Latest / The Christian Reeve Podcast / Princess Etch | The Christian Reeve Podcast #202

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Princess Etch | The Christian Reeve Podcast #202 · The Christian Reeve Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to another episode of the Christian Reef
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  podcast. Today's guest is Princess H&H a
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  sketch artist and artists of all kinds.
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  She's been on the show twice before got her back on the show,
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  for the third time in a row at the same time.
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  So, the OCD and me is very happy right now.
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  Welcome back to the show today. Hi, thanks so much for having me
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  again. It's an honor to be back.
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  All the owners, always my my love, I love talking to you.
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  And, you know, I always try to kind of keep Somewhat tabs on
• 0:31
  people that been on the show before just see how people are
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  doing. And what not and you've been
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  doing really, really well, there's a lot of different
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  things we could sort of jump straight into.
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  But yeah, I don't know. Like what's Past year.
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  Like what would you say a kind of the key things that stand out
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  for you? I'd say in the past year, the
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  number one thing that's been pretty majorly going on in my
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  life is Tick-Tock live streaming.
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  That has really just taken over by life in a way that I was not
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  anticipating and it's been a really amazing journey so far.
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  So yeah, that's that's definitely my number one.
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  Otherwise I've just been plugging along with my freelance
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  art and Having the time of my life doing that.
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  So last year was my best year yet, as a freelancer.
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  I've been doing it for over six years.
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  Now I started in June of 2016 full time and yeah, last year I
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  could have believed it because when I first started
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  freelancing, I didn't think live streaming was on the agenda.
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  I didn't think that I would be getting most of my work
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  remotely. I figured I would need to depend
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  on living in Chicago, which is where we began.
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  So, yeah, yeah. That's that's been my number
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  one, big change. Engine life is just diving,
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  full-on head in on live streaming will get back to life,
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  stripping a second. I just want to touch more on
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  freelance and for a second. So I this the beginning of this
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  year, I took a plunge. I decided to kind of go by.
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  This is the year I turned 30 this year.
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  I'm just going to go for this acting stuff and everything
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  else, and just see what happens. Because at least if I try, I can
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  say, even if I fail at least I tried, I gave it my.
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  All right, so I did everything. I began.
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  The other nephew saw it. I got like my photo shoot done
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  for the first time. I got a bunch of other things
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  done all set up and so now I kind of knew what to expect with
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  the freelance, kind of side of things in the sense that like,
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  You often get a bunch of different projects certainly in
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  the beginning years and it will start off on a smaller scale in
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  terms of like what you get paid but you know these things add up
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  and then of course you got to kind of manage your finances
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  accordingly. And so, right now I'm basically
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  chasing project to project and trying to weigh it up and see.
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  Okay. Does this work for me?
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  Is this worth me? Put in the time?
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  And also also another thing as well that I never really
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  considered as Time you travel for a project, you have travel
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  expenses obviously and sometimes you get lucky and like the
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  provider will pay for it sometimes not.
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  I'm currently disputing someone at the moment regarding that.
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  I'm just like, yeah, I know. Yeah.
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  I just it's just, I could share it here quickly as fine.
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  It's basically, I did a film and they agreed to cover my
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  expenses. They knew where I was coming
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  from and stuff. And that because I said, like,
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  our listen, I'm I'm coming down from Manchester or be, you know,
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  it'll cost me this much. Would you be able to cover it?
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  They said, yes. I was like, okay.
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  And then when I sent over my invoice and this is very common
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  with three lines in, this is why I wanted to talk to yourself
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  about this and connect because I know, right, right, so they sit
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  they pay for certain stuff but then they were like, oh yeah, we
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  can't cover. What was it?
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  The travel to and fro from the train station, the nearest train
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  station or something. And I was like, you never
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  offered because they said like there was transportation that
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  they were going to offer and I was like, well you never offered
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  it to me and they were like, oh, what we called you?
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  And I'll say, oh, I'm I'm sorry I missed your call but like, you
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  know, you could have messaged me and haven't received anything.
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  So, there's a bit of a dispute there.
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  We'll see what happens with that, but it's the reason I
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  bring it up. Is this is Quite common, you get
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  situations. Where people pay you late?
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  Or you have to dispute it, you have to chase it.
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  So I guess what I wanted to ask you with all of that is because
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  I think it might be really valuable for people listening
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  who want to take the plunge and become a freelancer.
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  Certainly, I'd like to hear your advice because I'm trying to get
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  into it, probably myself, what advice do you have based on your
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  experiences of sort of coming freelancer and making that
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  transition? I know we spoken about it a bit
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  and previous Groans. But let's explore a bit deeper.
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  No, I totally love this this question because when it comes
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  to payment with freelance, it is kind of most real answers.
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  Kryptonite for so many reasons. As you said, you could get
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  nickeled and dimed and you could have to dispute just the
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  smallest of stuff people do not want to pay Freelancers and they
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  know it's easier to not pay them because they don't have people
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  advocating for them. It's easier to walk all over
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  freelancer. Sir.
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  So it's really frustrating because even things like, I
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  don't know how different laws are between the UK and America
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  on us, but in the u.s. in Most states, you are allowed to as a
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  freelancer except contracts that are like net, 60.
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  So some people, you know, you might wait, two months, 60 days
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  after completing the job to receive payment.
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  That is an industry standard in so many ways.
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  Not 60 net. Is not even unheard of really
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  craziness. Yeah, I've only ever encountered
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  like one or two net 90s before and those have been some of the
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  worst experiences of my life. Like we're talking reputable
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  companies that are well established in their Industries.
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  We're talking Fortune 500's. That as soon as you you know
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  it's they always need the project ASAP.
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  They always need it like overnight they need the stuff
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  from you. You stay up overnight, you get
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  the work done, you send it to them, they love it.
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  They're thrilled about it, they use the goods.
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  And then three months down the line.
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  I've got to make an awkward phone call to their accounting
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  department because I am not getting email responses anymore.
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  And thankfully, those circumstances are exceedingly
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  rare for me, but they'd happen enough times for me to, like,
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  have learned a lot about my biggest problems with payment
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  are from the bigger. companies, because they're the only, The
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  only clients that I've worked with for I have less leverage.
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  Like that's that's a huge. I don't have much control over
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  that. Unfortunately, like say if I
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  wanted to work for Disney, I don't really have super
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  negotiating power and a contract with them compared to.
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  If some person wanted to work with me and say, hey could you
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  take 400 for that soda 500 I could just say no.
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  So What Disney, you know, it's a, it's a more precarious place
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  and Disney's just an example. I haven't ever had payment
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  problems with them specifically but just quickly and
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  subjectively cover your ass there so we don't get sued.
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  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, isn't it?
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  That's like that's like a A+ industry standard but even still
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  not 30 being the thing to look for in a contract feels criminal
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  like why? Why do they have to hold up our
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  money for an entire month? I know their administrative
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  reasons. I know people got to talk to
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  different people and companies, I know like theoretically why
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  it's not 30 but from like an ethical standpoint.
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  Why are we paying employees within the week for their work
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  or within two weeks for all the work they do and then
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  Freelancers have to wait an entire calendar month for the
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  work that they do. And not every company is like
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  this. Even if they Have a net 30
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  sometimes you get that payment sooner and you're like, yay, and
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  that's just if you get paid. There are times when you just
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  don't like my first time ever doing a freelance job ever.
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  I had freshly graduated from college.
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  I was provided an opportunity from somebody associated with my
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  college. So it was kind of like vetted
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  so, I was super excited for it. I was hungry for work.
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  I was going to take anything. I was saying yes to any
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  opportunity because I needed a portfolio.
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  I needed something that wasn't like my college projects and I
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  took on this job that I didn't want to do, I'll keep it kind of
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  nebulous. But basically I drew a lot of
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  shoes and I hate drugs shoes. It's I don't like it, it's not
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  fun. I did any particular reason,
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  we'll just know like it's funny because as an adult well I was
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  an adult that but like A decade later.
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  I feel like they're a lot more fun to draw than they used to
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  be. But back then I just found them
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  to be sort of boring and drawing shoes at different angles can be
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  like really tedious and Technical and difficult and
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  there's just a lot of like technical aspects of drawing a
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  shoe that can kind of be mind-numbing.
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  So I wasn't particularly enthused about the project but I
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  found in this is true with a lot of the work I do.
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  I may not like, be in love with every aspect.
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  Aspect of a project but I can usually find something to get
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  into. I can usually find something
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  that will Peak my fancy and kind of like invigorate me and to
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  diving head in a really fun project.
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  Like, it may not seem fun at the surface, but once I get into it
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  I find such a good reason to get Susie asked about it.
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  So that project we started with I had to do, there were so many
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  red flags, I didn't know because unfortunately, a lot of these
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  red flags can Would be taught in a classroom and the the best way
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  to learn about. A lot of the red flags is to
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  make the mistakes and your best teachers your wallet.
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  So I have fortunately learned some very hard lessons one.
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  This guy started with wanting me to do something that I was just
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  not qualified for. They basically wanted me to
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  design a new shoe and anybody who is like serious about their
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  business would not go to an amateur.
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  Or something like that. They would not go to somebody
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  who has nothing to show in their portfolio that would align with
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  that. It just like doesn't make sense.
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  And I wasn't thinking about that at the time because I figured oh
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  this is like a really good opportunity for me but I get why
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  small businesses might dabble and working with amateurs and I
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  was I would consider myself at that time to be an amateur and
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  that particular thing but it it yeah there I guess there's a lot
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  I could say about that on a tangent.
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  He hired me to do sketches for drafting up Concepts to help
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  find the look of the shoe and I don't have any experience with
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  pattern drafting or with the structural support of a shoe and
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  it was, you know, a certain kind of shoes that they wanted me to
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  make. So I begrudgingly made they
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  wanted 50 sketches. I went to shoe stores, I studied
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  shoes, I photographed them. I Googled shoes.
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  Shoes. I sat down and I drafted 50
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  different concepts that I presented them all.
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  And we had a meeting about it and all of this and they liked
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  some of the sketches. They had me work on a logo,
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  which once again that wasn't my area of expertise.
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  But I think with artists people who are in that Universe think
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  like, oh, you're an illustrator, right?
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  Can you make my website? Can you make my logo?
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  Like, they're just like your you use a pencil, right?
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  You could do these other things. Like yeah, the public perception
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  from people who aren't in the art Universe, sometimes kind of
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  is like that and when you're just starting out your kind of
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  tempted to take that stuff. So it's Jack just there for a
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  second as well. Like okay, so they're trying to
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  the thinking of getting you to do a logo, I bet you any money,
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  they had no intention of giving you rights to that because if
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  you did design their logo and they did really well, Jimmy,
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  they're probably probably try and do a do a dodgy deal.
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  Like oh yeah it's sell us. The Design.
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  And then they've just that's it the owner and if they make
• 12:58
  millions you make nothing. But 100% there.
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  Were no, there were no contracts at all which who first small
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  stuff like personal projects. Yeah, I don't need a contract
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  for someone who wants me to draw their cat.
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  That's fine. But yeah, for like a project of
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  this scope where this person was pursuing this field of like shoe
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  creation, and, and Logo, making, and brand ideation.
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  Yeah. That's something that like we
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  didn't even scratch the surface with that, because when I ended
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  up happening is I made all these logos.
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  They liked a lot of my sketches. They kind of lean toward this
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  one logo, and then I made these 52 sketches and after I sent the
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  shoe sketches, I was ghosted. And all I asked for those, 50
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  shoe sketches was $50, which is criminally low, for all of the
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  work I did. Literally a dollar, a sketch.
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  But one thing I've learned as a freelancer is the cheaper the
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  Project is usually the worse. It is.
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  You're getting a different kind of client.
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  If you've ever heard of, like, the 2080 room, where it's like
• 14:04
  you can apply to all sorts of different principles of life.
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  I firmly believe that 80% of my toughest, customers of the
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  biggest problems I have come from, usually the bottom 20% of
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  the paying customers, like the people that buy a $5 sticker are
• 14:21
  going to nitpick it more likely than a client, that hires me for
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  a $5000. Jack, this is so true.
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  I've had this experience as well.
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  This is ridiculous. Like one thing that annoys me a
• 14:31
  little bit and then the acting sphere is like how many Hoops
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  like students will try and put you through and student
• 14:39
  Productions. This is a bit crazy.
• 14:41
  Yeah. Because like, on major, yeah,
• 14:43
  make more major Productions. It's often just send us your
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  stuff. We'll have a look and then maybe
• 14:47
  we'll call you in, or maybe we'll just employee.
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  But like, there's so many that I've seen like all we want you
• 14:52
  to send, you know, full resume Day and audition tape and then
• 14:57
  you've got to meet us and do this and I'm like, come on man,
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  you're not I mean, this is not even a paid project and your
• 15:03
  students and nothing against students.
• 15:04
  I've worked with many students over the years but like, you got
• 15:09
  to be careful with that. And like, how many Hoops you
• 15:11
  actually getting people to jump through?
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  And as you say, like, it's always, it's always those
• 15:15
  smaller projects where they get us here and it's for me.
• 15:19
  Like I've had people offered to do work for me for free and Lord
• 15:23
  knows what I love to have staff. I would never accept that
• 15:28
  because my expectations are really high and I don't think
• 15:31
  that I could justifiably keep pushing and asking for like
• 15:36
  these higher standards when I'm not paying someone gin and I
• 15:40
  mean it's just under percent. Yeah.
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  And I Cajuns where I have to hire somebody to assist me in
• 15:46
  some capacity, I always pay them.
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  I don't, I don't care if I'm walking away with like no
• 15:54
  dollars. I mean, normally if I hire
• 15:57
  someone to assist me for something like, I do live events
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  or sometimes I'll table at a convention.
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  I make some type of arrangement where some kind of compensation
• 16:07
  is given because I just, and I privilege to be able to do that.
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  But there have been times where my assistant has made more money
• 16:16
  than me. Yeah, they're just hanging out
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  with me at my table. Like I might have a bad day at a
• 16:21
  convention and I threw down 50 bucks for my friend, hang out
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  with me for a few hours. For what I paid for a really
• 16:26
  nice feel for them and I know like I don't I don't have to do
• 16:30
  that. A lot of my friends would be
• 16:31
  like cool for it but like I also recognize that especially when
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  I'm doing a job where I am representing myself at an event
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  or something. I I have expectations of decorum
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  and professionality and while I know a lot of my friends would
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  knock that out of the park, regardless of the payment was on
• 16:49
  the table. I want to fairly compensate them
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  for that if I'm capable of doing so, and And I put that into my
• 16:56
  pricing for when I do a fence part of that is, you know, I
• 16:59
  charge this much because I need to compensate an assistant
• 17:02
  fairly for their time, especially if they're traveling
• 17:04
  with me. I know that they may not be on
• 17:07
  the clock for a lot of time, but I am asking for multiple days of
• 17:10
  their time because they have to travel, they are with me instead
• 17:13
  of doing whatever they want to be doing.
• 17:15
  And that's, you know, that I don't often have assistants in
• 17:20
  most ways, but then, there are other things that are unpaid
• 17:23
  labor, like I have moderators. For my live streams or people to
• 17:27
  help me with my Discord. And that is something I have to
• 17:32
  think about more because they are doing labor for me and I try
• 17:36
  to compensate them through other means, like, I will try to
• 17:40
  prioritize doing live drawings for them, or I will every
• 17:45
  Christmas, I'll try to, like, send them a card or, maybe
• 17:48
  someones good year, two of the mail.
• 17:49
  So I tried to show my appreciation.
• 17:52
  The that relationship is a little different because I'm not
• 17:55
  Not requiring chunks of time from them.
• 17:58
  It's kind of well if you're in the mood to help me out today on
• 18:00
  stream and you're going to be there already, that would be
• 18:02
  awesome. So I know there are more
• 18:06
  successful streamers that do compensate their moderators when
• 18:09
  they handle a lot of tasks for them and everything.
• 18:12
  And that would be wonderful if I got to that point where I could
• 18:15
  start actually paying moderators.
• 18:17
  But it's exactly the same for me shout to Vilma, hope you don't.
• 18:22
  Well, there's people such as film has friend of mine.
• 18:25
  Who do so much for this show and I just feel so bad that I don't
• 18:30
  have, the means to offer them because I would 100% employ her
• 18:33
  as like, I don't know, maybe the producer for the podcast,
• 18:36
  something like that. Because you are, you recognize
• 18:39
  that the service is that these people doing for you and it's
• 18:42
  but like it's all about what what you're able to do at that
• 18:47
  given time. It's like for me, it's like,
• 18:49
  this will happen. One day, I just need to get
• 18:53
  like, I just need to get that. It will Happen.
• 18:56
  Got ya. Yeah, and I have a great friend.
• 19:00
  My friend, Jesse. Hi Jesse.
• 19:02
  He and I have we're best friends.
• 19:05
  We've been best friends for over two decades, and he has stumbled
• 19:08
  into video production on his own.
• 19:12
  And so, there are times where he scratch my back, I scratch his
• 19:16
  back, he runs a company where I sometimes help them with random
• 19:19
  things, and we don't keep score or anything like that, but it's
• 19:23
  nice that were able to Help each other from time to time and he
• 19:28
  is absolutely a background asset to me.
• 19:31
  Not only in when he occasionally helps me with like, video
• 19:34
  editing and such, but in just having a second set of eyes to
• 19:38
  look at stuff for me. He'll give me candid feedback.
• 19:41
  He'll like it. Even, you know, my boyfriend
• 19:44
  Kyle. Like I'll have him.
• 19:46
  Look at stuff and he'll tell be some stuff.
• 19:47
  I'm like, but that's not. I'm not compensating those.
• 19:55
  Oceans, but they are, they are helping all your is your partner
• 20:00
  like is he in the completely different feel?
• 20:02
  Totally. So his right?
• 20:04
  Yeah, because I think that's really useful is to have that
• 20:07
  Insight of this person has nothing to do with this.
• 20:10
  They wouldn't even, you know, so it's purely, just objective and
• 20:15
  hundred percent. Yeah, he lives in an entirely
• 20:18
  different Universe, for me. He is a PhD physicist.
• 20:21
  Oh, that's okay. That guy.
• 20:25
  Ever heard of the show House Hunters.
• 20:27
  There's like the meme of like I'm a butterfly catcher and I'm
• 20:30
  a bricklayer and together. We want a six million dollar
• 20:33
  home, like I'm an Etch-a-Sketch artist and I'm a physicist
• 20:38
  together. We're looking for a two million
• 20:41
  dollar home and at school. That's awesome.
• 20:44
  Yeah. So so it's nice but it's, it's
• 20:49
  really tricky as a freelancer to advocate for yourself and the
• 20:53
  best thing that I've done. And in regards to personal
• 20:57
  commissions. So I do personal, and then
• 20:59
  commercial work. With the personal work, I always
• 21:05
  99% of the time, only accept payment, upfront hundred percent
• 21:09
  up front, and it's actually thanks to Etsy that I do that
• 21:13
  because Etsy has established that kind of social Norm that if
• 21:19
  you purchase a product on Etsy, you pay for it first and then it
• 21:22
  gets shipped to you. So the Leverage is On the the
• 21:26
  seller to ship and fulfill the product and then if something
• 21:29
  goes wrong then you can get your money back through Etsy.
• 21:32
  So I really leaned on that in the beginning and it really
• 21:36
  helped me to make that my standard in my norm and get me
• 21:40
  used to doing that. So when people purchased
• 21:43
  commissions from me off of etsy, I'd say, hey, I will start the
• 21:46
  project once I receive payment, then the clock will start
• 21:49
  ticking on the deadline and people were pretty understanding
• 21:54
  about that. And people who Weren't if they
• 21:56
  had problems then usually they were red flags and they weren't
• 22:00
  worth my time and energy. Anyways, if I you know, I even
• 22:04
  had a project where on rare occasion, I'll do a specific
• 22:08
  percentage, you know, usually like 70 percent up front but
• 22:13
  sometimes getting that last thirty percent can be a real
• 22:17
  drag because you are done with the product, and I won't ship
• 22:21
  it. If it needs to be able to
• 22:23
  someone, I won't hand it off until final.
• 22:25
  Received. So I've sometimes island of
• 22:27
  hanging onto a project for a month before I received that
• 22:31
  final payment, so I don't even like doing that.
• 22:33
  I just like up front, I don't even provide the other option
• 22:37
  unless the prospective client is like, kind of, like, well and
• 22:41
  then I'll sort of weigh my options.
• 22:44
  And I know that a lot of artists it's trickier for them to be in
• 22:47
  that position for various reasons.
• 22:49
  But if you have that option as an artist, I encourage everyone
• 22:53
  to start doing that because You will only benefit from there,
• 22:59
  but there's a little bit of benefit of the motivation of
• 23:02
  finishing the project, so you get paid.
• 23:03
  That's a good motivator that can help you with deadlines
• 23:06
  management but otherwise, we don't want to be debt
• 23:10
  collectors. That's not our job.
• 23:12
  That's not. Yes, not in our job description.
• 23:15
  We want to be artists, we want to be musicians, we want to be
• 23:18
  actors. We want to be able to practice
• 23:19
  our craft, without stressing about, if we could afford her
• 23:23
  next meal And yes, that's the reality is, wow.
• 23:28
  Like, I mean, I think like, for me, it certainly is like this
• 23:32
  right now, like, having to chase people for things and it's yeah.
• 23:36
  Like, I've budgeted so that I am ahead on.
• 23:38
  And I think that's the kind of key place you want to be is
• 23:40
  ahead of schedule. So you want to have like money
• 23:43
  kind of saved for the next word of a month or two months ahead,
• 23:47
  something like that and work around that.
• 23:49
  So that you're always working, you know, forward and any money
• 23:53
  that you're earning is for the future.
• 23:55
  Not for like immediately. Now, sometimes you kind of, you
• 23:57
  know, sometimes it gets trickier but things like this, slow it
• 24:02
  down and it gets ridiculous. Sometimes.
• 24:04
  Especially when you're chasing like several projects at once
• 24:06
  and you just have to keep a log of like Naomi Naomi there.
• 24:10
  It's just like just pay you your bloody clients man.
• 24:13
  Oh to pay your yapper pay your pay your artists pay them.
• 24:17
  The pay them now exactly. And it's also a disservice to
• 24:22
  yourself if You're so busy spending time, chasing for your
• 24:27
  paychecks that you can't properly focus on your craft, it
• 24:31
  will affect the way that you go about working.
• 24:33
  When you're stressed it will show in you know the way you
• 24:37
  perform or the way that you create.
• 24:39
  And it's not it's not one of those things where it's like,
• 24:43
  well if you're having this problem it's your fault.
• 24:45
  That's not it's the industry. That's the problem because this
• 24:48
  has become the norm. This is what is expected.
• 24:51
  And there are a lot of times when you don't hold The cars and
• 24:55
  you have no choice but to wait and sometimes you'll get paid on
• 24:59
  time and sometimes you just don't like, I was recently
• 25:02
  presented with a contract and this just, it just made me
• 25:07
  realize, like, this is so typical.
• 25:08
  I was presented with a contract that I'll keep nebulous for
• 25:13
  legal reasons, but they it's a it's a contract where payment
• 25:20
  might be going both ways. I might be paying them for
• 25:22
  certain services and then they would pay me for certain
• 25:24
  services. That I would render.
• 25:25
  And in the contract, they had a stipulation that if I don't pay
• 25:28
  them by a certain point, interest starts getting a crude.
• 25:32
  Well guess what? There wasn't that on the other
• 25:35
  way. It's not like if they didn't pay
• 25:37
  me on time, interest would be a crude and I know contracts are
• 25:40
  written to benefit the party who wrote it and that's where
• 25:43
  negotiations come in and that's where you establish those rules.
• 25:47
  But it's just like oh of course like I The Creator have to pay
• 25:53
  penalties. If I don't pay you on On time.
• 25:55
  But what about you? What about you?
• 25:57
  If you don't pay me on time, like, really, I think it all
• 26:02
  comes down to what you said earlier about.
• 26:04
  Like, when you're first starting out and you don't really know,
• 26:07
  like I had to learn that the hard way with regards to
• 26:09
  charging for projects and I will often I've said this before on
• 26:15
  the show so I won't repeat myself but like go go higher.
• 26:18
  Aim higher even if you feel like it's a little bit too expensive
• 26:21
  because you can always negotiate downwards and you know, you're
• 26:25
  going to be raising your prices anyway.
• 26:26
  Like, I mean, we've spoken about this in previous shows together
• 26:29
  that you annually raise your prices, and I think that's a
• 26:33
  sensible thing to do in any way in accordance with things like
• 26:36
  inflation and such and also just because that's a business, you
• 26:40
  need to earn more money and doesn't really make much sense
• 26:43
  to keep the prices. The same all the time, plus your
• 26:46
  expertise, your knowledge, everything increases over time
• 26:50
  and therefore right? You're worth more.
• 26:53
  You're going to put it like that but if you're just having the
• 26:56
  service that you can provide is worth more.
• 26:59
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you deserve to be
• 27:02
  compensated for more and not only that, but It also is almost
• 27:08
  a good boundary setting exercise with your clientele, it rewards
• 27:12
  your clientele, that you've worked with in the past for
• 27:14
  getting a good deal on You by supporting you earlier in your
• 27:18
  career. So, I have people who would I
• 27:21
  started doing at just sketch commission's like I would start
• 27:25
  on this size for started at like 30 bucks for a preserved
• 27:29
  drawing, which is criminally low, barely a compensation of my
• 27:33
  time. Absolutely below minimum wage
• 27:34
  efforts but I was learning. And I got my feet wet and I got
• 27:38
  a bunch of commissions under my belt and I was developing a
• 27:40
  portfolio and as time progressed I started taking that price up
• 27:45
  and now this size starts at like $200 for me.
• 27:49
  So just people. One quick question roughly, when
• 27:54
  you started on those, how long did it take you to do it?
• 27:58
  And then also, how long does it take you to do the same drawing
• 28:00
  now? Good question.
• 28:03
  So I would say when I began, it could be a around an hour or so
• 28:08
  to do the drawing for say like a portrait of one person, maybe
• 28:12
  even a little bit longer closer to hour and a half.
• 28:14
  If I was just starting these days it could be closer to like
• 28:18
  half an hour 45 minutes, right? Since?
• 28:20
  I've done, so many of them, so I've gotten faster.
• 28:22
  But my preservation process has gotten slower.
• 28:26
  So I used to use a different process to make my art permanent
• 28:28
  where I would drill a hole in the back and remove the powder
• 28:31
  and that was a sufficient method but it wasn't 100% thorough.
• 28:35
  There might be If you drop it from the wall, you might get a
• 28:39
  little bit of spotting on the screen from just residual
• 28:41
  powder. I couldn't get out from that
• 28:43
  first method. So people who own at just
• 28:45
  sketches with the first method. As long as it hangs out on your
• 28:48
  wall and everything is fine. But I switched to the most
• 28:53
  thorough method available which is much more time consuming
• 28:56
  which is one of the reasons why I upped my rate that could take
• 28:59
  over an hour to preserve whereas before it could be like a
• 29:01
  20-minute process. So I've changed the way that I
• 29:05
  invest my time. I'm Andre allocated it, but
• 29:09
  also, those who have my art for 30 bucks, they could Pat
• 29:12
  themselves on the back for making a wise investment.
• 29:15
  They look now, they say, they're not gonna get mad at me, that
• 29:19
  it's 100. They're going to be happy that
• 29:21
  they bought it for 30, like they bought low and I think every
• 29:26
  year, you know, that's another reason why I raised my race.
• 29:28
  So that's why I don't drop them. If I suddenly drop my rates to
• 29:30
  100 because sales were slow, then everybody who spent for
• 29:34
  200s like well what the heck, man.
• 29:36
  Like what do you mean? Your it only cost 100 where you
• 29:39
  were, you building me where you like?
• 29:43
  Is it good thing to consider? I mean I've set this on the show
• 29:45
  before about the idea that you shouldn't drop your prices or,
• 29:50
  you know, set them too low because it kind of says a lot
• 29:52
  about how much you are worth or how much you deem that you are
• 29:56
  worth and sometimes it can work against you.
• 29:58
  Because it's essentially saying like, oh well, you know, I'm on
• 30:01
  the smaller scale that I'll give an example like I I pitched a
• 30:04
  project recently to someone And they gave a range of what their
• 30:08
  budget was and I kind of pitched somewhere in the middle.
• 30:12
  I could have been greedy and gone for their whole budget, but
• 30:14
  I figured, you know, what? The work doesn't seem like,
• 30:17
  it'll take that much time. This is roughly where I feel is
• 30:21
  reasonable, and I pitched and I said that in the message them, I
• 30:24
  was like, you know, I've pitched it somewhere in the middle.
• 30:27
  I'm happy to negotiate a little bit but let's see.
• 30:30
  Let's see what you think and I think that's a good always
• 30:32
  always make it clear to to whoever you're working with like
• 30:35
  you're you're happy too. Go, she ate, but like there was
• 30:39
  a really great bit of advice. I received from a guest recently
• 30:42
  which was instead of like dropping yourself down, drop in
• 30:48
  your rate down. A good thing to do is offer to
• 30:50
  do like a portion of the work instead for the price that they
• 30:54
  want and then you know you can if they want the full deal then
• 30:58
  they have to pay the higher amount and that's a good way
• 31:00
  because then you don't lose your integrity and you know, you keep
• 31:03
  your reputation but you also give them a taste and He's like,
• 31:07
  yeah, find a way up your budget and maybe I can give you the
• 31:09
  full deal. I love that.
• 31:12
  I love that. I've been trying to do that more
• 31:14
  lately. There was a project I did where
• 31:17
  I have like a starting rate. For if somebody was to purchase
• 31:21
  a Time Lapse video of me drawing on an Etch-a-Sketch and this
• 31:25
  client wanted about 50% of that, right?
• 31:28
  And so, I like what you say, like don't change the price.
• 31:32
  Change the scope. Yes.
• 31:34
  So all right, if you can Wiggle your way up to the rate that I
• 31:39
  normally start with, then I ended up just stripping the
• 31:44
  surface down to the barest parts.
• 31:46
  Where I told them I could give you the raw video.
• 31:49
  Footage unedited. I'll pass it off to you.
• 31:52
  Do what you want with it? I don't care.
• 31:55
  Like, it's a time you and you can pay me half.
• 31:59
  And frankly, that project took me half an hour to film, and I
• 32:03
  got half my payment, which it usually takes me half an hour.
• 32:06
  To film. And then I need to sit down and
• 32:08
  sometimes I that could be 45 minutes of editing where I make
• 32:11
  it a nice polish cleanup thing. I might add a voiceover of.
• 32:13
  That could be another helmet type in the script.
• 32:16
  Like I actually I got paid 50% for doing maybe 20% of the labor
• 32:22
  because I just changed the scope immensely for that one specific
• 32:26
  project and the client was thrilled that I was willing to
• 32:30
  go down to their level and work with them and I was thrilled
• 32:33
  because I got paid a good chunk of money for Or basically, half
• 32:37
  an hour work, so they're definitely occasions where I
• 32:41
  agree. Yeah, you could take the smaller
• 32:42
  job. So you could take the jobs with
• 32:44
  the budgets that won't wiggle higher.
• 32:47
  If you're able to bring that down and one of the awesome
• 32:50
  things about Etch-a-Sketch is that there are different sizes.
• 32:53
  So sometimes someone will want the whole enchilada.
• 32:56
  They'll wipe the biggest Etch-a-Sketch, they'll what all
• 32:58
  the bells, and whistles, and they only have X amount of
• 33:01
  dollars in their pocket. There's like well.
• 33:04
  I can't give you all those bells and whistles, but I can give you
• 33:08
  this size for that price. And there are times when they're
• 33:11
  like, now we only want the whole enchilada and then there are
• 33:15
  other times where they're like, oh oh that's interesting.
• 33:18
  And then I can show them samples of what that looks like and say,
• 33:21
  hey, I'll work with your budget but only under these parameters.
• 33:26
  So it's, I think a lot of big successful at freelancing or at
• 33:32
  least having a pleasant experience.
• 33:33
  Experience freelancing is boundary setting.
• 33:37
  It's establishing healthy boundaries and expectations and
• 33:42
  communicating them to a client or a prospect.
• 33:45
  If you're able to establish those boundaries I probably have
• 33:52
  even said this on your show before but one of the things
• 33:56
  that I try to live by is if I'm ever feeling resentful toward a
• 34:00
  client as I'm working on their project if I'm ever working on
• 34:03
  Drawing and I'm like really frustrated about it or just kind
• 34:06
  of peeved about sending it to them 99% of the time.
• 34:10
  It means I undercharged, I don't want to feel resentful toward
• 34:14
  the client if I'm feeling that resentment, that usually means
• 34:18
  that I didn't advocate for myself.
• 34:20
  Well enough, I always have the choice to walk away and I do my
• 34:25
  best to have a savings that allows me the ability to pick
• 34:29
  and choose my projects. I tried to say yes to a bunch of
• 34:31
  stuff, but sometimes there's a job that Comes my way that just
• 34:34
  doesn't really feel, right? So, I might recommend someone
• 34:36
  else or am I just say, no, if that's out of my budget.
• 34:40
  But yeah, if I take on a project and I negotiated myself into a
• 34:45
  bad position and I'm feeling really resentful for the client,
• 34:50
  It's technically my fault in a way, but it teaches me a good
• 34:55
  lesson that next time I could see what I can do differently.
• 34:58
  If I'm in that situation in those times, when you did,
• 35:01
  negotiate yourself into a corner.
• 35:03
  So to speak. What would you say, were the
• 35:06
  main reasons why you did it? Where was this?
• 35:08
  Because it was early on and you were a bit nervous, or was it
• 35:11
  like we you to nice about it? Like I don't know what was the
• 35:16
  reasons but low, yeah it happened.
• 35:19
  Sometimes I don't fully understand or consider the scope
• 35:24
  of the project before I take it on and I realized on the line,
• 35:27
  like oh my gosh, I didn't realize how tricky this was
• 35:31
  going to be or I'll realize. I might have established a
• 35:35
  deadline and then look at my calendar and think, oh shoot.
• 35:38
  I'm going to be gone for a week. I have one week.
• 35:41
  Less to work on this project. I should have negotiated a week
• 35:44
  more and there are rare occasions when you can reach out
• 35:48
  to the clients. Say, hey, Is it okay?
• 35:49
  If I send this to you a little later?
• 35:51
  Is there a specific reason? You might need this by certain
• 35:53
  time and oftentimes the clothes like, no, it's cool, like we're
• 35:56
  good. So you can kind of like, fix
• 35:59
  your way out of that kind of situation but it lets you put
• 36:03
  that number down and you shake hands and agree to that or get a
• 36:06
  contract in writing. Like, no, you cannot suddenly be
• 36:09
  like hey, um, actually I can $500 more.
• 36:14
  I Longer. And I actually tried that once I
• 36:22
  was like, you know, it was, this was not early in my career.
• 36:27
  I realized I made an oopsie and this was Heavy, I'll be blunt
• 36:32
  about this. This was a project with Netflix
• 36:35
  and I had to go, she ate it to do, six drawings for them for
• 36:38
  spider head, this was in late 2020.
• 36:41
  So spider head is a movie that came out in June of 2021.
• 36:44
  I made six hero props. For that movie, She that were
• 36:49
  edges, catch drawings that if you see an Etch-a-Sketch for
• 36:52
  that movie, I drew it and it was yeah one of the coolest projects
• 36:57
  I've ever done. Well there was one drawing in
• 36:59
  particular that I did six drugs, for them, I started working at
• 37:04
  it and I'm like, oh my god, what have I gotten myself into?
• 37:08
  What? In God's name made me quote
• 37:09
  them? This number, I should have
• 37:11
  quoted a lot more and so I decided, okay, honestly, the
• 37:17
  best thing for me to do in this situation, It has to just suck
• 37:20
  it up and learn from my lesson and get the project done.
• 37:23
  But sometimes you can assess these situations and if you've
• 37:27
  got a good rapport with the contacts, we're all humans.
• 37:32
  We make mistakes. We could have conversations,
• 37:34
  we're not faceless corporations, so I decided to be professional
• 37:39
  but candid and explain, hey, I'm everything is going really well
• 37:44
  but there's this one drawing that I realized in retrospect.
• 37:48
  It's my fault. A of colpa, no worries.
• 37:51
  If the answer to this question is no, I completely understand
• 37:53
  because this is my bad. But is there a possibility of
• 37:57
  adding a little bit more to this particular drawing?
• 38:00
  Because I did not fully assess the scope until right now when
• 38:04
  I'm in the thick of it and I know it was an awkward question
• 38:08
  to ask and looking back, I don't know if I should have asked it.
• 38:12
  That's kind of a ghost thing to do.
• 38:15
  But I figured, you know, what? Things were good enough between
• 38:20
  us. I had good enough conversation
• 38:23
  with them where I thought things were swimmingly enough that I
• 38:26
  could, I could roll that die, I'd never rolled it before, but
• 38:29
  I figured I would go for it and the guy got back with me and
• 38:32
  he's like, hey, totally understand.
• 38:35
  I'm an artist too. We get that position from time
• 38:37
  to time. Unfortunately, we can't wiggle
• 38:39
  on the budget, but what if there was a way for you to simplify it
• 38:42
  and he proposed a way for me to simplify Drawing and it was a
• 38:46
  brilliant way to do it. He definitely had a knife or
• 38:50
  even though he didn't draw an Etch-a-Sketch he was a prop
• 38:52
  Master at Netflix had a lot of experience as an artist and
• 38:55
  proposed a solution that cut down on the amount of time, it
• 38:58
  would have taken me otherwise to do it.
• 39:00
  And it's crazy because that drawing there's a scene where
• 39:04
  the actor in the movie Miles Teller, plays a character that
• 39:09
  draws on an Etch-a-Sketch. And so he is the one that's
• 39:12
  interacting with these props. The most and there's a scene
• 39:15
  where they Show him in the middle of working on one of
• 39:17
  these drawings and it is like movie Magic blows my mind and
• 39:21
  the reason why they make it look so good is because I follow the
• 39:24
  instructions of the prop master and the recommended way that
• 39:27
  they wanted me to go about illustrating it like so it ended
• 39:30
  up being a net positive because I was able to cut down on the
• 39:33
  amount of time that I was planning for it to take for me
• 39:36
  and it ended up coming out beautifully.
• 39:39
  I it's my probably my favorite drawing, I did of all of them
• 39:42
  and It's so I don't regret asking that question but you
• 39:48
  have to be very Mindful and accepting of the answer.
• 39:53
  No. And there is a chance.
• 39:56
  If you ask that question, that it could damage your
• 39:59
  relationship with the client because frankly, it comes across
• 40:03
  as unprofessional. If you give them a number and
• 40:06
  you're like, wait, wait, wait. Take sees backsies.
• 40:09
  I'm sorry oopsies. Yeah.
• 40:14
  And so that is that is a seminal moment when I realized that I
• 40:19
  under charged because I did it fully assess the scope.
• 40:23
  So it's hard when you're beginning or when you're early
• 40:27
  in your career to fully understand the scope, I had
• 40:30
  another client where I was feeling resentful and it didn't
• 40:33
  even have to do with them. It had to do with shipping
• 40:36
  problems because I have to mail my art and I was spending so
• 40:40
  much time on the phone with customer service with The
• 40:44
  shipping company trying to figure out what was going on
• 40:47
  with the package. And that's not what I signed up
• 40:49
  to be. I'm not supposed to be a
• 40:50
  shipping consultant. I've supposed to be an artist, I
• 40:53
  put the put the art in a box. I throw it in the mail and after
• 40:58
  that, not my problem, like that's the mail companies
• 41:01
  problem. But do I also care about the
• 41:05
  client and I want them to be happy and I don't want them to
• 41:08
  get their products late, especially if I shift it on
• 41:11
  time. Usually, I give a few days extra
• 41:14
  Because things happen and unfortunately I did give extra
• 41:17
  time and a lot of things happened and I found myself
• 41:21
  resentful that I was dealing with all of this extra stuff.
• 41:26
  That wasn't really my problem but I provide a premium service
• 41:31
  and I owe it to my client to be there for them at that moment
• 41:34
  because I know how to navigate that world better than they do.
• 41:37
  And I want to advocate for them when I can.
• 41:39
  And so I realized, okay, I should charge more because I'm
• 41:43
  providing more. Than just our time, providing
• 41:45
  that level of customer service to them.
• 41:48
  That deserves to be compensated. I deserve to be compensated for
• 41:52
  the hour and a half. I spend on hold with the post
• 41:54
  office but a package goes awry. The client feels bad.
• 41:58
  The client feels guilty that I'm not getting more from them
• 42:02
  because they I, you know, they already paid me and I don't
• 42:05
  expect them to pay more in those situations because 99% of the
• 42:09
  time, it's fine, but those kinds of curveballs you don't expect.
• 42:13
  Like, Oh, suddenly is hard to find Etch-a-Sketch product on
• 42:16
  store shelves, or anytime. There's like a snag in the road
• 42:20
  that you don't expect like, oh, I quoted a thousand dollars for
• 42:24
  flights and they went up to 1200 like you can't necessarily
• 42:30
  account for every single bump in the road.
• 42:32
  So it really is to your benefit to allow for cushion when you
• 42:40
  quote, for things because sometimes it's going to go.
• 42:44
  Oh great and you're going to be like, yes heck yeah I got a
• 42:47
  little extra that I was expecting and it was smooth
• 42:50
  sailing the whole time and I didn't need to dip into that
• 42:53
  cushion for One problems. Go when problems happen.
• 42:57
  But then there will be those other times where the shit hits
• 43:00
  the fan and Murphy's Law is in full effect and even your
• 43:05
  cushion may not adequately cover everything but you've been
• 43:08
  charging cushion for a long time now and you don't feel so bad.
• 43:13
  If you got a dip out of Pocket for those weird occasions.
• 43:16
  When that kind of stuff happens. And, yeah, it's not like the
• 43:20
  clients fault, when things go awry, so you might feel
• 43:23
  resentment about the project that specifically about the
• 43:26
  client, but that's another reason why it always benefits
• 43:32
  you to try to like you said earlier, push for a little
• 43:37
  higher than you, think you need, because eventually, you're going
• 43:41
  to find yourself in a situation where you thought.
• 43:44
  Thought it was going to be something and it ended up being
• 43:46
  like three times as much as you expected.
• 43:51
  So, yeah, it's tough though. It's tough to figure out those
• 43:54
  numbers and that's why I talking to other people is really
• 43:58
  awesome. I'm starting to do that more
• 44:00
  myself being more candid with people that I'm growing to
• 44:04
  trust, where I just talked numbers with them and where I
• 44:08
  talk about the nitty-gritty of contracts, and negotiating for
• 44:12
  projects that having Having a Social Circle to help you with
• 44:16
  that is of Paramount importance. Because I'll be honest, I'm used
• 44:20
  to doing it all on my own. I'm good at some stuff, but I'm
• 44:23
  not the best at everything. And there are people who are way
• 44:26
  better at it than me. So it's like taking a little
• 44:30
  little backseat on my pride here and asking for help is like,
• 44:35
  really good for me, but really good hurting.
• 44:37
  I always look at it. Like, you can just learn
• 44:39
  something or hear something you'd never even considered
• 44:41
  before or like, considering some Different angle, whatever.
• 44:45
  Like, there's always going to be benefiting that, and this is why
• 44:48
  I like him in my circle. Be it people that have, you
• 44:52
  know, experience in my area or even people that don't I always,
• 44:56
  I always listen, even if I won't agree or I won't go with what
• 44:59
  they say. I always have my ears open just
• 45:02
  in case there's something there that might help me or might even
• 45:06
  change everything like the way you look at something, really?
• 45:09
  Yeah. And it's really interesting to
• 45:12
  talk to people in other Industries, Like my conversation
• 45:15
  with you right now, because a lot of these problems are
• 45:18
  Universal across Industries. Yep.
• 45:21
  Even the little bitty shared about freelancing and acting,
• 45:24
  it's like I relate at a lot of ways.
• 45:27
  I do travel occasionally, and I God, getting compensation for
• 45:30
  travel. Can be a pain in the butt.
• 45:33
  I did a project once where they accidentally charged me for the
• 45:35
  hotel that this will sound like tooting my own horn, but I did a
• 45:39
  project for MTV and they chose to put me up in the Ritz-Carlton
• 45:44
  Carlton, I would not have picked the Ritz-Carlton, but I wasn't
• 45:48
  about to argue with it. Well, they accidentally charged
• 45:52
  my credit card which is supposed to be for incidentals and
• 45:55
  suddenly, I'm dealing with the weirdest customer service
• 45:59
  problems ever because it was four hundred twenty dollars a
• 46:02
  night. Like what do you mean?
• 46:04
  Farted $20 of them by credit card suddenly what?
• 46:08
  And that's just like the weird I would never have thought.
• 46:11
  I'd have that problem every yeah.
• 46:14
  Yeah, like sure put me up in a nice hotel.
• 46:16
  Wait, I'm paying for it? Wait a minute, I want to go down
• 46:20
  the street to the like I don't know the Motel 6.
• 46:24
  It's only like how that team that's Western Hilton maybe I
• 46:29
  stayed at the Best Western but I went to the state's best
• 46:32
  questions. All right then you're great.
• 46:34
  I love this faster. That is a Marriott Marriott's.
• 46:38
  A good time. There's there's definitely yeah
• 46:41
  and it's just it's just Of those things where there's some, every
• 46:47
  job is unique and it's impossible to predict every
• 46:54
  curve ball that will come your way for every project.
• 46:58
  So it's best to advocate, for yourself and charge a little
• 47:02
  more than you might think you need kind of as insurance.
• 47:08
  Yeah no I agree with oh that thing.
• 47:11
  Yeah you yeah, you just covering your back really on you now
• 47:14
  then. That's the way forget.
• 47:15
  And I'll add to this as well just to put like a bow on it.
• 47:20
  Whenever I do so that voice acting projects voiceover
• 47:23
  projects, I always say that. Well what do I normally call it
• 47:31
  when they want lines, redone or stuff like that?
• 47:34
  I'm like, I'll do this free of charge like within reason.
• 47:38
  So if it's like a few things here and there that touch up
• 47:41
  stuff like that, I'll do it, no problem.
• 47:44
  But if it starts becoming like, okay, we need to just redo the
• 47:47
  whole of this, or we need to do that.
• 47:49
  We need to do that, then I'll start being like, okay, we might
• 47:52
  need to go, should negotiate an additional fee for this or an
• 47:55
  additional session. I'll give you a really good
• 47:57
  example. I did a project at the beginning
• 48:00
  of this year, worked with a client and it was fuss sort of
• 48:04
  like a commercial or a short film or something like that.
• 48:08
  And they wanted to do is the first time I've worked with the
• 48:11
  client in Asia and so I was very excited about the whole process
• 48:15
  and everything and it seemed like a really good team.
• 48:18
  And they wanted to do a live session, which I've done quite a
• 48:20
  few times. I'm quite used to it and I was
• 48:23
  giving them advice that we can try this.
• 48:25
  We can try that and you know, it's going well and then it came
• 48:31
  to payment and I was chasing them a bit.
• 48:34
  And it they kept saying like I will pay you at this time, we'll
• 48:36
  pay at this time and It was like three four weeks later and then
• 48:41
  they had the audacity to then ask for additional and I'm like
• 48:44
  okay listen first of all you need to pay me, you pay me.
• 48:50
  Secondly if we're going to do a dish because what they wanted to
• 48:53
  do is whoever was the director of it or something, they had
• 48:57
  like several people working on it, they wanted to do another
• 49:00
  session, and I think they wanted to go over it again or try
• 49:03
  something different and because I did everything that they asked
• 49:06
  in the session and they seemed happy And I again said what I
• 49:10
  normally say, which is if you need touch-ups, let me know.
• 49:12
  I can add them in post, it's fine, but then they came back to
• 49:16
  me and said they wanted to redo and I was like, okay?
• 49:19
  And then they said that they, I think, at first, they kind of
• 49:23
  wanted to get it for free like a free session and I was like, I'm
• 49:27
  going to need to. We're going to need some
• 49:29
  negotiate something here. I can't just work.
• 49:32
  Another was it free for our session?
• 49:35
  I think it was for free. And I didn't quite put it in
• 49:40
  those terms and to be fair, they were very forthcoming about
• 49:44
  doing a second session and I was I'll great.
• 49:46
  Great. Okay.
• 49:47
  Cool. Will arrange another session.
• 49:49
  And then again, there were trying to be, I do want to say
• 49:54
  cheap with the price, but they were there trying to kind of get
• 49:56
  wherever they could. And I was like, okay, well, this
• 49:59
  is what it needs to be and, you know, they didn't go for it.
• 50:03
  I got a message back saying that they wanted to go with something
• 50:07
  else and I'm that's okay. Yeah they want to get someone
• 50:09
  else to do it. Fine and they did pay me.
• 50:12
  I got my money but I stood my ground like I wasn't going to
• 50:14
  just like bend over and over. Yeah.
• 50:17
  Do what you want then like come on.
• 50:20
  Yeah you establish some healthy boundaries.
• 50:23
  It's right. It's another situation.
• 50:25
  That reminds me a lot of the illustration industry where a
• 50:29
  lot of illustrators will in their contracts negotiate.
• 50:33
  I will do up to two edits for free and they might even specify
• 50:38
  What kind of edit it might be, you know, I can't be like a
• 50:41
  structural edit to the drawing but maybe, you know, a different
• 50:44
  color or this kind of thing. And then after that, they might
• 50:47
  have some kind of like a fee structure.
• 50:50
  For what additional edits might entail, I thankfully due to the
• 50:56
  nature of Etch-a-Sketch, I send them a digital mock-up and once
• 51:01
  they give me the thumbs up on that, it's like, okay, this is
• 51:05
  your final chance if you want me to make it bigger.
• 51:09
  If you want the drawing to be more on the left, if you want me
• 51:11
  to change the font of the word, this is last call.
• 51:15
  Before this train is boarding and departing, because once I
• 51:18
  start drawing, there's no going back.
• 51:21
  And I'm lucky because artists don't generally have that level
• 51:25
  of boundary, they could set under normal circumstances and
• 51:29
  as long as I've really thoroughly, communicate that
• 51:31
  before the project begins, then things are good to go.
• 51:35
  But there have been times early on where I do.
• 51:38
  The drawing there. Like oh, You wrote their name
• 51:41
  differently, than I thought you did.
• 51:43
  Do you were gonna about? Okay, I need to show them what
• 51:47
  it's going to look like before I begin.
• 51:49
  And then once they give the thumbs-up, then I could be like
• 51:52
  will see these are the receipts, you said right here and I
• 51:55
  haven't had to deal with that but just in case that's how I
• 51:58
  feel with this current situation.
• 51:59
  I told you about earlier with the expenses thing, I'm like
• 52:02
  well this is what you said like I didn't have not it.
• 52:06
  I've not got to the point where I'd send screenshots but it
• 52:09
  might go that way. Way.
• 52:10
  He but that's that's the reality man.
• 52:13
  What you say is what you say? You know.
• 52:16
  Yeah. I love email email.
• 52:18
  You keep it all in writing, you can look back on it.
• 52:22
  Phone calls are trickier because it's harder to keep track of
• 52:27
  what's being said and there's no record of it and I love phone
• 52:31
  calls because it gives me the opportunity to get to know
• 52:33
  people. It's much more friendly and
• 52:35
  gregarious but well, when you're getting into the nitty-gritty
• 52:38
  and you're talking numbers, can we just keep that on email,
• 52:40
  please? I want a chance to ruminate over
• 52:42
  it. I want a chance to on the same.
• 52:45
  Have an opportunity. Yeah.
• 52:46
  I oh I do not like being put on the spot with.
• 52:49
  How about this much? Let me get back with you in an
• 52:51
  email. Like I don't like accepting
• 52:54
  numbers on the spot. No, I totally agree.
• 52:57
  I always asked it to do that and not even just numbers but like
• 53:00
  any time I accept a project on my okay, can you please send
• 53:03
  everything in an email and most of the time they'll just say
• 53:05
  yeah but Mike I need to sit and go over it.
• 53:08
  Reside over it planet and then make my understanding of it.
• 53:11
  So I totally there with you on that one.
• 53:14
  Yeah, 100%. And I'd say, most of my
• 53:17
  correspondence has almost entirely over email and I like
• 53:21
  that. It also means that I get to
• 53:23
  respond on my time when it's convenient for me, when I'm in a
• 53:27
  good spot to do it, if I'm getting phone calls out of the
• 53:30
  blue. It's hard for me to accommodate
• 53:33
  that like I'm in the middle of eating lunch.
• 53:34
  I don't want to talk about a contract, I'm trying sandwich.
• 53:39
  And that's, yeah, that's the kind of stuff or oral schedule
• 53:41
  calls, you know, I do these days.
• 53:44
  It's so common to do video chats for kind of discussion.
• 53:48
  So yeah, but it's yeah, when you are, when you were talking about
• 53:52
  times when I've felt resentful, there have been times where I've
• 53:56
  been too nice and I was nice to them but I wasn't nice to me.
• 54:01
  So this is the way you got to look at.
• 54:03
  This is why I asked you about, like, how long it took you to do
• 54:06
  projects because I think that that is a big part of being a
• 54:09
  freelancer, especially an artist or a voice actor.
• 54:12
  Actor, whatever is like, your time Is so valuable and like how
• 54:17
  much you be surprised how quickly it goes that mean even
• 54:21
  something like live streaming. I have to be careful with how
• 54:24
  frequently I do that because it's just it takes up a lot of
• 54:26
  time. It's just it takes time and you
• 54:29
  have to specially when you get busier like right now I have an
• 54:34
  insane amount of podcast coming up plus other projects and it's
• 54:39
  okay, I'm managing it. I'm you know making use of that
• 54:42
  Google Calendar but at the same time, It's like sometimes I'm
• 54:46
  like I might have to move this around, this might have to go
• 54:49
  lay it. Like I've had some people reach
• 54:53
  out to me and be like, hey can we not do this show sooner?
• 54:55
  And I'm like, I just can't, because I know, like some weeks,
• 55:00
  I'm doing two shows, three shows in a row, it's a lot and then
• 55:04
  there's all the editing and everything.
• 55:06
  And I pre-schedule my show ahead of time, but just just on a side
• 55:10
  note because ice better I find to just have like one sure week
• 55:17
  it's much more digestible. It builds anticipation.
• 55:19
  If you put too much out there, I'm sure you get the same thing
• 55:22
  with your right. Like, maybe you have like,
• 55:24
  several pieces of work done, but it doesn't make sense to just
• 55:26
  post them all on social media in one.
• 55:28
  Go like you stagger that out, you give it time and let it sit,
• 55:34
  let it. I don't know.
• 55:36
  Stu, I thought I agree and it also creates an expectation from
• 55:41
  your audience. They get used to them.
• 55:44
  Time a week. They like you said, the
• 55:45
  anticipation of that day. It's a good practice.
• 55:49
  And that's that's like a healthy practice to have that that level
• 55:53
  of consistency. Also what you said about the
• 55:57
  live streaming that resonates with me so much, I love live
• 56:02
  streaming and it is hard to not just turn on my camera and go
• 56:07
  live and have nothing on the agenda and just hang out with my
• 56:11
  audience because they're cool people.
• 56:12
  And it's It's like hanging out with a bunch of friends, but
• 56:16
  problem is I'm not doing myself a favor.
• 56:20
  If I'm Not getting fairly compensated, for my time and
• 56:26
  some capacity. It.
• 56:27
  I can't be putting paid work on the back burner all the time to
• 56:32
  live stream for an unknown amount of money.
• 56:35
  It would be one thing if I was like, rolling in with, like a
• 56:38
  very consistent reliable hourly rate of some type.
• 56:42
  But I have been very mindful about like the times and the
• 56:47
  amount of time that I schedule and part of that is not only
• 56:51
  because Like my time is valuable valuable but also as you're
• 56:56
  probably aware, when you're live streaming you you're on, you are
• 57:00
  giving your best energy, you're putting on the best performance.
• 57:04
  You can you're being the best version of yourself that you can
• 57:08
  be for that situation and that is valuable energy that you are
• 57:14
  giving to the camera and that energy should not be squandered.
• 57:18
  I've become very mindful of about planning intentionally for
• 57:24
  what's going to happen during a stream.
• 57:25
  Not only to communicate to my audience so they can know and
• 57:28
  get excited and anticipate what might occur but also for my own
• 57:32
  well-being because if I go in and just kind of wing it, then
• 57:37
  I'll act erection, it's not going to perform as well because
• 57:40
  nobody knows what's going on. And I don't really provide the
• 57:44
  same level of energy. If I'm just kind of like winging
• 57:46
  in, I still have streams where I only have like a vague itinerary
• 57:50
  but but that If I do that to protect myself, to make it a
• 57:55
  better use of my time to as bluntly as possible.
• 57:59
  Better my chances of being fairly compensated for the time
• 58:02
  that I'm streaming. And one of the things that I do
• 58:06
  with Tick, Tock live to better my chances for fair
• 58:09
  compensation, is I started doing these like Sabbath on style
• 58:14
  streams, where I'll start a timer, and then I will allow the
• 58:18
  audience opportunities to contribute to that timers.
• 58:21
  Through various actions. Some of them are free liking the
• 58:25
  stream, if I get to a certain like goal or share goal.
• 58:30
  So, some of them are the audience can basically spread
• 58:34
  the news about my stream and that's free for them to do.
• 58:36
  It's a free action. Others are gift based, if I
• 58:40
  receive a new subscriber that will add time to the timer or if
• 58:44
  I hit a gift goal that can add time to the timer.
• 58:47
  So people if they're liking it, they could put their money where
• 58:50
  their mouth is if Enjoyed it having a good time.
• 58:53
  They could immediately give me that positive feedback loop and
• 58:57
  then the whole audience gets to benefit from it and that's just
• 59:01
  one way that I've been trying to figure out how to make it like
• 59:05
  actually worth my time and the fact that I'm going to
• 59:09
  compensate otherwise, I'm still having the time of my life and
• 59:12
  I'm really happy to do it. It's scary because I do it for
• 59:14
  free, but I just can't because otherwise no, no repeat.
• 59:19
  Stop II completely. Agree with you.
• 59:23
  I know that sometimes with my audience and I apologize for
• 59:26
  anyone listening there is an expectation for me to be live
• 59:29
  all the time and I can't always do that.
• 59:31
  Sometimes if I have a project that takes precedence that takes
• 59:35
  you know and I feel if anything it's better actually like for
• 59:39
  instance I recently dropped down what I offer on my patreon so I
• 59:44
  used to do two episodes a week that's in a week a month.
• 59:48
  Now, I do want to pisode of this new show that I do life.
• 59:51
  Christian Reef, check it out, patreon.com/crashcourse Mary,
• 59:56
  and I found that it was too much because I was doing six shows a
• 1:00:00
  month plus everything else. Yeah.
• 1:00:03
  And it's a lot. Like, but like the whole premise
• 1:00:07
  of the life of Christian Reeves shows, it's kind of a split show
• 1:00:10
  in the the beginning. I'll give a big update on what's
• 1:00:14
  going on in my life and that could be like 5 minutes, 10
• 1:00:17
  minutes depends on what's going on and then the rest of the show
• 1:00:21
  is whatever the topic is that I've researched which broadly
• 1:00:25
  speaking kind of follows the same structure as this show, the
• 1:00:28
  podcast and what I've found. And this is what I said, in my
• 1:00:32
  note to everyone, and my message to everyone in the last episode
• 1:00:35
  is that If there's less time between each episode more time,
• 1:00:40
  between each episode, it's kind of like the old saying of like,
• 1:00:43
  how can I love you? If you won't go away, you know,
• 1:00:45
  I mean you got to kind of build a bit of time, let people be
• 1:00:49
  like oh wonder what he's been up to and then boom you tell
• 1:00:51
  everyone and I think live streams are the same.
• 1:00:53
  Like if you got time do it, if you don't got time, you know,
• 1:00:58
  you're busy, it's okay. But like I really agree with
• 1:01:03
  like, the way you've kind of approached it, like you, you
• 1:01:06
  Approach it that way, you're like okay I'll set myself goals.
• 1:01:09
  I try to monetize this and that's a great way of looking at
• 1:01:12
  it. Yeah that's a great approach for
• 1:01:14
  me. It's random if I ever get like
• 1:01:20
  potential to make money from it, I do get gifts and stuff.
• 1:01:23
  And that's awesome. Thank you so much to everyone
• 1:01:24
  that the gifts, but it's not like it's random.
• 1:01:29
  So I try to kind of like, you know, do what I can, but the
• 1:01:32
  main reason why I stream, there's a couple of reasons that
• 1:01:36
  one. One is There's A really lovely
• 1:01:38
  community that I like to give back to as much as I can and and
• 1:01:41
  entertain them and staff and I know it's a source of joy for
• 1:01:44
  many people and inspiration or whatever and that's awesome.
• 1:01:48
  So I really love that but you know, I'm a business guy just
• 1:01:52
  you know, your business woman. It's you got to look at you go
• 1:01:54
  look at these things. Like how is this benefiting me?
• 1:01:57
  And the way I look at it is I'm always getting to put myself out
• 1:02:01
  there, promote myself, promote my projects.
• 1:02:04
  This is a big part of it. And I've That one streams have
• 1:02:07
  been very transparent about, like this is why I'm here, this
• 1:02:10
  is why I did this. This is why I continue to do
• 1:02:14
  this. And I think as long as you're
• 1:02:16
  honest and upfront about your intentions and stuff that really
• 1:02:19
  helps and people want to get on board they want to cut do not.
• 1:02:24
  I mean like and this kind of brings me to this thing.
• 1:02:26
  I'm dying to ask you about, which is the you now this was
• 1:02:31
  this happened quite a while ago but basically what you did is
• 1:02:35
  you set up a structure On your live streams where you set a
• 1:02:38
  goal of how many like roses that you needed, you worked out
• 1:02:42
  mathematically in order to pay off your student loan.
• 1:02:46
  It's just beer. Eyeline.
• 1:02:47
  And I was like, this is the most ambitious goal ever, but it's
• 1:02:50
  fun. And I think that it's fun for a
• 1:02:53
  number of reasons because one, you know, you're not just
• 1:02:56
  saying, like, oh, give me a bunch of money or like, hey,
• 1:02:58
  let's do this journey together like this will be fun.
• 1:03:00
  Let's try this out. Let's see if we could do this,
• 1:03:03
  you know. Yeah.
• 1:03:04
  And you set the goal and you achieve That like you already
• 1:03:07
  did it? Yeah.
• 1:03:09
  Yeah, that's what we proved that was a mind-blowing experience.
• 1:03:12
  So basically, I was doing some live streams on Tick-Tock and on
• 1:03:19
  Tick-Tock, I didn't really have a plan or an idea for what I was
• 1:03:21
  going to do a tick, tock life, but I was having a lot of fun.
• 1:03:23
  So, I would just go live randomly.
• 1:03:25
  And one day, there was, I should pull it out.
• 1:03:28
  I'll send you a picture. Maybe there's this Etch A Sketch
• 1:03:31
  called the ETSU and shuts, and it's this as just catch from the
• 1:03:36
  Ireland's that's just what they call it and Dodge I guess and it
• 1:03:41
  had the silliest name. It just tickled me pig and so I
• 1:03:45
  decided on the spot during a live stream.
• 1:03:47
  I said, listen, you guys are going to bet an aide my
• 1:03:52
  addiction to edges catch collecting today, any funds that
• 1:03:55
  I receive on this live stream are going to go toward the
• 1:03:57
  purchase of the last thing I need on the planet.
• 1:03:59
  This ridiculous Etch-a-Sketch that I could go the rest of my
• 1:04:02
  life without but I need it. I need it.
• 1:04:05
  So I said that. Suddenly this audience of people
• 1:04:08
  that were just chilling out and watching were mobilized behind
• 1:04:12
  this, arbitrary bizarre goal and started sending Tick-Tock live
• 1:04:17
  gifts in mass and before I knew it, I knew it I needed sixty
• 1:04:21
  dollars to purchase that ship it from across the ocean and one
• 1:04:25
  hour bam, 60 bucks. At that was like, whoa, that was
• 1:04:30
  weird. That's fast.
• 1:04:31
  That was crazy. And I tried it again with
• 1:04:34
  another strange. Variant of The edge of sketch
• 1:04:37
  since there are so many different kinds out there.
• 1:04:40
  And once again, bam funded it an hour like, wow, this is weird,
• 1:04:46
  this is cool if I come up with a goal that I could really get
• 1:04:53
  people to Rally behind then people will care and they'll
• 1:04:57
  have a reason to donate before. It's like I wasn't giving him
• 1:05:00
  enough of a reason. So I sat down and I thought,
• 1:05:04
  what is a crazy goal? What is an out-there ridiculous
• 1:05:08
  goal and I thought about my student loans.
• 1:05:12
  Now I've been paying them for at that time around a decade, I
• 1:05:16
  graduated in 2013. This would have been an early
• 1:05:19
  2020 to. So your ago and I did the math
• 1:05:24
  and the amount that I had left a payoff, I had about fifty three
• 1:05:28
  thousand dollars in student debt when I graduated and those who
• 1:05:31
  know about student loans know that you're paying way more than
• 1:05:34
  that because you're paying the interest.
• 1:05:36
  East and all of that. So I shudder to think of how
• 1:05:40
  much I've actually paid in the last nine years and I was on a
• 1:05:43
  graduated plan, I picked the 10-year plan, I have a lot of
• 1:05:46
  friends who are on the 25-year plan and they're going to be
• 1:05:48
  paying till their 50s for this tough and I ended up doing the
• 1:05:55
  math and realized I had thirteen thousand four hundred eighty
• 1:06:00
  four dollars and 58 cents left in student loans and that number
• 1:06:03
  will forever be embedded in my brain because it Was the number
• 1:06:07
  one goal in my life for a while. So thirty thousand four hundred,
• 1:06:11
  eighty four dollars, and 58 says that got paused due to pandemic.
• 1:06:14
  So they were Federal loans in the US and I did the math and it
• 1:06:18
  was two million. Six hundred ninety six thousand
• 1:06:21
  nine, hundred, and sixteen Tick-Tock roses.
• 1:06:26
  So, for those who are not familiar with Tick-Tock live,
• 1:06:30
  you can send these digital gifts which are tick-tocks
• 1:06:35
  manifestations. Ian of currency and when you
• 1:06:39
  send those virtual gifts, the livestreamer will receive
• 1:06:43
  monetary compensation in return. So the rose is one coin on Tick
• 1:06:49
  Tock. And it is the equivalent of one.
• 1:06:53
  Half of a US penny, that an American livestreamer will
• 1:06:57
  receive. So, after doing the math, yeah,
• 1:07:03
  it takes over two and a half million roses to get To thirteen
• 1:07:07
  thousand five hundred dollars, reference roughly.
• 1:07:10
  So I started that journey. I posted a video about it.
• 1:07:14
  I talked about what if I could pay off my loans with Tick-Tock
• 1:07:19
  roses. It was like the strangest choice
• 1:07:21
  of currency to go all in on. But it was very intentional
• 1:07:25
  because Anybody who's been streaming on Tick-Tock live
• 1:07:29
  enough, has received at least one rose and people on Tick,
• 1:07:33
  Tock, culturally, just kind of throw roses at the stream.
• 1:07:37
  They just send a couple here and there, maybe one maybe 10.
• 1:07:42
  It's basically like the arbitrary tip that people will
• 1:07:46
  said, if they appreciate it was happening on stream or maybe
• 1:07:50
  they want to shout out. So they'll send a rose like you
• 1:07:52
  see their name prominently displayed on screen, so it's
• 1:07:55
  kind of like Or you're almost paying for ad space for a sec
• 1:08:02
  and it's a way for your audience to receive recognition and
• 1:08:05
  appreciation for the gift. And that's I mean, that's true
• 1:08:07
  across the board with like live streaming and the gift is set up
• 1:08:11
  for all of it but I chose Tick-Tock roses because nobody
• 1:08:14
  really takes the rose. Seriously, nobody really looks
• 1:08:18
  at it as like available form of income.
• 1:08:20
  It's like it's like if I went to my student loan servicer and
• 1:08:24
  plop down a garbage bag, The pennies and was like, here's my
• 1:08:27
  payment. Like yeah, I could do that but
• 1:08:29
  like nobody does that, you know, maybe someone does it because
• 1:08:33
  their film reel Petty and I don't blame them but Max is is
• 1:08:38
  that boom you'll problem. Yeah yeah I mean it's a great
• 1:08:42
  idea honestly. Yeah.
• 1:08:44
  I kind of wish that's how I handled it but yeah.
• 1:08:48
  But yeah. So so I picked the rose and I
• 1:08:52
  wanted it to be accessible for anyone.
• 1:08:56
  One to contribute to this goal. I wanted everyone to feel
• 1:09:00
  empowered to make a tiny difference in this giant
• 1:09:06
  thermometer and the thermometer is its maybe this is a u.s.
• 1:09:10
  joke, but in the u.s. we always say there's a pharmacy.
• 1:09:13
  CVS, they're known for printing out.
• 1:09:16
  Ridiculously long recedes. It's stupid.
• 1:09:19
  You get a receipt that's like 5 feet long for a purchase of two
• 1:09:23
  items because you got like 30 coupons Attached to the end of
• 1:09:27
  it. It's very silly.
• 1:09:29
  So, I always describe my, my thermometer is literally
• 1:09:31
  floor-to-ceiling, so I say it's the CVS length, receipt of the
• 1:09:36
  length of the thermometer and is comically large, but I wanted to
• 1:09:40
  Showcase, like the ridiculous scope of the ask that I put out
• 1:09:45
  into the Universe. I wanted a visually represent,
• 1:09:48
  this is ridiculous, and it's going to take me forever.
• 1:09:52
  I, when I started the journey, when I posted that first video,
• 1:09:56
  I said, yeah, yeah, I expected. Oh, over a year, like this is if
• 1:10:01
  I ever but I told people, hey, join my streams.
• 1:10:05
  This is what I do. I make live Etch-a-Sketch,
• 1:10:07
  drawings, if you fancy that if you enjoy it, and if you feel so
• 1:10:13
  desired to do so, any roses that I get from any of these streams
• 1:10:18
  will go toward this goal. So just that's, that's now, just
• 1:10:22
  so, you know, that's where it's going.
• 1:10:24
  That is how the support is. Being funneled and I don't have
• 1:10:27
  to be transparent about that. Most live streamers don't
• 1:10:32
  disclose to Their audience, where their donations are going
• 1:10:35
  and they're not required to there's no expectation for you
• 1:10:38
  to do that but I kind of liked the idea of the radical
• 1:10:42
  transparency of it. Letting people know, this is how
• 1:10:45
  much money you provided for me today, this is how much money I
• 1:10:49
  made today. Thanks to your support.
• 1:10:51
  And this is what it translates to and I would go up to my
• 1:10:54
  thermometer and take my marker. Her and fill in the lines and
• 1:10:57
  everyone would watch and the first video went viral, it took
• 1:11:01
  off like a rocket and I was able to keep building from that
• 1:11:06
  momentum and I kept posting update videos and this took over
• 1:11:10
  my life for the whole month of April of 2022.
• 1:11:15
  And I was able to accomplish that goal in 30 days, Chad.
• 1:11:23
  I didn't know. Is that sure?
• 1:11:24
  I know. It's sure he did.
• 1:11:25
  Days cheese. Yeah, so basically one month and
• 1:11:29
  I really want to emphasize to anyone listening that For all
• 1:11:34
  intents and purposes, I was a nobody livestreamer before this,
• 1:11:37
  I had experienced success, I'd had large audiences, I guess
• 1:11:41
  nobody livestreamer, I should specify more in the fact that
• 1:11:44
  like, I wasn't bringing a minimum wage.
• 1:11:47
  I wasn't, you know, like you? Yeah, no, it's true.
• 1:11:51
  I had an audience. I had a platform in advance and
• 1:11:54
  that is definitely worth emphasizing.
• 1:11:56
  I had assets that helped me to capitalize on like the beginning
• 1:12:01
  of the journey. Because at that point, I think I
• 1:12:03
  had to For 50,000 followers on Tick, Tock and that's nothing
• 1:12:06
  to. Yeah, yeah, that's that's
• 1:12:09
  definitely I wasn't starting from zero but as far as like the
• 1:12:15
  metrics of live streaming are concerned, I wasn't already
• 1:12:17
  bringing in thousands a month doing it.
• 1:12:20
  I was bringing in maybe like a few hundred on a really good
• 1:12:24
  month at most which is still really good.
• 1:12:28
  Like if you were to look at the the chart of like ownership of
• 1:12:31
  live streamers, I was probably already.
• 1:12:33
  Ready in like the 90th percentile because I'm sure most
• 1:12:36
  streamers probably don't make much money at all.
• 1:12:40
  And then it kind of is like, you know, 50% make 50 a month or
• 1:12:44
  something like that. So I wasn't yeah, I wasn't
• 1:12:47
  starting from scratch, but I was not a rockstar livestreamer, you
• 1:12:52
  know, I was I wasn't on the top of the twitch, explore Pages or
• 1:12:56
  anything like that already. So I do believe that it is
• 1:13:00
  possible to for others. To do this kind of thing and to
• 1:13:06
  mobilize their communities and to put out that big ask into the
• 1:13:09
  world, you have to be really intentional about it.
• 1:13:12
  You can't just be like I want a new house so Brazen a million
• 1:13:18
  dollars. Help me out world, you know?
• 1:13:22
  And I caught. Well I got so much flak even
• 1:13:26
  really fight the intention. I had.
• 1:13:28
  Oh yeah, I got, I mean, I wish I had a counter of the number of
• 1:13:32
  times. I got get a job.
• 1:13:33
  Job. Get a real job and you know,
• 1:13:36
  you're an actor, you probably hear anybody in the creative
• 1:13:39
  field, they get that always anyways.
• 1:13:41
  But I get this, I get when I'm live show been especially if
• 1:13:45
  it's during the day or in the morning and be like, oh same
• 1:13:48
  thing like oh why don't you have a job?
• 1:13:49
  Shouldn't you be at work? And I'm like, well, this kind of
• 1:13:51
  is what I do. Like, you know, I disallow I
• 1:13:54
  know it's hard to imagine that they don't work hard, I won't
• 1:13:58
  really are, but like it's a divide of time at sometimes.
• 1:14:03
  You won't set something, doing something sometimes you're
• 1:14:04
  recording something. Sometimes they'll be a day like
• 1:14:07
  tomorrow, I'm going to film something out somewhere but
• 1:14:11
  like, sometimes there are days when yeah, you just working from
• 1:14:13
  home, you just doing that. And I think, I think those types
• 1:14:17
  of comments tend to come from people that are annoyed that
• 1:14:20
  you're doing what you're doing. Like, because that's the way I
• 1:14:23
  look at most hate comments, is this is someone who's annoyed or
• 1:14:27
  jealous or yeah and it's, I get it.
• 1:14:30
  I understand, but it's just not necessary.
• 1:14:33
  Oh, yeah. And I I expected it and then I
• 1:14:36
  had a lot of people just saying I'm begging which like it's I
• 1:14:40
  wouldn't say it's begging. It's more like I feel like live
• 1:14:43
  streaming in a lot of ways is like, Digital busking, because
• 1:14:48
  yeah and I agree with this. Like I think that because when I
• 1:14:51
  saw that you were doing your live streams, it's not like you
• 1:14:54
  were just standing there and being like give me money, you
• 1:14:56
  know, you like you would do it, you you carried on doing what
• 1:14:59
  you were doing in the same way that when I do my music live
• 1:15:02
  streams, I don't ask for people is to send money, but they do
• 1:15:05
  and I'm very thankful or if I do my regular live streams at the
• 1:15:08
  conversations, I never liked. If anything.
• 1:15:11
  I tell people, not to give me money, a lot of time, I'm just
• 1:15:14
  like, you know, I've started to push things like my patreon now
• 1:15:19
  because I feel like that's a bit more acceptable.
• 1:15:21
  You know, in the same way that you would push your Etsy store
• 1:15:24
  or something like that, like it's something where it's like
• 1:15:26
  if you want to support me. Here's how you can do it.
• 1:15:29
  But yeah, I don't I don't get how it could be conceived.
• 1:15:32
  As e begging. There are actually people on the
• 1:15:35
  app that legitimately do that like the whole created a battle
• 1:15:39
  thing. I don't know if you've seen
• 1:15:40
  that, that is 100% e begging like and Tick-Tock pushes that
• 1:15:45
  big Because they make money from it.
• 1:15:47
  Like I don't know if anyone knows yeah.
• 1:15:48
  Like they make has done a fantastic job of gamifying it to
• 1:15:54
  with the battles. I have a very love-hate
• 1:15:56
  relationship with battles. I'll get into that in this in a
• 1:16:01
  second. I suppose I I think with the
• 1:16:04
  student loan Journey that I did, I call it my rose ometer, that's
• 1:16:07
  good. So for my rose ometer, it was
• 1:16:11
  very important for me to provide value.
• 1:16:15
  For the audience tuning in and for me that value looked like
• 1:16:19
  creating live Etch-a-Sketch drawings hanging out with the
• 1:16:22
  audience and providing visual entertainment.
• 1:16:25
  And for every livestreamer, it is important to think about how
• 1:16:30
  do I provide value for my audience and how do I justify
• 1:16:34
  the time that they're choosing to spend with me at the end of
• 1:16:36
  every livestream? I say you could be anywhere on
• 1:16:39
  the internet and you've chosen to spend that time with me and I
• 1:16:41
  never want to take that for granted, it is the World Wide
• 1:16:44
  Web after all And there is a lot of good stuff on the internet
• 1:16:49
  anybody's ever, been on the internet.
• 1:16:50
  You know, that there's incredible Eternal, of course.
• 1:16:53
  So the fact that people are choosing to stick around and
• 1:16:58
  watch me. I never want to take that for
• 1:17:01
  granted. I really want to be intentional
• 1:17:03
  about making sure to not waste their time in a way and I think
• 1:17:10
  it's dangerous territory. When as a livestreamer, you
• 1:17:13
  start feeling entitled to Support your audience.
• 1:17:17
  I kind of like that in a lot of ways live streaming is closer to
• 1:17:22
  a meritocracy in a way because if the people love it, they will
• 1:17:28
  show their support in whatever way they feel comfortable.
• 1:17:31
  They'll stick around, they'll watch.
• 1:17:33
  If you have a bad stream, there are, I mean algorithm that can
• 1:17:36
  really change a lot of things but I think usually you could
• 1:17:42
  tell when a street, if your numbers.
• 1:17:45
  Is are really good and a lot of people were watching.
• 1:17:47
  It is very rare for me to say after having like I don't know
• 1:17:51
  if I have like a thousand people in the room that is, it is very
• 1:17:55
  rare for to be like that was an off night for me.
• 1:17:57
  I don't understand why people were sticking around.
• 1:18:00
  Usually if a thousand people are in the room, it's because I was
• 1:18:03
  on fire, I was having a good stream and people had reason to
• 1:18:06
  stick around, it wasn't like they were doing me a solid.
• 1:18:09
  They felt like it was a good enough experience for them to
• 1:18:13
  stay but then the days where I only have 10 people, It's like
• 1:18:17
  okay. See could see where I did some
• 1:18:19
  stuff wrong. This, this is ironic.
• 1:18:21
  So 10 people in for me would be that be like a good day, which
• 1:18:28
  is a really good day for me. I should specify that.
• 1:18:30
  Yeah, so I do all my students had ticked up and I used to do
• 1:18:36
  to it unless you've been thinking about going back to
• 1:18:37
  that, that's another story. I think the same as you like,
• 1:18:41
  I've had people come in and comment and be like, how come?
• 1:18:43
  There's not more people here and I'm just like I don't know, but
• 1:18:46
  I focus on the people that are here and to me, it blows my mind
• 1:18:51
  whenever I get like five ten people in there and they stick
• 1:18:55
  around because you get people that come and go and I fully
• 1:18:57
  accept that that's the name of the game and you just have to
• 1:19:00
  accept that can take it. Personally, we all do it.
• 1:19:04
  You know sometimes you're stick around in a stream for a while
• 1:19:06
  and then you below I want to do something else or maybe I'll
• 1:19:08
  come back another time, you know?
• 1:19:09
  But then you get these wonderful amazing people who stick their
• 1:19:12
  for the entire stream and You got to be grateful for that and
• 1:19:17
  I've even had those people sometimes below.
• 1:19:19
  I'm sorry, you don't have more, it's just me.
• 1:19:21
  And I'm like, no, no, no. I am so grateful for you because
• 1:19:25
  without you, there would be no stream.
• 1:19:27
  That's the way you got to look at it because it's all, I mean,
• 1:19:30
  especially like, at least with yours like you've got something
• 1:19:34
  you do and activity. And to be fair, like, with my
• 1:19:37
  music one's. Alright.
• 1:19:39
  That's the same thing. But, like a lot of my streams
• 1:19:41
  are just me talking and reacting to whatever is in the chat.
• 1:19:45
  Yeah, I suppose I could come in and do like audiobooks or
• 1:19:48
  something but I prefer I come to do the live streams because it
• 1:19:51
  gets talk to people and you know share my stories with them or
• 1:19:54
  took about updates or whatever else.
• 1:19:57
  But the the main draw for me is getting to talk to them
• 1:20:00
  one-on-one and the back and forth and it can go in so many
• 1:20:04
  different directions and it blows my mind when those people
• 1:20:07
  stick around and some of those people have been there for years
• 1:20:11
  and that's incredible. You know, and I don't know if
• 1:20:14
  it'll ever take off. Me.
• 1:20:16
  But I blows my mind that because I remember a time when you know,
• 1:20:20
  good eight months when I first started, I never got anywhere
• 1:20:24
  with it. No one ever showed up, whatever
• 1:20:27
  still get day sometimes when there's only a few people in the
• 1:20:30
  room, but I've noticed that if those few, even sometimes when I
• 1:20:34
  do those morning streams and there's like three, four people
• 1:20:37
  around those people stick around.
• 1:20:40
  If they're available, they stick around and I'm like there must
• 1:20:42
  be something I'm doing right then.
• 1:20:44
  And so that's What? I focus on.
• 1:20:46
  I don't focus on the numbers. Neither should you just focus on
• 1:20:50
  making good content? And you know, who knows?
• 1:20:52
  Maybe I'll go somewhere one day. No, I you've yeah you shared a
• 1:20:57
  lot of gold there. I think a lot of Even if I'm
• 1:21:05
  having you know a good day on a stream where there's a thousand
• 1:21:08
  people that Tick-Tock algorithm for live could really be like
• 1:21:11
  you could hit a thousand and then go down to 600 and then
• 1:21:14
  rest at 200 or whatever. And I and I also need to
• 1:21:17
  emphasize. I've been doing this almost
• 1:21:19
  daily now for a year and I've gotten lucky the algorithm fyp
• 1:21:24
  was in my favor and of course, it's worth mentioning.
• 1:21:27
  I perform an extreme Niche. Yep.
• 1:21:30
  You know, it's there aren't many people, there are some, but
• 1:21:33
  there aren't many That do this and that Niche has really been
• 1:21:36
  to my benefit. I'm not sure I would have been
• 1:21:38
  able to build an audience by hanging out and talking but The
• 1:21:43
  hanging out and talking is what has established my core
• 1:21:47
  audience, the people, there are a lot of people who will stick
• 1:21:51
  around and watch me. Do I just got for a little bit
• 1:21:54
  and I might never see him again, and they had a great time and
• 1:21:56
  that was the beginning and end of that relationship with that
• 1:22:00
  viewer. But the people I'd say, of all
• 1:22:04
  of my audience, maybe 30, there's like 30 people there,
• 1:22:08
  like my core fans. They are my top supporters.
• 1:22:13
  Hours. And I've asked them, what is it
• 1:22:15
  about my streams? That keeps you stick it around
• 1:22:18
  and they'll say, well originally, it was the
• 1:22:21
  Etch-a-Sketch, drawings, that hooked me.
• 1:22:23
  I thought it was really cool, but I stuck around because I
• 1:22:27
  like you or I like your personality or I like the things
• 1:22:31
  you say about stuff and yeah, I just really feel connected to
• 1:22:36
  you and a lot of these top supporters are now my friends
• 1:22:41
  there. It's I'm past the point of like
• 1:22:44
  parasocial into social, like it's it's amazing and I didn't
• 1:22:49
  really think about that when I started streaming that I was
• 1:22:52
  actually forming a community. Some of my, some of the people
• 1:22:56
  who follow me, some of my top supporters, their friends, with
• 1:22:59
  each other, they do have each other all the time.
• 1:23:03
  It's amazing. You know, and they start being
• 1:23:05
  friends who show you that. Wow, I feel like I accidentally
• 1:23:08
  was a Matchmaker, you know, like people are people are becoming
• 1:23:12
  friends with them. Another and it's beautiful.
• 1:23:15
  It's so cool. It's almost like scary to think
• 1:23:18
  about that. Like I didn't realize, I had the
• 1:23:22
  ability to like bring people together and that kind of way
• 1:23:26
  that's that wasn't my intent when I started.
• 1:23:28
  But now it's like one of the coolest things about being alive
• 1:23:32
  streamer. And and I think, you know,
• 1:23:35
  despite the fact that what I do predominantly in live streaming
• 1:23:38
  is drawing on an Etch-a-Sketch. The streams that people tend to
• 1:23:42
  remember, Amber. The most are the ones where
• 1:23:45
  there are only 40 people in the room.
• 1:23:47
  Yeah, where I'm just talking for two hours.
• 1:23:50
  I did a stream recently called Tipsy Tipsy where it's based a
• 1:23:55
  little on an inside joke. Where I say sip of story, I
• 1:23:58
  verbally typo'd trying to say a sip of water, but then I said
• 1:24:01
  story. So now I say, I'm going to tell
• 1:24:03
  a sip of story. When I share some stories in my
• 1:24:06
  audience is always very excited. The core audience would I tell a
• 1:24:09
  random wild story and And so I put together like a small
• 1:24:15
  thermometer for Tipsy sipsey because they've by audience has
• 1:24:19
  been interested in San. Well, what is Princess?
• 1:24:21
  Such like but she has a little bubbly in her and I decided,
• 1:24:27
  okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna do this and it was supposed to be a
• 1:24:30
  one hour live stream and it became five.
• 1:24:33
  And I was just hanging out. Yeah, having the time of my life
• 1:24:39
  getting drunk and oh my gosh. Okay.
• 1:24:43
  Tipsy Tipsy. I bet to be tipsy and I ended up
• 1:24:45
  getting drunk, so do not recommend for a lot of people.
• 1:24:49
  I full disclosure big giant, asterisk was only comfortable
• 1:24:55
  with doing this because I have a well-established healthy
• 1:24:59
  relationship with alcohol. So don't ever feel in any way
• 1:25:03
  pressured to imbibe and any kind of substance if that is not your
• 1:25:07
  normal and that's not going to be mine or me, either, it was an
• 1:25:11
  event because it never happens. It's for my Stream.
• 1:25:14
  So I did that stream and it was it was just amazing.
• 1:25:19
  I felt like as a content creator.
• 1:25:23
  I think a lot of people talk about these concepts of, there's
• 1:25:26
  the content you make for outreach and then there's the
• 1:25:28
  content you make for nurturing, your already established
• 1:25:31
  audience. So my edges catch streams.
• 1:25:34
  I try to bring in the numbers. I try to bring in a bunch of
• 1:25:37
  people who have never seen my stuff before, but it may not be
• 1:25:42
  as engaging The people who've been sticking around for a
• 1:25:44
  while, like one of my most common request is drawing Stitch
• 1:25:48
  from Lilo & Stitch, on an Etch-a-Sketch and I have lost
• 1:25:52
  count. I was, I never attacked myself.
• 1:25:56
  Well, it's great for the first timers.
• 1:25:58
  They'll flip their biscuits. They'll go crazy.
• 1:26:01
  Oh my God, she's drunk Stitch my regulars.
• 1:26:05
  They've seen that a million times.
• 1:26:07
  I'm not again. Take a shower every time.
• 1:26:09
  She does during a stitch even have any boat, that's Um, type
• 1:26:13
  Cycles into my system where it's like, no Stitch.
• 1:26:15
  It's like the no sign twisted and my my regulars will like
• 1:26:19
  spam it. They're like no, not stitch.
• 1:26:22
  It said, they're like in on the joke and and I've even I want
• 1:26:28
  even hosted a live stream where I only Drew Stitch but I made it
• 1:26:31
  an open request stream. So I would be like all right
• 1:26:34
  guys and I start drawing Stitch and everyone's like yeah I'm
• 1:26:37
  like what do I draw next? And people are suggested all
• 1:26:40
  sorts of stuff. I'm like all right you said?
• 1:26:42
  It Stitch, let's go again and I did like 12 stitch drawings and
• 1:26:47
  then I made a video where I just like, maniacally erased them
• 1:26:50
  all. It was a cathartic experience
• 1:26:54
  and you know that video that I posted was not an Outreach
• 1:26:59
  video. A lot of people who might have
• 1:27:01
  seen that video would be like, why did you do that?
• 1:27:04
  But my regulars, love they get it.
• 1:27:09
  They're like Burnham down. Ed.
• 1:27:13
  And that's the difference, like I want I want to make sure that
• 1:27:16
  not just with live streaming, but with like what I do I want
• 1:27:19
  to make sure to not only It's not always about the numbers.
• 1:27:23
  Like you say, it's not always about, like, I need to grow grow
• 1:27:26
  grow. But like also, I need to, like,
• 1:27:28
  appreciate the people who've been sticking around, they they
• 1:27:31
  care enough to keep watching my streams, or liking my posts on
• 1:27:35
  Instagram or whatever, and I don't want them to feel left
• 1:27:38
  behind like, oh, now that I got you.
• 1:27:41
  It's it's like, oh, we're dating now.
• 1:27:43
  Okay, I don't care about you anymore.
• 1:27:44
  I'm gonna go hunt for someone else now.
• 1:27:46
  Like, that's not what I want it to feel like.
• 1:27:48
  So, so that's been something that I've been like learning.
• 1:27:51
  More with with live streaming is a lot of those streams.
• 1:27:55
  Where are you are just talking in front of the camera are often
• 1:27:59
  like better than the ones where you might have bigger view,
• 1:28:02
  counts, or even get more gifts because like it's those is those
• 1:28:07
  more intimate streams where most people aren't interested because
• 1:28:12
  I don't know who I am. Someone will scroll right past
• 1:28:14
  me on the fyp. If I'm just talking in front of
• 1:28:16
  the camera and they don't know me and I don't blame them.
• 1:28:18
  That's okay. But I might be telling a A story
• 1:28:22
  or I might be sharing a special moment with the audience and
• 1:28:28
  that's the stuff that people bring up to me the most.
• 1:28:30
  That's where a lot of my emotes come from, are those special
• 1:28:34
  moments that, that maybe only 50 people in the room where they're
• 1:28:38
  for and and I know 50 is still like a big number for a lot of
• 1:28:42
  people with streaming but but you know, it's like when a
• 1:28:47
  fraction of the audience is there but they're the people
• 1:28:49
  that are there for you all the time.
• 1:28:51
  That's is crazy. It's it's awesome.
• 1:28:56
  And I'm and I'm so glad that you know before streaming before
• 1:29:01
  streaming, I feel like people didn't really connect to my
• 1:29:05
  photo post on Instagram and then I joined Tick-Tock and then I
• 1:29:09
  started talking in front of the camera and then people started
• 1:29:13
  liking me and I'm like, oh I said this at a tick tock event,
• 1:29:18
  I'm not just some art created robot.
• 1:29:20
  That's a novel concept. I'm so used to the world
• 1:29:23
  treating me like a machine that is programmed to make art and I
• 1:29:27
  just catch, and that was my assignment.
• 1:29:30
  And That is what I did and I made art and I threw it to the
• 1:29:33
  planet. And I said, here, here's the art
• 1:29:36
  and they were like, heart, good jobs.
• 1:29:39
  And, and that was, that was fine.
• 1:29:42
  And then, and then I started doing Tick-Tock and posting
• 1:29:46
  videos and people started having dialogues with me and Enjoying
• 1:29:54
  my stuff. And I was connecting with people
• 1:29:57
  in a way I never had before and people would message me and say,
• 1:30:03
  oh this video like really hit hard and I didn't get that kind
• 1:30:07
  of feedback as a nearly as often on like a post where I wrote
• 1:30:11
  like a wall of text you know and and then I started streaming and
• 1:30:16
  started just having a conversation with people and
• 1:30:22
  That is by far the most connected I've ever been with my
• 1:30:25
  audience. And that's where I feel like for
• 1:30:28
  the first time I could say that I have Like fans in a way like
• 1:30:34
  they're there. Plenty of people who've liked my
• 1:30:36
  art, don't get me wrong but like, like they didn't know me.
• 1:30:39
  They just do what I made and it's an interesting world to
• 1:30:44
  Traverse and like with freelance like what we were talking about
• 1:30:48
  earlier. There are different kinds of
• 1:30:52
  boundaries, you have to set some of those boundaries worth of the
• 1:30:55
  contracts, and the payment and all that.
• 1:30:57
  But that with freelance, there's just a whole different like
• 1:30:59
  Universe today with live streaming.
• 1:31:02
  There's a whole different Universe to navigate and
• 1:31:04
  establishing boundaries and one of them is as you eloquently put
• 1:31:09
  earlier the establishment of when you go live, if you go live
• 1:31:14
  all the time you're just giving yourself to your audience and
• 1:31:17
  not giving enough to yourself. And to the people in your life
• 1:31:21
  outside of streaming. I lately haven't gone live for a
• 1:31:26
  very long time on weekends. I'm selective about it.
• 1:31:29
  It's a special occasion and yeah, it hurts because we could
• 1:31:33
  probably be my best grossing days and might even be my best
• 1:31:36
  audiences. But I made that hard decision
• 1:31:39
  because I had to advocate for my own time.
• 1:31:42
  Weekends are kind of a sacred time for me.
• 1:31:44
  I do a lot of work. I take care of the house.
• 1:31:47
  I spend time with my I go out and do stuff.
• 1:31:51
  It's important for me to cultivate those times off,
• 1:31:53
  stream, that I have something to talk about on stream to.
• 1:31:56
  So it's, it's definitely hard. I completely agree with you.
• 1:32:01
  I've had to sort of try to force myself to to, because it's easy
• 1:32:06
  to be at work. All I can get excited about it.
• 1:32:08
  You gotta take those times to rest and take care of you and do
• 1:32:11
  those things because, you know, that puts you in a better
• 1:32:13
  headspace mentally. And I think it's, you know,
• 1:32:17
  self-care, isn't it? And I know all the other other
• 1:32:19
  things are equally as important, you know, seeing friends seeing
• 1:32:21
  family chores, you know. That's yeah like you said it's
• 1:32:26
  all important as we draw things to a close today.
• 1:32:30
  Is there any particular projects that coming up that you'd like
• 1:32:33
  to fire out there or maybe some final thoughts you'd like to
• 1:32:36
  share with our listeners? Oh sure.
• 1:32:39
  Right now I don't have any major projects on the docket, which is
• 1:32:45
  rare for me, but frankly kind of nice.
• 1:32:48
  There's There's a way of like usually when I finish up a like
• 1:32:52
  some smaller commissions, I'll get some new ones on the docket.
• 1:32:54
  So I've got a few little things like that but nothing nothing.
• 1:32:57
  Big off the top of my head and then ask for final thoughts.
• 1:33:03
  Tell anybody who is pursuing freelance or live streaming.
• 1:33:09
  Establishing boundaries is being nice to yourself, it's doing
• 1:33:14
  yourself a major salad. So next time you find yourself
• 1:33:19
  in a position where it feels like it's nicer to ask for less
• 1:33:25
  money or it feels like you're doing a service for your
• 1:33:29
  Audience by being live 24/7. Just remember that if you give
• 1:33:35
  too much of yourself you can't give the best of yourself all
• 1:33:38
  the time and being the nicest thing you can do for a live
• 1:33:43
  stream audience or for a potential client, is to give
• 1:33:46
  them the best work you can make and The best way that you could
• 1:33:50
  do that is by advocating for yourself.
• 1:33:52
  So if that means going live a little bit less but providing
• 1:33:58
  really good live streams and really entertaining your
• 1:34:00
  audience, they're going to understand and if that means
• 1:34:03
  lowering the scope of your project or Not accepting a gig
• 1:34:10
  or asking for more money to make sure that you can adequately
• 1:34:15
  perform. The task at hand, then you're
• 1:34:18
  doing a major salad for the client to because you're going
• 1:34:21
  to make sure that they're going to get the best work, they can
• 1:34:23
  get out of you and it's only to both of your benefits.
• 1:34:26
  So it's a, it's a tough world out there.
• 1:34:30
  But you got this and make sure to make friends in the industry.
• 1:34:33
  You're in. You won't regret it.
• 1:34:36
  Absolutely, thank you so much. Much for the third time in a
• 1:34:40
  row. Mad.
• 1:34:42
  It's an honor to be back pages. Always my mouth.
• 1:34:46
  I love, I love picking your brains for the business side of
• 1:34:49
  things and just kind of, I don't know.
• 1:34:52
  There's something about like your positivity in your mindset.
• 1:34:56
  That's I think really endearing and I think it with the show and
• 1:34:59
  I've said this a million times. I sound like a broken record
• 1:35:02
  now, but in the last I'd say in the last year, maybe two years,
• 1:35:07
  I finally figured out. This show is and largely.
• 1:35:10
  It's to kind of showcase stories, people knowledge
• 1:35:15
  experience kind of a mixture of those things and you know, I
• 1:35:20
  love your story. I think I remember the first
• 1:35:22
  time I came across you, I think someone suggested you and said,
• 1:35:27
  you got to interview this, this person, she's brilliant.
• 1:35:30
  You got to interview her and I, you know, I did my research in
• 1:35:33
  you, and I was like, wow, this is a really cool person and we
• 1:35:36
  sat down and just chat it. I was just like, wow, is this
• 1:35:39
  like so much here? So much about you and that's
• 1:35:42
  something you scum over. You discover the person behind,
• 1:35:46
  you know, the entertain because there is a person behind
• 1:35:49
  everything, you know, there's that person that the, you know,
• 1:35:53
  all and all the things that you you don't hear about the
• 1:35:57
  struggles, the the trials tribulations that you go
• 1:36:00
  through, to get this stuff achieved, doesn't often get
• 1:36:03
  spoken about, but it gets spoken about on shows like this, and I
• 1:36:07
  think that's good. Yes, yeah.
• 1:36:08
  It's always a pleasure to spend time sharing stories with you
• 1:36:12
  and hearing about your journey as well.
• 1:36:14
  And there's so many interesting parallels between are varying
• 1:36:18
  Industries. Absolutely well, I hope that
• 1:36:22
  you'll join us again in the future and I wish you all the
• 1:36:24
  best for the future of. Yeah, thank you so much for
• 1:36:27
  being on the show. Thank you again and to the
• 1:36:31
  listeners of the Christian way podcast, as always be safe.
• 1:36:35
  Be well, hope you enjoyed the show and I'll see you all very
• 1:36:38
  very They soon, peace. They soon, peace.