 All right, we're going to get started if everyone can just make sure you keep your audio on mute so we don't interrupt our presenter and if you have any questions if you could put those in the chat. And we will have Kalina takes some breaks throughout our presentation to answer any questions. My name is I issue triggers I'm with the city of Columbia office of business opportunities and we are so excited for you to join us today. Our topic is the creative entrepreneur monetizing your craft and creative skills part two. And we have the wonderful Dr Casey whitener joining us today to provide this information. We've talked all year about the importance of making sure our creative entrepreneurs have access to these webinars and the different resources that are available to them as small business owners. And I will go right into our presentation in our office we offer several different program areas to help assist minority women, small and veteran or small businesses. Get started or develop their businesses as they grow and expand. We do that through these different program areas one of those being our commercial lending. We also offer assistance to start up and existing businesses for growth expansion retention and the creation of the job. We also offer assistance in the development of commercial corridors. We have writing on the call as well as our commercial loan officer if anyone has any questions about access to fun. Next we have our contractor and supplier diversity. We offer training and support for city initiatives designed to increase local contact capacity to compete for government contracts and other procurement opportunities. But just so this is we want to make sure that our procurement opportunities reflect the diversity of our great city. And we do that through a variety of programs. We also have a call that work in the areas are Italian Germany and clinic in your next we have our technical assistance education and advocacy. We offer business development assistance and courses for startups and existing businesses that are looking to grow and expand the topics that we cover use the social media business plan development finances legal issues and more. We're always looking for opportunities to these community. So we encourage anyone to let us know if there's some training they don't see available there might be an opportunity for us to offer that. In addition, our staff on the call are tiny important to vary. Also, we have Carla Ikeberger and Sandra Robinson. We are available as a resource for anyone on the call if we can't provide a specific assistance. I'm sure we have a partner that we can connect you with so we just want to make sure you know that we're here. And available to assist you. Our director Miss Melissa Wendler is actually at the National Association of Women and Construction. All conference today so she couldn't join us but she's a strong advocate for making sure our creative entrepreneurs have access to these resources. Our upcoming webinar we have one next week that we are partnering with the Small Business Administration on how to prepare for a small business loan with our loan officer Brad Whitey we want to make sure our small businesses understand what type of documents they need to have for if they are interested in obtaining lending so we will put a link in the chat for anyone on the call that's interested in joining us for that. Our office also sends out a weekly newsletter where we provide information on upcoming events and also important information that may be of interest to our small businesses. So if you are interested in receiving that newsletter, you can send us an email at obo at columbiasd.gov, and we'll be happy to add you to that. Also our phone number is 803-545-3950 if anyone has any questions after the call, we'll be happy to set up a meeting where we can talk about your business and what resources you may need. So at this time I would like to turn it over to one of our resource partners Cheryl Sally with the Benedict College Women's Business Center. Cheryl? Thank you Aisha. Thank you so much and thank you to the City of Columbia for putting on this great event for our creative entrepreneurs. As Aisha said, I am Cheryl Sally. I serve as the Director at the Benedict College Women's Business Center here in Columbia, South Carolina. We're pretty much an infant. We're still in our infancy stage. We are one year old, a little over a year old. We're funded in part primarily by the Small Business Administration. As is the other WBCs in South Carolina, the Small Business Development Centers, SCORE, and the Veteran Business Opportunity Centers. Next slide Aisha. And I won't be long because we have some great information coming from Dr. White. Just to summarize our purpose, our mission, our vision. What we want to do, what we strive to do every day at the WBC is provide the information, provide the counseling, the programming that our women, particularly women entrepreneurs need to either start or grow their business. And our focus is on our socially and economically disadvantaged women entrepreneurs. So, and not only to give them the tools, but at the end of the day, they can leave a legacy for their families and in this community. So we want to make sure that they are strong and they have everything that they need. While we focus on the women entrepreneurs, we serve everybody. Next slide Aisha. We serve everybody regardless of their race or gender startup companies, like I said, or existing companies for profit entities. And we get a lot of people contacting us that want to start nonprofits. So we do serve the for-profits, but I always tell companies that a nonprofit needs to know everything about business business management that a for-profit do. So I do share information with the nonprofits as well. We serve all business industries across South Carolina. Next slide Aisha. This kind of gives you a snapshot of some of our core and COVID services across the network of business development resource providers. You'll find as counseling on business planning, write the vision, write down your steps, you know, who you are. And a lot of people think that, oh, the business plan is just for, you know, if I'm going to get a long wrong answer, it does serve if you're going to get along, particularly if you're a startup business. But it is your roadmap of where you are now, where you want to be five months from now, 50 years from now, and all the steps that you need to take to get there. So what about your infrastructure and business management? I will stay on that piece of business management and understanding that businesses are built on business systems and having a solid infrastructure. So we provide those services resiliency and, excuse me, recovery services because of the pandemic season that we're still in. How do you recover? How do you pivot your business? And that a lot of that is going on. So we have other grants that we use that will help in that resiliency and recovery to financial management strategies, access to capital, helping you to complete that financial application package, positioning your business to get funding, understanding how to do the financial projections and all of that. Government contracting, if you have products or services that you are ready to, you have ready to sell to the government, we help you to understand how to navigate the government systems and all about certifications, so on and so forth, strategic planning and marketing. And our services is at no cost. For the most part, all the one-on-one guidance and counseling is at no cost. And so far, the programming, our workshops and webinars have been at no cost. And the wealth of knowledge that you get from the counselors, not just with the Women's Business Center, but across the network of providers is invaluable. You know, we are former business owners. I've been out here doing this since 86 and 94 as a consultant, have owned several businesses. And you'll find similar backgrounds and experiences across the network of our resource providers, some on this call. But contact us. Next slide, Aisha. Contact us. And we don't know everything, but we will connect you. I think that was said earlier with someone else who can help you. This is a snapshot of who we've served over the past year from September to September. The over, reached over 1200 contacts through programming one-on-one and training, helping to acquire financing over 700,000 and helping clients to generate sales over $5 million. Next slide, Aisha. Some of the programming workshops that we have coming up with our partnership with Nex and Pruitt Law Firm, we're going to do a lot with the bankable, you know, building a bankable relationship, not just making deposits and withdrawals out of your business. Check and account, but your bankers should know you and they should know you on a first name basis almost and all about your business and you should know them. So we're going to do a lot with that access to capital, our taxes, accounting and bookkeeping, quick book series. We'll start next week. So make sure you register for that business licensing and our government contacting series. Next slide. We do have a lot of new grants. We're going to update this because this is one that we have that started September 1, where we are using this to make sure we're reaching all of rural South Carolina, as well as making sure that the business, the entrepreneurs of the businesses in rural South Carolina, they know about all of the resources that's available to them, and they have access to all of the training and programming that we, you know, we're in the capital, we're in the central South Carolina. And so we do a lot of activity and oftentimes rural South Carolina. I don't have access with Dr. Weiner we're partnering on a program for the creatives just like we're doing today. So we're excited about that too. We have some more grant opportunities where it's all about resiliency with the CARES Act and the SBA. So we're, we're really excited about things to come. Next slide please. And here's our contact information. Please connect with us through our website or email us or call us so at least you can be on our marketing list to find out all about all of the things that that we have to come. And I'm going to stop right here and turn it back over to you. I should thank you again so much. Thank you Cheryl. We appreciate your partnership with us. Thank you. Next we have Diane and Andrea from our Richland Library. Good morning everyone. I'm Diane Lucy Business and Careers Manager at Richland Library. I'm on the call today with my colleague Andrea King, our workforce development specialist here at Maine. We are so glad to be with you to share resources that the library has. And I know Cheryl in her portion of her presentation mentioned free resources. I do want to remind everyone that everything we're going to talk about is free. You do not have to have a Richland Library card participate because our goal is to remove barriers and provide resources to the small business owners in the community. Next slide please. So we're going to very briefly discuss four areas that we can help you as a small business owner. The first one is the entrepreneur in residence. The second is our entrepreneurial library things. We'll talk about our focus programming to help small businesses move forward. And then finally other library small business services. Next slide please. I'm going to introduce you virtually to our current Richland Library entrepreneur in residence. If you don't know where Shonda Pratt you should. She's absolutely amazing. She has been working with us for a while now and her residency runs through January 15. She has the possibility for you as a small business owner to meet one on one virtually with for Shonda to talk about the pain points of your business. Now how would you do that. Next slide please. To schedule an appointment with for Shonda, we have two ways to do this, you either use our book and appointment link, and you don't have to worry about writing down any of these links, because I know Aisha is going to send you the slides later today. You can also access information about where Shonda book an appointment and find out about her upcoming program to our residence page on the Richland Library website. Very easy to use it's just www.richlandlibrary.com forward slash residence. Next slide please. Okay, so we want to talk about very briefly is the Richland Library entrepreneurial library of things. We were very fortunate to receive two different grants to help small business community here in Columbia. And initially the library of things was for key kits that you could check out with a library card. One was a camera kit one was a lighting kit podcast and kitten that sort of thing. We have found that this is a great opportunity for our customers to check out all sorts of things. The example I'd like to share however is we had someone who asked if they could check out two camera kits, and you might ask yourself why would you want to do that when you need one. But this person was trying to test the waters to see if they could run a wedding photography business. They checked out the items. It was very successful. They decided what equipment they wanted to purchase, and they move forward with their dream of owning a small business. So this particular service, it's richlandlibrary.com library of things. You can check out even seeds to plant in your garden games for your children. There are all sorts of possibilities. All of these checkouts are great with your library part. Next slide please. So we're going to very quickly touch on these there are certain guidelines you do have to have a library card. You check out the item for one week, and there is one renewal of no one's waiting behind you. You are responsible for all the materials. And if you reserve something, we all want to be good stewards of this equipment. So you get 24 hours from the time your reservation starts to pick up the item. If you do not, then return back to inventory. Next slide please. Okay, so you have to be 18 or older, and your card has to be in good standing, which means that you have less than $10 in fines, and you do have to have a photo ID. Next slide please. One thing I wanted to mention is that as we have mentioned on this call, we have amazing community partners here in Columbia, the city of Columbia Office of Business Opportunities with Women's Business Center, the SBDC, the SBA, and many, many others. And each month I facilitate a meeting that's virtual. It's the first Monday of each month, and it's held next one Monday, December 6 at two o'clock on Zoom. So if you are an agency in the community and you're not currently participating, please email me and I will be happy to share the Zoom link with you. Now I'm going to turn things over to my colleague, Andrina King, who's going to talk about our small business programming. Hello everyone. So Richland Library provides small business programs that includes collaboration with Richland County and the city of Columbia that cover topics on marketing, 10 steps to starting a small business, and financing to name a few. In addition to our artists and our entrepreneur and residence programs, our three previous EIRs from the library's field business grant were Karen R Jenkins, Kevin Williams, and Shanice Cleckley. In addition, you may have heard of one MC Columbia, which was formerly held here at Richland Library. Since the pandemic, the location has been moved to the normal warehouse, and they still meet every Wednesday at 9am. Next slide please. Our entrepreneurs and small business Facebook group. Richland Library created an entrepreneur and small business Facebook page last year when the pandemic first started. They created a place where businesses could bounce ideas off of each other and ask questions and find the tools and resources they needed to keep their businesses running during these uncertain times. Currently the group has over 2000 members and quickly growing. Next slide please. Richland Library has a great wealth of small business databases. They have great resources for research and learning new skills. Lakedale Learning is a popular database that provides over 16,000 web based video courses, step by step tutorials, covering creative techniques, technical and job skills, business strategies, and more. What's special about it is a certificate of completion is also awarded after successfully completing each course. Next slide please. We also have a dedicated spot on our website for entrepreneurs. It is a dedicated page on our website that provides resources to support emerging businesses at every stage of their development. The library is committed to offering a risk-free entrepreneur hub to support Midland area dreamers, doers and bakers. Next slide. Our library residents. The library's budding residency program connects the community with local working artists, entrepreneurs and writers. It provides educational opportunities to the community that supports cultural and artistic exchange, in addition to building an ecosystem that sustains the development and growth of future entrepreneurs in our region. Thank you so much. And our contact information is listed. Thank you very much, Andrea and Diane. We just have a wealth of information that's available right here. And I know there were a couple of questions about resources for individuals that are not local. And those answers were put in the chat. And additionally that we're always available to make the connection with someone if they don't think that may be the resources that we have available. I'm sure we have a partner that will be able to assist you and that we can refer you to. I want to introduce our speaker for this afternoon, Dr. Casey Weitner, to teach his entrepreneurship at the University of South Carolina and runs Climson Road Creative, a shared services company providing operational support to independent consultants. She is the author of Practical Entrepreneurism and co-authored redesigned work volume one, a beginner's guide to autonomy in 2020. In 2018, she also co-founded the Women's Business Center of South Carolina at Columbia College. I would like to welcome Dr. Casey Weitner. Thank you, Aisha. You know it's always like the most awkward part of any of these things when somebody else reads your bio. And then especially when you read my bio and I go, Oh, there's some things we should add to that some things that I think are a little bit more interesting to the creatives on the podcast right. So we'll talk a little bit about that. And what just happened? Yeah, there's some animations in my presentation. So things seem to be sort of stalling. That's why. So yeah, I wrote Practical Entrepreneurs and that's the textbook that I use with my students. I forced my students to buy at the university. And it includes a lot of conversations that I've had with the library resident entrepreneurs, which include Shanice Cleckley and now Rashonda Pratt. And so our ecosystem here in Columbia, South Carolina is thriving and a lot of those folks lent their expertise to me and to my book Practical Entrepreneurism. This summer I earned this Fresh Voices in the Humanities Award from the South Carolina Humanities. I'm not sure how familiar you are with them, but they're one of the big funding organizations for a lot of our nonprofits, including the South Carolina Writers Association, of which I'm a member. And I'm also a serial book club dropout. So, you know, I like to confess that as well too. It usually ends up somewhere in my bio. But first I want to get to Zoom. Let's do some fun with Zoom. Are you ready? So this is the interactive part. Everybody should open up in their Zoom and hover over your control panel. And on your control panel you should have, if you don't see your reactions button, you might need to use the more to find it. But however, click that reactions button and you should get a little floating menu that gives you an applause and a thumbs up and a heart. So everybody can identify that. And then click those little three dots that gives you the additional piece on the reactions menu. And it will give you a full list of emojis, right? So these are like the ones you have on your iPhone where you can like tears and crying and the surprised cat. I don't even really know why the surprised cat is one of my frequently used, but apparently it's one of my frequently used. So go ahead and identify that. And then at the top of that menu, you'll see there's an activity, which is the, it looks like a basketball. If you click on that, it'll jump you to all of the activity emojis. So I'm moving too fast for you if you found your activity menu. And what I'd like for you to do is select the activity that best describes you and how you spend your weekend. And then I'm going to take a look at our list of participants and see how many of you are like me. I'm, I'm football, football, especially in the fall is how it describes my weekend. So go in there, follow those steps, find your, your bit emojis, your emojis, and throw them up. And that will, I'm looking at our participants list right now. It'll show up in the little participants list. I see Shannetta's got a computer or a laptop. You must be working. Andrea's got a music cleft. So she's probably writing some songs. That's awesome. Who else? We've got drama. Good job, Diane. You're probably watching either watching theater or performing in theater. Right. I see ice cream. That looks like an ice cream sundae Fatima. Now I'm jealous. Basketball for Shanita. All right. Who else is out there to read? Is that a running Jersey, Teresa? Maybe. These things, they come up and then they go away real quick. All right. So the idea here is just for you to understand how to use our emoji tools there, because what I'm really going to be asking you to do is spend. Oh, there's another football. All right. She toy is with me on the football side. I'm going to be asking you to use the checks, the yes and the no. Really, most of our exercise are going to be yes, no exercises. And I'm just going to be looking for you to have identified either the green check for yes or the red X for no. And it'll go up there and it'll stay there until you click it again. Right. So as you see your name, you'll see that red X will be on your name or the green check will be on your name until you unclick it. All right. But we're going to do a couple of exercises that you'll need to be able to access those those checks. So thank you for playing around with me and with a little bit of zoom. Let's get started. What are we going to talk about today? Well, first, we're going to talk about be like the chefs. This is not code language. It's legitimate be like the chefs. I'm going to talk a little bit about what that means. Specifically, our celebrity chefs that are out there that are doing just a great job of showing us why we can never be celebrity chefs. So we're going to talk about them and that approach or that strategy to building your audience as a creative professional. Then we're going to talk about we're going to get really into the weeds on quantifying your inventory and calculating your cost of goods per unit. These are things I kind of glazed over in the August session, but today we're going to get into the weeds on it. And I actually have a tool that the Arts Commission gave me that you all as artist creatives can use. I'm going to show you how the tool works and I'll send you the link for it so you'll just have it free and forever that you can use. And that'll help you calculate your cost of goods. And then we're going to talk about monetizing digital platforms and what that looks like. So these are our three big topics. This is the be like the chefs, the quantifying inventory and then of course the monetizing platforms and it should take about an hour. But there's a lot of hopefully a lot of interactive here stuff as well. And I'll be glad to take questions if you throw them in the chat I'll try to keep up with them. If there's something that's urgent or relevant to exactly what we're talking about right then. By all means go ahead and interrupt me. I think when as the one who's looking at our chat. But if not, then we'll just hold those to the end and we'll come back to them. All right, everybody with me. Get on board, let's do this. All right, what does it mean to be like the chefs okay here's your first yes no exercise are you ready. Yes, no. Yes, or no, do you watch chefs on television or YouTube. Do you watch the chefs do you watch cooking shows on television or YouTube yes or no. Do you watch the actions buttons, looking for some checks. I saw a tiny with a check should toy with a check. So a couple of yeses. Diane's got a check okay. All right, so a couple of checks here so a couple of people saying yes, who are the celebrity chefs well the chefs are on the cooking channels they're on cooking network they're on food network right and they go out there and they end up with their own shows and they talk about all of their own recipes and then of course they end up with their own product line of knives and pots and pans and these kinds of things. And they're basically selling their craft so if you think of a chef as an artist. They've created something they've created a recipe, they've created a maybe a series of recipes, and they are promoting their art, which is food right through the television channel either the food network or I think the other one is food TV. That's the other one besides food network. Anyway, so we're going to think about that, and it starts here with asking yourself, why do people buy your art. Right, so think about the art that you're creating that you're wanting to monetize and ask yourself why do people buy your art and we looked at this briefly in August. This is a marketing hierarchy structure I don't really like that it says some things are better than others but certainly something that's functional right that it connects you to something else or it appeals to some kind of sensory like maybe it's a soft scarf, or some fuzzy fuzzy gloves and warm gloves right, or is it emotional is it something that reduces your anxiety is it something that's fun or entertaining. Is it therapeutic, I think I saw somebody's email address was about massage therapy. So that would be something that is therapeutic has therapeutic value, or is your art life changing does it provide motivation to people is it an heirloom that will pass down from one member of their family to the next. Does it create a sense of affiliation or belonging. My grandmother used to saying, you are my sunshine to all of us and after she passed we all got these painted signs that say you are my sunshine. So some artists created these that created a sense of affiliation or belonging to all of the grandchildren who had lost our grandmother related to that particular song right. Ask yourself what is your art actually do why do people actually buy your art and try to focus in on a few key things that your art can do for other people. You don't need fans for your art you've got those right I'm a huge fan I haven't even seen your art yet and I can tell you I'm a huge fan of your art. Fans are great don't get me wrong it's it's awesome to know that people are rooting for you and they think about you and, at least when you're in front of them they think about you. But really what you need is customers, you need people who are willing to part with their money for your art right they need to be willing to believe that your art is more valuable to them than the money in their pocket. And so what we need to do is figure out where are these people where do they hang out right, are they going to events, are they participating in festivals and things like that. Think somebody unmuted. Are we going to speak. No we're good. So where are they right where where they where they likely to be where we likely to find them. Social media is cheap and easy right we can we can all day long be putting our stuff out on social media, but it can also feel kind of like a vacuum because there's so much out there. So if your people aren't out there or they're not looking for art out there that might not be the right place for you. Additional media like TV and radio can also be a good way to reach your audience, unless they're not listening to that either unless that's not their jam right. So you've got to figure out who are these people and how do I access them right. There are audio channel subscribers I think about these as podcasts right or even webinars like we're doing right now. There are audio channel subscribers like people who use YouTube, or they are live streaming for on things like twitch that one of the creators that my daughter follows is on twitch. He's a Minecraft gamer, and he has 6.4 million followers on twitch 6.4 million followers. I get to imagine my head would explode of 6.4 million people were following me right, but this is a he's a Minecraft gamer that's what he does and what does he sell. He sells sweatshirts with his name on them right up to 6.4 million people how many of them are buying sweatshirts he didn't even create the sweatshirt he just put his name on it right. Okay, so how do you convince them how do you convince all of these people that are out there that are interested maybe in a genre like yours maybe they're simply interested in music, or they happen to be interested in gospel music specifically, or maybe they're interested in home decor, and specifically original pieces of art that could become their home decor. How do you convince them to pay attention to your stuff. Art's by demonstrating your work right how do you want to show it to them you want them to be able to see it. And in order to do that you've got to get in front of them, which is why where are they really matters, sometimes are especially with our performing arts, we need to be in in front of these people so they can see just how talented and how skilled we are right. The only reason I watch the voices to share your story, tell them who you are why this matters what inspires you. I don't know how many of you watch the voice but the only reason I watch the voice is to listen to the stories behind these people behind these artists that's what makes you care about them. They might not be very good singers but they have this amazing story that you want to follow. You have a story too. So you've just got to figure out a way to share your story tell other people why you do the thing you do, why you're inspired to bring this art into the world. Connect with these folks, I think the best way to connect them is to address them specifically and now I'm a writer so I'm a little bit biased toward the right to them side. But a lot of times even when we're posting content on something like an Instagram or Facebook, and we're putting up visual posts, there's some content that goes along with it right there's some writing written content that goes along with it. My publisher right now is right is posting pictures of her trip to Paris, as she's getting ready to release a book about a woman who falls in love in Paris. And so she's putting up these pictures of and who wants to see vacation photos like who cares about that right. But in fact people love this because they love to hear the stories and she writes those little stories just in the little Instagram memo side of the Instagram right. And so people are really responding to that you want to connect with people by telling your story and sharing enough about you that they care about you and not just the art. People who want to get more of your content they will like you they will follow you right. They become collectors of your work. They become subscribers and when they're subscribers eventually they're going to pay for stuff, but designed as a gift for publish it but it hasn't been published yet. Right. Once they become, they're going to become patrons they'll stick around for a while, not your name on it, but it does mean that a portion of those people will become getting her email newsletter since 2005. I've legitimately read her work when she didn't have hardly any subscribers at all. And so that's those buyers that support you they're going to become patrons and they'll stick around for a while. This is the customer journey diagram I showed it in our August session, and I wanted to kind of revisit here as we think about be like the chefs what does it mean be like the chefs were focused specifically on this part of our customer journey diagram. We're looking for people to become aware of us who's to cook. He's a recipe birds right this show them how to do it piece is how people will find you that weren't even looking for you, because they'll be asking themselves things like, how do I sell a patch onto the elbow of a jacket right because maybe I've tried it and I ended up ripping it off or something right, and then you go to YouTube and you put in how do I so on a patch and up comes your video where you have taught them how to do that. So this be like the chefs model is using social media to either give them the recipe, or show them how to do it right give them some kind of demonstration of what this art is. It could be music. If you're writing a song, give them the idea of this is how I came up with this song, or this is where when I go looking for inspiration, I walk around in nature. Now here's my Instagram video of me walking around in nature looking for inspiration. And this is, that's all it is right it's just me walking around in nature but this is where I find my inspiration. So take those social media posts that you've been putting up there that have probably been saying things like by my art by my art by my art. And instead, give them something right give them something that they can try something they can share. You can do this with blogs as well. Can somebody come on me to do we have a question. No, all good. Oh, can you slow down give the material. Thank you Jim I will. I'm staying on this slide for a good long time and this is sort of the in the depth so but thanks for that I do tend to talk pretty fast. All right, here we go. So one of these content pieces that you're creating social media blogs, you can pitch articles to third party publishers right if there's somebody that's writing in your currently in your field somebody that you follow. See if you can guest post on their blog right right something that's unique to your business to your art to your expertise and share it with other people. And then the books come in the chef's right cookbooks. And they're writing these cookbooks as a combination of all those recipes they put up on blogs, and all the videos that they have done to demonstrate those recipes, and they combine them all in a book. You can write a book to. It's not rocket science it really isn't and there are lots of programs that will help you go in step by step and decide what kind of book do you want to write, and how can you use that book to promote your business and promote your art. To demonstrate category here in terms of using your own video channels we're going to get a little deeper on the specific platforms you can use to do this, but there's a quality to these videos. The more of them you watch, the more you'll start to notice the quality of this. There's one guy who's a photographer who started making videos as part of his marketing efforts, and he would talk about just how to write how to take a good photograph to put the how to line up your subject in the right place, how to get the right lighting in a particular circumstance right, and he had these series of videos and eventually people started asking him to give them personal lessons of how to become better photographers, and he basically became like a photography trainer through these videos and he was making a lot of his revenue, being a trainer teaching other people how to do what he does. The challenge piece of this is to go out there and demonstrate what you can do. Put your art forward, put the techniques forward, put the stories behind it forward, put the materials for all of it, be very transparent with all of it, like the chefs and challenge these people to try to do it too, and then when they've done it to share it with you. The reason the chefs do this is because they know that you can't. Okay. The reason the chefs do this is because they know they've got 20 years on you right they've got 2030 40 years worth of cooking experience on you. They have a full team and an industrial kitchen right they've got all the perfect ingredients they have all this money and financing. They're threatened by you and what you plan to do with your pancakes. Okay. And you as an artist have a valuable, valuable thing that the other people don't have right you have your personal creativity, your personal story, the thing that you bring to the table, and they don't have that. It's okay to share technique it's okay to share materials, it's okay to share inspiration, because whatever those people create based on what you've given them will not compete with what you have. Art is not a finite thing right the world has so much room for art. It's just building it with other people and encouraging them to do it to just builds the community just builds your reputation as a as a giver into your community, and really in no way threatens your business and fact it does the opposite. It builds your business because people believe that what you're doing is so valuable and they're so grateful to you that they pay it back and they pay it forward by buying your art. So I fully believe it's true. And it is probably the best example as the chefs of course, I don't know if you notice this like back and forth it's the same. It's the same slide. But you know, Pinterest fail for what it's worth. Okay, this is a nice little chuckle on that. So we're back to our customer journey and what we're looking for here is on the aware side right. If you consider side the decide side we're trying to convince people to become part of our group, part of our audience, and they can be part of multiple people's audiences. I have people that read my books that also read my, my co editors books that read my co hosts books. They don't just read my stuff. They're going to read a lot of books. So it's totally cool for them to be a fan of my audience and also be members of other people's audiences as well. When you share your audience with other creators, and this is one thing that I didn't necessarily mention before but part of the reason that that guy fills I got to 6.2 million followers on twitch is because other gamers shared their audience with him. They paired up they did things together. And when they did those things together, both creators brought their audience into the same place. And I really enjoyed working with that, watching that that creative piece right and so I'm going to follow that person to. So it's great to bring in those collaborations with other artists and share that audit your audience with them and their audience with you. And just again that that the left side of that customer journey, trying to be able to make them aware of your art, get them to consider it with the demonstrations talking about features and benefits right testimonials man my favorite. We get this on the writer side we get testimonials pretty easily because people are going to review your book, right. So you go out there and you leave a review three star review five star review. And sometimes with art we don't necessarily get those reviews. So it would be great to get testimonials from people who have your pieces. If they just took pictures of themselves with your piece in their living room. Selfie with my piece in your living room things like that. Those testimonials help to build your reputation as well so I would encourage collecting some of those two. All right, I'm moving into our next topic now so I just want to pause for a second and see if anybody has any more questions about be like the chefs. There's no questions in the chat right now. All right, cool be like the chefs. I read this be like the chefs in a book called rework. It's a guy named Jason fried and he built a software program called base camp. And he wrote this book called rework. And the reason he wrote rework is because it was going to help him sell his software to people. So it happens in all areas of entrepreneurship that when we're trying to make people aware of our business. We go out there and tell them exactly what we what we've done to build our business. Okay. Topic number two. We're going to talk in depth about quantifying your inventory and calculating your cost of goods. So first, go back to our reactions button. Here comes our quiz again our reactions button. Question number one. Yes or no. Do you know how long your art takes. How long it takes you to create one piece of sellable art. Whatever this art is that you're doing how long does it take to create it. Yes, you do know or know you don't. Why don't we just add a question. Yeah, she needed one to know about the book. The book you just mentioned. Sure. Yeah, it's called rework. I can type that in the chat if you want. It's called rework. And it's by Jason fried. Jason fried. Yep. Good to do. Good, especially if you're building a business and you're going to have other people working for you because he talks a lot about getting away from eight to five and really focusing on results and really focusing on the specific activities that you have to do in order to in order to earn revenue. It's, it's, it's fantastic. I can't recommend it enough for business owners. So question number one as I mentioned before checks yes or no. Yes you do know how long it takes to build your art or no you do not know how long it takes to do a piece of art. And those of you who are thinking, well it varies, you're a no. Those, some of you do. Yes, some of you do know exactly how long it takes. And a few yeses. And no, there we go. Okay. A few yeses. Question number two is, do you know how much it costs to make your art. So do you know how much each of those individual units costs. We have a sculptor down in at the soda city market named Kyle, Kyle Peterson. I don't think that's right. Kyle somebody. Anyway, he's a big eagles fan. And he does not. He goes and takes this is ceramics down there every Saturday and he sells them his work is really good by the way. And he has to know exactly how much each piece costs, because he has to be able to sell it for a price where he's going to make a profit. So the second question is, do you know how much it costs, how much each of your pieces cost. I saw a couple of nos. Okay, we're going to get into that now. This, this is in the weeds, we're going in the weeds now. So start taking notes. Also I'm going to send you the link to the tool that we'll use to figure this out. But these are the questions that we begin with. Question number one, how long does it take the only way to really know how long something takes is to time yourself doing it. I know that sounds kind of dumb. So if you're somebody that's creating earrings right or necklaces and you're wanting to sell your homemade jewelry, you'll want to just set the timer and start crafting. Right. If you're making you know those really cool reads that are like football reads and they have the ribbons and all this kind of thing, just set the timer and start crafting. It takes longer than you expected it to. Right. But the best way to know how long something takes is to simply time yourself doing it and to try to figure out how many pieces you can do in a week in a month. Right. How can you build up your inventory. And the reason we're looking for this is because we want to know if, for example, you're aiming at being at the Florence farmers market on December 11. How many pieces can you expect to be taking with you if you're going to start crafting today. Right. So from today to December to December 11, you have a roughly 30 days. Right. How many hours per day can you actually allocate to this craft that you're going to be doing and how many units can you turn out in those hours per day. And the reason is because if you get there, say you're going to be there for December 11 and you think I'm going to the farmers market. I'm going to take with me 13 scarves. Now we're going to ask you here in a minute, whether or not 13 scarves is worth it for you to haul your cookies all the way to Florence. Right. So we want to know how long it takes to build up that inventory to make enough of this product that you're going to have enough to sell to make it worth going to the event itself. How long out are you going to need to get ready for these events. How many of these items can you make and some of that has to do with how many of them can you store right and how long do they last. So one of the so to city market stalls right now is a university class at in the Darla more school. It's not my class it's my friend Jeff savages class, and they're selling these jars these cookie jars right there. It's a jar of cookie materials. So I guess you get home and you pour it into a bowl and you crack a couple eggs in there and you make cookies out of it. So these are the materials these jars it takes a while to pack each of the jars right, and then they have to package them, and then they have to store them, and they expire at some point right like the flower and the, you know whatever else is in them the chocolate chips or whatever such are at some point so you can't make them the day before because you need 100 of them and it's gonna take too long, but you can't make them a month before because it won't be any good by the time we get it right. So trying to figure out how long does it take and how many can you actually make is a way that for you to determine how to allocate your time to get ready for these big events that you want to be part of. I know many of you have done your time as an inventory, but we know that our families are knocking on the door, our kids need help, you know you have to stay late at work. Some project took your attention away, you're just too tired on a Tuesday night you'll do it on Wednesday instead, right, all of these things that come in the way of our artists side hustle, have to be taken into account, because if right now we have 30 days to get ready for this market and we know that we're going to need every single day two hours a day to have enough inventory, we're going to be more disciplined about allocating that time. I'm not going to let work take that time for me. I have to give it to my craft, because I have to be ready for this market on December 11. So it's really important to figure that out so that you can start scheduling your creative time. A lot of times artists come into entrepreneurship thinking about, I'm an artist and I'm going to share my, my wonderful art with the world, and they don't necessarily think about how to allocate their time to the creation of that art. Now if you're somebody like a writer or a musician, like I am, I'm a writer, not a musician, then once you make the thing, you just keep selling it right so it did take me two years to write my latest book, but now I just keep selling the book right I don't have to continue to allocate that time to sell that particular book right and the same with with musicians right it might take you a while to write a song, but you don't have to continue to allocate that time to writing new songs, because it's not like I sell it to somebody, and now I have to write a new one. It's the same song that I'm selling over and over again right. When we think about material art, like things scarves and knitting art that kind of thing crochet right, or jewelry, or even like soaps and lotions and that kind of thing that people make. This is physical product and once you sell it it's gone, and you've got to make more to be able to replace it. So that's how we get into category two, which is the materials, how much does it cost. Now, how much your materials cost, and the challenge here is to break that cost down because, for example, I have these wine glasses that I share with my after December buyers right people who buy my book after December, they can also buy a wine glass. And then I have these shot glasses for my before Pittsburgh buyers. That's the second book before Pittsburgh. These are hand painted, right. And I have a certain number of them that I buy. Well, when I bought the purple paint, the cost of the purple paint it's not like I have to buy purple paint for each and every shot glass. I buy a bottle of purple paint and I can use it for multiple shot glasses. So materials inventory gets complicated by knowing that I can buy one bottle of purple paint, and it can help me make 35 shot glasses or however many shot glasses right. And I don't really know that down to the details to be honest with you, because these were meant to be gifts for my book club hosts, but then when I take them with me to book sales people want to buy them. So I started selling them to. Anyway, all that to say, when we think about how much does it cost the materials, you've got to break the materials down into those raw goods. What do you have to purchase to be able to do this. And those of you who are, you know, making clothing or jewelry or these kinds of things. When you buy the materials you're buying a whole bag of beads or you're buying a whole thing of twine or yarn or whatever right. And so getting down to the individual costs per unit can be a little bit tough. So when we think about that we get down to making a list of all the materials that we need to be able to create. We don't have to start counting how many units were we able to make before we started running out of materials. The minute that I ran out of black paint. I was done. How many glasses had I painted before I ran out of black paint. That's the cost of goods for those glasses right then and there. That's my cost of goods, as soon as I have to buy a new, a reimbursed or add more raw materials. I'm spending more right. And so I bought my initial buy in here's how much I spent here's how many glasses I was able to get out of it. And now I have to figure out how much I can sell those glasses for which I'm going to show you how to do that in just a second. Dr. Wagner. Yeah, we have a question. Jim rush would like to ask you a question. Okay, go for Jim. It's related to this but it's I didn't know if you want to do it after the section but I'd love to ask it it's kind of related but so just kind of the not not in the part of like, you know, expenses for materials around the other hand, the kind of bringing money in. So one one venture I'm interested in is, but it's disappointing that Google like if you have like a live like on talk program, they take 30% of any super chat. So that seems so much. So that's one challenge. The second thing is, I'm very interested in like a subscription model I hate to do all the ads, but it seems like people you know, potentially this thing I want to build up. It wouldn't be that expensive on the subscription but people are not used to paying three or $5 a month. So I was wondering on these two things. One, how one can have like a live program where where it's not 30% being taken on the super chats and to how one can, you know, get the subscription so that people would be paying a small amount for for your subscription. These are good questions and when we talk about the platforms in the third section, we're going to get a lot deeper into the weeds of that so let's start first with how much we need to earn right so right now I would think we're building a budget for the business itself. So before we get to like which platform I decide to choose start thinking about how much does it cost you to create this right how many hours of your time. Yeah, and then we're going to as far as those those individual payment and the different types of revenue. I'm going to dive exactly into that here in just a minute. Okay. We got one more question. I'm sorry. She wants to know what is there is a market for. I'm guessing she's saying be demeaning therapeutic tools and writing literature on usage will will, will there be able, will it will we be able to use this platform. I guess my question is which platform. Is there a market for writing about how to use specific tools. We've seen that that's true and other markets. I'm not entirely sure I'm not that familiar with that particular market, but my guess would be. Yes, that I see for demoing therapeutic tools. Yeah, I mean, there's a market for people opening toys and playing with the toys right. So certainly if you're using, and this is where we start to get the recognition of our community, and then have the opportunity to maybe even be paid for doing that work for other people. If you are writing about the tools that you use and you're recommending things, and you were not paid to do so, then suddenly those people start looking at those manufacturers look at you and they start wanting to pay you. So I mentioned, again, Sam the cooking guy. He's got these knives that uses and he's got different pans and things like that. And he'll always say like, they didn't pay me to tell you how amazing this knife is. Or then he'll go, they did pay me to tell you that this knife is great I just tried it it's fantastic I love it I'm going to be using it from now on, but they did in fact send it to me and ask me to use it because my audience is so big. So certainly I think there's an audience for all of that. The question is how big is the group of people that are going to also be using those tools, and then how do you reach them and make sure that they know that you're creating this content, where in you demo it, or where in you write about it. Did that answer the question she needed to say thank you I think so I think we're good. Okay, cool. Alright, so the last question here for you as you're thinking about your inventory calculations is storage and packaging and I mentioned this with the cookie jars right so we want to know how is it how are you going to be able to get it from place to place. There are some things that are simply prohibitive right. I know painters that are writing that are making canvases and these kinds of things, and that each of those canvases is unique. It's different. It's new, everybody has their own one. So you're not looking at a stock of you know, 350 canvases that all look exactly the same. So you've got to have room to be able to display them but then you also have to be able to store them. And at some point in that inventory the ones that are older that are starting to show some age, you may want to start just placing them right. You don't necessarily have to sell them you just need to put them out there and give them to people so that they're out of your storage area, and they're on display somewhere so they can be working for you and earning some attention for you. So be thinking about that too in terms of what are the limitations that you have and how much you can store how much you can package and how much you can store. This comes up a little bit with my friend Tazina Brown at Sunrise Artisan, because she makes bath bombs and organic deodorants and things like that and how many does she need to be able to make from an inventory perspective, just to keep her storefront stocked, let alone all of her online sales. She has to keep track of what those materials look like. And over time, as you're building your business, you'll have to do that as well and so getting into the habit early of managing those numbers is going to be beneficial to you. So how do you do it? And these are our specific, like I said, we're in the weeds here, right? If we think about you by unit, right? How many hours does each finished piece require? And the first identifier is H-U, right? H-U by unit, right? Hours by unit. And then how many hours per week can you allocate to that creation? So how many are you going to allocate? How many do you have available to actually do this? If you divide your allocated by your hours per unit, you'll know how many you can produce in a week. Did I do that a little too fast for you because the calculation is down at the bottom? The idea here is for you to figure out exactly how many you can do per week. And my example of the wine glasses is a really small example, because I'm wanting to take about 10 every time I go to an event, right? I only need to do 10, and if I'm going to do 10, it's going to take me two hours. So, or in this case, I put eight, right? If I'm going to take eight with me and it's going to take me two hours for each one, I can do, or sorry, two hours to do eight of them. I can get 16 units a week, right? And so when I think about this, like, how many weeks until the next event? If I can get 16 per week, I'm like, oh, I'm in pretty good shape, or I can wait until the week before to do it, right? Because I'm only going to need 16. But if I wanted to take more than that, if I wanted to take 32 or I wanted to take 64, right? I'm going to need a full month to be able to get ready for that event. And so again, my wine glasses, I don't take that many with me. But some of you are doing a lot of inventory, right? You're wanting to bring a lot of scarves, a lot of hats, a lot of mittens, right? Whatever it is you're creating. And so really trying to figure out how many per week you're able to do. And what's interesting to me about this in our artist community is a lot of you probably started out doing this as Christmas gifts for people. And so you already know that you've got to get started making mittens in August or you're only going to be able to make one pair, right? And so you probably already know how long it takes you to build up a pretty good inventory. If you just think about your Christmas gift list and when did you have to start doing this to get ready for that, right? And then the second column here is all these materials by unit. And the question is, again, how do you figure out which materials are required per unit? And this matters. This is important because it's going to determine your pricing. It's going to help you decide how much you need to sell these items for based on the amount of money that you've put into the materials and the amount of time that you put into this, right? What is the real value of that product? It might be that we're selling our mittens for eight bucks because that's what people are willing to pay for it. When we sell the mittens for eight bucks, we lose $3 on them because it cost us $11 to make them, right? And so we want to be able to figure out exactly how much money we're going to be able to make per unit. And the only way to do that is to get very granular about the materials that we're using and the time that we're putting into each and every product before we ever go out there and set our pricing. I'm seeing some more on chat. Let me see if there's any questions there. Batching is helpful. Yeah, that's a good idea. The batching piece too, especially if, and I do this with my wine glasses, because if I've already got all the materials pulled out, right, I might as well just paint them all. And you know who's determined the size of my batches is Amazon because I buy 12 glasses at a time. And so when the 12 show up, I just paint all 12 and put them back in the box. It's actually not the best way to design my batches. I should in fact be thinking about if I have two hours, right, and I can do eight in two hours and that's, you know, probably a better way to determine my batch size but So let me go to this one this piece here. This is that magical spreadsheet I told you about. I know it's 1238 and we're moving a little closer to our third segment here so if you're waiting for the platforms, just hold tight, we will get to them. But this is a spreadsheet that was developed by the Arts Commission for the purpose of the artist venture grant calculations. And so, and I will share it with you we earned an artist venture grant for our radio show right on SC. And they wanted us to go in here and figure out our raw materials, the labor that we use, the cost associated with it, the production facility that we were going to need all of these expenses had to be filled out. And we of course just want to show up and be on the radio. We're like, we don't know anything about any of this. In fact, our raw materials are things like every Friday I sit down to be my show notes for Saturday, and it takes me three hours to go through the internet and find the information that I want, and put it all into the show notes blog post and then to post it and add the picture to it and get it ready and all this. So it takes me some time to be able to do that. And in that case this bottom section is a little bit better for us from calculations, because we're really looking more at services without radio show right on SC is a radio show we have services. So we use that bottom calculation, which is the amount spent on labor, and I had to think how much is my time worth right. And so I put a quick calculation in here this is the wine glasses calculation for you. You can see the raw materials how much I spent on raw materials glasses and paint and paint brushes, and then the labor I said two hours, my time I put in at $25 an hour, it's probably worth a lot more than that. But I'm cool with $25 an hour that's a good round number for me, and then the cost associated with shipping and storage I put that cost the $2 as what I would pay for the materials to be sent to me right. And then the and really that's not much $2 but I think I think I'm Amazon Prime and so I get free shipping which means that my Amazon Prime cost $100 or whatever. I put in like $2 worth of my Amazon Prime cost for for my shipping, and then the total numbers of units sold. So the total product expenses 94, the number of units that I had prepared right I had that that 12 pack of wine glasses. So what was the cost of goods per unit it was $8. So if I'm selling my wine glass for five bucks I'm losing $3 per unit, but if I'm selling the wine glass for 10 bucks, I'm earning $2 per unit very basic calculations that you can use to figure out what are you, where's your profit margin where's your profit margin, and then the services was the same, the number of hours spent 10 the amount spent on the materials, I put that in at 84. And then our variable cost associate and it's because this is a static picture I can't go back and look at the cells and see like what the numbers were, but it says the total services 104 cost of goods per unit $9 again right so if I think about this instead as a service right there and go okay it's $9. I really do need to be selling these for for 10 or $15 a piece. But this, like I said there's a link right here that'll take us to the working spreadsheet you can download it yourself. This is not my personal intellectual property it was from the Arts Commission. And if you are thinking about applying for an Arts Commission grant in the next granting grant funding cycle which is in the spring. This being familiar with this is going to be very useful to you. All right, I want to jump into the platform question because I know that it's out there Jim's got it and a few of you have it as well but first back to our fun with zoom and your reactions let's see if everybody's still awake and paying attention. Here's our, our interactive learning are you ready. Question number one you on Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, Twitter. I got some thumbs up I got a couple of check marks so yeah it looks like people are they're using social media already. Yes, no couple yeses, more yeses. Okay good question number two. Are you creating content on those channels, meaning are you putting content out there that talks about what you do as an artist, how you how what your craft looks like, are you creating content, or are you simply posting pictures of yourself with your lunch. Okay, a couple knows. No I'm not creating content. I'm just out there sharing. Okay good a couple yeses are. Alright, excellent. So one of the ways that we can use social media is to engage with other artists right to follow them to like them to share their stuff. This is being a good citizen right a good we call the literary citizens in the writing world, but being a good citizen in your community. That's a great use of your social platforms is to promote other people's work. That's a fantastic use. So if you're not creating new content right now, don't feel bad. Question number three is, are you building an audience. So as we go into this digital platform question, are you currently building an audience using the social tools that you're using. And I'm not going to be surprised if I see a lot of nose. A couple yeses and a couple of nose. Okay good. It's hard. It's really hard to build an audience out there, and especially because we're competing against a lot of other people. And right now I'm, I'm right there with you sluggish growth on my email subscription list. So let's look at the digital platforms. Where can you go. There's a pretty big distinction between social media that we're using to connect with other people right Instagram, Facebook, where we're intentionally out there being good literary citizens right we're intentionally out there sharing other people's work. And the platforms that we use to actually build our business. So these are business building platforms that's why I don't have Facebook on there it's why I don't have Instagram on there. Can you use them. Yes, should you use them. No, I'm going to be 100% honest with you, do not build your business on Facebook, it will, they will change Facebook will change. Okay, and when it does, you will, you'll be stuck right because you built your business there and there's nothing you can do about it, and they've been they've done this before, about three years ago the most popular thing to say, was don't bother getting a website. Facebook is the best place you'll find everybody there so everybody built their Facebook pages right they didn't build website pages they built Facebook pages instead. And now three years later everybody's going, nobody ever comes to my Facebook page because they change the algorithm and now the only people that see it are the people that like it. I can't get any new likes on my Facebook page I'm like yeah I know that's because they didn't. They told you come here build your stuff. And then they just said, you know we're not going to, we're not going to support that or appreciate that. Anyway, so just going to go with probably not the thing to do. It is to Leslie's point very hard to build, but they're making it easier right companies are making it easier. So, where can you go to build these things. So I put tiktok out there I don't have a huge a lot I don't have a lot of experience tiktok. One of my students did a presentation on how to run tiktok. So if you're interested in that, I can share that with you. So tiktok Twitch and YouTube are basically where people are building their video content. It's hard to be found on YouTube because there's so much stuff there, but once you build your channel there things stay pretty much the same. So as you start sending people the link to subscribe to your channel, your channel will stay the same, and the way you're able to monetize on YouTube has not changed. The more subscribers you have, the more likely they are to try to start putting ads on yours right on your on your videos. Once the ads come on your videos you get a cut of the ad revenue when people see it. So there's, it's pretty clear how you can start earning revenue through ads on YouTube, and twitch is the same and tiktok is the same. They'll be pretty clear with you about what it looks like and how to do it. And there are people out there who will, especially on YouTube, who have put videos up of how to build your business on YouTube. So that might be worth taking a look at too but more than anybody I would say if you're going to go look at who makes who's built a business on YouTube that's worth it. Yeah super chat they take 30% that it's huge. Here's where I would say, because Jim to your question what should you use that won't do that. The reason the gamers are using the twitch platform is because they don't do it. But what you could use if you want to do live streams, and you want to enable people to engage with your live streams is that you can use a platform called stream yard and I'll put that in the chat so you can use it so you can find it stream yard we use stream yard for all of our live streams studio that broadcasts to those platforms. So it's not a platform in and of itself. It's a studio to record those live streams and it will keep your live streams you can store them on the stream yard site, or you can download them. You can do them just as a recording it doesn't have to be a live stream, and you can send it directly to your Facebook page right so you're basically broadcasting on Facebook, but stream yard is where the video lives, if that makes any sense. And when you do that people can chat with you on Facebook right and in the stream yard studio while you're streaming, you can see their chat coming up and you can interact with them and that particular way without having to worry about YouTube or Facebook taking any kind of cut of that. So something to think about is to maybe use stream yard and just stream toward YouTube and just use those instead of letting instead of using their streaming service. Just use them as the broadcast channel might be the way to do that. On the audio side I put up SoundCloud and Spotify and Clubhouse admittedly as I'm not a musician. I don't have a lot of experience with this but my friends who are musicians, they favor SoundCloud for its usability but they say Spotify is easier to get found. And then Clubhouse is a members only group, but if you can get into Clubhouse you can create some audio drop ins. If you and a collaborator want to just be having discussions about specific art or specific techniques and things like that, and then you want to allow people to listen in on those discussions and become part of your group, Clubhouse might be an opportunity for you. I just learned about Substack. It's basically a place where people are, a lot of writers are going to Substack. One of my favorites he wrote Fight Club, his name's Chuck Pollinick, and he is going to be serializing his next book on Substack. This is where people can subscribe to you and they can pay you a certain amount per month for access to your content. And then of course WordPress is just there if you want to build a blog and you can monetize your blog through WordPress as well. Most of the people that I know that have monetized blogs, they've used WordPress, they've been very happy with them. And then the last two, Patreon and Mighty Networks. Patreon again, people, you create your own page, you create your own community there. People have to go to Patreon, they have to log in, they have to create an account there, they have to connect their credit card to it. It's a little bit more labor intensive, but it is kind of like a set it and forget it, where people will start subscribing to you there or paying you every month. And then they'll kind of forget that they've done that. And if you're in it like a very low level $1, $3, $5, and you amass a large community there, you can really start to build a pretty good income. One of the writers that I followed Joanna Penn uses Patreon and she earns about $10,000 a month, just in people passively paying her $3 a month to have access to her content. Now you do on the community management side need to provide exclusive content for those members, because here on this last slide I'll tell you there's a couple of different types of customers. Your donors are the people that are simply giving you their money. They're not worried about getting anything in return. Your patrons are giving you their money, but they also want to be identified as having done so, right. And so they might want some exclusive content. And then your partners are the people that you promote them, and they promote you. So one of these three categories, all of these three categories can combine to make up your audience model right. I want to have a certain number of donors the South Carolina Writers Association members of the SCWA are donors for right on SC they simply send us checks whenever they can or give us money whenever they can. Our patrons are the people who are paying every month and we're sending them extra content. We're getting them behind the scenes footage we're giving them critiques of their work. And then our partners are people that sometimes they pay us and sometimes we pay them, but mostly we buy their books they buy our books we promote their events they promote our events. So think about these different categories and how you organize your community around these categories to try to give them what they need, while also getting what you need to develop your source of revenues, your sources of revenue. Okay, I kind of flew through this last piece, because I want to leave time for questions. So I'm going to leave this slide up while I take questions, and we can kind of work through this last piece together. Jim, did these answer the questions for you, or did you want to go back to that other slide questions about thank you a lot of great info. Could you talk a little more about, again, these different subscriptions. I do know about Patreon but I didn't know that the details, just a little bit about subscription or monthly donor thing you could say a little more about that. Yeah, so Patreon is actually a fantastic platform to be able to build a community where people are subscribed. They pay a certain amount every month. They are they organize their people into tiers. So somebody can come at you get to decide what tiers you want to offer you get to name those tiers you get to decide what benefits they're going to get at each of those tier levels. And then you can run your entire business on Patreon you when you log in as a creator, it will tell you how many people have benefits coming to them right, they've been paying for two months three months four months whatever. There's a particular benefit coming to them. So you need to send them whatever that benefit is right. So it's a great way to be able to manage the full platform. The challenge is getting individual donors right to come to Patreon and sign up and actually put their money into Patreon because for as long as we've had it for the radio show until I sit down with people and I go come with me, let me sign you up for Patreon, because it's not like a Facebook where they already have an account, or you know even Instagram or YouTube where they can just go to YouTube and like, you know here let me just send you some money right, it's not like that, they have to actually build a brand new account with Patreon, and that has been probably the biggest barrier to entry to there. So the creators I know podcasters specifically are using Patreon, because you can put audio content up behind the scenes kind of extra audio content, and we'll put some things out there that we don't release to anybody else, until our patrons have had a chance to see it. And so that's the real advantage there is that you can convince people to come and support you, and then you can provide them with these benefits in that particular way. I highly recommend Patreon it's a very easy to use. And one is my ID networks and mighty networks is mostly for people who have not necessarily artistic ventures, but they have business ventures consultants do this a lot and corporate trainer trainers and things like that. They'll build their mighty networks out because mighty networks allows you to create classes, where you can actually put up webinars, and you can put up little mini lessons and things like that mighty networks. So the YouTube when they charge 30 I go to sites and it's kind of fun and people do the super chats but they take 30%. When you're on Twitch, can you do the same thing like a super chat without having to give the company like 30%, how does that work on Twitch or is there something similar to YouTube without having to do the 30%. Yeah, my knowledge twitch is that way, because the game and I would say the only reason I know that is because the gamers are using it right. And most of the gamers are using it because they're not necessarily building a business around this. So they don't have a lot of sources of revenue so they don't want to spend a whole lot of money supporting it so they're using twitch instead. But I'm not entirely sure right like I would say it probably does require just a little bit more investigation there. My suggestion is always to use StreamYard, because StreamYard allows you to post your to put your videos anywhere you want. And then you can isolate your chats to to maybe to Facebook or something like that as opposed to using the super chat. Dr. Wynne we got some questions in the chat. The first question from SuperBrownsh wants to know would you consider LinkedIn as a platform? Yeah, I do. The challenge with LinkedIn is that most of the good features are behind their paywall. And LinkedIn is really originally set up for job seekers. And so their primary focus is on the job seeker side. But there are a lot of people that are out there building their expertise. And I think the idea there is to build your expertise so people will hire you. So if you're out there, if you're selling consulting services or you're selling, I don't know empowerment and services or some other kind of coaching, and that kind of thing. That's where people on LinkedIn are going to look for experts and business related fields. I probably wouldn't suggest that artists spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, unless of course you're looking to grow your studio or your record label or something to that effect. I mean I'm not entirely sure how LinkedIn would be effective or artists. Most of the people who are there are looking to hire somebody in a professional business capacity. The next question is from Shanetta Sprig. She wants to know, is there a resource or class for better public speaking and articulating our service and products? Yeah, it's a great question. Shanetta, I would recommend all day long a Toastmasters International. If you'd like to get better at public speaking, it's not a chance to right off the bat start talking about your products. But it is in general the best public speaking education for the money that you could possibly get. If you go to Toastmasters.org you can find chapters all over the world. And I know there's at least three or four operating here in Columbia. They meet pretty regularly. They're very regimented in terms of they follow their Roberts rules of order. There's specific roles for every single meeting. There's a tremendous amount of discipline associated with this public speaking that they're doing there. The rigidity of it is like why I'm not in it anymore. But I did get into it when I first started coaching and teaching and that kind of thing. And it was amazing. For the price that you pay, because I think it's like $90 a year, and they meet twice a month. So you're talking about 24 meetings for 90 bucks. I mean, for the price, it is crazy valuable, the amount of practice and polish that you get from Toastmasters. I'm a Toastmaster myself. Are you really? I didn't know that. I'm a member of a women's club in Columbia. And Shenetta, if you, I can send you the link to Toastmasters and I can also recommend you to a club that I'm a member of in Columbia if you, I'll put that information in the chat for everybody. Yeah, that's awesome. Toastmasters is fantastic. And they were, we had a chapter for the company that I worked for. So it was just people who worked for our company that were in the chapter. But we followed the rules and all that. And we, man, we all learned a lot. Those of us who were in it, we got much, much better. Other questions? No more questions in the chat right now. All right, because we're right at one o'clock and I didn't want to keep you over a good consultant always ends early. Well hopefully this was helpful. Okay. I want to make sure that you were done. This was such great information case. I think all of our attendees gathered a lot of good information and they can just get the chat. Yeah, you're getting guys to thank you. Yeah, good, good, good, good. Great. And if there's anything y'all need always, send me a note. I'm glad to answer any questions. I'm always glad to talk to people to get on the phone for a few minutes and just talk about the path that I've taken and what I've done to build my writing stuff. I'm just grateful to all of you for being here and to the OBO and the Women's Business Center and the original library, all of you guys have been supportive of me and my business for a long time. So if there's anything I can do to help y'all just file me and send me a note. I'll be glad to. This is wonderful. And the great thing about this webinar is you actually have some things that you can apply. You can go and look at your business right now and leave this and apply some of these strategies that you've shared with us. So what I will do is send a copy of the recording and also a survey. We love to get feedback from everyone so that we can make sure that we're providing information that is helpful for you. And it looks like Casey's going to provide you with a spreadsheet in our chat probably in just a few seconds. Yep. So you will get that from our office. And if there is any additional questions you may have, Talina just added the Toastmasters information. That's great. Thank you so much, Talina. And Casey has added the document. And expect an email from us. For those of you that added your name to the chat for the newsletter, we'll add that and you'll get that on Monday. And then also the ones that did not register if we have your email in the chat, we'll make sure to send you all the information we're going to send to everyone else. So thank you all for joining us. This was wonderful. We look forward to our continued partnership with Casey to provide this information to our creative entrepreneurs. Excellent. So I hope everyone has a great weekend. Take care of yourself and each other and let us know if there's anything we can do for you. Thanks, everybody.