S2E15 - How Does.... Money?

I like the fact that we release stuff, but it's not. We're not doing this mostly. Yeah, it's not really for that.

It definitely. The release part definitely helps me, though, because if it was just us talking, I like you guys. You guys are my friends, so, like, if I don't do what I'm supposed to do, you guys aren't going to give a. It's fine. But, like, if we release it, though, there's that little extra push to, like, you know, there could be other people that hear it. So I'm.

Do.

I do glad that we. That we posted eventually.

Yeah, me too. And. And, well, or at least that we. We record it with the frame that it's going to be released.

Yes.

Like, if, like, like, that's the thing mostly. It's just I don't want to stress if something was to happen and, like, it didn't work or whatever, you know.

Like, we've had that happen several times.

Yeah. That's why I feel comfortable, like, at times, like, I released the Charlie Brown trombone cut with, like, we didn't get your audio one time, and it's like, yeah, that. That doesn't bother me. Like, that's. That's really the. Like, there's no use in releasing it. There is tons of use in it. It just means that I don't stress about the fact that, like, something may screw up.

Yeah.

That's why, like. Like, right now I'm on my phone on Riverside instead of, like, using. I'm getting laptop out or whatever, because I'm just like, I wonder what this will end up being, like, if it works or not. And, like, let's test it.

Why not?

Yeah. If it does, then great, and if it doesn't, then, oh, well, we didn't. Like, maybe it'll be weird, but who care, you know?

Like, we tried it.

It's the time for experimentation.

Low stress, low stakes.

Exactly. Yeah, it was. If it was adding stress, then it's counterproductive.

Yeah.

Well, I guess we should probably actually start the episode at some point, so.

Yeah. Someday.

Hello and welcome to behind the Locked Doors, a. An outside podcast sometimes where you could probably hear, like, I think it might have been a woodpecker out there. I heard like, a. It sounded like a. So. But maybe it's a jackhammer. Very far away.

Scott is podcasting from nature Today.

Like, yeah, my. My deck. Like, my little apartment deck. But, yes, I am Scott Paladin. I am working on a horny werewolf audio drama called It Takes a Wolf.

And I'm Sam Stark. I am decidedly not working on Azim west right now. But I'm supposed to be.

Hold on. I just got, I'm Jack and I just got an alert on Google Chrome that says performance issue alert. This tab is using extra resources to improve your performance. Let Chrome make it inactive. Please don't do that. Oh, my God. And I'm also working on Addison West. I'm trying to actually work on it. I did not do check in. I didn't do anything this week.

Yeah, my check in is that I, I kind of was on the verge of burnout, I think for the last two weeks. I realized, like, I, I did not get, like, nearly as much done as I was hoping to.

Well, hopefully what you did is take it easy and take a break because you had a flurry of activity there for a second.

Yeah, yeah.

No, no, no. The answer is no, that I did not. I, I did not just, like, give myself the grace to do that. Really what it was. Because I only realized like yesterday what was going on, which is like, oh, I feel super bad because I'm not doing things like I should be doing. And then like yesterday I was like, oh, yeah, it's probably because I, like, have been pushing myself super hard.

So, yes, definitely.

I thought I would be two weeks closer to casting call, and I think I'm still two weeks out from the casting call, the first stage of casting call going out. So how did y'.

All. Okay to be. Hold on. To be fair to you, Scott, I remember you saying that you wanted to get on here and have a discussion about paying people and rates Kickstarter and before you even like, put casting call out anyways, so we had needed to.

Do that before, but that, that, that, yeah. And I, but I haven't, I need to have more. I've also got, like, to write up all of my character descriptions and.

Sure, sure, sure.

And pull, pull my lines there. This was not the only reason I, I, I legitimately experienced an amount of burnout over the last couple weeks. So that's, that's the excuse. It's not that, like, oh, I, I couldn't. No, no. It's like, I, which is, that's the, it's important to, like, be realistic about these things. Right?

Totally. Because this is a real thing that happens when you're working on, like, a long project and you, like, hit a point where you're really close to finishing one section of the project and you really dig your heels in and go, okay, I'm going to fin. You do that. And then you're like, whoa, I'm so tired. My brain is tired. Like, I need to step back for a second.

Sometimes the homework is taking a fucking step back.

A fucking break. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

As. As I would encourage everyone to do.

Yes.

But, yeah.

Anyway, Sam, update.

I know that you. Your update is no update, but let's just formalize that, right?

I. I always. I always come in here and I'm like, I didn't get anything done because it's like, you know, I'm talking about the thing that I'm talking about on, like, with us, but, like, that is 110,000% not true because, like, I actually did a whole bunch of stuff. I got so many things done. I got so many new jobs. I got so, so many things. So, like, I'm. I'm actually so productive, and I've done so much good stuff recently.

None. It just.

None of it was as in west, unfortunately.

Yeah, that's. That's how it goes. Sometimes I feel like I don't remember whether it was last week or the previous when Mike came and was like, hey, I didn't do anything on my project, but that's because I write audio dramas for money, and I have deadlines, and I have to hit those deadlines.

Exactly. That's kind of what happened to me. I had. I had to finish an audiobook, like, at the deadline, I. I landed a narration of a Goosebumps book.

So.

Awesome.

Oh, my God.

Yeah. So my childhood dream, like, coming true, basically. And I got a. Over at Bloody fm. I do dialogue editing for SCP archives now. Like. Yeah. So there's, like, a whole bunch of other stuff that I'm doing really well.

Other stuff going on.

Yeah. And so, like, I can't just put a deadline for an audiobook involving other people, like, to the side while I work on my passion project. Like, that doesn't make any sense, especially when I'm making money for that and I'm not making money for as in West. But the nice thing. The nice thing about your own passion project, the thing that you love and you are doing because you love it, is that it's kind of always percolating in your head. And I think for me, the longer it kind of sits in my head, the more it kind of expands and grows. Because I have said a thousand times when we're doing this podcast that I am a. The opposite of a planner. I'm a pantser. I'm like, it's a lot better if I can just sort of sit on an idea for a while and then try it four or five different ways. So it's kind of nice that I've written the, like, the. The episodes that I have several times because they get better every time. So it's fine. It's okay.

Yeah. Cool. And Jack, how did you do the last couple weeks?

I did not. I did not do. I did again, like Sam, I did other things. I didn't get any work done on as in West. I need to dig out the front half of the pilot episode and tweak as his dialogue a little bit here and there. Not like anything major, but just like a little like, consistency stuff. I planned on doing that last night. I didn't do it. I. I don't have an excuse. I just didn't do it. Well, I do. I'm preparing for like, a convention that's halfway across the country that I'm traveling to next month, and I'm trying to prepare a whole bunch of prints to bring with me. And also the like, big ceramic show that I do every year that is the same weekend, which I won't even be in town for. So I'm trying to like, make some stuff to send with my compatriots to that show to sell on my behalf because I won't be there. So, like, I have other going on. But no, I didn't. I didn't do anything on Aston West.

Yeah.

On the record.

Yeah, that's. That. That's pretty normal. Oh. I guess the. For the audience. I mean, I guess almost nobody who listens to this probably wasn't involved, but since we met last, I think we. That we haven't talked since we did the table read.

Yeah. And it went so good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That one. That went fantastically. Just to give the. On the off chance, there's anybody who's listen. Who listens to the podcast who was not there, which I. I know. I know what our numbers look like. I don't think there's anybody who. I think everybody who listens to the podcast might have been on that conference.

Like, might have participated.

Yeah, yeah, might have been participated. But there might be a couple of you all out there. So it went really well. It gave me really good data, actually. I. I will admit that part of the reason I did it was as a promotional thing so I could get it on people's. Get this project on some more people's radars.

No, totally.

Yeah. Which was. Which was a real thing. But. And I was like, well, also it'd be nice to hear people's Reactions and stuff. And it was really important because I, like, I had to take away that my later episodes got much bigger reactions. And I real. And I knew that was kind of after I'd found the voice, it took me like two or three episodes to sort of find the voice of that story. And I was like, oh, there's a couple of things that are missing for episodes one and two that I. The same kind of things that got big reactions later. So I'm like, okay, well, if. Since these are going to be episodes one and two are, like, where you sit your footing down and get people on board, I should go back and revise to put some of those. Some of that same stuff in there. You know, a little bit more wild world building. I'll just be a little bit more audacious with, like, jokes and sexual innuendo and stuff, because, like, that's what the podcast is.

Yeah.

So I've already started some of that. I think I've. I think I'm on the right track for most of it, so.

Nice.

That was super helpful. It was really fun to beat everybody. It was really great hearing people, sight unseen, read the. Read the dialogue and to people reacting in real time. And then also, of course, it's amazing when you're like, people are just like, oh, I'm just gonna throw a really good performance out for, like, this weird. For just like the table read part of it, you know, like, people are taking it very seriously and stuff. It was great. Well, not too seriously, but it was great.

Yeah, no, we had a fun time. Like, it was. It was a blast to do it.

Yeah, it was really good. Yeah. So this week I would like to talk some more about the business side of things because I am starting to prep. But this is one of the things that's. I'll admit, part of my. My lack of progress this week is also because I am beginning to worry more about crowdfunding and because I've been starting to do some of this budgetary stuff, figuring out, like, I revised my budget a little bit. I think I'm probably gonna do the first two episodes. I'm gonna at least cast the first two episodes in phase one. Possibly I'll pay for producing the first two episodes as well. That way I have a little bit more to show from it. But also because I would like to. I would like to nail down some people that don't show up at episode one, but two in episode two, so I can include them as part of that casting call. And then that sort of. I'm I'm, I'm starting to work out, like, what's my budget for phase one, which is episodes one and two? Kind of preliminarily at the moment that I'll be paying for sort of the initial setup costs and then starting to figure out, like, how much I need to be asking for in. When we get to crowdfunding, because it's, you know, I've, I, I've got some. I've had money set aside for this project for a little while now, but it's not going. It's definitely not enough to pay for the entire podcast.

Yeah.

So the. There's some interesting distinction, like, there's some interesting distinctions about, like, do you, do you want to pay by the hour? Do you want to pay by the word? Stuff like that. I love Yalls input on it, especially Sam, because I know you've got experience with this. Jack, you were really helpful in finding a rate sheet that somebod posted, which I looked through and looks really useful as well as I sort of figure this out because I'd like to have it sort of nailed down before I start, like, advertising how much I'm going to pay people when I'm.

Exactly. Yeah. For the record, my wife found that sheet and sent it to me because she was like, hey, you said Scott wanted to pay people. Like, I don't know what audio drama rates are, but this, like, server that I'm in has collected a pretty good list of.

Yeah, it's really, really good. Yeah. So it looks like. And the range is not like, it's not like outside of the range of what I had been thinking. I sort of expected somewhere between. I've been thinking in. In by word counts, but that's maybe not the best way to do things. The typical answer is, well, so like, I've been thinking somewhere between 10 and 20, which is kind of what everybody. 20, 10 and 20 cents per word. It's kind of the range that I've been thinking of. That seems really in line. Seems in line with what other people have been talking about. That being said, I think if you're going to be paying something like that, then you're probably. That's for the expectation of I'm going to be just sending y' all a script, maybe meeting with y'. All, maybe there's a table read, but mostly it's your recording on your own. For people that are recording simultaneously, it seems like paying by the hour is much more of a logical step in that case.

Yeah.

Because you're, you're controlling people's time and saying, hey, you're going to show up at this time for this thing.

So you can block out that time for however long.

Everything that I'm. Everything that I'm in that's paid doesn't actually distinct. Like, they don't separate those two things. It mostly is just by. Well, okay, so there's two. There's two different things. There's a couple. A couple that I do are paid, like, by the episode. And that I think personally that gets kind of. Because you have people that have way less words, obviously, than other people do. So you have somebody come in and say like three lines, and then you have another person who has like several hours of work, you know, and so I don't believe in really paying by the episode, obviously, but so by the word obviously is the most, like, obvious way to do that. And like, with Shelterwood, I was paid basically for the word. And it didn't really matter if I was doing async or not. It was just how many words I said into a microphone that went, you know, that actually were published into the episode. So. Because you got to think about, like, yeah, you know, you. You do have a lot more time when you're recording as a group. Like, you're there and you are like, this is the time that you are putting aside to record this. But like, if you were doing async, you would still put a bunch of time aside because, like, when I'm recording an audiobook, I only get paid for the time that the audiobook actually is. Doesn't matter how long I took to do it. So.

Right. Yeah, the. The only. The. The other consideration there is, at least within the US you do have to worry just a little bit. On something this scale, it's not going to matter, but you have to worry a little bit about the distinction between a W2 and a 1099 employee, which presumably basically any voice actor role is going to probably be 1099, but. Yeah, almost. Almost certainly, especially at these scales. But they're, you know, like, in theory, the. The IRS could come after you or. Or the. Not under this administration, but the Labor Relations Board could do it. It's not gonna happen. Like, all this stuff's gonna be funded, so it doesn't matter. It's a. It's a Wild west. But in theory, if you are saying when and how people need to be doing the. Doing the work, then they are much more like a W2 employee than a 1099 employee. The distinction being, for anybody who cares, a W2 employee is like a full, like not a full time, but is a traditional employee where you would show up for hours of work and you are sort of being bossed around by a boss. 1099 is specifically for independent contractors. And the difference between those things in tax reasons is that like W2, the employer is responsible for withholding and doing a bunch of tax calculations and things like Social Security withholding and all that stuff. And also if you get up to a certain amount, also you have to provide benefits and things like overtime and all that stuff. Again, at this scale, that's like not going to be a distinction that ever matters. 1099 employees as independent contractors. The employer no longer is responsible for all of those things. This is why, as an aside, lots of businesses try to incorrectly classify W2 workers as 1099 workers in order so that they don't have to do all of this extra paperwork and provide benefits and all these things. So if you, if you ever find yourself in a situation where you're being classified as a 1099, but you're just like showing up and doing a regular job, you should contact employment lawyer. They will work on specific story. But anyway, sorry, that was an aside.

But yeah, in podcasting though, it's, it's so rarely like even the, even the huge productions with like actual celebrities and stuff, like everybody. Everybody's a contract worker, so.

Exactly. And, and it's one of the reasons why, like, if you ever do business with like, with a, with a podcasting company, they'll probably require you to invoice them for your time.

Yep.

Or your, for your labor, because you are essentially, they're treating you as if you were another business. It's on my to do list of things, which is that because I found I find the invoicing process to be a huge pain in the ass when I'm doing it. So it's not that difficult for someone like me to set up a invoicing system that people can. That I can basically say, here is your invoice. Yeah, please fill out the five forms.

Fill it out.

Yeah, there's like, there's systems for that. I can't say that that's something that everybody will be able to set up really easily. But I know that I'm going to do that to make it easier on my, on my contractors when that time comes.

That'll be nice.

Just another thing I gotta add to my tubulist.

Yep.

There are good templates out there though too, for invoices. When I started doing, doing like independent illustration work, I literally just googled like, what's a good illustrator's invoice and just sort of like mocked up one that had all the relevant lines.

Yeah, that's how I started doing stuff for audiobooks.

That's. I mean. And that's how you do it. On the same token, I will either have to find a template for a contract, or I might have to commission as a contract template or employees, which basically says, here's. Here's what I'm expecting from you. What, here's what I'm going to pay you. Here's what we do if things go wrong. Luckily, with that, you know, in a. In a giant world, you'd have a lawyer draft one of those up every time you hire somebody. Small businesses like this, it's not uncommon for you to either grab a well established contract or if you're just to, you know, make sure that you get things right, contact a lawyer. Be like, I need you to create a sample contract that I can reuse with different employees. Mm. There's lots of that stuff that is now on my radar of things that I need to do. But that sounds reasonable. Like the sort of, I don't know, 15 cents an hour, 17 cents an hour. Like that sounds pretty reasonable to the two of y'. All. Yes, that's kind of what I'm thinking. Okay.

Yeah. And it's. It's really cool. Like, podcasting world is. Is so diverse and so fun and so easy to get into. And you can, like, whatever you think is fair and whatever works best for you is pretty much what's gonna happen. Like, if you want to pay them per word, then you're gonna pay them per word. And if you want to pay them for episode, you're gonna pay them per episode. And you know what? Everybody who gets on the show is gonna be like, hell, yeah, I'm getting paid. So, yeah, it's gonna be.

It's gonna be fine. That is very. That's. That's that you are correct. The other thing I will note is, because I meant. I meant to say it a couple times is I will. I. I'm also a big believer on minimums where it's like, you're gonna get paid. I don't know what the minimum will be. I'm gonna look at what it is. But like, if you're gonna be paid as a role, you're gonna get 20 bucks at least, or you're gonna get $50 at least or whatever. Like, even if it's like 10 words, which is not exactly fair, to the same person who's doing like 6, 000 words or whatever or, you know, and then is gonna get paid.

I mean, but it is because you're like showing up to do that job.

Yeah.

You know, out the gate.

I feel like it's only a little bit. It's only a little bit unfair. Like, it's like you're. You get the big role, you're gonna get the big thing.

Exactly.

You get the big. Hey. But the other person does five minutes of work, but they also lose out on doing what I would consider to be a larger, more fun role.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah. Okay, so that's. That's what we're probably gonna do. That means I can calc one thing that is nice about. I will say make sure if you are thinking about things like I'm gonna pay by the word, make sure whatever script writing software you have has a robust calculation for that. Because the fact that I am able to go through and like break out by character exactly how many. How much work, how many words they get is super helpful in terms of like, literally, I can make a spreadsheet. I've got to get it started, where I put all of my totals in and then say, here's how much I'm paying for sentence. And like, here is. Here's the breakdown. Here's what. Everybody's got all these long get paid based off of that calculation. And being able to do that is a huge. You do not want to be manually counting words.

No, but.

And you and you. And it is pays to understand what your report, gender, what, how you're generating that data. Because like, if I, like if I export all of my scripts as a. What's called a fountain file, which is really. Just a really, really, really basic. Txt file with like character name line, character name line. Really, really simple. I get different numbers for like word counts and stuff than if I ask my main program to do it. And the. The response is because it already knows to filter out things like character names are not part of the total word count. And like the. It also doesn't count. Like it. Obviously the descriptions are not character dialogue, so it doesn't get counted anywhere for that stuff. Like, so like a little bit of understanding about that is also a good thing to do.

Yeah. Is there a way to make it not count? Like stage direction that's embedded in a line of dialogue or whatever?

Yes, I. Well, I have to double check. I could, I could test this, but I believe that it doesn't count parentheticals or writers As I recall. Because, like, you wouldn't like. That's not a thing. They're gonna. That's not a word.

Yeah, they don't say that part aloud. So. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I believe that it is smart enough to count that. But like, I have done calculations based off of my fountain scripts before and gotten wildly different numbers because it counts all of the stage directions, counts all the Riley's. Every character name. There was a. As an aside, I have run some reports off of all this stuff because it's kind of interesting. And one of the things that I don't. I understand why it's there because it's for like, content rating. Like, how much? How much? If you're going to be PG, PG 13, you know, R, whatever. But it'll give you a profanity report off of each of the episodes. This is Fade in that I'm talking about, which I think is great because it. To me, it's more like a goal. It's like, oh, how high can I get this number? And I ran this report and I did it, like, I could do it by fully into all of the different episodes and how much swearing each one has and of what different type. And I'm like, man, episode four has like, literally like five times as many uses of the word as I normally use. Like, it's just. It's just wall of wall. I'm like, what the hell happened to that episode? And then I realized I have a character. I have a character named. Called the Up. And I'm like, oh. Every single version of his diet, every single time he shows up in. In. I don't think. I think I counted in the profanity report because I guess I wasn't thinking that people would put a profanity in the actual character names. Yeah, yeah, that's fine.

That's really funny. Every time he shows up, everyone's like.

Oh, yeah, okay, yeah, so I need to get. I need to get some more of that rolling and also get my casting stuff done.

Do you think you are gonna record.

As much of it synchronously as you can or are you gonna do more of it Async?

I. A lot of it can be done Async, not. Like, obviously all of the narration can be done asynchronously and that's for both the narrator and the self, probably also for the pillar and the changeling. All of that. In theory, you're not going to have as much because you're not. That those voices don't interact with other voices. It's much easier to just be like, this is what it's supposed to be. You know, you're going to base it off the script entirely.

Yeah.

So obviously that's a big chunk of it that can be done asynchronously. And then a lot of the smaller roles I think would be just fine too, to do it asynchronously, like be able to hand people, you know, script and say, hey, I liked your take on it. Here's kind of what I'm expecting. This is one of the things that, that I have learned from other productions, which is that I, I am going to refuse just to hand somebody a script. I know that, that we've had a discussion previously about how like the more professional a thing is, the more they just kind of give you what you need and then expect you to do a good job. But I can't, I can't work that way. I didn't like it when I was an actor. I, I'm not going to do it as a director. I'm going to at least meet with everybody and have a, you know, 30 minute conversation with everybody about all their, about what they're doing. So. But smaller roles, for sure, they could be done asynchronously. The biggest question though is I have my principles. So like the fool, the pillar, at least maybe the changeling as well, or presumably the changeling as well in that group. And it's like, maybe synchronous to that section would be really, really useful. Mm. And. But I'm.

Because that's a chemistry thing.

Yeah, exactly. There you get so much out of those two interacting with each other and it needs to be there. So at the very least, even if it's, Even if I ended up. They ended up doing final products asynchronously, which maybe that's better for, for some, for some people. But at the very least we got to do a table read where we get together and read the scripts and, and try dialogue out and allow some improv and stuff. I think there's no way I could do those principles without some of that at least. And maybe the whole thing gets recorded synchronously at the same time, but has to be. There has to be some amount of meeting each other and talking to each other and like learning what the other person's doing and like hearing their voice so that you. So even if we, Even if the final product ends up getting recorded asynchronously, the, the actors will still have it up, A. An understanding of what the other person would be doing, but maybe it goes, maybe it goes full synchronous on those. I'm not, I'm not entirely sure. Knowing that hearing from you, Sam, that like even when you've done synchronous recordings, you've gotten paid by the word, makes me feel less worried about, do I need to make the distinction now? We can do it a little bit later.

It just makes, it just makes so much more sense because the, the number of words that are going to be actually put out into the world in the podcast is going to be what it is and it really doesn't matter. It doesn' matter like how exactly you get them there, if that makes sense. You either do them by yourself and you do them a couple times or you do them in a recording with other people a couple times and you.

Do a couple takes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So. So all of this leads up to the, the thing that gives me a lot of stress is the idea of crowdfunding. I know how much I have money, how much I have for these first two episodes and I know how much work I'm going to be doing for them. Crowdfunding is one of those things where I'm like, I want like this will get made either way. Like if, if we did this as a Kickstarter and it didn't make its minimum and we don't get, I don't get the money, this will end up getting made. It'll just take longer because I will have to, you know, I will have to be the one to do it. Maybe, maybe I won't have to, I'll have to change rates or whatever like that to make it work. But I, this is one of those things where it's like, this is so like just to, to, you know, be admitted like this scares the shit out of me. That idea that like we'll do this and then it like we won't, you know, it won't, it won't work. Like we, you know, and maybe and not even for like reasons of I don't think this is projects good enough. I don't think people like it. But just for stupid stuff of like it's hard to break through into a really packed market full of already existent good content. Like there's just so much out there already. There's already so many Kickstarters and crowdfunders and stuff like that. And I, we, you know, I do not have a huge online following with a built in audience that I can, I can say, hey everybody, we need to get this going immediately so that all of that to say that I am making sure that I keep my expectations modest about what we do, about how much money we're going to be asking for so that I can, I can hopefully ensure the success of, of the actual crowdfunding round itself. You know, I don't want to be like, it would be much more if we want, if we went to a much more professional level about how the number of people I was going to hire, the number of stuff I was going to pay all this stuff and asked for, ended up asking for 20 grand. Well, like, I do not think I would be able to pull 20 grand off of a Kickstarter campaign necessarily. So I've done things from the beginning. The idea that like I'm going to play the narrator is there because I don't have to pay myself. And there's 50%, literally 50% of my voice acting costs dropped.

Literally. Yeah.

Literally half the cost of the, of that. And so there's other things like I'll probably be doing all of sound design in part because I, I like doing that, but also because, you know, again, that's, that's a whole other expense that we want to do. So all of that I'm, I'm keeping in mind as I sort of figure out what that's going to look like. Luckily there I have a sort of vague timeline of when that Kickstarter should happen. I probably am being stupid about how quickly I think that should happen. I probably have plenty of time. Like even if we, if I put the casting call out tomorrow, it runs for a month. Then we have that first section done. You know, I could take a year to produce those first two episodes if I really wanted to and then do a Kickstarter. That's. There's nothing worse about that than my idea that, oh, maybe it needs to happen in October or November. That's stupid. That's a completely arbitrary, self imposed thing. Except for the fact that I'm excited.

Yeah. On that. You've generated excitement within like the people who are interested in working on the project because like those of us who have watched you develop it are like, this is exciting. This project is cool and we all want to see it happen.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But there really isn't an actual deadline or hurry.

Yes. So my, my community, my writers community just recently started a business. We made a, basically a publishing business. We started a publishing house, I guess, and we're doing an anthology and we have all of our writers, we have, we have a couple artists, we have a designer, we have you know, everything. And we sent off our editor director to meet with somebody that was basically a Kickstarter expert. And she came back with, like, this enormous document of all of these things. And granted, granted, this is specifically for releasing, like, books, so it's not exactly the same as podcasting, but the. This woman is still a Kickstarter expert, and she had so many amazing things to say and stuff that you would just never think to do, because, you know, I've. I've been part of a Kickstarter, and I have been. Been a stretch goal a couple times. Like, my narrations have been stretch goals, but I've never been on the side of actually, like, making the Kickstarter.

Yes.

So there was so many things that I was like, oh, oh, yeah. Like, obviously, once you hear.

God, I never thought of that.

Yeah. And so she has a really good, like, timeline of when you need to start it. She also has all of these things, like, specific boxes you should check to not screw yourself over later. Like, so many things. And so I think what we should do is I should. Should either get that document from Camden or maybe I should have Camden come on and talk to you, because she learned. She learned so much about it. And again, it'll be a little bit different because it's for books, but it's still Kickstarters. It's still. It's still a Kickstarter thing. So it. There was just so much information. We were all extremely overwhelmed. So she might want to, like, cultivate, like, a couple kind of big ones that are really, you know, very helpful for all Kickstarting people and maybe send it to you or something, because, man, when she was reading off the list, I was like, wait, what? Oh, my God.

Oh.

Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Yeah, so there's so much more. There's so much more to putting. Yeah, there's so much more to putting together a Kickstarter than I ever really considered. But, you know, that's. That's everything. Like, oh, my God, there's, like, more fetches to this than I knew about.

Yeah.

But that would. That would probably help a lot if you. Yes, it sounds.

I mean, at the very least, I mean, even. Even if that's. I mean, like, even we might do all of that, and then I still might also get the contact info from that expert, if you can. If you have it to me, and then also go talk to her directly. Yep, that sounds. That sounds really useful. Thank you. I could. I could definitely make use of that. Yeah, that's the idea of like what the hell would stretch goals even be? Is a really good question. Like that. That is a pitfall I've seen other crowdfunding things do a lot of the time, which is that like they, the initial product, they have it really well structured, they have it really well planned out. They know what they're doing, they, you know, that's all. It's not that hard. Not gonna say it's not that hard to deliver on the initial project, but like, that's where you spend the bulk majority of your work. And then the people like come up with kickstart the stretch goals and they just like add them on. Sometimes during the campaign they add in additional stretch goals, but they haven't put the same kind of thought process into. If the amount of money we've put in here do we actually have the ability to execute on this stretch goal? Like all of that just is so much. They're Betsy people so much less prepared for.

Yeah, yeah.

And if they do what what this person talked about, if they do have stretch goals planned ahead, it's sometimes the stretch goals require a lot of money. And so she was saying if you. Again, this is books, so it's not going to be the same for podcasting. But she said specifically if, let's say your stretch goal or let's say your, your thing is a, is anthology or a book or something, and then your stretch goal is if you make like, you know, a thousand more dollars and they have some sort of like special edition, blah, blah, blah, you know, pin or whatever. And, and those pins cost like 25, $30 to make. It's like you've just totally screwed yourself. So she said make sure your stretch goals are easy to make, easy to do, very, very cheap. Maybe don't cost money at all. And I think, I think in podcasting that's really easy because with like podcasts you get like, people can do extra little things. Like you, you pay and you pay an actor a little extra little bit amount of money and they do like a special message dedicated to this one patron or whatever, you know. And then I think it as that the stretch goal thing is so. Works so much better for the audio medium, I think because you're not actually physically making stuff unless you're physically making stuff. But like a lot of the time you're not.

Yeah, the, the thing I would absolutely. That's a really good guiding principle. Like the. We're not doing a production of any physical items. We're not doing any manufacturing. We're not doing any kind of ordering from suppliers or anything like that. And so therefore trying to add that on during a stretch goal seems really dumb to me. Yes, but there are versions of that that you can do where, like, hey, we get to this stretch goal, we're going to release. We're going to commission an artist to make a series of, you know, portraits of all the characters or whatever that. And we just really, you know, that becomes part of the material and we release it as wallpapers for phones or, or desktops or whatever like that. So you can get the iris files from them. Oh, yeah, that. So there's stuff like that that could be really. I. They're absolute something that's been in the back of my mind sometimes. I seem to have forgotten occasionally is we could absolutely do some, like, major Arcana themed art. Because the way that everybody's set up as, like, archetypes, so they're like the fool, the Fiend, the. The Up. Yeah, all these things.

Like, it's already so easily translated.

There's a. There's a. There's a really easy setup there. So, yeah, that's probably something along those lines. And then, yeah, just avoid the temptation to do stuff like, oh, yeah, if we get to $30,000, we'll just make a whole second thing like, no, don't do that.

Yeah, don't do that.

Exactly. The. The other thing is, is a Patreon. And it's. It's kind of the same idea because you do, like, you unlock, you know, special perks for tiers or whatever. And I know with store 236, without giving away any spoilers, special Patreon content that's like specific characters. Sending you a voicemail like, oh, that's cool. Sending you a voicemail like that. We'll say your name or whatever. And we're considering, maybe you can even choose which character you want to have send you a voicemail. So, like that right there, that's really easy. Somebody could record it in like a minute, you know, like, it's not. It's not a big deal. And it's something that's really fun, that patron patrons will really enjoy, but cheaply. Cheaply does, you know.

Yeah, that's.

So the one thing I will. The one thing I'll say about that is that you probably want to, like, alert your actors when you're casting them that some, like, minor extra stuff may be asked of them as the Kickstarter goes along.

I think that actually they all. They all know. They already know.

I was gonna say that's actually That's a perfect. That's a perfect inclusion to do in something like a. A production contract when you. When you hire someone.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

To say, like, here is. If I want. I'm going to ask you to do extra work if I need you. If you need to produce another, you know, 30 seconds of content or whatever, here's what we're paying, here's what the rate is. Have. That's how we'll handle.

Yeah, that's a really good. Really good point.

So that's just like a line item in a contract.

Jackie's so smart.

Well, I've just seen it happen where, you know, you get, like, what, the word cast to do a part, and then you find out from the Kickstarter, like, stretch goals that you're gonna be required to do extra work. That is not what you. You wouldn't have to tell your actors that ahead of time.

Yeah, definitely.

Preferably in writing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the. Well, like, this is one of those things where just as a general overarching principle in all things, communication is key. Like, they're, you know, you just gotta be able to tell your actors and your. Everybody, your editors, your artists, everybody. Like that. Like, here is. Here's what we're expecting to do. Here's what I'm expecting from you. You know, here's what happens when we're done. And then if ever anything changes, you just gotta let people know before it's like a crisis, you know, before, like, you know, you know, let them know. Okay. Well, because most people. My experience, most people don't care if parameters change. If you tell them one thing and then you have to tell them another thing. Most people are like, oh, okay, great. Thank you.

Yeah. Like, thanks for letting me know.

Yeah, thanks for letting me know. Like, if you just, like, keep communication lines open and clear, then most people are the happiest that way. There are. There's the small end of the bell curve people who will be thrown off by that. Some people emotionally, because they just don't. Like, like, oh, well, you said this, but now we're doing this. Some people will get upset about it. And there's also people who just get super confused if you tell them different things multiple times. Yeah, that's no fault to anybody, but the vast majority of people prefer to be just informed and told early. And then if you need to correct later, just keep them informed. Like, just, you know, just make it as, you know, try to make it as clear as possible, you know, what you're doing. And, and set expectations and all that stuff. Don't blindside people. That's, that's always fun. Yeah.

Yeah. General. Good rule Gener.

Yeah.

Weird that we have to state that, but yeah, it's.

You do? Yeah.

Communication. What?

Yeah, well, I mean, like the amount of people who just never even consider other people's point of view, you know. Oh, well, they just never even did it. Oh well. Oh yeah. I guess I would upset my actors to find out that they're doing extra work in the Kickstarter, you know, like, they wouldn't even, it doesn't even track, you know, cross their mind.

I am trying so hard not to spill out just, just a gallon of tea right now. Oh, no, I've just seen some, bro.

Yeah, no, I, We. We. Yeah. Yeah. Geez. Well, we, we. Okay, so we've been talking for, for a minute and I think we've covered some good useful topics and stuff that I certainly have found helpful already. So let's go ahead and, and set our goals for the next two weeks and then we'll be good to go. For me, I am. How do I want to do this? I think I, I, I have to have my casting stuff ready to go. Not all of it, but like, I need to do all of that work that I put off the last couple weeks of, of setting out my character descriptions, doing all of my poll lines, all of that stuff. I need to have that ready to go. Even if I just do delay the, the casting call a little bit longer, maybe till September for other, you know, for other background reasons, I want to have that, I want to have that something that's my primary goal. Anything I get on top of that, that's great. But those are the things that I really need to get done.

So in the next two weeks, you want to write your character descriptions and pull the lines, the size, basically get.

The document ready to go where if I make decisions, even if I, if it's not finalized, then I can still change things. I want to have, you know, description of the show, what your expectations. What my expectations are how we're going to be handling, you know, like, do you do the, like the actual document construction? I might, I might sometimes. I might actually, you know, be ready to go sometime in the next two weeks, but that even if I don't, I want to have the document. Right. So that's my goal.

Nice. Okay, Sam, tell me a beautiful story. How are you feeling?

So the 13th through the 17th is Worldcon and it is being held in Seattle and I am paneling every single day. So, yeah, it's gonna be really cool. I'm actually the moderator of the Batman panel, so that's.

Oh, my God.

Amazing banger. So also, really, just quickly. I don't know if you guys know the Kingdom Come Deliverance games, but they're really, really incredible. And I'm on a panel with the creator, and I literally just want to cry.

Like, what's cool.

What the Am I gonna say, like, on this panel about indie video games that, like, anybody is gonna care about when he's on the panel with me? But anyway, sorry. Thank you. To go completely off topic. So the. But. But on the other side of that is I have, like, until that time where I don't have actually anything scheduled except to, like, get ready for worldcon, so. And I already have, like, my. My outlines for my panels and stuff already put together, so I think I'm pretty much ready to go.

Nice.

So I actually, for. Weirdly enough, even though I had this huge thing coming up, I have a couple days of. Of free time, which is odd. Yeah. So I think. Yeah. So I think I actually have some time to at least put some ideas on paper or maybe, like, do that section that I keep that I definitely already wrote, but I don't know where it went of the. Of the. The Walker. The Walker section at the beginning of your episode. So I probably will rewrite that if I can, like, make myself sit down and, like, concentrate long enough. So I think that I might make actually, that my goal is, like, get that Walker section written because it's not very long, I should be able to bang it out, and I kind of remember how it went, so, I mean, it's very small, but it is something that I might be able to get done.

Yeah, totally.

Well, it's just draft two at that. Late at that race.

Yeah, exactly. If you feel like you have the brain for it. If you wanted to look over the rest of that draft also of episode two and tell me if I have hit more the length that we want to hit with our episodes and whether there's still things that need to be added or taken away before we can forge ahead into the following episode, that would be helpful, too.

What's so sad is I definitely read it, and I was like, yay, this is great. And then I don't actually think I ever put that in. Like, I didn't think I ever typed it anywhere to you. So I'm very sorry about that. I will read it. I will read it again, and I'll just put down what I thought before, which was basically like, oh, this is great. So you actually have it that you can read it and it's, like, out in the world somewhere and not in my brain.

Well, no, no, it's all good. I just wanted to make sure there wasn't anything that you were like, well, we can't continue to the following episode until we add or take away or fix whatever.

I don't remember seeing anything like that, so.

Okay, great.

I think we're okay.

Okay, banger. Okay, what do we want me to do in the next two weeks? Should I finally actually go dig out the first half of the pilot and make my dialogue edits for az?

Please?

Is that my next task?

Yeah, that'd be great. And actually, again, like we've said probably a thousand times by now, nothing is set in stone. So if you want to, like, change anything at any time, like, just be like, okay, I'm completely rewriting this section, and I'll be like, cool.

Have fun.

Cool.

Great. Do it.

Do it.

Yeah, yeah, same. If there's something in my episodes that I write that you're like, I think this should actually go a different, like, way. Just flag it somewhere and do it, and then we'll proceed. Vibes unaffected.

Excellent.

Cool, cool, cool. All right, well, that sounds like a good set of goals for all of us, and we will catch you all in two weeks. Bye.

Okay, bye, everybody.

Yeah, so. So. Generic outro nonsense here. See ya. Bye.