Building a Creative small business 3/11/2018

Since I'm working on turning my art (and writing) into a small business, I've been on a Gary Vaynerchuk kick the last few days, listening to a bunch of his talks and interviews.  Gary, like many of the wines he used to sell, is an acquired taste.  When you first hear him, it's easy to say, "This guy's a big-talking asshole who cusses to fucking much."  If you get past that stage, and some don't, you'll realize that he really knows his stuff on the internet, tech savvy business, promotion, story telling, community building, marketing, and sales in the connected, information age that we now live in.  And he puts out TONS of content these days. 

But Gary's advice is geared mostly to people already in the tech world, or very tech friendly areas.  He's ahead of the curve because he goes to great lengths to keep a feel for the pulse of our rapidly changing, connected world.  So that's why I like listening to him, especially as I work to get my own biz going. 

But one blind spot of his in the millions upon millions of people, and huge areas of our country, that "don't do tech," or are just don't see the need to learn all this new crap getting invented.  He's knows this world is out there, but he's to busy to focus on it. 

I'm getting going in a mid-sized city that has done a lot of work to encourage a biotech/science scene to grow here.  But the vast majority of everyday people here are stuck in the "get a job, and if you can't find one just keep trying" mentality.  There's not a big entrepreneurial spirit here... These people I see around town are often masters of Candy Crush, but don't think of their phones and laptops and tablets as business tools.  This area of North Carolina was built on tobacco and textiles, with lots of farming and factory jobs that have mostly gone away.  It's like huge parts of the U.S. these days.  The idea of starting your own business is not widespread.  But as I've said before, looking hard at where we're headed (being an amateur futurist is my geek zone), I think we're going to need literally MILLIONS of new small businesses to get this country jamming financially again.  That's a very unusual, minority opinion right now.  I'm fine with that.  I've been a pioneer in other things before, and I'm used to everyone thinking I'm an idiot until an a new idea becomes cool.  I've seen that happen many times. 

Listening to Gary Vee rant on You Tube the last few days, I've decided to narrow the focus of this blog quite a bit.  I'm going to spend most of my time writing about what I'm doing to get my own little creative business going, and all the different things that entails, from the mindset and attitude needed to practical stuff I do day to day.  I'll also be sharing all the stuff I find along these lines for the other artists, writers, filmmakers, and other creative people building businesses.  I'll still tell the occasional old school BMX freestyle tale, since that's what a lot of you know me from, and I may throw in some of my crazy taxi driver or homeless guy stories, if they tie into that basic theme. 

And I'll try not to write lame ass blog posts like this one that have six paragraphs when I could have said this in two sentences.  I need to work on that.  Alright, back to work for me, and for you, go do something cool.  Later.