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.

Sharpie Art Lamborghini by Jessie Armand

I never spent much time painting pictures as a kid.  I was always drawing with pencils, and later ballpoint pens.  That's why I started drawing with markers in 2002, and later switched to using Sharpie markers almost exclusively.  I was in my own little world, and had no idea that there were people out there doing cool stuff with Sharpie markers. 

In 2012, my dad had a stroke and died a few months later.  While he was in the nursing home, I quit driving a taxi, and spent the time with him that could.  I wound up moving in with my mom when he died in August of that year.  I couldn't find a job, and started spending more time drawing in my weird "scribble style" with Sharpies.  It was around that time that I finally got around to looking up "Sharpie art" on the web. The standout artist I found was Jessie Armand.  He does these amazing designs using only black Sharpies most of the time. 

His work is totally different than mine, and much better in my opinion.  It looked like fun, so I do a doodle art drawing every now and then, my version of his style.  They're getting better, but they're still not near as cool looking as Jessie's stuff.  Here's Jessie working on a Lamborghini.  Hey, no pressure, it's not like the owner would be mad if you jacked up a $175,000 car.  Cool stuff.

Lessons from BMX freestyle: Get around the people who make stuff happen

When I came to Winston-Salem last summer, and camped out in the woods since I couldn't afford a room anywhere, I started wandering around and showing my Sharpie art to people in restaurants and stores to see what they thought.  I went to McKay's used bookstore (AWESOME place, BTW), and the women working in the back said, "Go to Delurk Gallery."  I met several other people who said the same thing, most of them in their 20's.  Delurk, on sixth street, just off Trade, in the space where Urban Artware used to be, is the coolest gallery here in Winston to the college age crowd.

My Michael Jackson drawing above is hanging on the wall there right now, in the "Creatures of Fortune" exhibit, one of 17 pieces chosen from all the talented artists in this area.  If you're a young artist, or a "creative" of any kind, you're probably wondering how a homeless guy who draws in an obscure medium made that happen.  The truth is, I didn't make it happen.  I got around the people who make stuff happen in the local art scene, and my first piece to hang in Delurk happened without me even knowing it.

How did I get to this point, having a drawing in the hippest gallery (to young people) around?  First of all, I  put in the work to learn to make cool looking drawings.  I tried to draw a mural on big sheets of paper in my room with markers waaaaaay back in 2002.  It sucked.  I kept goofing around with markers, switched to Sharpie markers, and stumbled on my "scribble style" technique in 2005.  I started drawing on a pretty regular basis, using my unique style of shading to do different types of drawings, most of which weren't very good.

In late 2015, unemployed and living with my mom at age 49, I couldn't find ANY "real job" in this area.  I made a little money now and then drawing kids' names in their favorite colors, and selling the drawings for $20.  I decided that I could either keep trying to get a lame ass minimum wage job, or I could focus 100% on turning my art (and writing) into a small business.  It wasn't much of a decision.  Obviously, I went all in on art.

I sat down one night and spent over two hours looking at all kinds of artwork online, asking myself, "What would I want to put on MY wall?"  It's a simple, but powerful, question.  I love the colors in graffiti art, the wide array of street art, and I kept coming back to stencil art.  I found a very simple stencil art picture of Bruce Lee's face.  So I printed it out, blew it up on a photo copier, and transferred the outline to my paper, then I drew it and colored it in using my Sharpie scribble style.  It wasn't amazing, but I liked it, and I did actually put it up on my wall.  I realized I was on the right track, and I started drawing picturse of people,working from photos, mostly athletes at first, that had deep shadows and stencil-like looks.

In the time since then, I've drawn around 80 to100 drawings, most of which took 18 to 25 hours each, some as much as 40 hours each.  I stepped up my game.  I kept improving, and still am improving.  I learn little things on every drawing.  I promoted my work online, and sold a lot of drawings super cheap, $1 to $2 an hour for the time I spent drawing them.  Over the last two years, I got better.

I finally got to the place where my drawings, all by themselves attract attention.  Then I came over to Winston-Salem, broke as fuck, and left a toxic living situation where I never could have made a living with my art.  That was necessary, but it meant going back to homelessness.  I kept drawing every day, struggling to survive day by day at the same time.  It was tough.  Really tough.  But I knew it was the right thing for me to be doing right now, and I loved doing the actual work.

A couple of guys saw me drawing at McDonald's, and said I should show my work to the music shop across the street.  That shop was Earshot Music (3254 Silas Creek here in W-S), and the manager, owner, and the art director liked my stuff.  They put a couple of drawings up on the wall, then asked me to do a full show with 8 drawings.  I knew that was a launching pad for me.

To be clear, I don't actively "network."  I figure out who the people are who make stuff happen in the scene I'm interested in.  In this case, it was the Winston-Salem art scene, centered mostly around Trade Street downtown.  Earshot Music is not there, but it's vibrant part of the local art and music scene.  I went there, talked to Phred the owner, and we hit it off.  I don't try to push myself on people I don't really like.  I don't go around talking fast, using Neuro-linguistic programming, and hand my business card to everyone.  I hate that shit.  I go out and meet the people in the scene, show them what I do, and some people and me click, and some don't.  I don't worry about the ones that don't.  I learned that years ago in the BMX freestyle world.  Just meet the people in the scene, and you'll click with some.  Start working with those people.  Forget the rest.

Right when the Earshot show was about to open, I finally made it to the First Friday Gallery Hop on Trade Street.  I showed my drawings to several people, and a woman named Luba really liked my stuff.  She led me around meeting other local people.  She introduced me to Rachel White of Designs, Vines, and Wines, at Studios at 625 on Trade Street.  I talked to Rachel for a while.  A month later, at the next Gallery Hop, I talked to her some more.  She made me a featured artist in her space in February.  She liked my Michael Jackson drawing that I did for someone.  That person never got back to me when I sent them a picture of the drawing online.  So I gave it to Rachel to hang up, along with some others.  Then I had drawings hanging at two places in Winston-Salem.

I wasn't even there the day a person from Delurk Gallery came around, scouting work to have artists apply for the "Creatures" show.  Rachel took the initiative and entered two of my drawings.  Normally I don't like people doing stuff without asking me concerning my work, but it was near the deadline to enter, and I'm stoked he just did it.  As I mentioned, the Michael Jackson drawing made it into the show.  So now, while still homeless (hopefully for not much longer), I have drawings of mine hanging up at Earshot Music, Studios at 625, and at Delurk Gallery.  And to be honest, I didn't work hard to make those happen... recently.  But I put in the time to figure out how to draw with Sharpies, which I was attracted to for some reason.  I think that reason was mostly because I didn't want to learn how to paint.  I wasn't out to create a unique style.  That failed mural attempt just really pissed me off, and I was determined to find a cool way to shade with Sharpies. 

The recent part, working into the local art scene here, is based on something I learned in the BMX freestyle world in the 1980's.  In Idaho, I got into BMX racing, then freestyle, and went to a show by the only freestyle team around.  I met the guys, Jay Bickel and Wayne Moore, and started riding with them two or three times a week.  In a couple of months, I was part of the team and doing shows with them. 

When I moved to San Jose, California with my family a year later, I started a zine as an excuse to meet the riders in the San Francisco Bay Area, which included a few pro riders.  I didn't think I was a good enough rider to actually just hang out with them.  Within a couple of months, I met them all, interviewed them and shot photos for my zine, and I was part of the scene, which happened to be the most cohesive BMX freestyle scene anywhere then. 

Intuitively, I sent copies of my zine to the guys at the BMX magazines.  A few months later, at a big contest, I went up and introduced myself to Andy Jenkins and Lew from FREESTYLIN' magazine.  Much to my surprise, they said they really liked my zine.  That led to writing an article for the magazine, which was a huge deal in those pre-internet days.  Soon they offered me a job, and I "stumbled" into the BMX freestyle industry, and later the skateboard, video, and TV industries.  Along the way I realized that the two main things I was doing were: 1) Working hard to make a cool zine, (and later other cool stuff, like videos), and 2) I was finding and meeting the handful of people who actually made stuff happen in the BMX freestyle world.

In any scene (art, music, BMX, skating, whatever), or business, or industry, there are a relatively small number of people who make most of the stuff happen.  Do something cool, and then send it to those people.  Or meet those people at an event, and give them a small gift of your work.  That's a totally different mindset than say, stalking Kim Kardashian and trying to get her to give a shout out to your handmade jewelry or something.  Tons of people try to do that these days to get hype from "influencers."  Don't.

Work on whatever creative thing it is that you do.  Get to where it's pretty good... maybe even great.  Then give it to the people you admire in that world.  Lots of people ask those people for their influence or hype.  But not all that many people will just give the people they admire a small gift with no expectation of them helping you.  It's not hard to do, and the people who make stuff happen don't get that many personal gifts like that.  You will be amazed how many people will respond.  Many will remember your gift much later on.  But don't just do it as a quid pro quo.  Give a gift... a TRUE gift, without expecting anything.  Then just go on with life.  Some of those gifts will help you connect with the people who make stuff happen.  When you get around those people, opportunities will just start coming your way.  Yes, HARD WORK is a definite part of the equation.  But if you're doing something creative that you enjoy doing, it doesn't really feel like work. 

How crazy can this get?  At one point in the '90's, I made a little zine of my poetry, handmade, typed on a typewriter, and photocopied.  They were cheesy, but some of my poems were halfway decent.  I sent those zines out to several of my favorite writers.  Like real writers who published real books.  And then I just forgot about it and went on with daily life.  I got four or five thank you notes and letters back from my favorite writers, all very positive.  In fact, I got a form letter back from best selling novelist Dean Koontz, who gets thousands and thousands of fan letters.  He hand wrote two lines at the bottom.  That blew my freakin' mind.  Guess what, I read several more of his novels in the next few months.  If you happen to be a Koontz fan, write him an old-fashioned snail mail letter.  He has a newsletter he sends out to fans that write to him.  It's awesome.  That's his way of giving a little gift to his readers, the opposite form or what I'm talking about here.

This is one small part of getting to the point where you can make a living from your creative work, which is what I'm working to do myself.  And it IS work.  But in today's high tech, info age, hyper-connected world, there's a lot of work out there for creative people.  So take the time to develop your craft, work hard, and get around the people in your world who make stuff happen.  You'll be amazed what that can lead to.

The answers to the questions you'll ask when you're broke in two years: Gary Vee lets loose

If you're not interested in using the web and new tech to promote yourself or your business, then you'll probably think Gary Vaynerchuk is an arrogant prick who cusses too damn much.  That's understandable.  But he's not.  He's been a businessman since childhood, and he knows just how amazing today's technology is when it comes to letting everyone into the game of business.

When I came to North Carolina in November 2008, after a  year on the streets of Southern California, I started surfing the web for the first time in my life.  That was years after most everyone else started wandering around in the online world.  I was way behind the curve on the internet and new tech.  But I wanted to figure something out.  I wanted to learn what it took to be a writer in today's world.  I've been going to the Google State University and You Tube College and self-educating ever since.  I started blogging, and have since had three blogs that were #1 in their little niches, in the world (FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales, Freestyle BMX Tales, and Make Money Panhandling; all have been taken down since).  They didn't make money.  But I DID learn that these days you're a media company first, like Gary says in this talk, and then you're whatever you THINK you do for a living.

I live in a fucking tent right now.  But I'm doing what I love.  I'm creating drawings that real people want to put on their walls.  I worked two years to get to that point, after ten years of developing my unique style.  I'm writing about things that I really am interested in and care about.  I'm not worried about the raccoons I share the woods with getting in my tent.  I can deal with them.  They 're actually better neighbors than many 2-legged creatures I've met. I'm not worried about that because I spent many years searching for the reason that I, personally, am here on Earth.  I found the answers I was looking for that ring true on a really deep level to me.  That simple understanding let me get out of my own way, and get much, much more productive.

Some people like what I draw, I'm starting to make money consistently with that.  The writing and blogging will lead to other types of income in time.  I go to sleep happier in a beat up, old, musty tent in the woods than most of you do in a big, awesome (or not so awesome) bed in your nice warm house.  I'm doing what I think matters, and it's starting to pay off.  That's because I've been learning from people like Gary Vee (and Seth Godin, Mitch Joel, etc) for the last 9 1/2 years, and I've been trying different things, finding my voice, and learning what does and doesn't work for me.  What I've sent out into the world, both online and off, is starting to come back in a positive way.  I've been meeting talented and motivated people with similar interests, and many have helped me one way or another.  So even if it's a cold, rainy morning, and my tent zipper won't zip closed, and I start cussing like a taxi driver (or Gary Vee), I'm still stoked on what the day ahead of me will bring.  With that going for me, dealing with the day to day crap doesn't phase me that much. 

As a homeless entrepreneur at the moment, I know that something really bad could happen on any given night.  It's possible I won't live to see the next day.  But more than likely, I'll be able to work my way out of homelessness (again).  At that point, the sketchy tent living will become a funny anecdote to tell to people who think it's impossible to start their own business. 

For a while now, I've been saying we'll be heading to another recession before too awful long.  Like Gary, I did some research on the whole student loan crisis, and realized that it will collapse, probably in this next recession, and it will cause hard times for millions of people.  It could be another 2008 mess all over again, and we'll see well known colleges and universities struggle, and some will collapse.  It's another big part of the shake down as the old Industrial Age fades, and the Information Age continues to take shape.  I don't say this to be a doomsayer or bum everyone out.  I see it as a financial weather report.  There's a big storm coming in the economy, we get one every decade, and I believe putting some thought into it ahead of time will help me, and all of you, deal with it better.  Gary Vaynerchuk is the first successful business person I've heard talk about the student loan crisis turning into a Great Recession-type mess. 

But there's another side to financial hard times.  Lame businesses go under, and there are all kinds of opportunities for people who have good ideas and are willing to work hard.  I don't care who you are, it's worth the time to listen to Gary's speech above.  I know most of you won't watch it.  So if you're reading this, come back to this post and listen to it a year or so from now when things look really sketchy.  You'll be ready for what Gary's talking about then. 

Put in the work...

Gary fuckin' Vaynerchuk cusses a lot.  Or "curses" a lot, if  you grew up in this part of the country.  He also understands today's connected world like very few do, and he works his ass off.  Just listen.

Hanging at Delurk

Patrick Harris, the painter of the work in this clip, is one of the founders of Delurk Gallery in Winston-Salem, I believe.  He did a great painting of Deniro as Travis Bickel in Taxi Driver years ago.  I really wanted to buy it, but I was broke, so I drew my own version.  I'm showing this clip because, for some reason, there's hardly anything on You Tube from the Winston-Salem/ Trade Street art scene.  Let's see if we can double the 53 views it's had in two years.  Heh, heh, heh.

My Michael Jackson drawing was accepted into the "Creatures of  Fortune" exhibit at Delurk, which opened last night.  Months ago, when I first wandered around Winston, showing my art to random people to get their thoughts, nearly everybody said, "Go to Delurk Gallery."  To the college age people in particular, Delurk seems to be the coolest gallery around.  As I got busy with other projects, I never followed through with them.  The drawing got into the show thanks to Rachel White, and was a total last minute thing.  I didn't win one of the three prizes, but as a new guy to this scene with a really weird type of art (Sharpie art), I'm just stoked to be included and have something on a wall at Delurk.

I also just finished a drawing of Jimi Hendrix yesterday, my take on the classic photo of him lighting his guitar on fire at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.  I was stoked on how Jimi turned out,  and I dropped it off to be picked up by the couple who ordered it.  There are a couple photos of it floating around, I'll chase them down and post them later. 

After a beautiful, but chilly and super windy day yesterday, the crowd for the First Friday Gallery Hop wasn't huge, but we had a good time.  The theme was Alice in Wonderland, so there were a couple Alice's and a Mad Hatter or two, wandering around freezing their butts off last night.  It was a good time, and after wandering the scene, I landed back at Studios at 625, and worked on a Sharpie doodle art drawing idea.  I'm not a member of 625, but more like a stray cat the fed a couple times that won't go away.

OK, that's my quick take on last night's gallery hop, now... back to work.  I've got a bunch more musicians to draw in the next few weeks. 

What happens when 7 to 10 million men are playing video games and not working?

As a geek who is actually interested in macroeconomics, the future, and big picture thinking, I've been skirting this huge problem for years without hearing about this aspect.  Here's some facts.  In the U.S., we have:

- 7 to 10 million men, ages 25-54, who are not working
- 20 million people with felony convictions who are in society and not incarcerated now
- A higher percentage of prime age men not working than during The Great Depression
- A growing number of women of prime age not working

Nicolas Eberstadt  wrote a book about this issue, Men Without Work, but it's still unknown to most people.  The small number who do know about this issue tend to be concerned, but the media at all levels either has no idea about this, or is ignoring the issue.  This is a very quick, concise clip that gives a great glimpse of a huge issue we all really need to figure out and deal with.