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Chris: I actually, somebody asked me on Twitter the other day, she said, “I’ve been offered this illustration gig.” It’s doing sort of a magic card kind of thing and she’s like basically…I think $98 to paint this card and she said, “Is that too low?” And I said, well how long would it take you to paint it? And I can’t remember what she said, but she’s like, “Well, not counting revisions, I think it’s a total of ‘x’ number of hours,” and I was like okay, well minus taxes and whatever else I factored in. I can’t remember off the top of my head, I was like, you’re basically it adds up to about $3.48 per hour. It’s like, you would be better off working in fast food.
Justin: Yep, yep.
Chris: Oh, so no Josh I never agreed to royalties, I would rather create my own thing and if I do that with a partner which I do all the time now. I just always want to work with friends, and fortunately that has been working out. I personally want to always work with friends and if I am going to create an actual business venture, then…royalties are too complicated. It’s just too much to deal with, and who’s going to keep track of all that? And it’s such a contingency, so it’s either a partnership among friends and we’re both investing in it and we’re going to split the revenue or it’s just completely for free and completely for pleasure and just something that I’m doing because I love making comics or whatever the case is.
Justin: Absolutely, I feel like comics as a whole, and I don’t mean I beat this to a pulp, but I feel like comics as a whole is sort of moving into like this royalty type realm for some comic production houses. I feel like I had to chase some of these guys around in order to get money. And this is after months, like hey man I finished my book, just wondering, I need money. Can I have some that’s owed to me. And I think it’s making the business worse.
Chris: Yeah. I completely agree. So there’s one kind of question that he asks in kind of a transitional way but I think maybe it’s good to wrap up with. He says, “How do I make the kind of connections I need?” And in other words, I think…it sounds to me and judging from the way that you wrote this Josh, it sounds like you subconsciously understand that this is a crappy deal. That’s what I’m saying, like to me and maybe I’m reading into it but it sounds to be like you’re saying I don’t have a lot of faith in this, I want to believe this could be something cool but I don’t and how do I get the kind of connections I need? And obviously this is an entire can of worms, this is an entire Oatley Academy course worth of information that this question unlocks but maybe we could quickly just go around and give one tip to help Josh find clients that actually have money to pay him. You can start, Lora.
Lora: Well, I think that doing work for free isn’t horrible, it just depends on who and why you’re doing it for free. And so I think that instead of taking that time that you would be working with some guy you’ve never met and helping to come up with something great, you should spend that time making your own project. So you should just take that same amount of time and investment, make…tell a story…I don’t know, is it a book, is it an app, whatever it is and do your dream project on a scale that makes sense and get attention doing that and that will be inevitably the best work that you can put out because it will be the thing that you’re the most excited about because you get to set all of the parameters for it. And so, that becomes…well we actually talked about this on ChrisOatley.com recently, that becomes your showcase. And so from there, that attracts similar kind of work to you.
Chris: How about you Justin?
Justin: Yeah, I agree with Lora as well. And also, there is a…the world is small enough now with online technology and your phone, and I think there’s a value in building relationships. Most of the guys, a lot of the guys that I work with at Marvel and Stars and everywhere else, those were really good friends of mine for a long time. And after a while, you start to build a trust which is basically what a relationship is, it’s a friendship with more trust built into it. So you know who you’re dealing with right off the bat and working with people like that, that’s way better than, “Hey, my name is whatever, can you do this for me? I promise I’ll pay you when we make millions of dollars.” I mean, I think there’s a value in having patience and building that relationship. I would say…I mean there’s lots of places online now where you can start to do that even around the world.
Chris: Yeah, that’s fantastic. I recently heard it said that we get so focused on trying to get other people into our network that we forget why would someone want you in their network. And that’s your goal, your goal isn’t to get people into your network, that’s a selfish self-centered path that is wrought with frustration. What you want is to be the person that everybody wants in their network and that means getting out there and just like they said, help people. Just help people all the time, no strings attached, nothing up your sleeve, behind your back or whatever. Just help people unconditionally and you will be amazed at how people just want to help you. If we just take care of each other, we’ll all be taken care of.
Justin: Yep. Scratching everybody’s back, you know. Seth Godin has a lot, he talks about this topic a lot, hiring clients and working with people and building relationships. I would recommend his blog.
Chris: Oh yeah, that’s good.
Justin: Yeah man, I’m addicted to that guy. Thanks, Chris.
Chris: Godin is awesome. Um yeah, and then we will also link to the various sites and resources mentioned in this segment as well as in the episode proper. Thanks for joining me for this little lark Wing leaders!
Lora: No problem!
Chris: Thanks guys.
Justin: That was fun.
Chris: And thank you Josh for your fantastic questions. If you would like to submit a question for the Q&A segment, head to ChrisOatley.com/contact.
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