you do. So, you know, I'm writing music,
• 16:53
  I'm doing live streams, I'm doing acting and doing all these
• 16:56
  different things which are not directly connected, but they are
• 17:00
  connected from The Branding standpoint, you know?
• 17:02
  And if you have to think about things like what you, what you
• 17:06
  did with with that post it wasn't just a know, I'll just do
• 17:09
  this. It's that you had to sit down,
• 17:11
  think about it. Get a lot of different people to
• 17:16
  give you kind of like feedback on that and then you made a
• 17:20
  decision and it's the same with what I'm doing and I really
• 17:23
  respect that from a business standpoint and I think I'd be
• 17:25
  interested to see where your business goes from here because
• 17:29
  as you just on a side note like what would you say?
• 17:34
  You kind of your main It's a bit like, pray as far as like what
• 17:39
  your main sources of revenue but what are the main parts of your
• 17:41
  business that are kind of like driving you?
• 17:44
  It is it the commission stuff is it is there like a daily thing
• 17:47
  that works for you? I know you do live streaming
• 17:49
  which we'll get into in a bit. But like what's the main Drive
• 17:53
  is that? Why you've chosen to go down?
• 17:54
  This route? Is that kind of the better?
• 17:57
  Sure. Yeah.
• 17:59
  So I love talking about my streams of Revenue, so it's
• 18:05
  always fun to me to hear about. People like get by in life, but
• 18:11
  so I for me, I said, I just sketch artist.
• 18:13
  I'm more of a, I'm a kind of a hybrid of a product and
• 18:17
  service-based Industry that I run as my business.
• 18:20
  So one of the things that I do is teach workshops so that's
• 18:24
  kind of the clientele for. That is a lot of like libraries
• 18:27
  children's Museum's park districts and the like and then
• 18:30
  I will work at private events where I draw people to
• 18:34
  portraits, kind of like the concept of a caricature.
• 18:36
  Honest, but it's more like a life drawing, those are done in
• 18:39
  minutes, so that's more of like, a corporate kind of clientele,
• 18:43
  or like, a private event sort of clientele.
• 18:45
  And then I will do time lapse videos for more corporate
• 18:49
  clients, like I'll record myself, doing a drawing on that,
• 18:52
  just sketch and then companies like Disney, and MTV and
• 18:58
  Callaway golf. For some reason, these are
• 19:00
  companies that like, they'll, they'll they've hired me to, to
• 19:03
  make content that they use for social media as Marketing tool.
• 19:08
  So those are some of the more like top-billed Services I
• 19:12
  offer. And then my mid-tier services
• 19:15
  are commission's which can range usually between a hunt like two
• 19:19
  hundred and a thousand dollars USD.
• 19:22
  So those you know those kind of like capture my mid-tier
• 19:26
  clientele. We're basically the size and the
• 19:30
  degree of detail in the subject. Matter is what determines the
• 19:33
  price of the commission? So I could do a portrait of a
• 19:36
  single person. Person on a small.
• 19:37
  I just got for 200 bucks or a portrait of a whole family on
• 19:41
  the large one for, like, around 1000.
• 19:45
  So, there's like a whole variety of, you know, at my like bottom
• 19:49
  level fours and other kind of like print related products that
• 19:53
  can range from like, you know, $5 to up to like 40 dollars.
• 19:58
  So I kind of planted some seeds in different, you know, monetary
• 20:02
  categories to capture different audiences, but my Rebrand is,
• 20:06
  Focusing more on watering the plants that are on a more
• 20:10
  corporate level. Because those are the ones that
• 20:12
  have fared, the most fruit and that pain the most bills for me.
• 20:18
  So, that's kind of a that's, that's sort of the, the
• 20:22
  reasoning behind the, the upcoming Rebrand and also just
• 20:26
  read recognizing that like, in order to maintain this business
• 20:30
  that I've created, I need to like put my focus more on those
• 20:33
  things too, but I do also livestream.
• 20:36
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 20:37
  Oh, and the last thing, this one, I think we can talk a lot
• 20:39
  about. I've started, I've started
• 20:43
  investing more into like, the residuals that come from things
• 20:46
  like YouTube, and Tick-Tock and Instagram, like Instagram has.
• 20:51
  I don't know why, but Instagram reels is paying incredibly right
• 20:55
  now. Like, I'm getting a penny, a
• 20:57
  play on Instagram reels, which is insane.
• 21:00
  I think I've made this year alone, I've made definitely at
• 21:03
  least like four hundred dollars just by like Cleary posting
• 21:07
  content that I've already made for Tick-Tock on Instagram rails
• 21:11
  and I don't make that much money on Tick, Tock through the
• 21:13
  Creator fund, the Creator. Fun doesn't pay out like nearly
• 21:17
  the same rate. So I expected any day, that
• 21:19
  Instagram reels is going to like, get super nerfed and
• 21:22
  they're not going to pay out that much anymore.
• 21:23
  But I'm trying to ride this, wait, as long as I can, so, so,
• 21:27
  yeah, yeah. YouTube, I'll get like some
• 21:29
  AdSense and then Instagram and Tick-Tock.
• 21:33
  I'm gonna have to sneeze in a moment.
• 21:35
  I'm just warning. It might go away.
• 21:38
  I'm feeling it going away now. Okay, we might be good.
• 21:40
  Okay, I've got questions for you for days, but I just want to
• 21:50
  talk a little bit more about Brandon for a second.
• 21:55
  Yeah. So as you before, we get into
• 21:57
  into that one, final question on what you use or the tail end of
• 22:01
  what you were talking about before.
• 22:03
  Do you find now that you sort of got this established brand in
• 22:07
  the manner that you've that, you sort of built it up?
• 22:09
  Do you have sort of people approaching you more for
• 22:13
  business now? Or are you still having to kind
• 22:15
  of push that Outreach to clients and potential clients like great
• 22:21
  question? Yeah, like what, where are you
• 22:23
  at with regards to? That.
• 22:24
  So I'm pretty fortunate and that most Outreach these days are
• 22:30
  most of the business I get is people who connect with me, but
• 22:35
  I'm also in a position where I recognize if I'd like to
• 22:38
  flourish more, I need to do more Outreach.
• 22:40
  So I'm pretty privileged in that for the most part, especially in
• 22:43
  the last two or three years, it's been more people connecting
• 22:49
  with me than vice versa. So, for that reason, I'm not
• 22:52
  necessarily as practiced and doing the kind of like cold
• 22:57
  reach out. But it's always benefited me and
• 23:01
  I'm trying to do that more, especially through Tick-Tock
• 23:03
  livestreams. I'll sometimes bring up a lot of
• 23:05
  like calls to action to get people to consider some
• 23:09
  different products that I offer. Or, you know, one of the things
• 23:13
  that I do, I haven't had any success yet, but like, why not?
• 23:17
  Keep trying. I'll say, like, if there's any
• 23:19
  Librarians in this. Is chat room like, hit me up.
• 23:23
  I teach digital workshops, I would love to teach a workshop
• 23:25
  for your local library. We can make that happen.
• 23:28
  So I'm trying to like, you know, in those senses like trying to
• 23:32
  like work with an active audience to see if like I can
• 23:35
  turn that like warm connection into an actual transaction.
• 23:39
  You know what? I'll reiterate that as well or
• 23:42
  something right words. I don't know.
• 23:44
  Either. My words are escaping me.
• 23:46
  I agree with you. There you go.
• 23:48
  I used to be years ago when I first started doing.
• 23:51
  I used to be very adamant like, no, I will not ask my audience
• 23:54
  to do that, you know, it's up to them, you know, they can make
• 23:57
  their own minds up excetera and it's just kind of a stupid way
• 24:02
  to think. I mean it's Noble, but the
• 24:04
  reality is, as you say, you know, you've got that soft
• 24:06
  interaction with your client base or potential client base,
• 24:10
  but they don't know what you do necessarily, and it's just good
• 24:15
  to remind them like in my live streams, whenever I have like a
• 24:17
  new person pop by and they seem to like, who I am.
• 24:21
  I'm like, hey, by the way, I do this, this this, this this and
• 24:24
  this, and they're like, really where can I find that?
• 24:26
  And then you drop the links and then that's it.
• 24:30
  Yeah. See what I mean.
• 24:31
  Like, like because I consider all of this to be an advert of
• 24:36
  such genetically. Like, for instance, it would be
• 24:38
  very easy for you or you or other people to come on the show
• 24:42
  and just advertise for like half an hour.
• 24:45
  But who wants to listen to that? You know, it's more interesting
• 24:48
  to find about the person. Behind what's Not you know, and
• 24:52
  if there are people that watch this the you know, they really
• 24:56
  dig you and what you do and everything about you, they're
• 24:59
  more likely to buy off the, you know, because of that as opposed
• 25:03
  to like just just a 5-minute sales pitch, you know?
• 25:05
  I mean, it's like, I don't know. I really I but I think it's a
• 25:10
  good point, especially in live streams because you're already
• 25:12
  talking to your audience. And one thing that I've learned,
• 25:16
  especially with my current website is that I do a terrible
• 25:18
  job of advertising the services that I have to offer.
• 25:21
  Offer. And that's one of the reasons
• 25:22
  why I felt like I needed a new website because I it's a miracle
• 25:26
  that I still get work for a lot of these Services.
• 25:29
  I provide because what often happens is, I'll get an email
• 25:33
  from a company saying, like, do you do this?
• 25:35
  And it's like, that's like I've recognized I'm not communicating
• 25:42
  that enough. So I feel like I'm on the side
• 25:45
  of the spectrum where I'm sometimes, not doing a good
• 25:49
  enough job of, really Educating my value and that can come in
• 25:54
  the form of calls to action, but I think it, you know, when
• 25:58
  they're intentional and when it feels organic that's like I
• 26:01
  think that's the time to do it. Like I'll get people who join a
• 26:05
  live stream and they'll say something like, oh wow.
• 26:07
  Like can you make these permanent?
• 26:09
  And like you know that's like my number-one question for my edges
• 26:12
  sketch art and so I you know I totally get why people ask it
• 26:16
  and I know I get the question thousands of times.
• 26:18
  So I'm answering it a lot and basically all Explain it like
• 26:21
  very quickly in the Stream and then I'll say, if you want to
• 26:25
  see the full process, I have a pin video that you can watch
• 26:28
  right here on Tick-Tock. And, you know, if you're really
• 26:31
  interested, thank you for the organic plug Opportunity.
• 26:35
  By the way, I have an Etsy shop where you can buy the original
• 26:38
  art so it's nice to find those like organic segues to actually
• 26:43
  like essentially push your agenda but also like, you know,
• 26:48
  find a meaningful way to connect with your audience.
• 26:51
  In a way that's not like too salesy.
• 26:55
  But not like, you know, you're you're allowed to be sales.
• 26:59
  They like, we're all kind of running.
• 27:01
  I think most people who have like social media that are, you
• 27:05
  know, offering a service are posting on social media for the
• 27:08
  purpose of like advertising their service.
• 27:10
  In some capacity, whatever that service.
• 27:13
  Maybe, you know if you're selling a product or, you know,
• 27:16
  whatever I think, you know, the hope is that if you post a
• 27:20
  video. Go on social media or you know a
• 27:23
  photo or anything that people will follow you stick around and
• 27:26
  want to like find out more about what you do and buy whatever the
• 27:30
  product may be. So I think if we're like honest
• 27:33
  about that then like then cool you know it's like it's all like
• 27:38
  a willing facade where in is so hard you know like I honestly
• 27:43
  I've had some moments over the past year even where I thought.
• 27:48
  Okay this is it this it's finally And then it just didn't
• 27:52
  happen. You know, I got a video too
• 27:54
  close to three minute close to 3 million views.
• 27:57
  It's fragile. That's amazing, right?
• 27:59
  Yeah. Like okay it's beginning to
• 28:01
  happen. I built up a following.
• 28:04
  It's like 29,000 on Tick-Tock. I was like this is it.
• 28:07
  It's finally happening and then views dropped.
• 28:11
  Just I mean, I struggled to get any interaction now and that's
• 28:16
  just on Tick-Tock. I'm not even talking about
• 28:17
  anything else. I think the only thing that's
• 28:20
  really grown. And the two things that are
• 28:21
  grown a little bit, have been the livestreams the audience and
• 28:28
  then the podcast there's people listening to it.
• 28:31
  Hey thanks for listening. Thank you I appreciate you but
• 28:37
  the point the reason I bring this up is that it's so hard to
• 28:40
  get people to stick around even if you do have those moments you
• 28:43
  know like I had a livestream recently that got like a
• 28:47
  thousand viewers or something amazing, right.
• 28:50
  But then No one really stuck around.
• 28:52
  And I was gutted and I was like, okay and but that's the nature
• 28:56
  of what we do. It's just continuous if keep
• 28:59
  going and keep going and keep going and never stop, but you're
• 29:02
  a hundred percent. Right?
• 29:03
  Every time you post anything, you always got that hope, like
• 29:07
  maybe this is the post. Maybe this is the thing.
• 29:10
  Maybe, you know, and that's the way I try to look at it.
• 29:12
  I try to, you know, and there's good days and bad days.
• 29:15
  There's days when I go to bed and I'm like, wow, I'm fed up
• 29:18
  with this and then the next day I wake up and maybe it's a
• 29:21
  slightly better day, you know. Yeah.
• 29:23
  But it's just like you just have to keep trying, you know, gotta
• 29:26
  be in it to win it. Absolutely.
• 29:28
  And I feel like Tick-Tock in some ways is the worst offender
• 29:31
  when it comes to the, that kind of roller coaster feeling,
• 29:34
  because the algorithm will give you this moment of, like,
• 29:39
  Supreme Joy of like, whoa, my posters performing phenomenally
• 29:43
  look at all these people and reaching out to you, and it's
• 29:45
  always like, such a quick burning candle.
• 29:47
  Like consistency is not the name of the game on.
• 29:51
  Tick-Tock as far as like the engagement your post.
• 29:54
  Get. And I've learned the hard way
• 29:58
  that like growing an audience on Tick.
• 30:00
  Tock does not in any way, shape or form indicate that your posts
• 30:04
  are going to perform well because tiptoe doesn't even
• 30:07
  know. We're really show your post to
• 30:08
  the people who follow you. Same with my live streams like
• 30:12
  I'll have a phenomenally performing live stream and
• 30:16
  almost every single life dream I ever had on Tick-Tock, if it
• 30:20
  will be 90. Six percent of people who join
• 30:22
  it. Do not follow me.
• 30:24
  And three to four percent, are people who follow me every
• 30:27
  single time and that's with return viewers.
• 30:30
  Like I'm starting to recognize user names in the chat and
• 30:33
  profile pics. And even still three to four
• 30:37
  percent of those people are repeat Watchers, which is
• 30:39
  mind-blowing to me, that's so much like in some ways that's
• 30:43
  incredible in other ways. It's like disheartening because
• 30:48
  it means that like you you're not reaching the people Who care
• 30:51
  enough already but you know, you're always reaching someone
• 30:54
  new. So like this, this is the thing.
• 30:57
  Yeah. It's like if you do that, the
• 30:59
  way I look at my live streams. Now, like I did one earlier and
• 31:03
  none of my core audience were there and I was gutted, but I
• 31:06
  reached some new people which was, I didn't know, there was
• 31:08
  one called viewer, actually shout the Vilma.
• 31:11
  And but I just reason that was like, Hey people are busy, you
• 31:15
  know can't be there all the time, right?
• 31:17
  But every time I've done because I do like Days and Fridays.
• 31:21
  Now and I shortened my I used to stream like every day and now
• 31:25
  it's like two days a week and part of that is for mental
• 31:30
  health reasons, part of that is to have more time to do what I
• 31:34
  need to do like other work commitments because I'm a
• 31:38
  workaholic, and then it's just, you know, it's a bad thing,
• 31:42
  isn't it? You got to go give time for
• 31:43
  yourself but inevitably, I just end up doing other work.
• 31:47
  Anyway, sure, those people that keep Coming five or ten people,
• 31:53
  or in your case, I mean, II. Yeah, I've seen the crazy
• 31:55
  numbers you get, but they'll be like call people that you keep
• 31:58
  seeing in there. That looks cool names every time
• 32:01
  and those people. And I this is why I make a point
• 32:03
  of in my live streams and my podcast, I always thank
• 32:06
  everyone. I did it the other night and I
• 32:08
  said, thank you so much without you.
• 32:10
  It wouldn't be possible and that's that's the reality.
• 32:13
  And those people that number will grow one day, it will get,
• 32:17
  you know, it'll get to the point where it's impossible to keep up
• 32:19
  with everyone but But you know, you'll never forget the people
• 32:23
  that were with you at the beginning who you know, and that
• 32:26
  and that's the thing, like it's I think it's a journey and and,
• 32:30
  you know, but it's different like some people get those crazy
• 32:34
  numbers. Eventually, some people never do
• 32:37
  but, you know, even if you got, like, five or ten people, that
• 32:38
  care, that's, that's incredible. That's something that's it.
• 32:42
  Is, I have I'm going to show you a photo one second.
• 32:46
  I'm sure. This may not show up well but
• 32:50
  this is a photo. I don't know if she'll listen
• 32:52
  but this is Lily. She's like my biggest fan, this
• 32:55
  is me her. Oh the con and she found me
• 33:01
  through Instagram years ago and she joined some of my Instagram
• 33:04
  livestreams and on Instagram live.
• 33:06
  I would get maybe 12 people watching that was a good day on
• 33:09
  Instagram life. That's like still still my best
• 33:12
  numbers on. Instagram is like 12 and she
• 33:15
  became my number one fan and two.
• 33:18
  Stay. She gets a Christmas card every
• 33:20
  year. I love Lily so much.
• 33:23
  She's so awesome. She's been a huge supporter of
• 33:26
  my art like spending like a disproportionate amount of money
• 33:30
  compared to like, you know, a lot of other fans and she's just
• 33:35
  the sweetest and you never want to forget those that like, you
• 33:40
  know, that were there for you especially early because it's
• 33:44
  like those are the kind of people that help.
• 33:47
  Help you to like, remind you of like what you're doing.
• 33:50
  I went to a Comic-Con like a decade ago and one of the people
• 33:54
  on this panel, it was a panel about like, nerds in business,
• 33:57
  it was awesome. But one of the people, they were
• 34:00
  alive streamer a decade ago, which was a very different
• 34:03
  experience. And he said, every person you
• 34:06
  reach is a miracle and I love that so much.
• 34:10
  I I tried to like, live by that phrase when I see repeat
• 34:14
  viewers, I like to say in my Extremes usually, before I sign
• 34:19
  off, I'll say like, you could be anywhere on the internet right
• 34:21
  now and you chose to be here with me and I really appreciate
• 34:24
  that because the internet is a big place and there's a lot of
• 34:27
  people that you could be getting, you know, possibly
• 34:31
  Superior entertainment from but like you connect with me, and
• 34:34
  that's really cool that like you're not scrolling away.
• 34:38
  You're not swiping to the next video especially with Tick-Tock.
• 34:41
  It's they make it so easy for you to just immediately leave a
• 34:43
  video and move on to something else.
• 34:45
  So it's something thinking cherish that like people people
• 34:50
  care enough, that's really cool. I used to complain a little bit
• 34:55
  about the numbers. I don't do that anymore.
• 34:57
  Now like I'm like, once in awhile be like oh, it'd be nice
• 35:00
  if we reach some people but it's just like in a joking way like
• 35:05
  II. So I kind of got kind of quite
• 35:09
  put into words how much I appreciate.
• 35:10
  Like the people that watch me and who listen to the podcast
• 35:13
  you check out the live streams who check out the videos, I do,
• 35:16
  whatever like there. This disc or community of people
• 35:19
  who I really love who, who have been there from day one for a
• 35:23
  long time. And I think little things remind
• 35:29
  me, like I think one of the reasons why I keep doing the
• 35:31
  live streams is because they keep showing up and they keep,
• 35:36
  you know, they look forward to them and I'm like, okay, and I
• 35:38
  really tried to make them as entertaining as engaging as a
• 35:42
  can. And really, I really put a lot
• 35:44
  of effort into it just like I do with the podcast and everything
• 35:46
  else I can take it. Very seriously and I think it's
• 35:49
  because of them and some of them have reached out to me here and
• 35:52
  there and told me that, you know, whatever the podcast live
• 35:56
  streams of videos, got them through like a difficult time
• 35:59
  and then that kind of that, that was when it started hitting
• 36:01
  home. Like okay, there's there's
• 36:04
  there's something bigger than myself at play here.
• 36:06
  That's a reason why I should keep doing this.
• 36:08
  And, you know, if I can entertain people bring some
• 36:11
  happiness into their lives, then that's, that's a good enough
• 36:15
  reason to keep doing this and Yeah, just got it.
• 36:20
  Yeah, go remind yourself. Sometimes don't use you get
• 36:23
  those days when you like and then you start putting stuff
• 36:26
  into perspective and then suddenly that makes you more
• 36:28
  grateful and then you start having the right attitude again
• 36:31
  and I think that's that's the key because it's it's tough.
• 36:34
  It is tough. You get those bad days.
• 36:35
  You get those days when you don't have a great attitude and
• 36:38
  then you just have to re-evaluate and remember those
• 36:40
  people that are always there for you, who, you know, tell you
• 36:44
  these amazing things like that fan of yours too.
• 36:48
  You don't mean like, you You've probably.
• 36:51
  Massively inspired that person to do things in their own life,
• 36:54
  and that's meant so much to them.
• 36:56
  And, you know, they're of course, they're going to be a
• 36:58
  fan of you for that. And that's, that's amazing.
• 37:00
  And yeah, I definitely, I also kind of like, Evan flow with,
• 37:06
  like I'll feel I'll find that there's days where I am
• 37:09
  frustrated that my my post aren't performing well or I'm
• 37:13
  not hitting the audience. I might have used to have
• 37:15
  reached at a different time and the thing that I feel like it's
• 37:20
  a dangerous line of thought. But it's really easy to think is
• 37:23
  like, I've been doing this for so long, things should be easier
• 37:26
  now, like it was supposed to get easier by this point.
• 37:30
  And that's such a dangerous. I don't recommend anyone think
• 37:34
  that way because there's so much outside of your control when it
• 37:37
  comes to social media, especially that like you just
• 37:42
  can't afford to have that kind of an expectation because you're
• 37:45
  just setting yourself up for disappointment.
• 37:49
  Like there will be things that like maybe one day Tick Tock is
• 37:53
  going to tweak a certain feature and it's just going to
• 37:56
  completely destroy whatever Empire you've built their like
• 38:01
  we don't know, there's Much outside of our control and the
• 38:04
  flipside Tick-Tock and introduced a new feature that
• 38:07
  like completely changes your life for the better.
• 38:09
  So it's like, just like, I guess you just got to take things day
• 38:13
  by day and do the best you can. And and just yeah, having I
• 38:21
  agree that like having an appreciation is probably the
• 38:24
  best thing to do to combat the feeling of like frustration or I
• 38:30
  mean even even maybe like Went towards feeling like you
• 38:34
  deserve, mmm more of an audience or like more traction on your
• 38:40
  posts. Because II know, I've definitely
• 38:42
  felt a degree of entitlement and the entitlement could come from
• 38:46
  past for performance of previous videos, like, well, these did so
• 38:50
  well, therefore, this one should do, like, why doesn't this one?
• 38:54
  This one's good too. Feeling like, well, this, you
• 38:57
  know, this video I made is, is one of my favorite things I've
• 39:01
  ever done. It deserves.
• 39:02
  You seen work by more people and I think just kind of recognizing
• 39:07
  like it's not a meritocracy either, that's helped me a lot.
• 39:11
  Because then it's like I've said this before, some of my best
• 39:15
  performing posts on Tick-Tock are in my opinion, some of the
• 39:18
  least deserving there, the videos that I threw together as
• 39:22
  an afterthought. The production value is
• 39:24
  non-existent. Like, they were like, I would
• 39:27
  like Post-it walk away from my phone, go to bed, wake up and
• 39:32
  find out. It went viral be like, huh?
• 39:34
  I had no idea. Like that's the post that have
• 39:37
  gone viral for me and the ones that I like storyboard and sit
• 39:42
  down and plan and film and resell them and edit to
• 39:45
  Perfection. Those are the ones that flop.
• 39:48
  So you know what? Like because I got mixed
• 39:53
  feelings about this. But one thing and I remember
• 39:56
  when you first came on my show, like I was obviously enamored
• 39:59
  with with just what you do and everything about you.
• 40:01
  That's what you're really cool. Person.
• 40:03
  But one thing I immediately clicked on with you was like
• 40:06
  she's a businesswoman. This I like this and I recognize
• 40:11
  this in people and some of the people listening right now will
• 40:14
  be low. I was he on about like you know
• 40:16
  the thing is the thing is Because when I was at, when I
• 40:21
  was at school, I was right heavily into business.
• 40:23
  I started studying it, I went to University and studied business
• 40:26
  with marketing. Like I've always had a big
• 40:28
  business business mind, and interest in it and, you know, I
• 40:32
  don't know your background as far as that's concerned, but I
• 40:34
  can tell you, you've definitely studied it at some point or
• 40:38
  you've got a keen interest in it.
• 40:39
  And I think the point what I'm trying to say here is that I
• 40:42
  think we have a danger of always looking at things through those
• 40:46
  frames sometimes like It's difficult to just take it for
• 40:52
  what it is. And go.
• 40:52
  You know what? There's progress because when I
• 40:54
  look at the last two or three years, there's been a massive
• 40:56
  progress, but because we're thinking it from the business
• 41:00
  perspective especially with you, I mean, you're actually selling
• 41:02
  products and services such as your further down the line than
• 41:05
  I am on that regard and you're even more keenly, looking in it
• 41:10
  because you have to be looking at over time and going.
• 41:12
  Okay, what progress are we making?
• 41:15
  Am I doing enough to kind of push this upward curve, or am I
• 41:18
  not doing? Enough.
• 41:19
  Is it stagnating is my current activities right now.
• 41:23
  Are they preventing me from, from reaching new levels?
• 41:28
  And and that's, I think that's the difficulty is we're battling
• 41:30
  with ourselves in that. We have to sometimes kind of
• 41:32
  take a step back and go, you know what?
• 41:34
  This doesn't have to massively succeed.
• 41:37
  Every five seconds, I sometimes the successes can just be small
• 41:40
  things. They can be things like, hey,
• 41:43
  you know what? There are five people watching
• 41:45
  right now and those same five people have been watching for
• 41:48
  the bus. Three months.
• 41:50
  That's incredible. You know stuff like that.
• 41:53
  I agree, I think. Yeah, you made a really good
• 41:55
  point there. Like sometimes progress is very
• 41:57
  incremental and I know that I always want progress to be
• 42:03
  Monumental, you know, I want it to be exponential but it's not
• 42:08
  sustainable and you can't help but feel a little envious
• 42:13
  towards the videos. You watch on Tick-Tock where
• 42:15
  someone's like, you know, thanks everyone for or the three
• 42:19
  thousand orders from my last video and it's like I hate you.
• 42:24
  But congratulations. Like I have not that's that's
• 42:28
  something I want to emphasize. I've never posted a tick, tock
• 42:32
  that caused me viral sales, I had one video that got me, seven
• 42:37
  sales on Etsy and that was I celebrated that man.
• 42:40
  I posted a video I danced in that video.
• 42:42
  I'm still proud of that moment and that was a very you know,
• 42:47
  looking back on it. It's a humbling.
• 42:49
  Because like 7 sales is still worth celebrating like that.
• 42:54
  I'm so glad that I took that moment to like, to just
• 42:58
  celebrate that and be happy about it because like, I don't,
• 43:03
  I don't need 3,000 orders to sustain my business.
• 43:06
  It would actually probably cause my business to buckle.
• 43:08
  If I got 3,000 orders overnight. So it's like, it's like thinking
• 43:12
  about those, those kinds of things where it could be, it
• 43:17
  could be frustrating. To feel like you're not
• 43:21
  necessarily reaching, like the echelons, you're hoping to reach
• 43:25
  or the meteoric growth. You thought you were on the path
• 43:27
  for but you're still doing better than you were yesterday.
• 43:33
  Or you're still just the act of posting.
• 43:36
  The content is a victory in itself.
• 43:38
  Just the act of creating the new thing and putting it into the
• 43:41
  world. Even if like nobody sees it in
• 43:43
  that moment, that's a victory. What?
• 43:46
  I'll share a very brief anecdote if you don't mind.
• 43:49
  The one of the coolest strange experiences that happen to me
• 43:53
  early in my career was, I had the opportunity to work for
• 43:57
  Disney. They were my first legitimate
• 43:59
  client. I was still in college and I did
• 44:01
  a project with them. Yeah it was like I was
• 44:04
  gobsmacked but I was I was in my senior year of college.
• 44:08
  I did this first project for them.
• 44:10
  We wrapped it up and it was great and I figured.
• 44:12
  All right, I work for Disney, like, that's awesome.
• 44:16
  I'm so glad I got to work for them.
• 44:18
  I'm probably never going to do. You work for them again but I'm
• 44:20
  glad I got to do that once in my career and I developed a
• 44:24
  relationship with the client from Disney that I worked with.
• 44:27
  And we're still great buddies today, really nice guy and we
• 44:31
  were on the phone, he was talking to me about how he was
• 44:34
  thinking about, maybe hiring me for another project, and he was
• 44:37
  scrolling through my Tumblr, which thankfully, I kept very
• 44:40
  professional. So I feel like Tumblr.
• 44:43
  It's really easy to go. I'm professional with.
• 44:45
  Tell me he's scrolling through. And he'd spotted a video.
• 44:50
  I did I did a music video that was practically pro bono for a
• 44:55
  small musician in Canada the time and it was a major learning
• 44:59
  experience for me. I had very little experience
• 45:01
  with recording time lapse videos and I it was really good for me
• 45:06
  to do because despite the fact that I didn't really get paid
• 45:08
  for the video it it was a portfolio piece early in my
• 45:13
  career and it was something that like I was interested enough in
• 45:17
  doing that. I kind of got to do it on my
• 45:18
  own. Terms.
• 45:19
  I don't normally advocate for free work but I can understand
• 45:23
  circumstances would people choose to take them, they just
• 45:26
  have to be for good reason and it ended up being great reason
• 45:29
  for me because as this Disney employees scroll through my feet
• 45:32
  on Tumblr, he saw this video I did months ago for this musician
• 45:37
  and he's like you do videos. We need to do this for Disney.
• 45:41
  We need to make a video for Disney and that's how I got a
• 45:43
  video job with Disney. So I guess like At that time, it
• 45:49
  felt like that project was a flat.
• 45:51
  Like the video didn't go viral on YouTube and I didn't I think
• 45:56
  I got paid like very little for it.
• 45:58
  So it was a lot of effort that I put into a project.
• 46:01
  And I figured once it posted, that was the end of it's like
• 46:04
  life span of like how I could like benefit from it.
• 46:08
  But it turns out that like it was seen by the right eyes, down
• 46:12
  the road, and it ended up producing more opportunity for
• 46:16
  me. So While I sometimes feel like,
• 46:19
  you know, maybe I'll post a video to take talk and it will
• 46:21
  flop. Sometimes, I'll post that.
• 46:22
  Same thing to read it, six months later and it will hit the
• 46:26
  front page. Like they're like, I always
• 46:29
  encourage people to find ways to repurpose their content or
• 46:31
  simply repost it. Like, I'm trying to get better
• 46:35
  about that myself because we all have made really cool things and
• 46:39
  sometimes it's just posted at the wrong time and the right
• 46:42
  people didn't see it that time. So that's something I'm working
• 46:46
  on more, although I know Tick-Tock specifically they're
• 46:49
  trying to not let people like repost their old videos.
• 46:53
  I heard there's go around for that but I have to learn more
• 46:55
  about that. Like if you edit it a little
• 46:57
  differently maybe it will like circumvent the whatever Bots
• 47:01
  they have trolling for for you know, reposted content.
• 47:05
  But but yeah, I find that like, if I give my content another
• 47:09
  chance to thrive sometimes that seed will Blossom and other
• 47:15
  times it will Wilt. And it's the same Thing.
• 47:18
  The only difference is I posted at a different time so it might
• 47:22
  reach a whole new audience of people.
• 47:25
  And that's that's something that I'm I'm working on doing more
• 47:29
  because I know you and I probably have hundreds and
• 47:33
  hundreds of videos and other related things we've created
• 47:36
  that we were proud of but they just didn't like get seen by
• 47:41
  anyone and they could they could in the future.
• 47:44
  So I agree with you, but I have a slightly different mindset of
• 47:50
  regards to this, so, Two points here like firstly yeah I think
• 47:56
  it's really important to just keep keep posting keep putting
• 47:59
  stuff out there and then you know your old stuff will
• 48:02
  probably be seen by someone as you say, like I've had similar
• 48:07
  instances, we forgot that I've had, people follow me or want to
• 48:11
  do business with me on the basis of something.
• 48:13
  I didn't years ago and I'm like, oh, okay, that's it.
• 48:16
  I forgot about that. Yeah.
• 48:20
  But but like, you know, It's like that old adage of you know
• 48:24
  you gotta be in it to win it, like the lottery you just have
• 48:26
  to keep trying, keep putting stuff out there, keep having a
• 48:29
  presence, the algorithm isn't always in favor of you.
• 48:35
  With Tick-Tock we will eventually get the live
• 48:36
  streaming TiK ToK by the way. It's just it's it's princess
• 48:40
  Edge. There's so many, so many
• 48:41
  questions, so many things, I've taught.
• 48:43
  I said this in the first episode which I implore everyone to go
• 48:46
  check out like we could literally talk about business
• 48:48
  for hours like and I'd never get bored.
• 48:53
  Why I wanted to come back? It's just I feel like we could
• 48:56
  always like, anytime the podcast ends.
• 48:58
  It's like we could just keep talking.
• 49:00
  That's just that's why I try to ask the right questions, but
• 49:04
  it's tough. No.
• 49:05
  Like, because for me I'm just asking like the questions I want
• 49:08
  to know because I'm just intrigued about your business
• 49:11
  model. I think it's it's fascinating to
• 49:13
  meet someone who's got like this kind of, very playful brand, but
• 49:18
  so much goes into it from like the planning.
• 49:22
  S considerations for Branding. How you approach clients?
• 49:27
  The like, I can tell. It's very meticulous and I like
• 49:30
  that and I think that's really important.
• 49:32
  It was Jay's just with any successful business of brannis
• 49:35
  is so important to do that and it won the question.
• 49:37
  I want to ask you actually was with regards to Like how you're
• 49:43
  making this possible because you said, like if you receive too
• 49:46
  many orders at one time, that would be too much that be like
• 49:48
  overwhelming. Do you have like a support
• 49:51
  network? Like is your partner or family,
• 49:53
  or whoever like helping you facilitate that like when things
• 49:56
  get busier, like I don't around the holiday season or something
• 49:59
  like or are you hiring people? You have a team of people doing
• 50:03
  stuff for you. I know you're very Hands-On when
• 50:05
  it comes to social media and stuff but like do you have
• 50:08
  anyone helping you with the business side of things and do
• 50:10
  you also do, you have plans to kind of expand that?
• 50:12
  To grow your Empire so to speak. Yeah, great questions.
• 50:16
  So for the most part, one of the reasons why I raised my pricing
• 50:21
  annually, there's a lot of reasons but one of the big ones
• 50:24
  is that I want to be able to maintain being able to do all
• 50:28
  the work that I get. So I'm always trying to keep
• 50:30
  myself into a market where like, I'm not getting too much work
• 50:34
  because I want every jet. Like it would be amazing if
• 50:38
  suddenly like five people bought a commission for me but that
• 50:41
  would really mess with my turnaround time.
• 50:42
  And I would be, I would be having to really sacrifice a lot
• 50:47
  of my personal life in order to accommodate being able to
• 50:50
  fulfill a bunch of orders at once.
• 50:53
  I think back to this is, this is probably the closest thing I've
• 50:56
  ever had to, like, a viral selling experience in 2014.
• 51:02
  In November, I had my first ever local news TV appearance and it
• 51:07
  was a pre-recorded new segment that they debuted around
• 51:11
  Thanksgiving. And it heavily.
• 51:15
  It heavily showcased these. I just got two ornaments.
• 51:18
  I made that were like a nice holiday gift and after that
• 51:21
  debuted and then I had a coincidental.
• 51:23
  Like local news article shared on the internet after those
• 51:27
  debuted. I got like 30 orders for the
• 51:29
  holidays, which is basically my maximum capacity.
• 51:33
  I could have handled at all. Like I was working full time.
• 51:37
  I was working like 50 hour work weeks at that time.
• 51:41
  Oh, you had full-time job. Yeah, well, so normally it was
• 51:44
  part-time but because it was the holiday season, they had me step
• 51:47
  it up. I know I so we did two jet.
• 51:49
  I did I remember this from our previous podcast.
• 51:51
  Now, this is this is the job that you had to quit.
• 51:54
  Wasn't it like? Yeah.
• 51:56
  Yeah. And it's, so I was, you know, I
• 51:59
  was like working, like intense hours for the holidays for that.
• 52:02
  And then I got this slew of 30 orders and I didn't want to say
• 52:06
  no to anyone. So I did all of them.
• 52:09
  I skipped Thanksgiving with my family.
• 52:11
  Oh, why? Would I would literally go home
• 52:14
  from work work on my commissions.
• 52:17
  Go to bed, get up, go to work, come home from work work.
• 52:20
  I could like, that was like, pretty much the entire rest of
• 52:24
  November, and then through, like half way through December.
• 52:27
  That was my life, and it was exciting because I was like,
• 52:31
  constantly making art, like, I thought like this, isn't it?
• 52:33
  I finally made it. But what's funny is that, you
• 52:36
  know, back then I was selling ornaments for like forty dollars
• 52:40
  for preserved at just catch and these days that's Arts at like
• 52:43
  170. So I think two years later I
• 52:46
  made the decision. It was a scary one to like
• 52:49
  triple by price is essentially and I was really scared that.
• 52:52
  I was going to like lose all of my business doing that and I had
• 52:57
  to make that decision for a few reasons.
• 52:59
  First off the 40 dollar ornaments was not paying me
• 53:01
  enough for my time second, it wasn't sustainable like I can't
• 53:07
  make a business only making that much money third you know it's a
• 53:11
  specialty product. So I have Like consider that
• 53:13
  it's, it has inherent value because it's not something
• 53:16
  people can just get anywhere, but forth, the two years later,
• 53:21
  when I raise my pricing. So, I made like three grand that
• 53:24
  holiday season, which was like the most I'd ever made.
• 53:27
  That was incredible. That was 30 orders though.
• 53:29
  I think like, 30 orders for three grand.
• 53:32
  I think two years later. I think I got four orders.
• 53:36
  And I made 3 Grand like bubbles, same like, you know, like the
• 53:41
  same amount of money for Like a fraction of the work.
• 53:44
  And so I lost a lot of my original clientele because they
• 53:48
  were priced out. And yeah, you know, the way that
• 53:51
  I look at it is like those were the early adapters.
• 53:53
  They are. The people that can look at
• 53:56
  their art, they bought for me and be like, I got this for only
• 53:59
  40 bucks, but she's charging 200.
• 54:01
  Now for it. Like, that makes me feel good to
• 54:04
  know that, like they got a deal. And I hope they feel that way to
• 54:07
  like, And so, you know I look at it that way and then I also feel
• 54:11
  like. So that's one of the reasons why
• 54:14
  I have my pricing as it is because I actually do in a way
• 54:18
  want to discourage people from, like, from buying too much
• 54:22
  because I kind of have it like, set at that really nice.
• 54:25
  Sweet, sweet spot where like I'm never finding myself too busy
• 54:29
  where I can't handle the amount of work I get.
• 54:31
  Or if I do find myself with like an incredible about it work, I'm
• 54:34
  being incredibly well, compensated for it.
• 54:37
  So, it's worth the occasional all-nighter.
• 54:40
  It's worth the having to move some plans aside if I need to
• 54:46
  that's that's kind of one of the things that helped me as far as
• 54:49
  having helped. I guess, you know, having my
• 54:53
  rebranding done and my website designed by someone else is
• 54:56
  truly the first time in my business that I've really
• 54:59
  entrusted another with like a major aspect of my job or just,
• 55:05
  you know, the way that I run my business because I was I was
• 55:08
  pretty About it and I made sure to communicate this to my
• 55:10
  designer. I was like I'm used to doing
• 55:12
  everything on my own. I used to like every aspect of
• 55:15
  my business essentially being run by myself and so this is
• 55:18
  going to be, you know, I'm either going to be a great
• 55:21
  client or your worst client. I'm going to do my best to be a
• 55:23
  good client for you. But this is my baby.
• 55:25
  And I know, you know, that because it's your job to like
• 55:27
  treat this like a precious commodity and, you know, so I
• 55:31
  trusted her with this thing. That was a little scary to let
• 55:34
  go of, because I'm so used to having control over every aspect
• 55:36
  of my business and she knocked it out of the park.
• 55:38
  And did a better job than I ever could.
• 55:40
  So that's you know, that's the beauty of it.
• 55:42
  I kept telling myself for years that I would take a month off
• 55:45
  and rebuild my website. Yeah, never did that.
• 55:49
  And it's like I paid this designer to do it instead and
• 55:52
  the beauty of doing that is that it still freed me up to do work
• 55:55
  for a month. So it's like I want to get to a
• 55:58
  point where I could start to Delegate more, I do
• 56:04
  occasionally, have people assist me at events, but I, it's
• 56:07
  because I don't have enough hands to do everything at once.
• 56:12
  And then on occasion, especially during the holidays, like, I've
• 56:15
  become pickier about the kind of work, I like to do.
• 56:18
  So sometimes people will say, oh, can you do this drawing?
• 56:21
  That's like a few lines of text or whatever and I don't really
• 56:25
  like drawing like written word on edge a sketch.
• 56:28
  So, I'll see you know what? That's not for me.
• 56:30
  But there's a Today that just sketch artist and this person's
• 56:34
  available for commissions and their rights might even be lower
• 56:38
  than mine. So this is board their
• 56:40
  wheelhouse. Why don't you reach out to them?
• 56:42
  And you know, maybe you can facilitate a sale from there or
• 56:45
  like you know because there's like a community of us, we all
• 56:48
  kind of have our own Specialties to.
• 56:50
  So if I find myself like swamped with work and that rare
• 56:53
  occasion, I can, you know, possibly get someone else a gig.
• 56:57
  So that's always like, you know, and that's something that I feel
• 57:00
  like that just Each artist Community, we're pretty good
• 57:03
  about like there have been times where people have passed a job
• 57:07
  to me as well because they couldn't take it for one reason
• 57:09
  or another. So we scratch each other's
• 57:12
  backs. I get that thing, that's
• 57:14
  important, especially agree with what you said about pricing.
• 57:20
  I had a similar situation recently because I do like
• 57:23
  Marketing sales, all sorts of stuff freelance.
• 57:26
  And one of those things is just copywriting and content writing.
• 57:30
  I've been doing it for past five years.
• 57:31
  Now and same. As you raise my prices every
• 57:34
  year, I didn't realize until last couple of years.
• 57:38
  Just how important that raising a prices is as far as you know,
• 57:43
  like how much time it takes you to do things and also the
• 57:47
  perception, the client or the companies that you work with
• 57:50
  have of your work and I actually raise my prices quite
• 57:54
  significantly recently for a regular client of mine.
• 57:58
  And they immediately said yeah they said oh well, this is very
• 58:01
  Verging on salary prices like in terms of what we would order for
• 58:05
  you and I said, well, I know you can afford it and also at the
• 58:10
  same time, I'm very cheap in comparison to what the market
• 58:14
  rates are, which is true. And I gave some examples of
• 58:19
  like, agencies and what they charged at, just at the low end,
• 58:23
  which was double, what I was charging.
• 58:25
  And then, I gave an example of what some companies charge in
• 58:28
  the maximum. So, some companies for example,
• 58:30
  will charge like, 3,000 per article, which is nuts to think
• 58:34
  about. But it's all to do with, you
• 58:37
  know, the idea of all, you're getting a solid piece of work,
• 58:40
  you're getting this again, that and I've always been very fair
• 58:42
  with what I do, because I'm very Hands-On meticulous with with
• 58:46
  the things that I do. So I factor that in and the time
• 58:50
  and effort and also the back and forth, you know, like I'm not
• 58:53
  going to charge clients if there's back and forth with the
• 58:55
  client, because I expect that to be part of the process, but that
• 59:00
  will inevitably drive the S up and I think it's not just a
• 59:05
  perception of your work itself, but how much you value your time
• 59:10
  you gotta charge according to your time because that's the
• 59:12
  thing time is so valuable, and in a business context, it's even
• 59:17
  more. So and I think what's
• 59:18
  fascinating about what you do, which because I have a question
• 59:22
  in mind for you, but the same time I'm like, I already know
• 59:24
  the answer. I don't think you're ever going
• 59:28
  to consider having other people do your work for you.
• 59:31
  You never going to have a team of people that work on right
• 59:35
  now. I don't think so, I've even had
• 59:37
  people, recently asked me about Outsourcing the preservation
• 59:41
  process for my edges sketch art. And ideally, that would be
• 59:45
  awesome, but it even that is such a meticulous process that
• 59:50
  it's hard to trust another person to do it correctly.
• 59:53
  Like I've I still mess up and I've been doing it for years so
• 59:57
  it's like, it's not a matter of not trusting people adopt.
• 1:00:00
  It's a matter of like, Recognizing that the process is
• 1:00:03
  so. So difficult that I just want to
• 1:00:07
  make sure that I administer it in the best way that I can.
• 1:00:10
  So with that, in mind, it basically means that your work.
• 1:00:15
  Hey is only ever going to get more expensive as time goes on.
• 1:00:20
  Yeah. And be because of the nature of
• 1:00:22
  the fact that you don't have everyone out.
• 1:00:24
  Anyone else doing it? You are the only person doing
• 1:00:26
  it. People are not just paying for
• 1:00:27
  your product, they're paying for you specifically to do that.
• 1:00:32
  And, you know, the more, I don't know, famous, you get all, the
• 1:00:34
  more renowned you get, all the more people you reach, the more
• 1:00:37
  those costs are going to go up and up and up, but it's it and
• 1:00:41
  it's it's not even necessarily because of you and like,
• 1:00:46
  obviously, you'll be deciding those prices, but it would be
• 1:00:49
  Beyond you if that makes sense. It's like this just has to
• 1:00:53
  happen because of the nature of how your business is
• 1:00:57
  constructed. In that sense.
• 1:00:59
  Yeah. And then every year, you know,
• 1:01:01
  we're becoming more expert in our fields to so you know that
• 1:01:06
  deserves compensation and then not even to mention inflation.
• 1:01:09
  Like it's it's all. There's all like, really good
• 1:01:12
  reasons to raise your pricing. I've even thought about, like if
• 1:01:15
  Were to decide one day. I'm done with this being my full
• 1:01:18
  time Endeavor which might happen in the future, I'm not sure, but
• 1:01:21
  if I decided one day I want to go get a more traditional 925.
• 1:01:25
  Again, the grass is greener over on the 925 side, let's go do
• 1:01:27
  that. I would actually raise my prices
• 1:01:30
  a lot more instead of lower them because if I were to get a
• 1:01:36
  nine-to-five job that would be what I'd be spending my life
• 1:01:41
  doing for a living and I wouldn't want to be spending my
• 1:01:44
  time. I'm off the clock taking on more
• 1:01:47
  work. So it's like, Well, if you
• 1:01:49
  really want me to spend my personal time making a project
• 1:01:52
  for you, then you're going to have to pay an Ultra Premium for
• 1:01:55
  it. Yeah.
• 1:01:58
  That was like, you know, that's the only way you're going to
• 1:02:00
  motivate me to pick up an Etch-a-Sketch on my down time
• 1:02:03
  when I want to, you know, have a nice weekend and relax.
• 1:02:06
  So so yeah, yeah. I mean, if it's anyone's
• 1:02:10
  considering buying art for me, it's only going to get more
• 1:02:12
  expensive at least as far. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:17
  So it's definitely a, you know, that might be counterintuitive
• 1:02:20
  to a lot of people because, you know, but but there's also, this
• 1:02:24
  was something I really firmly. Believe in the biggest power you
• 1:02:28
  have in negotiation, is being able to walk away.
• 1:02:31
  So if I had a 9 to 5, I'm being all of my, you know, in theory,
• 1:02:37
  all of my financial needs are being met already.
• 1:02:39
  So, If I raise my prices it's because I'm okay with people not
• 1:02:44
  buying my art, I'm okay with like if you can't afford it or
• 1:02:48
  if you don't want to spend that money, if you don't find it to
• 1:02:50
  be of that value, that doesn't bother me at all.
• 1:02:53
  I don't fault you for feeling that way and you don't have to
• 1:02:56
  buy it. Like you could complain about
• 1:02:58
  the price but like you're not my customer and that's okay because
• 1:03:02
  you're not the person. I'm trying to reach someone who
• 1:03:04
  values my art enough is going to pay the price.
• 1:03:06
  I ask for it, this is an amazing Point as well because I think
• 1:03:10
  it's very important that people Realize that often, when these
• 1:03:14
  companies are clients come to you, they think, oh, you
• 1:03:17
  desperately need me. You need me.
• 1:03:20
  Like, I, for instance, I'll give you an example.
• 1:03:22
  I had a company reach out to me via Tick-Tock and they said, I
• 1:03:28
  won't name the company for obvious reasons, but they will
• 1:03:32
  like it was a major company that's going to give away.
• 1:03:39
  They have a, they have a, they have a product, tell you off
• 1:03:41
  camera, they have a product which has an app as well, it's
• 1:03:46
  fairly well known its International product.
• 1:03:50
  I was kind of surprised that they reached out to me.
• 1:03:52
  I think they were just looking at my numbers, to be honest, but
• 1:03:55
  they weren't looking at engagement.
• 1:03:56
  So, to put that into perspective, as I mentioned
• 1:03:59
  earlier, I have 29,000 followers.
• 1:04:01
  Yeah. But how many people are
• 1:04:03
  regularly watching my videos. Average is about 200 viewers.
• 1:04:08
  Vidya. Yeah.
• 1:04:09
  So I have a similar problem with my account too.
• 1:04:12
  So and that's fine. You know, that's amazing but
• 1:04:14
  like, from it from a marketing perspective.
• 1:04:16
  Yeah. It's like influencer marketing.
• 1:04:19
  Yeah, it's not worth it. Like, you know, if I had like a
• 1:04:22
  thousand reach 5,000 reach per video and of those people, I
• 1:04:26
  don't know, maybe 500 by it, then it'd be worth it, it's not,
• 1:04:29
  it wouldn't be worth it. So I was a bit puzzled from a
• 1:04:31
  business standpoint. Why they were contacting me but
• 1:04:33
  I was like, hey whatever they want to throw money away.
• 1:04:36
  Great, let's do it. So anyways, around the Christmas
• 1:04:39
  season so I created an advert and I did it in my style because
• 1:04:43
  I'm a content creator and I was really proud of it.
• 1:04:47
  It was a video that was timed perfectly, you know, that that's
• 1:04:51
  only goes, who still the most wonderful time of the year that
• 1:04:56
  one. But, you know, that at the
• 1:04:58
  beginning goes bing. Boom, boom.
• 1:05:00
  Dude. It's it is like you can imagine
• 1:05:03
  and I cut it in that way. I filmed, I went went out.
• 1:05:06
  I filmed a bunch of stuff. Even got friend of mine to one
• 1:05:09
  of my housemates to help me film it and everything like a really
• 1:05:13
  went into a lot of effort to create it and it basically
• 1:05:16
  showed the place that I live Manchester and it showed me
• 1:05:20
  using the product in the context of that.
• 1:05:23
  Like all of the call these things, you can use it for, you
• 1:05:25
  know, right? Brilliant.
• 1:05:28
  And then they message me and they were like, oh yeah, great
• 1:05:30
  could you do a voiceover for it? And I was like, okay, yeah,
• 1:05:34
  fine, I can make it work. So I did a video a voice over.
• 1:05:37
  On top of that, still managed to keep the setup that I had and if
• 1:05:40
  anything, it added more to it, to be honest.
• 1:05:42
  It was good. Good.
• 1:05:44
  Yeah. Now they get back to me again
• 1:05:48
  and then like, oh well, could you not maybe show that it's on
• 1:05:53
  tfl. Now for those who don't know
• 1:05:56
  Transport for London, that's what tfl is?
• 1:06:00
  I live in Manchester. Yeah, I do not live in London.
• 1:06:04
  I'm from London by don't live in London, and it's very obvious.
• 1:06:07
  And I, Had been and I made it clear that it's in Manchester
• 1:06:10
  you can tell so I don't live in that region.
• 1:06:13
  That's number one. Number two, they were like, oh,
• 1:06:17
  we need it to be a bit more professional.
• 1:06:21
  You need to add this in, you need to add that in and I was
• 1:06:23
  like, look this this is I have you have you watched my channel?
• 1:06:29
  Have you seen the way I do things like this is what you're
• 1:06:32
  going to get. Like I'm not a marketing agency,
• 1:06:34
  I'm not a professional. Creator in the sense that, you
• 1:06:40
  know, like I do professional adverts if you want that go hire
• 1:06:43
  a marketing agency, you know, I didn't say that in those words
• 1:06:47
  but you know, I was like, what is this?
• 1:06:49
  Like I've already created this for you.
• 1:06:51
  You know. Like this is getting a bit
• 1:06:52
  ridiculous. Now obviously I put it in a
• 1:06:55
  business format, you know, I didn't write you never speak
• 1:07:00
  like this to improve business. You can you can communicate the
• 1:07:04
  same message but you could be a personal way.
• 1:07:07
  Yeah. So I was like, okay, fine, and
• 1:07:14
  then they said something which actually annoyed me, they were
• 1:07:16
  like, oh, we're looking for a partnership, a long-term
• 1:07:19
  partnership with a content creator to do.
• 1:07:22
  X, y, and Zed. And I was like, Okay, so
• 1:07:28
  basically what they're implying is that I'm not professional
• 1:07:32
  enough to do this and, you know, but that they didn't care about
• 1:07:35
  what I was doing. I could tell this is just a
• 1:07:37
  numbers thing. I can tell that someone looked
• 1:07:39
  at my account and when yet that takes the boss, he's got enough
• 1:07:42
  followers, Target him for some money at him.
• 1:07:45
  They won't even offering that much money to be honest with
• 1:07:47
  you, it was a right. But it, you know, for an advert
• 1:07:51
  specially, if I take off in the future, you know, they're
• 1:07:53
  getting the bargain from me because I know how advertising
• 1:07:55
  works. You always get fleeced for an
• 1:07:58
  advert. If you've if you've recorded an
• 1:08:00
  advert and put your voice to it for like say 500, they probably
• 1:08:04
  made like, 50,000 from it, you know, a low level, you know.
• 1:08:07
  It's like that's the reality of the situation.
• 1:08:10
  They look at it, like they're doing me a favor, they're
• 1:08:13
  helping me out. I'm the small lowly content
• 1:08:16
  creator that, you know. And and this is goes back to
• 1:08:18
  what you were saying before. Sometimes the power is in
• 1:08:21
  walking away. I was like, no, thank you.
• 1:08:23
  I'm good. And I walked away and I'm sure
• 1:08:25
  they probably. Looked at me like are he's an
• 1:08:27
  idiot? Like you know, he loses out but
• 1:08:29
  you know what? I don't lose out.
• 1:08:32
  Have my Integrity. I have my time.
• 1:08:35
  I'm not going to waste money on a bullet.
• 1:08:36
  Yeah, that's the thing. I'm not going to waste my time
• 1:08:38
  trying to Pander and continuously tweak something
• 1:08:42
  that was already good. Yeah and I posted the video
• 1:08:46
  anyway without their stuff in it and it was a decent video and I
• 1:08:49
  was proud of it and cool. It just kind of been able to use
• 1:08:53
  the contents because that's always heartbreaking if you make
• 1:08:56
  it. Like surrounding a product that
• 1:08:58
  like you end up not wanting to like promote or support.
• 1:09:01
  So that's cool. That's really cool.
• 1:09:03
  You were able to like still there was a silver lining to it.
• 1:09:07
  Yeah. And they're always has and I
• 1:09:09
  think you just have to have the right attitude in these
• 1:09:11
  situations like some companies, it just doesn't work out with
• 1:09:15
  some clients. It doesn't work out with and
• 1:09:16
  that's okay. And you always have to try and
• 1:09:18
  keep it professional like you know if they don't act
• 1:09:21
  professional that's their problem.
• 1:09:23
  Make sure every correspondence that you have with anyone.
• 1:09:26
  Is always professional. Absolutely.
• 1:09:29
  It never behooves you to burn a bridge but it just makes you
• 1:09:33
  look bad. Yeah.
• 1:09:34
  Even if you feel like it's a Even if you feel really
• 1:09:38
  justified in burning the bridge, like you just, it's a small
• 1:09:42
  small world and, and, you know, and you don't know what the
• 1:09:45
  future holds even if you just really find it in, you, like it
• 1:09:49
  really great to feel wronged, it's definitely from a
• 1:09:53
  professional perspective, a really bad idea.
• 1:09:56
  Yeah. So let's finally talk about
• 1:09:59
  Tick-Tock and live streaming. I know, I know everyone's
• 1:10:01
  probably been really aggravated but I kept switching and pushing
• 1:10:06
  it around. But hey did those just like I
• 1:10:08
  said before that you there's so many questions to ask this lady
• 1:10:11
  and I still haven't even asked barely any of them here.
• 1:10:13
  I've just been ad-libbing the whole time pretty much.
• 1:10:17
  But yeah I want to talk Tick-Tock because I think
• 1:10:22
  Tick-Tock and you what which has been the most successful view.
• 1:10:27
  Let's start there because I think Instagram and we spoke
• 1:10:29
  about this a little bit and in the first episode that we did
• 1:10:32
  together tick-tocking YouTube seem to be the two.
• 1:10:36
  Would I think we're doing particularly well, I could be
• 1:10:39
  wrong in that because I think to recall that you had some success
• 1:10:42
  in the last year where YouTube actually like advertised you or
• 1:10:47
  something, which was really cool.
• 1:10:49
  Yeah. It's it's interesting with.
• 1:10:53
  So so the, the primary three platforms that I'm most active
• 1:10:57
  on our Instagram, Tick-Tock and YouTube, and YouTube and
• 1:11:01
  Tick-Tock have most recently given me a platform that I was
• 1:11:05
  not expecting. So YouTube has featured me as a
• 1:11:08
  Creator on the rise in 2020, which is basically like a
• 1:11:13
  24-hour feature on the homepage of the website so that was
• 1:11:18
  incredible. I think my subscriber count went
• 1:11:20
  up like 20,000 that day. So like meteoric difference in
• 1:11:25
  my subscriber count and then and then YouTube also featured me
• 1:11:30
  for international women's day last year which was really
• 1:11:33
  unexpected and cool. Yeah.
• 1:11:35
  So I Like there's like a tendrils of a, you know, of some
• 1:11:40
  kind of a partnership between me and YouTube.
• 1:11:42
  Like I'm on their list somewhere which is incredible.
• 1:11:45
  And something I never imagined or expected but happen.
• 1:11:47
  So I'm all about fostering that relationship further and then on
• 1:11:53
  the flipside, quite recently Tick-Tock has put me on one of
• 1:11:56
  their lists so they featured me in a live Spotlight earlier this
• 1:12:02
  month, okay? And that similar to YouTube is
• 1:12:06
  like 24-hour feature and they're like there's like a whole
• 1:12:10
  section on the live creators page where you can just see like
• 1:12:14
  a list of people that they Spotlight like two or three
• 1:12:16
  times a week and that was also an incredible Boon.
• 1:12:20
  I think so I went live most of that day and I gained like 5,000
• 1:12:23
  followers that day from just going live and interacting with
• 1:12:27
  people on Tick-Tock. So so Tik-Tok has also been you
• 1:12:32
  know, starting to like They've noticed me which is another
• 1:12:36
  thing that like most creators, don't ever get noticed by the
• 1:12:39
  platform. So I just feel incredible
• 1:12:41
  gratitude that that has even happened with.
• 1:12:46
  Yeah. So with Tick Tock, I've been
• 1:12:47
  live streaming there for the last week or so I've been
• 1:12:50
  streaming their daily and you mentioned earlier that you used
• 1:12:54
  to stream deley, right? And yeah, no kidding.
• 1:12:57
  That can be taxing because that's like a chunk of your day
• 1:13:00
  that you dedicate to like speaking to an audience and
• 1:13:04
  Forming for them and I liked it but I could see how it's like
• 1:13:08
  it's a decision. I have to make to take the time
• 1:13:10
  out of my day, everyday for that.
• 1:13:12
  Yeah, I moved twitch. Yeah, and I've Been Everywhere
• 1:13:16
  twitch YouTube, Instagram. Tick-Tock, I actually moved away
• 1:13:20
  from Tick-Tock because I got banned forever, seemingly.
• 1:13:24
  And I've told the story many times before it was a silly
• 1:13:27
  story. So I won't bore the listeners
• 1:13:29
  with it again but basically They banned me for saying a
• 1:13:33
  particular word in the context of advertising, as in mature
• 1:13:38
  content kind of thing. So you can sort of get where I'm
• 1:13:41
  coming from their die and I named a company that produces
• 1:13:46
  mature content and I was I was talking about advertising
• 1:13:50
  because I have an international audience of always seem to have
• 1:13:53
  an international audience and many of them were not familiar
• 1:13:55
  with this like Christmas advertising campaigns that we
• 1:13:59
  have here in the UK because it's It's not hot like I think
• 1:14:04
  America does it too but like we have quite a lot of competition
• 1:14:07
  between certain companies and supermarkets that who can get
• 1:14:09
  the best Christmas, advert. You know, it's like who's the
• 1:14:11
  most compelling because it's like a story.
• 1:14:13
  It's not even anything to do with the actual supermarket's.
• 1:14:16
  It's like, oh, look, this company did a story about a
• 1:14:19
  rabbit and how it got like, a cute little teddy as it's
• 1:14:23
  Christmas gift or, I don't know something like that where ever.
• 1:14:27
  They, cool. Yeah.
• 1:14:27
  We I don't feel like our supermarkets compete in the u.s.
• 1:14:30
  like that, like, that's That's that's really.
• 1:14:32
  I want to learn more about that. Yeah, I couldn't, I can send you
• 1:14:35
  some stuff afterwards. So I was talking about that and
• 1:14:39
  then I explained that sometimes even companies you wouldn't
• 1:14:43
  expect do that. And then I gave this example of
• 1:14:46
  this particular company and again above board.
• 1:14:50
  It was it was an advert that was played on daytime TV in the UK.
• 1:14:54
  It was perfectly fine. I mean it would have been on TV
• 1:14:57
  otherwise, right? And it was a very
• 1:14:59
  tongue-in-cheek, funny advert, and I spoke about it for like
• 1:15:02
  fight than 10 seconds, mention the company name and then moved
• 1:15:05
  on, and they proceeded to ban me for life.
• 1:15:09
  And I appealed it and loads of my audience appealed it, and
• 1:15:12
  I've never received anything in response.
• 1:15:15
  I personally think that Tick-Tock is a fast because I
• 1:15:21
  see lots of content that is really inappropriate on that
• 1:15:24
  platform. Everything from Well, let's
• 1:15:28
  let's just leave it there, just not.
• 1:15:31
  Yeah, it's stuff that I look at and I'm like, really, you're
• 1:15:34
  gonna ban me for saying this word, but you've got all of this
• 1:15:36
  stuff on your content. Like, this is Despicable, that's
• 1:15:39
  that's kind of where I'm at with a used to be annoyance now.
• 1:15:42
  I'm like, it's despicable whatever.
• 1:15:47
  Now, I really understand your frustration.
• 1:15:49
  That's the thing. Like it surprised me when I got
• 1:15:51
  banned but I just let it go. I moved to other platforms.
• 1:15:55
  Twitch. Christian Roots, official.
• 1:15:56
  Come check me out. But then I started seeing you
• 1:16:00
  getting back. Yeah and that's tied to really
• 1:16:03
  infuriate me and confuse me because at first I thought our
• 1:16:06
  maybe it's just some trolls messing around but it kept
• 1:16:09
  happening and kept happening and kept happening.
• 1:16:12
  Yeah, talk talk us through your experiences with getting banned
• 1:16:16
  and what's going on there because it doesn't make any
• 1:16:18
  sense to me. Why you would be there?
• 1:16:20
  I am one of the lucky few to actually find out why I got
• 1:16:25
  banned. Oh it's so I'll share that at
• 1:16:28
  the end of the story. So, basically, for anyone who's
• 1:16:32
  never been in a live stream of mine before I will take live
• 1:16:36
  request for what to create on an Etch-a-Sketch over the course of
• 1:16:39
  a few minutes. So basically I tell the chat,
• 1:16:42
  all right guys, spam your request.
• 1:16:44
  I'm going to select one at random and then I'll just okay
• 1:16:47
  that one I'm going to Etch-a-Sketch Goku from Dragon
• 1:16:50
  Ball Z and then in like, you know, 10 minutes or less, I'll
• 1:16:53
  create a live Goku drawing and everyone watches.
• 1:16:55
  And, you know, we talked about anime for A bit.
• 1:16:58
  Well I'm drawing it and that's, you know, that's the general
• 1:17:00
  gist of my live streams. And I so I was doing, I was
• 1:17:08
  trying to figure out ways to monetize my live streams.
• 1:17:12
  And the thing is, people don't really donate on Tick-Tock lives
• 1:17:17
  very much or if they do donate, it is literally fractions of a
• 1:17:20
  penny. So when you get a rose on
• 1:17:24
  Tik-Tok, if somebody donates a rose, which is like the most
• 1:17:27
  common, Donation. You can receive that is worth,
• 1:17:30
  half a penny, USD roses half a penny.
• 1:17:33
  So when you get 20 roses, that's 10 cents and it's great and it
• 1:17:41
  does add up over time but it trickles.
• 1:17:44
  So I could be having a live stream with maybe three thousand
• 1:17:47
  people watching at my Max and maybe overall there's 85
• 1:17:52
  thousand viewers who tuned in and after streaming for an hour,
• 1:17:55
  I'll end the stream and I'll make Make four dollars and
• 1:17:58
  twenty three cents, you know, and that's like a good day on
• 1:18:01
  Tick-Tock. So it's like, oh wow.
• 1:18:04
  How can I how can I solve this problem?
• 1:18:07
  I want to live stream or obviously Tick.
• 1:18:10
  Tock is pushing my content because it finds it, engaging,
• 1:18:13
  it's hitting the fyp. The audience is sticking around
• 1:18:16
  because they enjoy it. So, is there a way for me to
• 1:18:20
  actually make this a sustainable thing for me on Tick Tock?
• 1:18:23
  So I was brainstorming. And one problem that I found in
• 1:18:26
  my streams is that The word keep asking me to create X Y or Z but
• 1:18:31
  I wouldn't get to it because there's two thousand people
• 1:18:34
  watching and I'm one human, I can't do all the requests.
• 1:18:37
  So I came up with the first idea, I had was, I made a live
• 1:18:42
  stream commission slots on Etsy, so basically you go to Etsy.
• 1:18:46
  It's 10, u.s. dollars, you get your request guaranteed, to be
• 1:18:50
  fulfilled on a future live stream.
• 1:18:52
  We coordinate for the time and what you want drawn and what
• 1:18:56
  you're paying for is the Experience of watching your
• 1:18:58
  request being made and you can take a screenshot and you know,
• 1:19:01
  I give you a shout out because it's like this person requested
• 1:19:04
  this and then you get to watch it being made and there's like a
• 1:19:07
  live audience that's watching it too.
• 1:19:10
  So that was you know my solution to the you know the problem.
• 1:19:14
  So to say and it worked, okay? Like I would get a couple
• 1:19:20
  commissions here and there you know the problem is, I tell
• 1:19:23
  people go to the link in my bio and then they got to go to my
• 1:19:26
  link and bio They go to Etsy and then they got a process the
• 1:19:30
  transaction through at Sea and do they have to put in their
• 1:19:33
  credit card number probably. And by the time they go through
• 1:19:35
  all these steps, it's like I lost them you know who's going
• 1:19:38
  to want to jump through all those Hoops.
• 1:19:39
  So then I had a big brain thought one day and it wasn't
• 1:19:42
  even my idea I was watching someone else's live stream and
• 1:19:45
  they were doing drawings like really poorly done.
• 1:19:49
  Quick drawings online paper and it was like donate sunglasses.
• 1:19:54
  I shred it donate a heart with a lock in it.
• 1:19:57
  And I keep it and their chat was going wild.
• 1:20:02
  Like they were getting like a billion, like just all of these
• 1:20:05
  notifications popping for donations and it's like that's
• 1:20:08
  it if I keep people in the app and I get them to donate in app,
• 1:20:14
  then I don't have to have them jump through the hoops and
• 1:20:16
  they're more likely to want to get the request fulfilled on the
• 1:20:19
  spot, then have to schedule it for a future stream.
• 1:20:23
  So I thought, all right, let's do this.
• 1:20:26
  So I you know I I don't know if you've ever liked explored, the
• 1:20:30
  options of like different emojis you can donate but they all have
• 1:20:33
  different monetary values. So I started like learning about
• 1:20:37
  how much is this worth? How much would it be worth my
• 1:20:39
  time if I asked for this? And I came up with the system
• 1:20:42
  where it's like if you donate a gold mine, then you can you know
• 1:20:48
  request that the drawing is made or if you donate a Galaxy, I
• 1:20:51
  will erase what I'm drawing like but having a lot of fun with it
• 1:20:54
  and making it like really urgent and I mean I had live streams
• 1:20:59
  where I made like $50 in an hour.
• 1:21:01
  I had live streams are made 75 and an hour doing this.
• 1:21:05
  Yeah. The chat was like freaking out,
• 1:21:08
  but I kept getting Bandits. Like I would start doing this
• 1:21:11
  and then suddenly the rug is pulled from under me.
• 1:21:15
  And every single time I would get banned for misinformation.
• 1:21:20
  It's like I'm not talking about anything regarding
• 1:21:24
  misinformation. I'm not talking about the
• 1:21:26
  election. I'm not talking about Maxi's.
• 1:21:28
  I'm not like I'm as far as you could get from political content
• 1:21:32
  and it's like what does that even mean?
• 1:21:35
  And so obviously it's like well I was just banned for no reason
• 1:21:39
  like that. That's not I didn't do that.
• 1:21:42
  So I would appeal and time and time.
• 1:21:44
  Again Tick-Tock denies my appeal within minutes of me submitting
• 1:21:48
  it. And now for me I'm lucky because
• 1:21:50
  my band's last only a week but you know what?
• 1:21:54
  It's like is alive streamer. If you get derailed from
• 1:21:57
  Streaming for an entire week that messes with you.
• 1:22:00
  Like you, you might have had a schedule going.
• 1:22:03
  You might have had some good momentum going and now you
• 1:22:06
  cannot do that. That sucks.
• 1:22:09
  So it was infuriating and I kept trying and finding that I had
• 1:22:13
  this problem. Well, one day I hosted a live
• 1:22:16
  stream on Tick Tock and it performed really well.
• 1:22:19
  And I got a message from Tik-Tok like in the app and you know how
• 1:22:23
  like you can get a notification from Tick-Tock and it'll tell
• 1:22:26
  you this or that it was Actually a message from a staff member at
• 1:22:30
  Tick-Tock and she's like, hi, I'm so-and-so at Tick-Tock.
• 1:22:34
  I saw your live stream and I would love to connect with you
• 1:22:37
  via email about a potential future live-streaming
• 1:22:40
  opportunity with Tick-Tock and I'm like, amazing.
• 1:22:43
  So so we scheduled a meeting. I got to talk to her and she was
• 1:22:50
  really excited to like tell me about, you know, I can't talk
• 1:22:53
  about everything we said but like you know, there was like
• 1:22:56
  nda's. So Oh, she ate it.
• 1:22:57
  But basically she wanted to put me on a list for you.
• 1:23:01
  No consideration for like being able to know about some new
• 1:23:04
  features and and and like being considered for future Tick-Tock
• 1:23:08
  Spotlight and and I was all about that and then I kind of
• 1:23:12
  derailed the conversation because she wanted to know from
• 1:23:14
  me personally like what kind of features would you like to see
• 1:23:17
  in future Tick-Tock lives and I was like, huh well you know, I
• 1:23:21
  keep having this problem actually and I was like super
• 1:23:25
  cool about it. Like I know it's not your fault
• 1:23:27
  right. But I keep getting banned and
• 1:23:30
  she's like, oh, I know why it's probably because a gift baiting.
• 1:23:34
  And I'm like, because of what, what is gift baiting?
• 1:23:37
  And she explained that by doing anything in any capacity on
• 1:23:43
  Tick, Tock to ask for a donation.
• 1:23:46
  Even though I'm performing a task in exchange for the
• 1:23:50
  donation, that is against Tick-Tock terms of service.
• 1:23:52
  And that was news to me because I've lost Looked through the
• 1:23:57
  Tick-Tock terms of service. I've read through their
• 1:24:00
  Community guidelines. Every time I've gotten band,
• 1:24:02
  I've combed through and never saw that word gift painting.
• 1:24:05
  And I said, okay well, then why am I getting banned for
• 1:24:09
  misinformation? If that's the problem and she
• 1:24:11
  told me straight up that she concedes that Tick-Tock needs to
• 1:24:15
  do a better job of being more transparent about the reasoning
• 1:24:18
  because she knows that that doesn't make sense either.
• 1:24:22
  And I said well that's, you know, that's huge news to me, I
• 1:24:26
  would have loved to have known this.
• 1:24:27
  Months ago, when I first started getting banned because I kept,
• 1:24:33
  you know, I wouldn't have kept gift baiting if I knew it was a
• 1:24:36
  problem because it's in my best interest to have my Tick, Tock
• 1:24:40
  live streaming Privileges, and she told me that she would send
• 1:24:45
  me some resources and, and she did.
• 1:24:49
  And then I found on the only place I could find Tick-Tock
• 1:24:52
  making an official stance on this was on like one of their
• 1:24:55
  Tick-Tock live website. It's where you could scroll
• 1:24:58
  through. And it's like make sure to not
• 1:25:00
  gift bait and then describing what that is.
• 1:25:02
  And you know, basically, I asked her, it's like well, okay that's
• 1:25:07
  that's a real bummer. Because how what do you suggest
• 1:25:11
  that I do to make this a monetizable platform for me?
• 1:25:16
  Because frankly, I'm happy to keep producing valuable content
• 1:25:21
  for your platform and I'm glad that you find my content
• 1:25:24
  valuable enough to like put me on a list for future.
• 1:25:27
  You shouldn't and for features, but the fact of the matter is,
• 1:25:30
  I'm doing this for free and I'm not really getting compensation
• 1:25:34
  for it. And ideally I don't mind that
• 1:25:37
  you get a cut. Like, if I get donations through
• 1:25:41
  your platform, you're taking a 50% cut, Which is higher that a
• 1:25:45
  lot of other platforms, but I don't mind that.
• 1:25:48
  As long as I'm making enough money to sustain the time, I'm
• 1:25:53
  spending doing live streaming where I could be doing other
• 1:25:57
  work. Work that I'm getting paid for
• 1:25:58
  right? Like I could be focusing on
• 1:26:01
  other projects or planting other seeds or you know promoting
• 1:26:05
  other endeavors. And so I asked her like what can
• 1:26:07
  I do as a Creator on your platform to better guarantee
• 1:26:12
  that I can actually make this sustainable for myself.
• 1:26:15
  And she said well you can ask for compensation off the
• 1:26:21
  platform and that's what I've been doing technically with Ed.
• 1:26:24
  See, right? Like I ask people to donate
• 1:26:26
  through And that's like it's a really unfortunate answer,
• 1:26:31
  right? Because like, like I said
• 1:26:34
  earlier, who wants to jump through those Hoops, who wants
• 1:26:37
  the moment, you ask someone to leave your live stream, the
• 1:26:39
  probability of them coming back is pretty well like the
• 1:26:43
  internet's a distracting place. You're going to leave the app,
• 1:26:47
  like you're asking me to tell my own viewers on Tick, Tock to
• 1:26:51
  leave your app to go give me money off platform like that
• 1:26:57
  seems So counterproductive to like Tik toks Mission like they
• 1:27:01
  want to keep people on their app, they want to make money
• 1:27:03
  through their app. So I don't know exactly why
• 1:27:08
  Tick-Tock has that policy because it seems definitely
• 1:27:12
  counterproductive to like money-making.
• 1:27:17
  But maybe it has something to do with, like, safety guidelines
• 1:27:20
  with children or something. I know children aren't supposed
• 1:27:23
  to be able to donate on the app, but I think that they just get
• 1:27:26
  away with it because a like, Just lie about their age so I
• 1:27:31
  yeah, I don't know, I've got a lot of mixed feelings about it
• 1:27:34
  and that communicated to me like I love Tick Tock, it's
• 1:27:37
  definitely my most successful live streaming platform, but
• 1:27:41
  everyone tells me I got to jump ship because I cannot sustain
• 1:27:45
  myself on that platform. The only way I sustain myself is
• 1:27:48
  when I get people to buy something else, while on my
• 1:27:52
  life, which can be sustainable. Like I got a few weeks ago, I
• 1:27:57
  was Hosting a live stream, and somebody bought a 350 dollar
• 1:28:00
  drawing of mine on Etsy because they were watching my street and
• 1:28:04
  it's like that doesn't happen every day.
• 1:28:06
  But like, if I make 10 bucks from a print sale on my stream,
• 1:28:09
  like, you know, ideally I'd like to make minimum wage because it
• 1:28:13
  is work. But yeah, you know, there's a
• 1:28:16
  lot of fringe benefits. Like I get new followers, My
• 1:28:20
  follow count on Tick-Tock has skyrocketed.
• 1:28:23
  And you know, the last few months from streaming
• 1:28:25
  consistently but that number It doesn't mean much if I can't as
• 1:28:30
  a business capitalize on it and very blunt terms.
• 1:28:35
  So that's kind of where I am with Tick-Tock live streaming
• 1:28:39
  and I feel so lucky to know why I got banned and to have that
• 1:28:43
  reasoning going forward because I stopped gift meeting but it's
• 1:28:46
  so impure. Reacting to go on the app and
• 1:28:49
  see. Everyone else is still doing it.
• 1:28:51
  Anyways, like I go to streets all the time.
• 1:28:53
  Whereas if you have any signage up that says like donate, X and
• 1:28:58
  this will happen. That's gift.
• 1:28:59
  Being like that's that's definition of gift waiting and
• 1:29:03
  it's inconsistent on how things are moderated.
• 1:29:05
  I think if my stream from popular, if they hit the F why
• 1:29:07
  people are more likely to report me for it and therefore I've
• 1:29:11
  been banned more frequently because I've had success.
• 1:29:14
  So it's a double-edged sword. I still to this day, don't
• 1:29:18
  actually know what happened with mine.
• 1:29:20
  I think I'm theorizing, I think a few people because it said on
• 1:29:25
  mine, it says there's mold. The pool violation.
• 1:29:34
  Multiple instances, where I broke the community guidelines
• 1:29:38
  on the basis of what did they say?
• 1:29:42
  Adult content and sexual nudity, something like that, man.
• 1:29:47
  And and and I was thinking about this, and I was like, okay, And
• 1:29:52
  then, the only thing I could think of straightaway was, okay?
• 1:29:54
  I said that word the name of the company in context of
• 1:29:59
  advertising as I outlined before.
• 1:30:01
  Yeah. But they never gave me a
• 1:30:06
  concrete answer because I spoke to them.
• 1:30:10
  As in, as, you know, I never spoke to them.
• 1:30:13
  I tried to send an appeal and then they've got this backward
• 1:30:17
  process. We have to go to, like some
• 1:30:18
  separate website to do it. And so I sent it and then about,
• 1:30:21
  Even people from my community sent appeals on my behalf as
• 1:30:26
  well going like, no, he didn't do anything wrong.
• 1:30:28
  I was the deal and I waited for a month, never got any replies
• 1:30:35
  and someone in my community was like, well, why don't you send
• 1:30:37
  another message? Just see what happens.
• 1:30:39
  You know, send another appeal so I did and this time I got a
• 1:30:42
  response, I was like, oh, great, great great.
• 1:30:45
  And then I just see it's another one of those, you know, copy and
• 1:30:49
  pasted on Answers and he didn't tell me anything.
• 1:30:53
  It's still still to this day. I don't know what the problem
• 1:30:56
  was. If the problem was, don't say
• 1:30:59
  the name of these companies don't ever mention that fine but
• 1:31:02
  tell me give me a warning. Don't ban me forever like
• 1:31:06
  terrible. That's the thing he being banned
• 1:31:09
  for a week. Consistently for a problem.
• 1:31:11
  I didn't know but you got banned forever like the yeah.
• 1:31:13
  That's and that's the thing. It makes it makes no sense to
• 1:31:16
  me. I mean they just they lost me at
• 1:31:17
  like okay maybe it's not it's not big blow to them, I get it.
• 1:31:20
  I'm not a big streamer but hey. Maybe one day I will be and then
• 1:31:23
  maybe they'll be like oh huh he started on our platform.
• 1:31:27
  Maybe we could have kept him by you know reinstating him but no
• 1:31:31
  just and and it this is where the in Fury where infuriates me
• 1:31:36
  because I've seen stuff On that platform, especially on lives
• 1:31:42
  which is definitely not appropriate and not appropriate
• 1:31:46
  in the context of what I just mentioned.
• 1:31:48
  Yeah. And and yet, those people still
• 1:31:50
  remain on their they never get banned.
• 1:31:51
  They never get challenged. I mean part of me just thinks
• 1:31:55
  like, okay, maybe just Tick-Tock, they punished small
• 1:31:58
  creators but they reward people that are getting a lot of
• 1:32:01
  traffic and they don't care about their own guidelines.
• 1:32:04
  On that front. I don't know, I don't know.
• 1:32:08
  I'm very confused about the whole thing.
• 1:32:11
  I just can't like, I'm pretty sure I'm continued like forever
• 1:32:14
  Shadow band. I mentioned this in recent
• 1:32:16
  episodes as well. So sorry for rehashing, the same
• 1:32:18
  things, but since we're on the topic of together, nope, it's,
• 1:32:22
  you know, I'm pretty sure that's the case, and I don't know why,
• 1:32:27
  you know, I don't post anything. That's inappropriate.
• 1:32:31
  Most racy stuff I ever do, is in the context of acting.
• 1:32:34
  Maybe, I might say, I might drop the F-bomb or something, but
• 1:32:39
  it's not, it's not Really dinner me?
• 1:32:41
  It's not. It's not like wholly
• 1:32:42
  inappropriate. Yeah.
• 1:32:46
  Yeah, you know, I think I'm a very pretty pretty squeaky clean
• 1:32:49
  content creator. Like it's, I mean, for instance,
• 1:32:51
  in my community I have a mixture of different ages ranging from
• 1:32:55
  like young, teens all the way up to people in the 60s.
• 1:32:59
  So it's definitely definitely, is content that can appeal to
• 1:33:02
  everyone in these safe. You know, I aspire to that as
• 1:33:06
  well, like keeping it real, you know, underage.
• 1:33:10
  People watching are welcome and they're not going to have to
• 1:33:13
  worry about being exposed to inappropriate content for their
• 1:33:15
  age range and then also like, still making it engaging enough
• 1:33:19
  for adults. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know.
• 1:33:22
  I I really struggle with this app.
• 1:33:25
  I think it's because it's so heavily unregulated and it's not
• 1:33:29
  met because it's a Chinese companies so they don't adhere
• 1:33:32
  to the same rules that maybe like American companies would as
• 1:33:36
  far as like how because if this was like, Accor YouTuber saying
• 1:33:41
  it would be heavily regulated on that front to protect to protect
• 1:33:46
  as well. And that that, I understand that
• 1:33:48
  I get. But I mean you've really got a
• 1:33:51
  review people probably like in my instance, they did owe me a
• 1:33:55
  response and they didn't give me one.
• 1:33:57
  And then I just kind of went. Oh, okay.
• 1:33:59
  I guess we're just leaving then and I'm much happier on Twitch
• 1:34:03
  like I yeah, even if it's kind of like the Silver Lining right?
• 1:34:06
  Like you're probably better off. What platform It sucks.
• 1:34:11
  No man, I reached more people on on Tick-Tock that that much is a
• 1:34:18
  little bit of infuriating keeps me there.
• 1:34:20
  Like that's I get it, you know, it's like I people tell me I
• 1:34:23
  could have more profitable streams on Twitch but it's like
• 1:34:30
  but, you know, firsthand how it is getting people over to Twitch
• 1:34:33
  and discoverability on Twitch with.
• 1:34:35
  That's, that's the thing that the key difference and I've said
• 1:34:38
  this before, but the key difference is Twitch, Which is
• 1:34:40
  purely about going to this specific app and enjoying this
• 1:34:46
  content be like you're going there to be a viewer but it's
• 1:34:49
  it's not like YouTube where you don't have to have an account to
• 1:34:53
  enjoy it. Like twitch, you kind of have to
• 1:34:55
  have it. Like, you have to download the
• 1:34:57
  app. It's not really that
• 1:34:58
  straightforward, you know, it forces you to do a lot of things
• 1:35:02
  that other apps don't do. Whereas Tick-Tock, same thing as
• 1:35:06
  well, you can just sit there, you can create a private
• 1:35:08
  account. And you just scroll through.
• 1:35:11
  And it's very, it's very straightforward.
• 1:35:12
  It's very easy in that sense, and people don't to the point.
• 1:35:18
  The difference that people don't really go, there necessarily to
• 1:35:20
  watch streams, they go there to be entertained by a range of
• 1:35:23
  different content. But here's the thing, and I
• 1:35:26
  think maybe why you should consider twitching the future,
• 1:35:28
  maybe is that it is for building that audience and having
• 1:35:33
  committed people that are actually engage with it.
• 1:35:35
  Because Tick Tock, you get a range of people that are and
• 1:35:38
  then a range of people that are not Not like I, for instance I
• 1:35:41
  rarely ever have mod problems now.
• 1:35:44
  Whereas on Tick-Tock I had to have like 20 different mods.
• 1:35:47
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I know on Tick, Tock has the
• 1:35:51
  same thing for me, right? I feel like my mods need to be
• 1:35:54
  actively in the chat or we're going to have problems.
• 1:35:57
  But I, you know, that is one thing that I've been
• 1:35:58
  experimenting with a lot lately is I'll do a live stream and I
• 1:36:03
  will have two portions. The first portion is the live at
• 1:36:06
  just a chart and that's where it's always popping.
• 1:36:09
  Like, I'll You know, a thousand people minimum usually and it's
• 1:36:12
  great. Then I'll move on to the second
• 1:36:17
  portion where I just go in front of the camera.
• 1:36:19
  And I just talked to my viewers for a bit.
• 1:36:21
  It's like thanks to everybody who watched the first half of
• 1:36:23
  this. This was lots of fun.
• 1:36:24
  Now I'm just going to cool down and chitchat and that I will now
• 1:36:27
  have about between one and two hundred people just hanging
• 1:36:31
  around and watching and they stick around for like an hour
• 1:36:34
  and they just listen and it's incredible to me and those are
• 1:36:39
  the people All that it's like well, maybe I should just say
• 1:36:41
  going forward. All right, first portion of this
• 1:36:44
  stream is done. I'm going to be chit-chatting
• 1:36:45
  over on Twitch. If anyone wants to join me or
• 1:36:48
  making more art on Twitch and that's, that's the step I
• 1:36:51
  haven't taken yet. It's a little bit scary to, to
• 1:36:55
  like choose to like, say, alright.
• 1:36:57
  Goodbye everyone. If you want to see me go over
• 1:36:59
  there now and I haven't, I haven't done that yet.
• 1:37:03
  I did it once for a test stream and I got one viewer on Twitch.
• 1:37:08
  They got a free request, I had to sketch.
• 1:37:10
  Gengar for him because I held up my word I was like I'm gonna go
• 1:37:13
  on Twitch in a few minutes and of course it was clunky.
• 1:37:15
  It took me a few minutes to set up and by that time I lost
• 1:37:18
  everyone, but one I got one. So yeah, as we draw things to a
• 1:37:24
  close final, couple of questions, switch changing the
• 1:37:27
  gears. So I think I did actually ask
• 1:37:29
  you. My famous question was, not
• 1:37:32
  famous question, but I always ask my guests about biggest life
• 1:37:34
  lesson, but I think I've already asked you that.
• 1:37:36
  So here's another question, similar.
• 1:37:38
  Yeah. What's the best advice you've
• 1:37:41
  ever received? Wow.
• 1:37:47
  Oh my gosh. The best advice I've ever
• 1:37:49
  received. I'm going to try to think of
• 1:37:53
  like the first, really good piece.
• 1:37:55
  It's so hard to pick the best. Okay, I guess, you know, pick a
• 1:38:01
  niche is a pretty good one. Pick a niche.
• 1:38:04
  I know it's like a common piece of advice, but I think it was a
• 1:38:08
  piece of advice that I even received in college, you know,
• 1:38:11
  back in art school and a niche, could mean so many different
• 1:38:15
  things for me. My Niche is at just sketch, but
• 1:38:17
  even with an Etch-a-Sketch, I'm a niche, because I've made
• 1:38:21
  myself different than other Etch-a-Sketch artist.
• 1:38:24
  And the way that my content and my branding looks and the
• 1:38:27
  subject matters of a Schedule that I draw and the way that I
• 1:38:30
  dress and you know, the name of my business.
• 1:38:33
  Like so within that sense, you know, the more the more you make
• 1:38:36
  yourself a niche and many different ways.
• 1:38:40
  You know, the more people are going to want to tune in to see
• 1:38:44
  you. Not just people who do what you
• 1:38:47
  do. So, I think, or the more likely
• 1:38:51
  people are to hire you. Specifically, like, you know, if
• 1:38:55
  you're an artist, maybe you have a proclivity.
• 1:38:58
  For drawing houses and you know maybe there's a specific kind of
• 1:39:03
  house that you really like to draw if you like lean into your
• 1:39:06
  niches and like start like getting more and more specific,
• 1:39:10
  you're more likely to become the expert in that Niche, and become
• 1:39:13
  the authority on that Niche. And then kind of like SEO you're
• 1:39:18
  more likely for people who are looking for that Niche to find
• 1:39:21
  you. So I guess from kind of a
• 1:39:23
  marketing standpoint, the more you lean into like what you love
• 1:39:26
  the most and what you You know, want to share the most, the more
• 1:39:31
  beneficial it's going to be. Excellent.
• 1:39:33
  Thank you so much for sharing as as we draw to a close for today.
• 1:39:38
  Is there any final thoughts on your mind or any upcoming
• 1:39:41
  projects that you'd like to share with our listeners?
• 1:39:45
  So, final thoughts, I guess I'm excited to see what the future
• 1:39:52
  of social media holds not with the metaverse.
• 1:39:55
  I don't like the whole metaverse thing, but I really won only
• 1:40:00
  like corporate shareholders like them.
• 1:40:04
  But I'm excited. I'm excited to see what kind of
• 1:40:09
  new Innovations will come to light, due to the competition.
• 1:40:12
  That was primarily created by Tick-Tock.
• 1:40:15
  I might have my misgivings about Tick-Tock, but I think that they
• 1:40:18
  were a very healthy disrupter in the social media climate.
• 1:40:23
  It's forced Instagram to really reconsider a lot of their crappy
• 1:40:26
  practices and finally pay content creators for the first
• 1:40:29
  time. Like, yeah, what a novel
• 1:40:31
  concept, maybe we want to be paid for everything we get of
• 1:40:34
  you and It's also caused YouTube to really re-evaluate some
• 1:40:40
  things too. So for that reason, I'm really
• 1:40:44
  excited to see what kind of new Innovations come to allow people
• 1:40:50
  on the internet to make a living, making whatever they
• 1:40:54
  want to make on the internet. So I have a hopeful note for the
• 1:40:57
  future and I'm always excited to see the new things to come.
• 1:41:03
  Yeah, well, speaking of which, I can't wait to see the new things
• 1:41:07
  that come from you in the future because it's, it's been really
• 1:41:10
  interesting watching you, you sort of or meeting you initially
• 1:41:14
  and then just seeing your brand grow.
• 1:41:15
  And yeah, I really admire everything that you do and real
• 1:41:19
  pleasure to have you back on the show again.
• 1:41:21
  Thank you so much. Thanks so much for having me
• 1:41:23
  again, I appreciate it. My pleasure and to everyone
• 1:41:26
  listening to the Christian we've podcast, I hope you've enjoyed
• 1:41:29
  this episode, as always be safe, be well.
• 1:41:33
  And I'll see you in the next.