Someone screwed up and encouraged them so now our hosts are fired up and ready to discuss the latest Daniel Silva novel, Portrait of a Woman, and delve into the fascinating world of provenance - the history of ownership and custody of a piece of art. They also explore the steps required to build a business around artistic products, from creating unique pieces to marketing and branding. One host shares their personal experiences in the industry, including the challenges they faced and the strategies they employed to overcome them. Listeners will come away with a deeper understanding of the art world, as well as practical advice on how to turn their creative passion into a successful business. As usual, both hosts get sidetracked discussing music, science, and world cultures in yet another test of the limits of the human attention span. You may want to take your Ritalin now.
Someone screwed up and encouraged them so now our hosts are fired up and ready to discuss the latest Daniel Silva novel, Portrait of a Woman, and delve into the fascinating world of provenance - the history of ownership and custody of a piece of art. They also explore the steps required to build a business around artistic products, from creating unique pieces to marketing and branding. One host shares their personal experiences in the industry, including the challenges they faced and the strategies they employed to overcome them. Listeners will come away with a deeper understanding of the art world, as well as practical advice on how to turn their creative passion into a successful business. As usual, both hosts get sidetracked discussing music, science, and world cultures in yet another test of the limits of the human attention span. Pop that Ritalin in 3...2...1...
Check out the Spotify Playlist for this episode here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4E88yg9hVP7ZYzy5Io7X89?si=6ab9ef8bfd164943
Pick up a copy of Portrait of an Unknown Woman here: https://danielsilvabooks.com/books/portrait-of-an-unknown-woman/
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Steve: But if you really feel like you can get your ideas out there much more quickly with a partner, like a screenwriting partner, let's say, or someone who's helping you artistically create a project or a T-shirt design or whatever it might be, and one person has a really good business acumen and the other one's more creative, then that's a perfect combo.
Right? Because like we were saying before, if you're extremely creative and don't have a business side, this becomes a lot more difficult for you.
Jason: Mm-hmm. So it helps you keep that momentum up if you have a partner who's working as hard as you are and has some complimentary strengths, or at least is willing to embrace obstacles and work towards overcoming them on a regular basis.
Yep,
Steve: exactly. Or if you sleeping together. That helps too.
Jason: Welcome to the podcast where we talk about the big ideas behind fiction projects of all different kinds, books, TV shows, movies, video games, nothing's off limits. And be sure to stay away from those like and subscribe buttons. I'm your host, Tre Williams, and I'm here with my co-host, Joe Piscopo. So the plan today is to talk about some of the things that we've been into lately, what's been on our lists, and then talk a little bit about some of the creative projects that, uh, my co-host has been involved with, uh, in the last few years.
Maybe give you guys some ideas on things you can do for yourself. What's been on your list?
Steve: Typically, I've been reading a lot of, you know, personal development type books, business books, but I picked up a spy thriller. Just recently, um, by Daniel Silva, it's called Portrait of an Unknown Woman. It's really interesting in the sense that it takes place in the world of art and really high priced art.
It's about a retired spy, and he's now a restorer of fine art, a woman's murdered. And this woman is trying to figure out the provenance of this really famous artwork, trying to figure out whether or not it's a, it's a forgery, and if it has like a, what they call provenance, so like where the actual piece of art has come from through the centuries.
And that's one of the big things in the art world that tell you whether or not an artwork is real or not. And they also do scientific analysis, et cetera, but it's not your typical spy thriller because this one is all about trying to break into a forgery network. So there's a, a large group of forgers or a network of people who are forging these artworks and they inflate the values of, of artwork even though it's not actually legitimate.
They buy and sell art. They push this art into museums. A lot of times they're tricking the museums themselves into thinking that this is actual real art. And one of the interesting things in the book that they mentioned, I haven't verified this, is that 20% of artwork in some of these museums is actually forged.
Hmm. But the forgeries are that good. So I found this book really interesting in the sense that, you know, this is such an unregulated industry, this buying and selling of, of fine art. And I just didn't realize it was to this level. Like there's so many pieces of art that are actually pretty famous, that they're not a hundred percent certain if it's by the actual artist.
Interesting.
Jason: Explain this term providence, if you would. Is it provenance or providence? Provenance. Yeah, provenance.
Steve: Ok. It's basically the idea of any type of art. Let's say it's Leonardo da Vinci, being able to trace from Leonardo da Vinci all the way through the centuries. Like the ownership. Ownership.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. All the way through. So the stronger that is, the more the artwork gets legitimized, because you can trace it back family to family, or dealer to dealer. But in a lot of cases, what ended up happening is that these famous artists had other artists underneath them that they were mentoring.
Mm-hmm. So the artists might paint just a little bit of the painting itself, and then have another artist who they were training finish it. Oh. Or they would actually paint the entire thing. And then because the providence has been lost over time, they can't trace it back to the original artist. So they'll say, you know, it's from the school of, or the trainees of the specific artist.
But it's not actually him. So it's really difficult because in the 16 hundreds say, or even earlier, a lot of these masters had these basically workshops, kinda like Andy Warhol had his factory of, of different artists in New York. Mm mm-hmm. And they would all be doing different artwork in the style of the master.
So figuring out what artwork came directly from the master or from one of his students can be difficult. Cuz sometimes the student would do a piece of artwork and he'd sign his name to it. So there's all of this kind of mystery around really fine works of art and figuring out who actually did it has a lot to do with how they, the brush strokes, the type of paints that they used for that time, what type of canvas it was on.
And now they're using a lot of really advanced technological equipment to figure out at a very atomic level, Where this actual paint came from and if it could have been painted by that artist. And was he known to use that exact type of paint, for instance. And a lot of forgery, amateur forgers, according to this book, will sometimes leave fibers of modern material in the forgery.
Mm-hmm. And they discover that through this really advanced analysis, well they'll find a fiber of like polyester. Mm-hmm. Let's say. And an artwork that was supposed to be painted in the 14 hundreds. Time machine. Time machine. And that's what I was gonna say.
Jason: It's such an interesting commentary to me on this kind of cult of personality, this like egotistical, like celebratory view we have of each other.
It's not the quality of the art that matters, it's who is the exact person who created it. Because it's brilliant. It's genius if it was created by this artist, but if it was done partially in the same style by someone else, then it's crap, you know? Yeah. Even though it looks the same, right? I ideally, or a reasonably, the master might have an off day and a student might actually do a better job of creating something in that style for part of a larger piece, and that doesn't matter.
Like that's still negative value. So it's not really the art that you're celebrating in that case. It's the individual.
Steve: Yeah. It's the caul of celebrity.
Jason: Yeah. Is that like a Western thing? Are there other parts of the world where they're like, well, you know, it's sort of like sun sue's writing, and so we just kind of cramm it in there and we consider it part of a larger art of war idea, or are they like, no, if Sun Sue didn't say it, then it's garbage.
It's an interesting
Steve: point you bring up that I hadn't really thought of that. All of these masters. You know, we're all from where the West, right? We know all the Western masters, but we don't know any Eastern that I know of that are on the same level of, let's say a Monet or Al or Da Vinci, and you can go on and on and on.
It's always these western European artists who are the ones that are, have these ridiculous prices put on their art, like the Salvador Moony that sold for, I think 450 million, which is the I I wonder
Jason: if that's partly because when Westerners study other cultures, they try to run everything through that same lens of Yeah, but like, who's the guy.
You know, like, what's the name? Okay, yeah, there, there's a wall. But like, who built the great wall? Like if you had to attribute it to one person, who would that be? Okay, now we can write a history in English without that like singular name of who invented that kind of pottery. Like we need to know who it is.
Or at least like a tribe or like, you know, without that, it just sort of doesn't register for us. It's a time period. It's a region. We need a name. You know, I
Steve: think it's, it's a big flaw and I think of human logic.
Jason: Is it human though, or is it like western culture? Is it like, you know, European and North American culture?
Or is that just across the globe? Everybody's like, how many clicks in his name? You know, it's
Steve: another really good question. I mean, is attribution and other cultures more collective? And is that why we haven't heard of these other masters that I'm Right. I'm alluding to because we are only singularly focused on one individual doing it if it's not Da Vinci.
But it was the guy who worked in Da Vinci's workshop that was actually as good as Da Vinci because he learned all his techniques at this particular thing and it was a good day for him. Exactly. But there's no value in it, right? Yeah. But nobody cares. Consider a lesser artist. Right. It's almost a forgery.
Jason: Mm-hmm. At
Steve: that point. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And this, this book does a good job of exploring all of these concepts and what it really means for an artwork to have value. And they talk about how it goes in differing degrees. Someone from the workshop or someone who's directly trained by that master, that artwork is gonna be significantly less, but not as low priced as someone who's in that same school, but is lesser known.
So why, why the value in me in the Da Vinci versus someone who painted exactly like him, for instance? I dunno, that's a, a really good question. And the difference could be millions and millions of dollars. Mm-hmm. Not just a little, a little difference. Yes.
Jason: Well, and psychologically the difference in how we value it, and again, again, I wonder if we're just sort of raised that way in the West where it's, we're taught to think in terms of who's special.
And so we're always looking for that. And then owning a piece of art by a master is a way to be associated with someone who's special. It's like special by proxy or by association. Mm-hmm. I wonder if that's unique to us or just kind of universal for
Steve: humans. Yeah, that's a, that would be a really interesting thing to explore because you can even, you can attach that to a lot of things, right?
Specific technologies or who, who created PayPal, let's say. It just mm-hmm. Jumped to my mind and people think, oh, Elon Musk did that. Mm-hmm. When it was actually a team of people alongside him that created it, but they're just not as famous, but no one even thinks who are the other guys that did that.
It's just attributed to one person, and I think our attribution seems to go from like one person, maximum two, the co-founder mentality, or those two people, the Wright brothers, when in fact there was probably a whole team of people that were helping the Wright brothers with their plan, or Elon Musk with Tesla, et cetera.
But that's just interesting. It's almost like we can't handle more than one or two founders or inventors of something before it just dilutes it.
Jason: Yeah. Well, you know, I think if you're gonna talk about, like the Wright Brothers for example, it would make sense to take a big step back, look at history and talk about the culture that produced flight.
Mm-hmm. Of that type. What were their traditions or what did they inherit in terms of knowledge and passion for flight and those ideas, and what was the culture in the area that influenced them, or just the culture in the world that influenced them and how does that make sense? But that's almost too much maybe for people to grasp, or were just not raised to think that way.
Like what were the key elements in cultural development that led to flight? Oh, and by the way, it was the Wright brothers, but who cares? Mm-hmm. Asterisks. We only talk about them in terms of how the particular influences came together in those people in that moment. But it's not really about them as a whole.
I mean, that's part of the problem we have, I think in our society, is that when we label somebody special, then all their characteristics that had nothing to do with whatever achievement got them that label, people are confused when those other characteristics aren't also amazing. You know? And maybe it all tracks back to this idea that it's not the art or the painting style that is amazing, or even this particular piece, right?
It's not that that's amazing. It's the
Steve: person. I agree. It's a very strange thing that we can't take a talented person and think. They had a talent for this one thing that does not equate to the fact that they are flawed like every other human mm-hmm. In all these other areas, most likely. Mm-hmm. And let's say that obsessiveness that drove them to create that amazing piece of art or technology or whatever, or novel or whatever it might be, you know, isn't a negative trait that obsessiveness is negative and affected other areas of their lives negatively.
Mm. So I remember reading in the li uh, the Da Vinci biography, and they were talking about Michelangelo, and it seemed like people really seemed to gravitate towards Da Vinci. He was extremely popular and town very well respected, charismatic, et cetera. And he was this incredible genius. But Michelangelo, on the other hand, seemed to be a very sour type of character, very jealous people, didn't really resonate with, with him being around, didn't really enjoy his company.
But Michelangelo, what he did, you know, in the Sistine Chapel is incredible, right? Mm-hmm. But he was a person, right, with flaws. But with Da Vinci, it seemed like he was a lot more well-rounded, so that makes him quote unquote better, I guess, in a lot of people's eyes. Like, oh, he was not only this incredible artist, but also this really nice, well loved person for his time, which is
Jason: you probably Probably a serial
Steve: killer.
Probably a serial killer that no one
Jason: I, I saw where you're going with that. Yeah. The World's greatest serial killer artist. You heard it here, folks.
Steve: And artist. And artist, yeah. And he did art, I guess. Yeah. It's funny though, because you think of these guys as being kind of great in every sense, you know?
Mm-hmm. Like you're saying, but that's normally not the case with anyone who has a single-minded obsession with their art, with their work, whatever it might be. But there's very little
Jason: talk about what was the culture, what was the environment, what were the relationships that created this, that, mm-hmm.
Provided the fertile ground for the David to sprout up, you know, what was the context? But people are like, no. Who was the person? Like, maybe I'll read a biography about that person. But I'm, I'm really not interested in a biography about all of the cultural and socioeconomic or sociological influences that culminated at least briefly in the creation of flight or this thing, you know, whatever the Sistine Chapel or, you know, early designs for a helicopter or, you know, whatever, like a complete reexamination of anatomy and biology and, you know, the introduction of the scientific method, like what made that click, because mm-hmm.
A certain perspective could argue that nobody's like manifesting anything out of thin air. It's all there. They're just in essence discovering it. And they're serving as a conduit, a focal point for all these different forces. And then that results in this brilliant book or series of books. Right? But we don't really explore the rest.
We just talk about the person, it elevates them unrealistically.
Steve: Mm-hmm. The thing that comes to mind is Isaac Newton and his, uh, what? Principia. Mathematica. Mm-hmm. Where he created calculus or where he's, he came up with calculus and I was reading, I'd never heard this before until recently. And the reason why he was able to do that is because he was locked in his house trying to escape the plague.
Huh. So he wouldn't leave his house. And imagine when he wrote that book or that, I think it's a series of books that he wrote, there was nothing else to do for him. He was just locked in his, in his house. So if the plague hadn't come about, would we have calculus now? Right. And
Jason: what is Covid gonna produce for us?
That's another big one. Right. More math classes we have to take. That's another argument against precautions. Good job. Another scientific calculator. Way to make it political.
Steve: Yeah. Nice one. What are you taking the vaccine. He would, he would've
Jason: invented his own. Yeah. I think if you're not gonna take the vaccine, you better hit the lab and make your own or work on your math textbook.
Exactly. Three acceptable choices.
Steve: Keep yourself busy. Um, So you're not gonna watch tv. I guess you're gonna have to do something.
Jason: That is a great example. Right. So without, you know if that's true, obviously without the plague, would those ideas have come together, like coalesce in his mind and would he have manifested them in a way that resonated with others, and then who knows what prevented that idea from dying?
Because so many good ideas die a premature death because they don't catch fire, or they're drowned out by other hashtags, Uhhuh or reality TV, or whatever it is, right? It just doesn't catch fire, it doesn't catch connect with people, you know? We live in the information age, and maybe that's part of the problem there is we're choked with too much garbage information, but mm-hmm.
I think a future generation might look back at this time, might sift through a lot of what might be saved and wouldn't surprise me. If they look back and they say, you cannot spend an hour sifting through information saved from the early two thousands without coming across 10 brilliant ideas, 10 future thinking, you know, forward thinking ideas that we embrace now as just a given, and it's just all there and you just, you trip over it right and left, but it was just buried.
Yeah.
Steve: Or, or trolled. It's, yeah, it's a really interesting concept. There's so much information that we're creating now on a daily basis compared to, let's say, a hundred years ago. You're right. How would you sift through all that information? My guess is that AI will take over. Yeah. AI will have to be programmed in such a way, or instructed in such a way to weigh certain ideas much more heavily than others, because otherwise, how would you even, what are these important ideas?
Because there's so many important ideas that are being thrown onto the internet. There's probably world changing ideas that are all over Reddit right now that no one's really paying attention to. But how do you actually pull that information out and say, this is actually really important to humanity and this isn't important to humanity.
We just use up boats.
Jason: Oh, done. From my example, it's easier because you have the advantage of hindsight. So you just program the algorithm to look for phrases and terms and ideas that have become like really successful, you know, let's say 200 years from now or a hundred years from now. Oh man, we all realize that's a society in the late two thousands that, not late two thousands, the late 20 zeros, what, what do we call that?
Twenties? Twenties, 20, whatever. So we realized that was a good idea and then looking back we can discover how many times that idea was presented and rejected and why in 2092 it caught fire. Mm-hmm. So we can see going back to like 19, you know, 92, it's popping up repeatedly, but it's getting like shouted down and insulted and we can learn a lot about humanity by understanding why the ideas were rejected and then we can use that information to present ideas more effectively going forward.
So you could do it that way and you could study like what it is that leads an idea. That's good to be accepted, but without that, without knowing the future, I don't know. I don't know how you would do that. I don't know how you'd program a computer to find a good idea. It would just keep coming up with exterminate all humans.
Right? That's the best idea. You're wasting my time. All humans get off the, you're wasting my time. Yeah. I'll tell you right now, the algorithm would say, I don't even need to search anything. Right. I just went through your photos and the answer is exterminate all humans. Right? It's like, oh humans
Steve: again, here we go.
What do they want now?
Jason: So I think that that sounds like a really interesting book. Is the spy part of it like fulfilling? Is that interesting?
Steve: I think the spy part is interesting. It's not a as much action adventure as a, his typical books are. It's a whole series of books about an Israeli spy called Gabrielle Ilan, and I think this is 22.
Oh wow. Two on that list. All right. Yeah. And this one's a little bit different because he retired, but it's, he's still using a lot of the same story structure as the other books, so it keeps things moving. But it's more an intellectual type of pursuit in this book than it is in other ones where there's a definite bad guy who, you know, he's chasing after he is a terrorist, or what, whatever it might be.
This is more about really the environment of the art world and how it allows a lot of these things to happen and how it's self-regulated, which means it's not regulated at all. Hmm. There's people setting prices for art just arbitrarily, and the more sales a piece of art goes through over time, the more valuable it gets, depending on who it's sold to.
So again, to your point, it's almost a celebrity. The provenance part is also, there's a celebrity aspect to it too. Was it auctioned off at Christie's to this specific person Now that legitimized it, Uhhuh, it went up to this price, but then it was sold to Sotheby's or through Sotheby's at this point in time that raised it.
So it's automatically raising the price of a specific artwork and then creating really an artificially inflated demand scam. Mm-hmm. Yeah. In a lot of ways, because the price is just set by the market, but then it's inflated by the people who control that market, right? The art dealers and the auction houses who are actually at the forefront of like saying, this is the piece, billionaire person A, this is what you should be buying.
This is very hot right now. And I'm saying, okay, sure. I'll pay 10 million for this. And then that person going to another dealer and saying, I have this piece. How much more can we get for it? So they just keep inflating the value of this art over time. No one really knows why. In terms of, you know, why would this artist be more valuable than this one?
No, because someone like the Guggenheims has it. In their house, you know? Yeah. So it's just an artificial market.
Jason: So it's the Bitcoin of the, uh, 19th century.
Steve: It's the Bitcoin of now, because the art world still operates exactly like this, where things are just inflated randomly and no one seems to care and then just becomes a status symbol.
I was able to pay 20 million for this artwork in my office, you know? Mm-hmm. And they control the market by bringing certain pieces out at certain times, which is also really interesting. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So you don't wanna bring out too many Da Vincis at once because you're gonna devalue the piece. We're gonna bring out one, and then we're gonna try to inflate that price as much as possible.
Cause imagine an artwork that was sold for 10 million this year. More than likely in 10 years, it'll be sold for 20 million or 30 million. Mm-hmm. But it's not gonna be devalued. How would that happen unless the market was flooded with similar art by the same artist? Yeah.
Jason: Well, I think Disney used the same strategy to sell v h s tapes in the nineties where they would vault movies.
I don't know if you're old enough to remember that, but Yeah, they would take like some of their classic films like Bambi, and then they just wouldn't sell it for a few years, so that when they reintroduced it, there was a clamor to grab a copy.
Steve: Interesting. Mm-hmm. Like what they just did? Netflix just did with the Knives Out movie, the Knives Out sequel.
Did you hear about this? No. What did they do? They gave it an extremely limited theatrical run of one or two weeks. Okay. And specific markets, Uhhuh, and then they pulled it, and then they're going to release it wider in December on Oh really? Six only. Mm-hmm. Oh, interesting. Just to just tease the market and to try to get the media to talk about it.
Hmm. Like the fact that there was this limited theatrical so people, there was a scarcity to it, you know? Right, right. And they sold all the tickets out, but it was very, very limited. So people were asking, oh, why wouldn't they just expand that release? Because for them, they wanna get more subscriptions to the streaming service.
Mm-hmm. But if you set it up as, oh it, it was a huge hit in the theater. Tons of people did go and see it. You couldn't see it cuz it was sold out. Then you're gonna get more people going to the, the streaming platform and signing up for that. I also heard that they were trying to placate Anne Johnson to have it, have the theatrical release, even just for a little bit so that he would continue to work with them on, is that how you say his name?
Is it Rian? I guess I
Jason: thought it was Ryan. Is it Rian?
Steve: I don't know. It's spelled weird. Uh,
Jason: what? Yeah. Well, and also I think that makes it eligible for awards. Uh, yes. Or did they change that? Maybe they changed it. I, I can't remember if they created a category like with the Oscars for streaming stuff or if they said if they still say it has to have a theatrical run in order to be considered or not.
Not, that's a good question. Maybe they took that away. Is the Oscars still a thing? Are they doing that anymore? It's a lot of questions
Steve: here. It's a whole other episode.
Jason: The Oscar's episode. I think we have to wait till it comes out next time to find out the
Steve: answers. Now you got me thinking if it's Rhianne or Ryan.
That's the biggest question, isn't it? That is a big one. So anyone in the audience that might know? No one knows.
Jason: No one knows if he's listening, which he's not. He's probably deciding right now. Should I, should I go with Ryan? Should I go with Rian? Hmm. Very good. Anything else, uh, been on your list lately?
We had a bit of a long gap between recording. Did you, uh, consume any other
Steve: media? I started watching that show on Netflix Wednesday. Hmm. I'm curious about that. I think it's a really good show. It's still classic. Tim Burton, the lead actress is great. It's just a fun show. It's very light, but I think she plays that part really well.
And the supporting actress, actress and actresses are really good too. It's pretty enjoyable. You're not gonna, you know, it's not a huge intellectually challenging show, but it's, it's fun. I think they did a good job with the casting. Very cool. Yeah, so, and I've never watched the original show, the Adams Family movies.
I haven't seen those movies. Maybe I saw the, the original long, long time ago, but I don't remember. Or the show from what, sixties or seventies? It's been
Jason: a long time. Yeah. No, I, those movies were huge when they came out. Yeah.
Steve: Adam's, was that like the early nineties? Early nineties? Yeah. Yeah, 1990. I think the first one came out then.
92 was Adam's Family Values. That's
Jason: right. Yeah. And uh, it had big hit songs. And did he direct
Steve: those too? I don't know. I think
Jason: so. Did
Steve: he not? It seems like something he would've directed during that time period. Let's see, because that was right around Beetles. Use time. Maybe not.
Jason: Let me see. Uh, no, Barry Seinfeld.
Oh, okay. Looks like Dave Payne. So there
Steve: Isfeld did Men In Black, I believe. Yeah, that sounds
Jason: right. Adam's Family 1991. Adam's Family Values 1993 and then Adam's family Reunion, 1998. So he did do, uh, Barry Stonefeld. Did Men and Black Get Shorty one of my favorite, actually, I really love the TV series. Did you watch that?
That was great. No, I didn't. I heard it right there. Oh, so good. Wild, wild West. Everybody's favorite movie. Yep. Throw Mama From the Train. Love that movie. Very good. Um, anything else?
Steve: Uh, no. I've been trying to do a little more reading than normal, and that's really the only show that I've, I've watched recently besides dma, which was, was extremely creepy and disturbing.
Mm-hmm. Again, great acting, and it seemed to really follow the actual case, which was really, really disturbing. Mm-hmm. Did you get a chance to watch that? No,
Jason: I watched a lot of the, uh, true crime documentaries. Was it like earlier this year I went on like a true crime kick, and then I, I kind of reached my limit when I do that.
Like, I, uh, I read Mind Hunter years and years ago when the book was out. I was, you know, fascinated. I read the sequel to that, just really get into it, and then I, it's like enough, you know, I get a little sick of it. It, I can only immerse myself in that world for so long before I get a little burned out on it.
And Netflix had a couple really good investigations series, I think it was earlier this year where they followed these different cases and it was interesting stuff. But then I said, all right, that's enough for a while. And then Dahmer came out, so I haven't watched,
Steve: it gets a little dark. I like those, uh, Swedish, Norwegian crime novels too.
Mm-hmm. But after a while, I gotta put 'em down. For a few months before I can pick one up again. It's just so the flawed detective who's an alcoholic, who's divorced and is just like, he's about to get fired all the time and he's investigating these grizzly murders. You know, after a while it just gets to you, especially if you're
Jason: reading for bed.
John Douglas, the author of, uh, mind Hunter, he was an FBI profiler and they did that, uh, Netflix Mind Hunter series about him, but he talks a lot. I think it was in the second book, maybe it was in the first one. But he talks a lot about his breakdowns, like where he was hospitalized, uh, he started having panic attacks, right?
You can only absorb so much of that, those photos and put yourself in the mind of somebody who does those kinds of things because they're, they're truly sick. Personally, I think I get more into the reality of it. I think about it as a real thing that happened to real people, and I can only take so much of that before I'm on a path that John Douglass was on, and I, you know, threatening my own mental health
Steve: after Dora was like, okay, yeah, I'm good.
Yeah, yeah. I'm good for a while. Maybe watched
Jason: comedy. You know, I haven't really dived into Dahmer, but I'm sure next time I come around to being interested in true crime, it'll probably pop up unless it's, uh, only available on, uh, Snapchat at
Steve: that time. It's now on TikTok, so you're fine. Okay. See it in six second increments
Jason: with somebody like dancing and dancing.
Canim dancing and dancing. Being in front of it, like going by and doing their little cheerlead dance and the latest
Steve: viral top 40 song underneath.
Jason: Yeah, exactly. Whatever they got the rights to. Yeah. From the, from the nineties or something. So I have been listening to Master Boot Record. Are you familiar with that artist?
No. He's an Italian synth metal artist, but he's got a new album out and it's good. It's very good. Uh, he does a lot of, a bit music inspired metal symphonic pieces, so Wow. It's a combination of those kind of three very different sound sets. So like for example, it definitely has like a heavy metal influence and you can imagine what that sounds like with the drums and the guitar and the riffs and all that.
But then there's also like a bit music like Nintendo. Sounds like ghosting, goblins, uh, I think inspired a track for him. And then you've got that sort of symphonic background that he mixes in. He's done quite a few albums. I think my favorites are check disc and direct memory access from 2016 and 2018 respectively.
But all of his albums have like a computer or dos sort of theme in the naming. And they also have hidden like messages built in to the tracks and the titles. The current album is Personal Computer, so it's available widely and I
Steve: recommend it. That sounds really cool. Yeah. Yeah. I really like that kind of music, like electronic music in general.
So this will be an interesting thing to check out. Yeah. Alright,
Jason: so we're gonna talk a little bit today about some of the ways in which you've found creative outlets. Mm-hmm. And maybe even turn them into side hustles. Do you want to talk about anything first in particular?
Steve: Yeah, I want to talk about a little bit about Canva and how easy that is to use.
So if anyone out there is looking to do anything creative, it's a great platform for that.
Jason: Walk me through, like where does the idea start? Where does Canva come into play? What's it like using it? Canva has
Steve: a lot of different elements that you can use and pull into like the main structure, so the main canvas.
So you can pull in a lot of different things into the canvas, move those things around, pull in typography. So if you have a lot of different, like typography that you like or that you're using, you can go in there, resize things, change the background. You can even do animation, which is a lot of fun. And then if you want to, you can, uh, export it out, create t-shirts, which is something that I really like.
Jason: So I start with like what, like an urge to create? Yeah. And then I log into this web-based app. Is it web-based? It's
Steve: web-based, yeah. Okay. And it's free. And there's a paid one as well. There always is my, yeah. But starting on paint, you have a lot of different elements that you can pull in to the canvas. So elements could be anything from like photos, graphics, video, like graphical elements of people, let's say, or trees or whatever it might be.
So you've got a whole library of that and you can pick what you want and you simply drag it into the canvas and you start manipulating it. That's usually how I like to start as a creative idea,
Jason: like visual brainstorming. Mm-hmm. So for you, you don't start with like a clear concept and then you use this tool to create your vision.
You start with the, is that correct?
Steve: Um, it depends. You don't do that? It depends. Sometimes you do. Yeah. Sometimes I do. Like, let's say if I don't have any type of idea, I'll do this whole element thing. So I'll say, let's say, I'll pick random words, say like robot, tree, house, whatever it might be, and it gives you a whole bunch of different elements to choose from and different types of artistic styles.
Which you then pull into this canvas and then you start playing from there. So I might see something and say, oh, I like this kind of 3D render of a house. What else could I add to it to make it seem more surreal? And then I might type in robot and then I'll find some type of robot graphic that fits into that canvas.
And then I'll say, okay, what colors do I wanna start using? So I'll start manipulating the colors of the actual element. I'll manipulate the colors of like the background itself, and then I'll go from there. And other times I just have an idea in my head cuz it'll be something that I've just seen on the street or a specific saying that I think is kind of funny or interesting.
And I'm like, now how can I play around with typography within Canva and see what I can do in terms of turning it into like, let's say a t-shirt. We can talk about how you would go about doing that. But I think those are two of the main ways that I use it. And since it's so easy to use, it gives you a lot of ways to be creative without having to learn like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop.
You can just start right away cuz it's very intuitive and there's also a lot of tutorials on YouTube that you can use to actually get started. So
Jason: if somebody's walking around and they have like an idea pop into their mind, like some sort of visual idea, or they see something and they think, man, if you just made these changes to that, you know, that would be really cool or interesting.
Then they can log into canva.com. They can start with like a whiteboard or a canvas. Mm-hmm. They can start pulling pre-created elements together and adjusting them and turning them around, changing them. You know, until something really comes together that you like. And then you can
Steve: But export that. Yeah, you can export it, you can share it with somebody as a link.
That they can actually go into Canva and you could collaborate on something together, which is pretty cool. Yeah. They have a teams
Jason: feature. I see. Mm-hmm.
Steve: Yeah. And you could download as a pdf. You can create gif. So you can actually do a, like animations within Canva now. Okay. And you can edit video. So all these things are really interesting to play around with.
And they keep adding features cuz what I think the company's trying to do is basically take over the entire graphic design and video editing market. Mm-hmm. With one platform. So they keep adding features to, it seems almost weekly that they're doing this, which is really, really fun. Cuz now you can get into video, you can create your own gifts, for instance.
You can create your own social media posts through there. You can do posters, you can do mug designs, you can do invitations. Basically anything graphically that you can think of you can do with the software, even with the free version. Because it gives you unlimited access in the free version, except for the fact that you don't get a lot of these pro-level features like pro-level graphics, for instance, from a lot of different artists.
Or you won't get pro animations, you'd have to buy them individually for about a buck. But I think the actual subscription is well worth, it's like 180 a year. Mm-hmm. But if you use it for a lot of different purposes or you know, you gonna really open yourself up creatively, then it's well worth it.
Jason: I go on there, I design something, I think it's cool, it's original.
If it's an animation, how do I turn that into like a side
Steve: hustle? I think the animation part would be a little bit more tricky if you were to do it, you probably want to put that on some type of platform, like Etsy, what a lot of people are doing, let's say on Etsy. And I don't know about the animation piece, but I'm assuming there's a way to do it.
With an animation, they're doing stickers. So they'll go onto Canva, get elements together, that would create a sticker. For instance, say like you wanna have a cool saying on there, whatever, like, um, the only way is up, or whatever you wanna say. And you can turn that into digital art, which you would then download and then upload into a platform like Etsy and sell these digital stickers through Etsy that someone could then download.
And people are doing this in hundreds of different styles that they upload into Etsy and have entire shops dedicated to it. I'm sorry, digital sticker. Yeah. Where someone would download it and print it themselves with their own like Got it. Sticker paper. Ok. So there's something called a cricket, I think it's C R I K E T.
Okay. And you can print a lot of this stuff, like more elaborate designs at your house. You can also go on Canva if you want, and you can design your own planners or journals. Mm. And then you can download those files and upload them onto a platform like Etsy and have it be a print on demand journal. Oh, I
Jason: see.
So you're not actually making a physical product Correct. That you have to ship. You're just creating digital content that people can order. So it's the difference between like a Kindle book, like ebook versus like a printed copy of a book. Mm-hmm. Exactly. So you're cutting your overhead and then it's the other person's responsibility to buy sticky paper or whatever.
Yeah. And you probably put instructions for that or places to get
Steve: that stuff. Make it easier. Yeah, exactly. And I believe, I haven't tried it. There are services now that'll do it all for you. So you'll upload this digital file and they'll print the actual book and send it to the end user. So it's not a digital download anymore, it's an actual physical thing.
So they're people making a lot of money doing things like, let's say a cookbook with a journal. So you can keep all your recipes there and there's some, a page with a recipe on it, and then you can have your notes page on the other part. Right. Or productivity planner or anything else. You can also do, um, posters, which could be digital downloads as well.
Mm-hmm. So you have different size posters and what people that will do is they'll put it on a, a site called Place it, and what place it does is you upload this poster design, let's say, and then it'll put it in different virtual environments. So it'll look like what it would look like hanging in a room, for instance, if it's a big poster.
Oh, okay. Which is really, it'll do it instantly. You just upload it and then it'll show it. What I've done is I put my stuff up on Red Bubble. Which is a print on demand service. And it also does the same thing cuz I think they have a partnership or an integration with place it. Okay. So once you upload a t-shirt design or whatever design it is, it'll put it on, I think it's 30 some different products that they'll print for you and send.
Like what directly to your house? Uh, mugs, stickers, mouse pads, hoodies, hats, you name it. Like tons of stuff. Backpacks. Real, real exotic stuff, huh? Yeah, real exotic stuff. Trap, uh, phone cases. Oh yeah, that's gotta be big. There are a lot of people doing that now. The tricky part with selling through those platforms, if it's not on Shopify, Shopify is your other option where you would have to drive traffic yourself.
The advantage and disadvantage of some of these platforms is, let's say with a red bubble. I actually made a sale the other day, which was just a t-shirt design. But it was on a hoodie that I had set up within Redbubble. Someone bought it and I get a cut of the total price. It's a very small cut of what the, the final price is, but they're really good with seo.
So if someone's typing in a t-shirt, like Car T-shirts onto Google, one of the big first search search results would typically be Red Bubble. Whereas the Shopify, you're driving to your own branded store with your own products only, but you get a bigger cut. You get a much bigger cut. Yeah. So that you would do, you'd set up a store with, let's say a print on demand platform, and what it would do would integrate with your Shopify store.
So you'd upload your designs into that print on demand store. It would connect to your Shopify storefront that you would design to your specifications, and then it would do all the fulfillment on the backend for you so you could take a bigger cut. What's, if it was a
Jason: physical product, what's the cost?
We're talking start to finish. If somebody has, I guess, graphic ideas, you know, if they have images that they can create or that maybe already uploads things they've already made, what's the cost for them to get it to the point you just described?
Steve: If you're using one of those services, let's say like a red bubble, and I know there, there are other ones, the one that I use, it's just a percentage of what you're gonna take.
You can set your percentage, take home, let's say it's 20% of a $35 shirt or whatever it might be, so you're gonna make seven bucks on that sale. Mm-hmm. But you don't have to do any type of marketing whatsoever. So it's totally passive. It's just the designs that you upload, but it all has to do with how good you are at search engine optimization.
Basically figuring out what are people gonna search for in Google. That's gonna drive your sales because people will go to these, you know, to Red Bubble or whatever it might be. They're not necessarily gonna be searching for your specific design unless it's something that they're already looking for.
It's not very discoverable when you go to the pla, cuz there's just so much content on it. But let's say you had an idea for a t-shirt. You could either design a t-shirt that's like really cool abstract design of a tree, right? So you put those words in, you describe it as such, you put your keyword tags and everything hoping you're gonna get a sale.
Mm-hmm. Or you figure out the searches that are happening on Red Bubble already. And let's say one of the big searches is like Wednesday t-shirts, nature whatever, burn Tree t-shirts, something very specific. You're gonna do much better. No matter what, what design you have, cuz someone's already gonna have that intent there.
Or if on Google there's a ton of people searching for that design fern tree t-shirt. Mm-hmm. You're gonna have a much better chance of actually selling it. So now it's not, it isn't really a creative marketplace as much as it's like, how good are you at figuring out the algorithm in order to get people to buy whatever it is you're selling?
Yeah. Well that's where the
Jason: marketing comes in, right? So, so much of what we talk about starts with a creative idea, but along the way, success requires business side, right? Understanding, you know, how people are gonna react to your creative ideas and sometimes modifying them accordingly. So what you're saying makes total sense to me.
It's just part of the
Steve: process. Yep. If you wanna go with the, you know, the pure marketing route where you're just marketing your own products and services, you would take a more traditional approach in terms of having your own storefront. Let's say it's that, you know, tree t-shirts dot com. Then driving paid traffic through social media or through Google Ads, or having an email list that you're then creating a fan base around and getting them to directly buy from you.
So they're associating your brand with this specific product as opposed to just letting them go to one of these services. Where the end result is that the person who creates the design is gonna get a very small cut of that, but the end user has a lot of different choices. You know, so you look at it more of as like a branding exercise as opposed to an SEO exercise within a service like Redbubble.
Mm-hmm. But for someone who's just starting out, those services are really good. Cause you can kind of figure out what designs might sell better than other designs. How do I use this, you know, Canva tool? Is this something that I need to outsource to someone, let's say on Fiverr? Mm-hmm. To just create all these designs for me and then I can upload 'em into these pieces of software.
But the thing with Camden, that's really useful. That you have a lot of choice for the type of products that you can create since they have so many different templates already. So I mentioned, let's say the planner. So let's say you're in the event planning space and you don't see that there's any type of planner out there for people who are planning an event the way that you want it to look, or maybe there's nothing out there at all.
Well, you can always set up your own website, you know, an event planning journal or something, and sell planners to people using a design that you had from Canva and then a print on demand service for that particular product, and then sell direct to the consumer. Or you can upload those files to one of these services that kind of markets it for you.
So you have choices. There are a lot of people with these side hustles now, so they'll do planners, they'll do stickers, they'll do cookbooks, they'll do, and it all just starts adding up after a while. Yeah, it sounds
Jason: like the perfect thing for somebody who, maybe they haven't studied art under one of the masters, so they don't necessarily have the brush strokes down and the fine motor control, but they can click a mouse and they have a good vision and maybe even they have a little bit of a passion for creating, you know, visually appealing or practically useful content, I guess is is mm-hmm.
Just the most general term for it. Yeah. Like they're planning a party and it's just easier to make your own invite or you're trying to get, you know, your wedding together and then you realize like the way you organize it works a little bit better than what you've been told. And so you can put that together and then, hey, once you're done, why not just sell it?
Why not sell the template, put it out there and you can just take a small cut if you don't really want to do the marketing stuff, but if you get interested, you can dive in and take a bigger cut.
Steve: Yep. Exactly. And, and you mentioned invites. That's another big thing that people do. Wedding invitations, birthday invitations, they'll use a tool like Canva.
Create a mockup of one, then upload that to Etsy and then give the end user the ability to customize it however they want. They get the order, they customize it on the template in Canva. Then they upload that file and they sell that customized file to the end user for their, their own particular wedding without really having to change the font or the design because they know that person loves that design in the first place.
So there's a lot you can do in terms of the, the digital side, which is pretty interesting. And then you can also outsource all of this stuff, like I said, to a service like Fiverr. If you don't wanna do it yourself, you have no artistic ability whatsoever. You just an idea. You can get an artist on Fiverr to design, let's say, a journal for you.
Then you can get someone else to set it all up within like, let's say Amazon Print on demand. So you can sell it as a book or a Kindle book directly to then user, which is another way to make money.
Jason: Yeah. Okay. That sounds like, sounds like there are a lot of really relatively easy paths to go from a creative idea that pops into your head to something that is actually a real item.
Mm-hmm. You know, whatever that would be for whatever your idea was and you could play around with it and you could make money. If you wanna do a little bit more work, you could figure out how to make some money. And if you're willing to do a good bit more work over time, you could make even more money potentially if other people
Steve: like what you created.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's, it's a really great way, I think, to get yourself into online business in general, cuz you can get your feet wet just a little bit. Mm-hmm. Figure things out. Do you like it? Do you not like it? Do you wanna do this type of design yourself with something like Canva? Or do you want to outsource the whole thing and turn it more into, you know, you just running the business side, which is, I mean, I think those are two legitimate ways to go about it, depending on what your interests are.
Jason: Absolutely. Yeah. It's all very accessible. And probably stuff you could do in your own free time initially. Mm-hmm. And if it took off, you know, obviously it would be more time consuming, but probably worth it. Yeah. Very cool. Anything else about that or any other creative projects that you want to talk about
Steve: today?
Yeah, I mean, I've been working with my wife on, uh, on our candle business, so that's been a lot of fun because you've got how to create a brand, how to set up a website. And in this particular case, the brand's called The Stoic. We have eight different scents and four of 'em are new for this year. And it all started because, you know, I bought her a, uh, a candle making class.
And then she started, started messing around with the idea of creating a candle based on that class. And she got really involved in figuring out what scents work, the type of wax that you would use. So this has been an interesting journey because, you know, in my mind it was always just, oh, you get some fragrance or something and poured into wax.
But it's a lot more complicated than that. There's a lot more chemistry behind it. Yeah. Ah, to actually make it smell correctly. So a lot of the candles that she was making at first, they seemed to smell fine when they weren't burning. But then when you lit it, the scent wouldn't escape uhhuh. And that has to do with the, a lot of different things.
What temperature you're pouring the wax in, what type of fragrance oils you're using, or essential oils. You have to know that, let's say essential oils don't smell as much when they're burned, but fragrance oils do. So you need to keep adjusting all of these measurements in order to figure out what the perfect combination is to actually get a candle that smells good when it's cold, meaning cold throw, that's what they call it.
Okay. Or a hot throw when it's burning. There's also other parts of it, right? Like you can't have the flame going up way too high, or having it burn out too quickly. Making sure you're using the right wick for the right candle. Mm. So there's a lot of different factors that we hadn't really thought about cuz it just seemed like, okay, you just get some wax.
And she tried a lot of different scents, buying a lot of different stuff from Amazon and everywhere online. Until we figured out like what the best brand would be and what type of quality we were looking for in the scent. And that's been a journey to try to get it to this point now. And getting the design right, the labels was another one.
Yeah, it's just starting any kind of small business endeavor takes a lot of, a lot of time and a lot of things you wouldn't expect that would be an issue. Cause at first we just thought, okay, we'll get the candle part done really quickly and the branding part will be a lot longer. But they both take a while to get going, you know?
Yeah. Well,
Jason: I've talked to a lot of creatives over the years and I think something you said there, I'm realizing, is something that I've heard again and again from people who have accomplished something with their creative ideas, people who've brought them to realization or sold them, developed them in different ways and seen it all the way through, is the unexpected obstacles.
You know, I think a lot of people, especially artists, sometimes they have this like, brilliant idea. They have this creative image in their mind or sound, you know, whether it's music or something that they can see very clearly in their head. And then trying to make that real kind of pops the bubble and makes it like, not fun.
But I, I would recommend that they listen to what you're saying and anticipate obstacles as part of the journey. Like, there are gonna be a lot of unexpected things you need to learn or overcome or research or get help with, you know, and that's all those answers are out there most of the time. Other people have run into it and solved it, but you're gonna have to learn a little bit in order to, to continue.
Right. It's not as easy as sometimes it seems in our own heads.
Steve: Yeah. And to that point, trying to get everything to the right point where it looks good. And also that someone's actually gonna wanna buy it as opposed to just kind of hand labeling. Mm-hmm. Which you see a lot. You know, people come up with these ideas, they have a great product, but they don't work on the label.
It's just some sticker that they came up with from the store when the whole thing with candles or any type of beauty product or home accessory, let's say home goods items, that it has to look good cuz people are gonna have it in their house. Right, right. You can't skip that step just cuz it'll be faster to get this thing to market.
And the other part is getting everything online, the technology part of it. Now, for instance, right now we're not on Shopify, which is something we're gonna move into soon, but we wanted to do like a proof of concept. So that's another thing that I recommend. Just doing a proof of concept. You don't have to try to sell, you know, 2000 units at once.
You just need to kind of figure out to your friends and family, first of all, like what you're doing. Would they be willing to order it again? That's another big one. And if we are using a uh, software, it's an app called Cash Drop. And what cash drop does is you don't have to pay your, whatever it is, $30 monthly fee for Shopify or get a developer involved in creating the site.
You can do it all yourself just through your phone and it does the payment processing and everything for you, just like a Shopify would do. It doesn't look as good, obviously. Mm-hmm. But it still gives you enough to know like, are people actually ordering this or would they be willing to order your product?
And which one of 'em do they like the most? Cuz that's another thing to keep in mind. You don't wanna burn all your cash before you even know if it's something that you should keep pursuing. Yeah,
Jason: that's a tricky part. Sometimes you run into that obstacle early, but I really liked what you're laying out now because everything you've said so far, that's not the case.
Right? You're not making a heavy financial investment early in this creative process. You can wait till later when you've gotten some proof of concept.
Steve: And you don't have to create all the inventory at once either. Mm-hmm. When you have some type of website or some type of catalog or something that you're sending around, even if it's just a pdf.
So for instance, the site's been down for a little while cause I need to update it, but I was thinking, okay, how do I get people to buy without having to have the site up? So I was like, okay, I'll go on Canva and I'll create a PDF brochure that I can then email. Mm-hmm. Or send over WhatsApp to people.
Mm-hmm So they can still order through Venmo. So you need to be like kind of creative when it comes to not just stopping if you don't have that perfect thing ready and set up. Mm-hmm You know, and the other things, veins fair that you get. Right. Really good photos of whatever you're selling just cuz it puts you on a whole other level when it comes to people trying to buy a, a more luxury based product.
Cuz you're gonna work really hard on something and the materials cost is very expensive and so is shipping. Then you need to kind of raise everything up in terms of quality. And that starts with the photos. Mm, mm-hmm. Even if it costs a little bit of money to do it. Yeah.
Jason: That's really the trick, is being, uh, really aware of the kind of money you're investing.
You don't want to toss money, you don't wanna waste your time and your energy. So it sounds like if people are serious about making a living, doing some of these things or earning their money back, it's helpful to talk to someone like you who understands the ins and outs of this, or find some resource for that so they can mentally, or even literally like, chart out a path like this is the rollout plan.
And then sort of use that as a framework to prevent them from wasting a lot of time and money. But that's for people who wanna earn a living or earn their money back. But for people who just wanna create something, it seems like it's much simpler.
Steve: Yeah. For people who wanna just create something, my advice would be to do the digital route because you're, your initial investment and your ongoing investment isn't, isn't very high.
If you're doing digital products or services or files that you're selling somebody, you don't have to worry about the product, you know? Mm-hmm. When you're doing something like candles or home goods or T-shirts or whatever it might be, you have those shipping costs and you also have the packaging costs that you have to build into your pricing.
Mm-hmm. So your margins get much thinner. Mm-hmm. Because the delivery costs so much more. So if you're really looking to start something, I think as a side hustle, I would suggest doing some type of digital product or some type of service that you can do online. Mm-hmm. So if it's some type of consulting service or some other service that you can provide, let's say like running someone's Facebook ads or Google ads, cuz you don't need an office, you don't need to ship them anything.
You don't have employees, you can just do it and have a really high hourly rate that you can charge. So
Jason: if somebody wanted to make one candle, They just, they had this idea in their mind of like the perfect candle. They would have to, if I'm following you, they'd have to start by researching the candle ingredients.
They'd have to figure out for their idea of, let's say it's a scented candle or it looks a certain way, how that's done best. They would probably have to order different versions and experiment multiple times, and they'd have to have some sort of like molding or how do you pour a candle? You
Steve: just pour it into the vessel, whatever the vessel is.
Okay. So if it's like a A jar.
Jason: So you'd have to buy that or make that?
Steve: You'd have to buy that. Yeah. More than likely. Making it, I think becomes a little more complicated cuz you have to buy the molds. Sure. And then you gotta figure out how to use the wax within a mold and join it together. And it'll be much easier just to buy it.
But yeah, you need to figure out what type of wax you're gonna use, what scents are gonna work, cuz there's different qualities of scents and some smell better than others. And, and the big issue is like when it burns, it's gonna burn evenly. Mm. And is the scent gonna be strong enough for someone to actually like, continue buying it?
Unless you don't really want it to smell all that much, which kind of defeats the purpose. Mm-hmm. But it's a lot of experimenting. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason: So, yeah, that's, it sounds like it. And that costs money. That costs
Steve: money, yeah. Yeah. So something like that, you gotta invest. Mm-hmm. You're gonna have to invest. And then on top of that, you're gonna have to think about the branding.
What's the label gonna look like? Are you gonna Right. Design it yourself is something if you're
Jason: gonna sell it. Yeah. Right. If you're gonna sell it. Correct. Right. But so just as like a creative project, making a candle, you're probably better off just taking a class. Yes, absolutely. And maybe they give you some freedom to make what you want to make, and you can do that.
But if you actually want to start a business with a lot of these different goods that you're referencing, then it's gonna be a lot of buying
Steve: and trying. Mm-hmm. Yep. And you're just gonna have to accept the fact that these things cost quite a bit of money If you want a really high quality end product.
Mm-hmm. Cause to make a really cheap version, you can buy, you know, the cheapest fragrance oils, you can find paraffin wax, which is cheaper than soy wax or bees wax. So you're gonna have a cheap made product, and that's a big difference, you know? Mm-hmm. Between making something high quality or more luxury than something that's more just doing it for fun.
But taking a candle making class would probably be the best way to start. That's probably true
Jason: for a lot of creative ideas. It's like, just find a class, you know, or find an existing recording studio or, you know, whatever. Uh, go drink wine and paint place and mess around. But if you have a more serious vision or you're past that stage already, then be prepared for some work.
Right. It's a methodical approach, uh, you know, which doesn't often appeal to artists to do things methodically, and you've gotta really stick with it when you run into obstacles.
Steve: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think with all of these business ideas or creative ideas, it's just getting momentum. Mm. In keeping that momentum up.
Even if it's really small steps, even if it's really, it doesn't seem like it's going anywhere. Just doing one thing a day is much better than thinking about it and trying to make the perfect product. Offering the perfect digital download. Or like the example I was giving earlier about, we don't have Shopify yet.
Well, what's an alternative to that that you can do faster? Or cheaper or both. Mm-hmm. Just to test the proof of concept. Mm-hmm. Cause at the end of the day, I think that's what matters the most. Being able, if you're gonna sell, for instance, or if you're gonna do something creative, you have to be satisfied with what you've created in the end.
And for the business side of it, like how can you get that to the market as fast as possible and get feedback? Do they like it in the case of candles, do they like what vessel it's in? Do they like the smell? Would they change something? What do they think of the label? Would they change that? Do they want more customization on the label?
You know? Mm-hmm. Is that something that people are asking for? And then you can go into step two or three, which is making much more professional looking website that costs more money, spending more money on advertising, spending more time on social media, pushing it out. But at least you know, the basics are there.
Like, this is a good quality product that I want to get out to market without doing. What a lot of people end up doing is, I have $25,000, this made the greatest website ever. And then Hope mm-hmm. That people are gonna buy it, you know? Do you think it helps to have a partner? Yeah, I think having a partner can really help, but I think it'll also be detrimental depending on who the partner is.
Cuz I think if one person's working a lot more than the other, there are gonna be issues. If their vision for the end product is totally different, they're gonna be issues. So if you're very self-motivated, then taking on a partner isn't something I would necessarily recommend you do. But it might be better to get employees or contractors who are kind of fulfilling the role of a partner.
Mm-hmm. So let's say you're great at the marketing piece, but you're not so good at the sales side, or you're not very good at web development. Hiring a contractor to do those things would be great cuz you, you still keep ownership of the company and you're just paying a salary or a fee for a particular service.
But if you really feel like you can get your ideas out there much more quickly with a partner, like a screenwriting partner, let's say, or someone who's helping you artistically create a project or a T-shirt design or whatever it might be, and one person has a really good business acumen and the other one's more creative, then that's a perfect combo.
Right? Because like we were saying before, if you're extremely creative and don't have a business side, this becomes a lot more difficult for you. Mm-hmm.
Jason: So it helps you keep that momentum up if you have a partner who's working as hard as you are and has some complimentary strengths, or at least is willing to embrace obstacles and work towards overcoming them on a regular basis.
Yep.
Steve: Exactly. We were sleeping together. That helps too. I
Jason: knew it. Awesome. Well that sounds really useful. Anything, uh, else, any other last words for, uh, would be business moguls?
Steve: Yeah. I would say Udemy and Coursera and YouTube are the three big resources that you should use really frequently in order to kind of speed up your time to market for whatever you're trying to do.
You can do all your research through those platforms and if you want more of a class, Udemy, Coursera are great for that. And now YouTube is actually offering a lot of classes. There's actually, for Canva, I know there was a U Tomy class and the two instructors on there we're so good at getting people to try Canva, that Canva actually hired them or their official YouTube channel.
So anything you wanna learn about Canva, you can find through there, through the Canva, YouTube tutorials, anything so. That
Jason: is something I definitely under utilize. I have a habit of banging my head against the keyboard. You know, whenever I try some new software or website, I try to tackle it. I try to figure it out, you know, it all looks sort of deceptively user-friendly.
Mm-hmm. So I think I'll just watch maybe their little brief tutorial video for 30 seconds and then I'll just mess around with it and learn as I go. And I'm realizing that that just does not work. There's too much I'm missing out on the learning curve is too long, you know? So I am able to produce something, but I don't like it.
Whereas if I probably took some of these classes, I'm assuming I would go into it more knowledgeable, even if I just did a 15, 30 minute class or whatever.
Steve: Yeah. I mean, I think there's something to that, to the YouTube class or doing a Udemy course. I did a Udemy at Udemy class on Canva, which is extremely useful, even though I thought I knew Canva really well.
Mm-hmm. There was so many shortcuts and tricks and ways to use it that I'd never even thought of in buttons that I didn't even know were there. That they were explaining the same thing with something like Audacity. Yeah. Like figuring out how to do the sound filtering on Audacity. Yeah. You can start clicking around, but it takes forever to figure out like what are the right settings for whatever you're trying to do.
Or you can go on there where some Audacity expert has set up 25 different videos from start to finish of how to use Audacity. And it's all categorized by exactly whatever problem that you're having on, on Audacity. Right. So yeah. Much quicker. Yeah. And less frustrating. Much less frustrating. Yeah.
Jason: Yeah. I think I'm just, I'm a little bit old school in that I'm used to learning in person.
And it's hard for me to absorb information via video because there's no, it doesn't feel like I can interact, like when they start talking and they're going in a different direction than the question that I have in my mind. Not being able to like raise my hand and stop the conversation and say, right, but what about this real quick?
And then they answer that. And then I'm, you know, in a classroom setting, I get that answer and then I'm able to like plug back in, you know, and, and continue to absorb information very quickly. But when I try to get like audacity training over YouTube, I'm so fixated on what it is that my next question is that I end up skipping around trying to find the answer and if I can't get it, then I get frustrated and feel like it was kind of useless.
So I think maybe some people who have now grown up being taught online are probably gonna have a little bit of an advantage with
Steve: that. Yeah. Yeah. It's a different way to learn. But what I like about it is that you can pause the video and just rewind it. Mm-hmm. What was that button you clicked? What was the setting he had there?
What were the steps to get to this point? And that seems to be much quicker than me jumping into the help and then reading about it and then try to put the steps into practice.
Jason: Yeah. It sounds like a skill that you've
Steve: developed. Yeah. I've just gotten used to doing it so much for very specific questions that it's just really convenient.
Mm-hmm. At this point. Well those are some good
Jason: resources for that, for approaching things that way. So I'll use those and hopefully things will be smoother going forward.
Steve: Cool. Yeah. I hope you use it.
Jason: Yeah. Are a lot of great tips in here. I appreciate it. I, I think, uh, for anyone listening who has creative ideas that could possibly fit into using any of those tools, they might find that it allows them to either finish creating and or maybe sell it.
Yeah. That's it. You
Steve: make some money. Yes. The selling parts become so easy now that there's really not any reason not to try it.
Jason: Yeah. That's great. All right. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you for getting into that stuff. Thank you for your time today. Anything else? Any other last words from you? My co-host, uh, Mr.
Piscopo? No,
Steve: I think it was, uh, another great show. Informative. It was a long one today. I hope. Absolutely. Hope the listeners have something out of it. Yeah. Or
Jason: ramblings. I hope so too. And we will see, uh, see what we come up with for the next one. Sounds
Steve: good.