Left their Day Job to Make Mimic Books with SuetyFiddle - Interview 6 - Nerdpreneur - Grow Your Nerdy Business

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(01:15):
Welcome to Nerdpreneur,
where we have fun conversations with nerds
making money with their nerdy passion.
And as always,
I am joined by my co host, Frank.
Hello.
And today we have a very special guest. Their
name is Vic and Suety Fiddle on Instagram.
Yes. Suety.
Suety. Okay.
Yeah.

(01:35):
Suety.
Oh, Suety. Really?
Yeah.
Oh, my God. We thought this
whole time it was sweaty fiddle.
I thought your name was sue.
Before I learned it was Vic,
I thought it was sue,
and you had turned that into a sweaty pun.
And I was like, man,
those Brits in their humorous fiddles,

(01:56):
familiar with sweaty fiddles.
That must be an expression.
It was randomly generated.
I wonder how many people that are
familiar with your brand are gonna go, oh,
that's how you say it?
And if nobody else
does and everyone else gets it, and
we're just the ones who couldn't figure it out,
I will be fine with that.
I wouldn't be
surprised if we were the idiots. Frank.

(02:17):
Yeah, I was just gonna say
it does confuse a lot of people,
so don't worry about that.
And you were saying it was randomly generated.
It was.
So I've told this story a few times, but way,
way back in the days of Yore,
I was playing Arkham Asylum.
It was like a few months after it'd been out.

(02:38):
Everyone else had already experienced
it and then forgotten about it.
I tend to be a bit slow when
it comes to AAA games and things,
but when I tried to run it,
it told me I needed to have
some sort of online Microsoft account.
So I had to sign up with
that in order to play my solo.
A game by myself.
I need to be on this online service.
Yep.
When people ask me to
be creative and think of something,
I just freeze up.

(02:59):
So there was a random generation button.
I started clicking it,
and it was throwing out
all this really angsty weird stuff,
like abyssal darkness and edgy forever.
And edgy forever nonsense.
And eventually it came up with Suety Fiddle.
I was like, that's nice, inoffensive nonsense.
And it turns out it's

(03:21):
unique basically everywhere
on the Internet. So Reddit, deviantart,
and Instagram and TikTok. It's just three.
I don't need any numbers, and it's excellent.
Sue Eddie Fiddle
Suety Fiddle
So it actually breaks it into three words.
Sue Eddie fiddle.
That is how I have to do this now,

(03:42):
because I thought the sue ti was one word.
I don't know why
I thought that made more sense,
but it makes sense.
It made no sense.
But when Chris introduced your instagram to me,
he was like, yeah, it said like this, I think.
And I was like, huh,
I guess I see that.
I mean, it gets weirder

(04:02):
because it is actually sorted in things.
Suet is another word for pig fat.
So you have Suet pudding.
It's like the shortening desserts and things,
which is why my weird
nonsense logo is a melting fiddle.
Whoa.
It's a fiddle made of pig fat. Oh, my gosh.
This is making
so much more sense now. I'm like, I.

(04:26):
Your fans are gonna
love this because they're gonna be.
I think we're gonna be making a lot
of connections right off the bat for them.
This is awesome.
Actually, it
just says on her description, Chris,
it explains this whole thing.
And we just missed
it this entire time. No, I'm joking.
Oh, my God.
Well, we haven't even got into what your nerdy.
What is it?
This is just about the name. I love it.
I love it.

(04:46):
Can you tell us,
what is your nerdy passion?
Okay. I have a lot of nerdy passions,
which is kind of the problem,
because there is no one nerdy passion.
Because it started out I
wanted to make props for D and D,
because I wanted to run waterdeep dragon heist.
And I wanted to make myself a stone of gala,
which I've come to call shorthand irocks.

(05:07):
So if I ever say eyerocks,
it's this weird little thing
with three eyes and a load of wrinkles,
and it's the main Macguffin
in this pre canned adventure.
And so I made like a few for myself,
and I tried out different methods
until I got one I was satisfied with.
And I put all the spares up
on Etsy and they started selling,
and then more people

(05:27):
started messaging me about them.
So I had to start just making more.
And I was kind of just always
searching for something different or new.
I didn't know like
what exactly I wanted to make.
I just wanted to make more things.
And I sort of, by complete accident,
started making books.
And so for the last two years,

(05:49):
my nerdy passion has been books.
And if we'd done this podcast three months ago,
I would have gone, ahh, really easy.
But I've since started branching into bags,
and I really want to do hats,
and I've got patterns for
gloves and all sorts of nonsense.
And it's a little bit chaotic, but
generally everything is made out of leather,
and it has teeth and eyes,

(06:10):
and I hope it weirds people out in a good way.
Yes.
Well, it totally attracted
me to your instagram,
right when I saw that literally your
whole content was based around mimics,
which is such an iconic
monster in dungeons and dragons. I mean,
it's basically
like dragons beholders mimics, right? Like,

(06:31):
these are like the most iconic of monsters
out there in the dungeons and Dragons universe.
And I was like, fascinated.
The fact that you had taken the mimic
guys and then decided to literally make like
mimic stuff are you had just so many different
cool products that basically people can get.
And you said you make all of this by hand.
So I did briefly get into resin casting, which

(06:53):
was what I was eventually doing with the Irox.
I think I made something like 200,
300 irox by hand from scratch to order
before I started to get into resin casting.
And I think since I got into resin casting,
I've made about half,
I've made about half that
much since I got into resin casting,
because the resin casting is there, obviously,
so I don't have to sculpt every single one.

(07:16):
I just make five molds
and then just churn them out.
But I still have to paint them all by hand.
They are beautiful. I mean,
I'm on your instagram right now,
and just the eyes that you have, I mean,
people often say how beautiful eyes can be.
And I'm one of those people that just
don't notice people's eyes until way later.
But the eyes you have

(07:37):
here are so hard not to notice.
They are so beautiful.
And just the way that they pop is so cool.
Do you make the eyes,
or did you just find somewhere that makes
the eyes and you're able to attach them? Like,
I'm curious because the eyes really do pop.
And the fact there's like
six of them on some of these books. Right.
I showed this to people who aren't
even d and D nerds, and they're like, well,

(07:58):
that's really cool.
I really like the look of that. Like,
it doesn't have to be someone
who understands mimics for
them to want one of these books. So, yeah,
I'm curious about the eyes.
How did you find them?
How did you get into that?
And I, where do they come from?
Okay, so I started out with pre made ones
with most craft materials these days.

(08:18):
They're mass produced in China,
and there are about 30 different
third party resellers that have just
taken over Amazon and Etsy and eBay.
And so it's to the point that
it's kind of hard to get anything else,
which can be a little bit.
So it's convenient on one
hand because it's massively available,
but it's inconvenient because
if you want something a bit different,

(08:39):
it makes it a lot harder
to find and a lot harder to source. So
when I first had the idea for the mimic book,
I just wanted to try it out.
I didn't know if it would work
because I don't really do.
I say I don't do sculpting, but
I did like 500 irocs or something ridiculous.
But I think I have trouble

(09:00):
visualizing things sometimes in my head,
so I don't know how they're going to look
until they're there in front of me. I just,
I work out the process to get
there right and then discover
what it looks like at the end. And so,
because I just needed to try it out
to see if this design would even work,
I was looking for pre made craft supplies,
and I freely give this information out.

(09:21):
If people ask you go onto Amazon,
you type in Julie Wang glass eyes,
and you can buy a random
assortment at the glass cabochons,
which is like a flat dome shape
with a printed design on the back.
They're sometimes a little bit wonky,
but generally the colours are
fantastic and they're very durable

(09:41):
and they're very very affordable. So they're
a great first start. But obviously, over time,
I wanted colors that they didn't have.
And sometimes the quality of
the print isn't quite as good
as I wanted it to be. And also, I would just.
I I'm an irredeemable perfectionist.
So I just really wanted

(10:02):
to have full control over the design. And
so I wanted to learn how to do the eyes myself.
So I have more recently been doing hand
painting my own eyes. I also. Oh, yeah. And
they also didn't add stupid cool effects. Like,
I found some glow in the dark powder pigment.
And so you can start to incorporate
that in all the different layers.
And you get some really
cool effects coming out of it.

(10:22):
Glow in the dark.
You can have a literal glow
in the dark mimic book on your shelf.
So that down the spine, it just, like,
stares at you at night.
That is so cool. Or a handbag, like,
walking around at night outside.
The only problem is all
the fancy colors only charge with uv.

(10:42):
Like the green one
charges up in regular visible light. But
for all the reds and the yellows and the blue,
you need to actually charge it with sunlight,
or it doesn't work too well.
Yeah, I wonder if that has to do with
the light being able to get
through the glass part or the resin.
I'm not a scientist to do with.
The actual compound,

(11:02):
the pigment itself.
Okay.
So I used to do
a lot of science and engineering.
When you have a molecule and light hits it,
the type of light that it
absorbs depends on the atom itself.
And kind of where the electrons
are and the energy levels
and all this complicated nonsense.
But then once the light is absorbed,

(11:24):
it's re emitted in a random direction. And
it changes the energy levels of the electron.
That's a very specific set of
levels that jumps between energy levels.
And so it re emits
something of a different wavelength,
but the same overall.
I don't know if this makes sense anymore.
It's been so long since I've done this.
It's so cool, though. I mean, you're

(11:45):
getting into another one of your nerd avenues.
Or I don't like that term so much, but, like,
you're going down a nerd path.
I think that's so
interesting that you were in that.
Or maybe you still are in that line of
work and that constant school of thought.
And then you come and you create
these beautiful pieces of art.
The problem is that I did all the fancy,

(12:06):
intelligent stuff so long ago.
So I kind of,
in the back of my head, I'm like,
I know how this works.
And I start to try
and tell people stories about it,
but it's been years and years
and years since I've accessed
this bit of information in my brain,
and sometimes I just find out I
don't actually remember it that well
when I'm already halfway through a story.
Totally. I do the same thing whenever

(12:27):
I'm telling people cool history stories,
because that's what I studied.
And then I realized halfway through,
I don't remember how it ends.
So I kind of make it up to make a good story.
And then people are like, wow,
you know a lot of stuff. And I'm like,
I know half of a lot of stuff.
It's like how I play my d and d games.
I never know exactly what's going to, what's
about to happen or where it's going. So just.
Just make it up as you go along.

(12:49):
I'm really curious.
Why mimics of all the monsters
do you have a personal connection to, like, oh,
I like the mimics.
Or is there a reason
why you chose that as the monster?
I am a meme slave. I'm sorry. It's true.
It's just the silliest,
most ridiculous thing.
They can perfectly
mimic absolutely anything. Traditionally,

(13:11):
it was wood and stone specifically,
but over time,
they've kind of evolved to just
perfectly mimic whatever they consume.
Absolutely anything and everything,
regardless of what it is. Like,
they just learn anything.
They're made by magic.
They birth themselves through magic. Like,
it's so weird.
If you touch them,

(13:32):
they instantly adhere
to you so you can't escape. And also,
I just like big teeth on things.
Yeah, lots of eyes, big teeth.
What's not to like, right?
Yeah.
I don't know.
Have you ever seen
a scallop like that isn't cooked?
Like a living, breathing, real scallop?
They are so weird.
They're so creepy. So weird.

(13:53):
And the only thing I can think
about that remotely resembles
a mimic in our real life is a scallop.
And if you haven't googled image of a scallop,
you can see they have all
these crazy long row of teeth. They have, like,
a bunch of little beady
eyes staring out of you in between.
They're just a really weird,
weird creature that happens to be delicious.

(14:15):
The most gorgeous,
bright blue eyes as well.
That's the thing. Like, oh, my God,
this is a gorgeous.
I hadn't done that in a long time,
until just now. And I'm like, oh, my God,
they are exactly like mimics.
Quite a few people
have just met me and gone, oh, my God.
Have you seen what scallops look like?

(14:35):
I bet. Yeah.
I've become
the mimic lady to people now. So, like,
there's a little four panel webcomic
and one of them was a mimic sword.
And I had four people send
it to me in the space of two days.
You must get
some really crazy DM's just about, like,
you must have tons of DM's coming in just
complimenting or being excited or sending

(14:56):
you mimic memes or mimic stuff because
you are kind of like the mimic person. Like, I
haven't seen anyone else who's really narrowed
their niche down that far to being, like,
I focus on mimic stuff, you know,
in the same way.
I can't.
We can't say that without
mentioning the monster in who

(15:16):
makes the most fantastic mimic mugs.
You must have seen the mimic mugs.
No, what's who is that?
Okay, I'll have to link you. Give me 2 seconds.
What was their name again?
Oh, lowercase with underscores in
between the words the Monster Inn.
Oh, like an inn that you'd stay at. Oh, yes,
I have seen these.

(15:36):
Of course you've seen them.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, these are so.
These are really detailed and, like big,
big beer steins in a sense,
that turn into mimics. That's awesome.
Yeah. You know, I feel like mimics, it's
so cool that you've chosen them and because so
many people tap into them and I feel like they
really represent a part of human nature,

(15:57):
like the chaotic nature that we all love.
We love things that can be
surprisingly unpredictable in a fantasy
world that don't actually harm us, but, like,
that could in theory,
but they're just so fun and chaotic.
And what is it that drew you to mimics?
I think it's just the versatility.
It's exactly that.

(16:18):
Because I can slap eyes and teeth
on any old thing and call it a mimic.
That's so true.
There's infinite potential for new craft.
Do you have anything that you would
be really excited to make into a mimic?
I know you focus mainly right now on, like,
books and other kind of thing,
or do you have weird commissions
that have come in the weirdest commission.
Requests are the ones that have nothing to do

(16:40):
with what I'm doing. I mean, I suppose, like,
because I've done a little bit of sculpting,
because I did a couple of props and things,
but then people come along and they're like,
can you make a pipe that I can smoke out of?
And all the stuff I work with.
Does not play well with fire at all.
Yeah.
Like, I was working with. With polymer
clay and with resin and all of these things.

(17:01):
You do not really want to get
hot and then rub against your face.
Or inhale.
Yeah, or inhale. I had a very
weird one a few days ago.
I think the guy who messaged me and he was
asking for like a giant three foot Nokia phone,
but with some company logo on the front.
So this is like proper cosplay,

(17:22):
foam crafting kind of stuff.
Like one of those old Nokia brick phones.
Yeah. And they went to a guy who does
hyper realistic wax sculpture and then he
came to me who makes books and handbags,
kind of round table of nonsense requests.

(17:43):
It was a bit.
Yeah, but they wanted the Nokia phone as
a mimic or just a three foot Nokia phone.
No, no, they just. They wanted a phone
with their company logo on the front,
but they had no idea where to get it from.
And the guy they asked really just wanted
to be helpful even though he couldn't.
I think sounds like a. Yeah. Like
totally out of left field pitch. You're like,

(18:03):
so you want a three.
I could just see you thinking
and you want mimics on this. Like,
why are you coming to me? Like,
I don't understand.
Do you, at the phone?
To also have lots of teeth.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's
one of the reasons I really like, like,
mimics is because, you know, it's
always the surprise element of a mimic. Right.

(18:27):
And there's a weird sense of
justice that happens because it's like
the rogue who's trying to steal the
treasure before everyone else gets there,
that all of a sudden realizes when they try to
steal the treasure that it's actually a mimic.
It's like the DM's justice. I don't know.
Yeah.
Yes.
Do you play much d and D?

(18:48):
It varies over the years.
I've been in a few.
It was just really hard to get into
tabletop games to begin with because
I didn't have any friends that were into it.
And then I came to uni and I had
lots of friends who claimed to be
into it but weren't capable of kind
of putting a schedule or a game together.
So I think I was in like five

(19:10):
or six first sessions before I actually.
Before I actually found
a game that went on for a while.
And of all things, totally unexpected.
It happened when I started
my first software development job.
They had a regular Thursday night d and D game.
I think it had six or seven people
in it and not D and D. Sorry. Pathfinder.
Because they are different.

(19:31):
We must distinguish.
Ah, yes, of course. So are
you still in that group?
Not anymore.
So that that group was a bit weird because
it had been going on for quite a long time
and so many people had dropped in and out.
They kind of lost the
original thread of what was going on.
And at the moment,
I'm actually in a homebrew game which is run
completely online with a bunch of crafty

(19:53):
friends that I found through Instagram.
And it's absolutely fantastic.
It's been the complete dream
game and I am terrified of losing it.
That is so wonderful. Like, I mean,
getting to play with people that
are like minded and then, like, feeling like,
this is what I want. That is,
that is the dream with D and D.

(20:13):
Make your own crafts for the game.
No, I mean, when you're playing online,
there isn't really much
in terms of props and things anyways.
That's so true.
I'm curious, when
did you realize that this could be a viable
business that you could just do full time?
That one's a difficult one because
I've kind of come to that realization in

(20:34):
different ways at various different points.
And I'm sorry that
every time you ask me a question,
it ends up being a 30 minutes ramble.
But how I tell stories, unfortunately,
it's a good story.
So, like, I just. I have always been.
Not necessarily creative,
but just always creating,

(20:55):
just constantly making stuff.
Most of it was rubbish. As a teenager,
I thought I was hotshot,
but I know now that is not true.
It was all rubbish.
But that was probably my most
productive time because I would just, like,
get a sketchbook and just go
page after page after page after page,
go through the whole thing. But,
but you kind of,

(21:15):
you grow up with the sort of the general
social viewpoint I know is that it's
hard or you can't make money from art.
And you see, it's in, like, popular culture
and jokes and in tv shows, it's like, oh,
what do you do with an art degree?
Go work at McDonald's.

(21:35):
So for a long time,
I didn't think it was possible,
but I always wanted to,
and I would have, like, quarterly
existential crises at university. Like,
why are they doing engineering?
What's going on? Oh, no.
I always kind of like, no,
this is the correct path.
I will stay the course. I'm sunk. Cost fallacy.
Too much invested in this now.

(21:59):
And so really, it didn't,
the first time it happened was, like I say, I
put those spare irocs up on Etsy and they sold.
And the thing is,
even though I'd had the idea to do that,
it still took me like three months
between making them and actually
putting them up online to the world
because I didn't think anyone would care.
And then the first one sold pretty cool,

(22:20):
and the next one,
and the next one, I was like, oh, gosh.
And then someone went and posted it on Reddit,
and I'd only set like a
stock limit to ten on etsy or something.
But then the orders kept coming in
really fast and I kept going back and
putting the stock limit up a little bit.
And I got something like
20 orders in one weekend.

(22:40):
At that point, I was really, really slow.
So this took my entire weekend to fulfill,
just making irox constantly.
And that was when the seed was sown.
And so I started taking time off work.
So I booked out.
So I spoke to my boss about flexible working.

(23:01):
I dropped down to four days a week so
that I could run the store a bit more.
And I started trying to advertise on Reddit,
and I made the Instagram account,
which was a nightmare to begin with,
and
I was really enjoying it.
And I was getting up to a steady,
I think it was like 400 pounds,
500 pounds a month,

(23:21):
which obviously is nothing
compared to the software salary,
but it was proof of something.
And eventually I dropped
down to three days a week at work.
And my boss is starting to think you're
just going to leave. I was like, no, no, no.
I like the stability
of a regular salary going anywhere.
And then six months later,
I put in my nose.

(23:42):
That's awesome.
So that's
two separate different realizations. Then.
The third one came actually quite recently,
because when I quit my job,
I was so
worried about losing that salary. I was like,
I need a way to fund some money.
I need a safety net.
And so I decided to run a
Kickstarter with absolutely zero

(24:03):
experience and zero self confidence
and zero project management capabilities,
despite having been to several PowerPoint
presentations on someone else's dime.
And so I ran this Kickstarter and it went quite
well and it was fully funded and everything,
but I just horribly mismanaged it and I didn't
charge enough and it all kind of fell apart.
And as crazy as it sounds,

(24:27):
January of this year,
I decided to cancel
it and just work for myself,
making what I wanted to make, sell it all,
and then use that money to refund the
Kickstarter because I can't take
people's money and not give them anything.
Can't do that. But this,
the last couple of months have.
Have actually made, like,
a livable quantity of money

(24:48):
for the first time in a long time.
A bunch of that, like,
more than half of it immediately
went out of my bank account
to go to Kickstarter people. But, like,
this is actually a serious, not high,
but livable wage that I could
be making if I could just do it.
The thing is that I'm not there yet

(25:08):
because I still have an absolute
boatload of Kickstarter debt to pay off.
So it's more just the,
this is going to get bad. Just
the Kickstarter thing dragged on for so long,
and I felt like such a failure,
and it was really,
really getting to me. And, like, everyone,
all the people, like,

(25:30):
all my friends and family,
they all love me, and
they want to know how to know how it's going.
It must be great,
and you do what you love and it'll be great,
and you have to go, well,
I kind of made some mistakes,
and it's a bit crap,
but it'll be okay.
I'm going to fix it,
and everything's fine. Everything's good.
If you don't mind,
I would like us to dive a little
bit into that because I think a lot

(25:50):
of people that are listening think, like, hey,
if I want to take this somewhere,
if I really want to see if it's a good idea,
I should take it to Kickstarter. And.
And hearing about the risks
of using Kickstarter is really important.
I've used Kickstarter
in the past a couple times and, yeah,
you got to be aware of this stuff.
And are you okay if we, like, kind of.

(26:11):
If we talk about, like,
what is it that, you know, there?
What? It was good when you got funded, but
then what is it that really became the problem?
I mean,
the funny thing is I was a little bit
nervous to talk about this because it still
felt like a big failure until very recently,
but then I brought it up.
So it's my fault? No,

(26:31):
I'm happy to go into it at this point.
I've been through it all. I've processed it.
I've made my peace with it,
so I'm happy to talk about it.
All right. Yeah.
What is it you think that for you,
when you look back now, what
is it that you should have given the advice,
you should have given yourself?
The problem is that I didn't

(26:52):
have any self confidence because, like I said,
I'd had years of indoctrination,
that art is not the way.
And so when I made my first book,
I showed it off to a bunch of people.
How much is it?
And I told them and they went, oh,
that's a bit much.
And the thing is,
70 quid at the time, to me,

(27:12):
that was a lot of money
because I grew up pretty poor.
And so that was the kind
of thing that only happened on, like,
birthdays or if you did really well in your
exams and you get like a nice little treat.
So this, to me, this
is like an event full of quantity of money.
And so the fact that people were saying, oh,
it was a bit too expensive,
but I knew that I put a lot of work

(27:35):
into it and I needed to charge more.
Yeah.
And I kind of, like,
as people started to come to me
asking for their own books and things,
I just add like a fiver on and add a tenor on.
And so by the time the Kickstarter came around,
I was charging like 135 pounds or something.
And I thought, wow, yeah, this is fantastic.
I've almost doubled my money. But the things,

(27:57):
I was charging 135 pounds for like,
20 hours of work and 30
quid worth of materials and like,
not to mention, you know, advertising time,
running Instagram, taking photos,
packaging everything and all that stuff.
So I was even then, still, like,
woefully undercharging for my work.

(28:18):
And the problem is that you
want opinions from the people around you,
because those are the people
by your friends and your family,
because those are the people
that you respect, you know, that they, like,
they have good, solid, sensible opinions,
they'll give you good advice and then they go
much there because it's not their passion,
it's not their.
It's not something

(28:39):
they're personally interested in.
And so the problem I partially is finding
the right people to ask about it because, like,
doing this stuff is really,
really hard and there aren't that many places
you can go to get good advice about it.
So I'm trying to charge
materials plus ten pounds per hour, plus,
like a bit of fetch time to

(28:59):
account for making videos and
managing Instagram and all that nonsense.
But the thing is that that adds up to a lot.
And so you have to have,
you have to have someone who will appreciate
the time and the care and the details
and actually look at the quality
of the work that you're doing and go, yes,
this is worth a substantial

(29:20):
percentage of my monthly salary.
Yeah.
And also, in your case,
it's something that is different
than what anyone else would do. Like,
there's no one else really
doing what you're doing, I think. I mean,
there might be a few people doing mimic mugs.
And stuff like that.
But the fact is that I think there's a.
There's a scarcity to it that allows you
to be able to charge at a higher price

(29:41):
because you're getting something handmade.
Why was Instagram
a nightmare when you started? I'm curious.
Yeah, it's. I mean, there are several reasons.
The first is that
attention begets more attention.
It's easier to grow when
you have a lot of followers, which means
that starting out is a horrible, painful grind,
and there's very little you can do about it.

(30:03):
And the other thing as well is, at the time,
I was also working full time,
so I would be down there trying to diagnose
problems right in front of our clients who
are scientists and trying to fix things. Like,
do I just take ten minutes? Just.
That's my scheduled posting time.

(30:23):
And the thing is,
everyone's really interested in it.
Once they actually find out we do it,
we do other things.
And so it was actually surprisingly
accommodating about letting me do my
little social media things on work time.
Just don't tell the managers kind of a thing.
Right, right.
But, like, also, you don't
know what people want.
You don't know what people like,
you don't know at the time as well,

(30:46):
I hadn't really found my niche. I just.
I was making a whole bunch of different things.
I was trying to do, like, little
leather dice bags and character portraits,
and I did little, like,
glass potions filled with resin and
all sorts of bits of dried flowers and
herbs and things just because they looked
nice and they had a nice fantasy vibe.
And there's a lot to learn about

(31:07):
photography and lighting and framing.
You have to kind of have
the confidence to sell your products,
which I still kind of don't really do.
Like, I'm not one
of those people who will go, like,
I find it really hard to say those things.
So usually when I do ask people to
spend lots and lots of money on my stuff,
I'll just put a little button that says,

(31:27):
buy my shit.
I'm hoping that by being, like,
kind of blase and a little bit funny about it,
people won't be like,
I can't believe they're
asking for so much money. Oh, good lord. Sorry.
Social anxiety is creeping into things again.
And, you know, it's funny. That is
how I feel a lot of the time.

(31:48):
I hate job interviews, for example.
I hate them because I am selling myself.
I have faith in my skills,
but I also wonder if other people value
my skills and my time and my expertise.
The way that I do,
and I'm afraid that they don't.
So I'm afraid of looking
stupid and being rejected. That's where I.
That's for me.
That's where it comes from for me.

(32:09):
I know lots of people who just have a
hard time making that ask for the money.
It is it. I feel ya.
I guess I feel like I'm a
little different than frank in that way.
And part of it,
you're very different in that way.
You're very different in that way.
And I think the reason why is
I worked in sales for so long,
asking people to spend exorbitant

(32:30):
amount of money on knives. Like,
I used to sell knives, and
these knives were not cheap. I'm talking, like,
for the amount from one knife,
you could buy an entire, you know, mimic book.
Like it would be for one knife and
for a whole set of knives, we're talking, like,
you could have a whole
library of mimic books for the price.

(32:50):
For the price of one set of knives. But
I just saw so many people deciding to purchase,
and so much of that
turned into a confidence that, yeah,
if they can afford
this much for a knife set, like, it's
okay to charge for the work that I'm doing,
or it's okay to charge 100 or $200 an hour

(33:11):
for my time if I'm giving someone real value.
I think that's a really big hurdle for
a lot of people when starting a business.
One of the things we actually tell people, too,
when you put yourself
in the higher price position,
when you buy something that costs more,
you assume it's better quality,
and you assume it's better
than what the other people
are selling their stuff for. And, you know, you
want to spend more on something that's good,

(33:32):
you separate yourself from the lower market.
So, actually, there
is one minor point to that, though,
is that there is a quality issue.
This comes back to what I was saying
earlier about how when I was a teenager,
I thought I was hot shit.
I get a lot of people
asking me for advice. Well, okay, not a lot.
But from time to time,
people come to ask me for advice
about how to get started with a business,

(33:53):
and some of them just
aren't that good yet. And, like, obviously,
to get good at something,
there is a process.
There is a point where you suck at it,
and you just have to keep working at it until
you get to the point where people actually
do want to give you money for things.
Because, like, when I was a teenager,
I put up on Deviantart because, oh,

(34:14):
deviantart that was the trendy thing. I just.
I put up commissions and
I just assumed that I would get them,
even though I realize
now it was actually kind of terrible.
But it's just. It's not.
You can't always charge the top
tier because you might not be there yet,
but if you keep working at it,
you will get there.
That is such a good point,
because I wanted to ask you, you know,

(34:36):
following up off
of what Chris and I had said, you know,
what is it for you that. That
prevents you from charging that top dollar?
And if I heard you just now correctly,
it was that you're still trying to figure out
if you are good enough to do that. Like,
and that's not. That's not. I mean,
I'm sorry if that sounds like a hit. That's
not at all what I mean. That's just, like,

(34:57):
our vulnerabilities, our sensitivities. Like,
I would have a hard time
charging top dollar because I'm
still not convinced I'm good enough.
Is that where for you,
or is it something different?
So many people that I talk to
all seem to have the exact same problem.
Maybe we all have
just accidentally congregated, but. And maybe.
Maybe it's just the

(35:17):
software developer dnd player thing,
because basically my entire friend
group is software developers d
and D players and now Instagram crafters.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So maybe this is just, like,
a problem for this group or
maybe the wider world as a whole,
but almost everyone I know in this group
is anxious and insecure in some way. They

(35:38):
don't believe themselves to be good enough.
And that's a shame,
because I know some fantastically wonderful,
amazing people who just
don't quite believe in themselves yet.
Yeah. Yeah. And then there's people
like Chris who just are like, hey,
I sold knives for 10,000 years, honestly.

(36:00):
But this. But literally, like, this is.
This is like,
confidence is earned. It is, really is.
And so I didn't
become confident out of nowhere. I was.
I used to be very insecure.
I used to be very. You know, I didn't even.
I didn't even date in high school.
I.
Like, I had no dates in high school. Really?
I couldn't ask anyone else. Huh. Like,

(36:21):
I didn't go ask anyone out until I sold knives.
So I just want
you to understand something. Like. Like, once.
I didn't get it.
I just wanted to say, therapists
hate this one weird trick. Sell knives.
Yeah. I'm not saying you gotta sell
knives to get confident. I'm just saying, like,
there was a there was an absolute

(36:43):
correlation between going out there
and doing a job that was really
difficult and you would get rejected.
And once I got rejected so many times,
the anxiety started to lower and diminish
because I was forcing myself into
uncomfortable situations consistently
and being able to survive them and
then sometimes succeed in those situations.

(37:04):
It's earned over the course of time. Like,
part of why I wanted to create Nerdpreneur
completely is because I wanted to highlight
and find people like yourself who have gone
through that process and have started
to earn that confidence in themselves,
to charge for their work,
to be able to see that
they can become successful
in something that they're passionate in.

(37:25):
And it doesn't really matter what that is.
In some ways,
it matters that they've pushed
through that barrier and now
they're there to inspire other people.
The other thing as well is that
you don't necessarily know what your
niche is going to be when you start out,
because you just know
that you want to create something,
you want to put it out there,
and you want other people to love it.

(37:46):
And it takes a while to grow and find an
audience and to find what people respond to and
to actually find something that you want to
do over and over and over and over again.
So my business has changed so much,
I basically packed
it in with all the D and D props. Now.
Now it is just things with teeth, right?
And that's such a wide

(38:08):
category of things for me to explore.
And I wouldn't have guessed I would be
doing this when I started out in any way.
And I'm curious about the.
So if I understand correctly, you're not doing.
You don't have another job,
like this is your full time.
This comes with the caveat that
I am very much supported by a wonderful,

(38:31):
very patient partner who is still a software
developer and therefore makeshi fat stacks
because there was a point where
I basically just ran out of Kickstarter
money and I had so little incoming. Like,
I had just enough to sustain my
account exactly at the level it was at. And

(38:52):
I was contributing to food and nothing else.
And it was very stressful, and
I would not be here without that safety net.
So in some ways,
it feels like I'm cheating a little bit,
but in other ways,
it's still been a horribly hard grind.
So it's like a combination of
luck and support and hard work.
Have you heard of that dynamic with

(39:12):
other people who pursue their passion,
where they have a partner that's
patient and supportive like that?
Several times, yes.
Yeah.
No, I'm just, I'm sure there are people
out there who could get this thing off the
ground completely under their own financials,
and they probably didn't run a horribly,
terribly managed
kickstarter like I did. But, yeah, it
does seem to be a common thing because, again,

(39:35):
it's a hard thing to do,
and it's not something that anyone
really knows how to do going into it,
especially when you're doing, like,
actually designing, crafting, making.
You have to do photography,
you have to do the social media stuff,
you have to do packaging.
You need to know about pricing and shipping.
You have all this stuff.
But managing your time
as well is such a big thing. And, like,

(39:57):
streamlining your processes,
no one knows how to do it when you start.
And so there's to be pitfalls
and to have someone to back you
up really does make a huge difference.
And I do know quite a few
people who are in similar situations.
Can you talk a little bit about the.
Because your instagram has grown over

(40:17):
the course of time that I have followed you,
because I followed you,
I think when you were much lower in
followers and you're up near 30, 33,000,
something like that now,
is there anything that you do
daily with your instagram that
really makes a difference in it growing?
Yeah, no, I'm lucky in that I've stumbled
onto something that is kind of
a bit weird and unique that

(40:38):
people seem to engage with really well.
And so it's hard to know what
advice I could give because I don't know
how much is down to what I'm doing. Like,
every so often,
I do put down a video,
and the cuts and the kind of natural
sounds of the craft just kind of
come together in a really satisfying way.
And that video does really, really well.
So there's definitely something about the

(41:00):
editing that makes it more appealing to people.
But I think it's luck mostly when that happens.
I've got to be honest,
I've grown a lot in a very short time.
It took me years to get up to 10,000.
And then I think about six to eight months ago,
I had two videos go viral at the same time.

(41:21):
And I got up to 22,000 in,
like a week or two weeks or something
and then just been steady from there.
That's amazing.
I don't. There is. I don't have, like,
a daily thing or, like,
a special secret that brings people in.
I think I'm just lucky to
have found something weird and different.
But you've been doing it for years, too.
There's been that consistency well, like I.

(41:44):
Said, when it comes to mimics, when
your thing is just mimics,
there's so much you can explore and it's.
There's like a core thing of it
going to be a bit freaky and a bit weird,
and it's got lots of teeth and eyes
and how many different ways
can you arrange that onto something? Like,
I've come up with dozens of book designs,
and I think there are several points where
I would have thought I'd exhausted all the

(42:05):
possible designs for books with eyes and teeth
and yet somehow new ones keep appearing.
Well, it's that whole thing about, how did you
become an overnight success? It's like, well,
it's never overnight, right?
There's a lot of mistakes or things that
didn't go viral or things that didn't hit,
that didn't work,
that were experiments,
and then you only needed one or two

(42:26):
things to really go big for you to get a
lot of attention and for people to then start
really paying attention. I mean, in music,
it's the same thing.
No one knows who a musician
is until they get their first hit,
and then all of a sudden,
everyone knows who they are and
want to listen to what else they made.
One of my things I talk about
with people when they're afraid of, like, oh,
should I start posting?

(42:47):
Should I move into that? I'm like, if you're.
If your content sucks,
no one's going to see it,
so you might as well post it.
You know what I'm saying? Like,
you might as well go out there
and see what happens and
start moving in a direction. Because, you know,
so many people, I think, avoid
the act of posting or trying to get themselves
out there because they're worried, like, well,
what if I make something
silly and everyone sees it?
It's like, that's never gonna happen. Like,
if your stuff sucks,

(43:08):
no one will see it
the way the algorithm is designed,
but if you make something really cool,
you'll actually get seen by a ton of people.
And figuring out what that
formula is is a bunch of trial
and error and it's individual for you.
What's going to work for your niche is
different than what's going to work for the
neuropreneur niche or the professor epic niche,
or for any of these other niches that

(43:29):
might be out there that we interview. What
are some of your core values for your business?
Now, I know you have a few, and I'm
curious what they are and why.
I can be very,
very strongly principled
with the right persuasion and the
business is definitely one of those things.
I'm a little bit embarrassed that this is gonna

(43:50):
show off my left leaning nature, I suppose,
but I just generally dislike
kind of large corporations
and therefore I'm very anti advertising.
So when it comes to Facebook
and Instagram and all this stuff,
you can pay them money so they
can show your stuff to more people.
But the thing is,
is that if you're
not already making something interesting,

(44:10):
it doesn't matter how many people
Instagram shows it to because
they're still not gonna click on it, and
then you're just giving them money for nothing.
Yes, he's selling, they're all selling
all my data and feeding it to Coca Cola,
who know that this particular group of people
of this gender and this age, like Coca Cola,
also like fries.
Maybe we should do
some sort of crossover promo thing,
that kind of slightly scary,

(44:31):
hyper detailed data analysis stuff
that they should be getting their
value out of me just fine without me
having to pay them money for advertising. So I,
and the other thing as well is I'm a little
bit afraid of getting too much limelight again.
We've gone over all this,
this insecurity and stuff, so, like,
I already can't meet the demand that I have.
I don't really want to explode overnight

(44:53):
or anything like that because I'm just
about managing with what I have already
very much anti advertising, organic growth.
Just put stuff out there and
hope people respond to it in a good way.
I'm going to move on to number two
because there are three things on this list.
Yes, go ahead.
Yeah. The other thing, as well as like
when we were talking about
pricing your work appropriately,

(45:14):
charging more for your money and so on,
one of the ways I kind of justify
it to myself is that I'm trying to make.
I'm trying to be accessible by making a few
lower priced products like the pins and so on.
But also I want people to be able
to recreate my craft because growing up,
I could not afford
anything like this sort of nonsense.
And so I would always be making my own dodgy,
weird knockoffs of

(45:35):
things that I saw on the Internet.
And I want people to be able to
make and enjoy it for themselves
if they can't give me the money for it.
So that's great.
And to that end,
to that end, I will always, always,
always respond to people
who message me asking for craft advice.
Awesome.
That's great.
So if people
want to get some craft advice, they
can go find you on Instagram. There you go.

(45:57):
Instagram is the best place,
because for some reason,
TikTok doesn't let you send messages
unless you both follow each other. And
it's a whole weird system that's very annoying.
I didn't think about that.
I only did TikTok for a little bit,
but I didn't message anybody.
It kind of accidentally
became my biggest platform for a while,
and then it shrank again, then it spiked,
then it shrank, and so on, but, oh, weird.
It's one of the more

(46:18):
highly algorithmic things out there. Like,
stuff on TikTok
tends to either die a slip, like,
just die a silent death,
or explode with very little in between.
That's actually a really nice
explanation of social media in general. Like,
either you die silently or you explode,
depending on the size of your audience. Like,

(46:38):
that's really concise.
Yeah, but, so the thing is that I would
have all these people on
TikTok trying to ask me questions,
and it's got a limit, a very,
very short limit for the number of comments.
And I realized that none of these
people could contact me because
I wasn't following them back. And then, like,
when you're in, like,
300 comments deep and you've
lost it and you've no way
of getting back to them to say, I'm sorry,

(47:00):
mean to ghost you,
please don't hate me.
300 comments. Oh, my God. I can't imagine.
When I first started on TikTok,
I was obsessive about
replying to all of the comments,
and it really just ate up my life.
Yeah, I was just gonna say because I
thought maybe this would be a
good time to ask about burnout

(47:20):
or stress or fatigue. You know, burnout, stress
and fatigue is part of running a business.
It's part of being an influencer,
part of all this stuff.
How do you handle that
and what gets you going again?
Mostly these days,
I just try and pace it out.
I can't give myself this ridiculous goal of
posting every other day and always having super

(47:41):
cool finished content and so on. So I just,
it takes me so long to make things,
and then the amount of time on top
of that to film it and edit it
and throw all that stuff together, it can just,
it can be overwhelming.
And it gets to the point where you're planning
your life out in terms of projects and how
many videos you can get out of each project,
and all this kind of crazy stuff,

(48:02):
it's not maintainable.
So I just,
I make as much as I can make in a
two or three week period until I get to
the point where my financial anxiety goes,
you have to sell things now.
And then I put some stuff up for sale. Like,
I'll try and ring at this point,
ring as much content out of it as possible,
which is usually,
like still photos and
a couple of videos and so on.

(48:22):
I just post what I have until I run out.
I'll take some time to myself, I'll
play some games or spend time with my partner,
and then I'll get back to work.
I'll make a few things,
and by that point,
I've got enough clips to start
editing and putting content together,
and then I'll start posting again.
So I naturally kind
of end up working on like a two,
three week cycle where I'm, like, really
active on social media and all that nonsense,

(48:45):
and then I just take some time out.
You sound like you have a really good,
healthy ability to separate your mind
from things when you're not working on them.
Oh, not at all. No, no. When I said
I'm constantly planning
my life out in terms of project, even
now I'm still doing that because there are 40

(49:05):
different things I want to make. Oh, another,
another thing about burnout, like,
one of the ways that I get over
it is that when you make your hobby, your job,
it gets all these extra
mental things associated with it.
And so I need another.
I need a different creative
outlet that's just for me.
So I bake a lot. And admittedly, yes,
sometimes I post baking pictures

(49:25):
onto Instagram because people like them.
And when people like my things,
it makes me happy.
But my second favorite,
my second greatest passion is food.
So just having, again,
having to plan out dinner
every night can be quite overwhelming.
But I also make cake,
and the cake is my nice creative outlet for me.

(49:48):
And I do bake oil
tarts and friendships and sometimes,
occasionally weird things that
take like four days to kind of
assemble and put together and so on. You
need to have an outlet for you. I don't know.
The other thing about it as well
is that sometimes you don't want to.
You just, you
get up and you're so tired
and you're talking to all these

(50:08):
people and still so many more messages.
People who want your attention,
they want to ask you about shop things, and
they want to ask you about advertising stuff,
and you kind of.
And sometimes you don't want to do it,
but you still just have
to sit down and do the work,
because if you don't do the work,
you're not going to get anywhere.
There's the balance of sometimes you don't

(50:30):
want to do it and you have to make yourself,
and there's discipline,
but also you have to recognize when it's
actually affecting you in a negative way.
And deal with that 100%.
There's so much that comes
from knowing when to take a break.
And this is another theme. Like,
I think Ryan from
Zephyr Games board game designer, that
was his advice to people, was like, you know,

(50:51):
you should be able to take a break,
but you need to know when to take a break.
What do you see?
Where do you see your business going?
What do you want to do with it?
Or maybe these are two different answers.
What you want to do with
it and where you see it going.
The thing is that I
really quite like where I am now,
where I'm just making what I
want to make and putting it out

(51:12):
and hoping people give me money for it,
and somehow it seems to work out.
People ask me this quite a bit,
would you ever hire anyone?
You're going to get interns
and teach your craft and so on.
And the first thing is that
my house is absolutely bloody tiny,
and there is no possible way
I could fit another person in here.
And so many things,

(51:34):
like the way my business has gone has changed
in so many ways that I couldn't predict.
And so I kind of like the idea of having, like,
interns and people running around.
It'd be great to have someone to manage
Instagram and edit photos for me. Good lord.
Editing photos is not
something that I ever wanted to do,
but it's a huge part of the business.

(51:56):
But partly,
I don't know if I could
trust other people to care
about it as much as I do. I just. I don't know.
I don't know if I would trust
other people to complete something to.
This sounds so stuck up. Good lord.
I don't know if I could trust someone
else to complete something to the
same standard because I don't know

(52:16):
if they would be as passionate about it.
They would be as perfectionist.
I don't know if they would be.
If they have, like,
the engineering brain that's constantly
trying to analyze how secure this thing is,
how I can make it better secure.
Will it fall off?
What happens if someone does this?
If someone rubs
it this way or pulls this thing? And how.
How can I make this the best,
most durable product? Because, good lord,

(52:37):
people are paying
me a lot of money for it, and I just.
I don't know if I
could trust other people with that.
That's a great point.
The amount of trust that goes
into bringing other people
on board is you know, so, I mean, we actually.
I don't think about that often,
so I'm so glad you brought that up,
because that really is anyone who's launching
into something that is their passion, like

(53:00):
what you're doing and then marine someone else,
it's kind of like saying, you know,
on the playground when you're a kid, like,
here's this brand new
toy I just got for Christmas.
Would you like to play with it?
And then it turns out that, like,
the kid has no respect for your toy,
and then you're crushing it, and you're like,
what the heck?
You know, there is that fear. Yeah. Wondering,

(53:21):
given that your following
has been growing so much, you know,
say you had a million followers, what
would be the advice that you gave them all? And
it doesn't have to be related to what you do.
It could just be anything.
This is the problem. I don't.
I don't know what I could possibly say to
a million people that would benefit all of
them in some way other than to be kind.

(53:44):
Look after yourself,
but don't sacrifice yourself.
Be kind to yourself.
Yeah. Just. Just be a nice person.
Be nice to yourself.
Be nice to them. That's like, there
is nothing else to say to a million people. If
you want to be responsible about it, you know?
Do you have anyone that you follow
that keeps you inspired or that you

(54:05):
think other people should definitely
check out because they're awesome?
Oh, I mean, in terms of definitely checkout,
I could probably sit here for, like,
half an hour and go through my follow list. Oh,
this guy, this guy, this guy. But, like, I.
Most of my Instagram account
is stuff that's related to,
but not quite the same as what I'm doing.

(54:26):
So I follow a lot of
traditional bookbinders because I do.
I love to learn and
to know and to understand things,
even if it's not necessarily something
that I'm going to use in my craft.
To see the way that other people
work and to see all these fantastic,
amazing details and, like, end bands,
I could watch people sew end bands for hours.

(54:46):
It's just like whipping some thread
around and tying it in fancy knots.
But the care and precision that
goes into it is kind of amazing.
Yeah. I did see a video a couple
of years ago of people that.
It was like a very concise video of how the
binding happens when they rebind old books.
My mind was blown at that point.
I didn't really know these details, and I. I

(55:06):
can totally imagine what you're talking about.
Just going down a rabbit hole. It's eye candy.
I like anything that takes a really
goddamn long time to make, because again,
you see people posting speed paints,
and on YouTube,
when people are recording their drawing,
they're speeding it
up so that you don't get bored.

(55:27):
And then you start to
judge yourself against this sped up,
super speedy version.
So I like to follow people that
will put a month into one art piece
and then offer it up to the world. So I did.
I did write a couple
down in terms of the book things.
I don't know if I will be
butchering some of these names

(55:48):
because I've only seen them written down.
It's okay,
we've done that too.
That never happens. Yeah.
So there's one guy called,
I think it's Jostapan or IO Stow pen.
I'm not sure.
But this is the guy that will spend
a month making a book and he'll, he'll
sketch out all these beautiful designs to,

(56:10):
and he'll do hand painted filigree.
It kind of looks a bit like celtic knot,
but it's a completely different cultural
background and I'm going to butcher
it if I try and go into detail about it.
But all these wonderful, beautiful patterns,
he'll learn and create ciphers,
new calligraphy styles he'll like.
He works with his parents as well.
His mother does weaving,

(56:31):
his father does silversmithing.
So they'll incorporate elements
of the metalwork into the books.
And every single thing is so unique
and special and different and weird. So that's.
I really love to see that guy.
A quick shout out for Lotus bluebuck art.
Just because there's this
one double book binding where the,

(56:52):
the COVID was kind of like an s shape and
it opens this way and it opens this way.
I've not seen anything like that.
And that just kinda
of blew my mind a little bit. And
just in terms of sheer. Oh, my God. Wow. Skill,
Alex Libris again on Instagram
just makes the most beautiful, detailed,
gorgeous leather bound books.

(57:13):
They're all stamped and embossed
and it did an amazing one.
I still can't even
process exactly how it was done,
but it had a 3d ribcage coming out
of the front of the book. It was incredible.
I'll try and track it down for you.
That's so cool.
Wow.
There's a little thing, like,
I wanted to share it with
people because I had this big fun. I was like,

(57:33):
share this with people. Everyone's
going to realize I'm just a hack. This guy,
he knows that. He's doing this. It's amazing.
Wow, those are great.
Can you spell the first one?
The Ustapan was that we called it.
Yeah. I o s t o p a.
M. Because we'll put some of these
ideas in the show notes as
well so people can go and find that.

(57:54):
And in terms. Sorry, there's
a couple of other things. Gosh, I'm sorry.
Talk for selling everything. There's a couple.
I like to see other people make
weird crap and put teeth on things.
So George circuities, I think,
does amazing sculpts.
He's got one I quite liked.
It's an arcade monster.
It's like a little arcade machine.
It's kind of rectangular and square.

(58:14):
It's got the screen as the mouth.
It's got amazing sculpted,
wrinkly skin and all the teeth and
little buttons coming out of the teeth,
and it's great.
One of the things you said earlier was
that you really like seeing things done
over a long period of time and you love,
and I totally noticed that a while ago
when you mentioned your personal passion
of baking and how you sometimes will

(58:35):
do things that will take multiple days.
And I was like, wow, that
is exactly the same as what your business is,
because you will make
these products that take weeks, you know?
And so the two things you
definitely have that build up
that excitement for the complete products.
How does it feel for you when you
finally see the end result or taste it?

(58:57):
The thing is, the moment of, ah,
this is working doesn't come at the end.
You have all these ideas in your
head and you start to put them down. You don't.
You don't know exactly how it's
going to look because you don't
know how the material is going to react.
And a lot of the designs, I'll do, like,
little sketches,
but then you're laying stuff over
it and you can't see the sketch anymore.
So it'll change to a little bit and so on.

(59:18):
And so there'll be a point halfway,
three quarters where you start to go, yeah,
this is gonna be good.
And that, I think,
is the most intense moment
by the time I've finished. Like,
it's been almost complete for so
long that I kind of know what it's
gonna look like when it gets to, like, 75, 80%.

(59:39):
It doesn't change that much.
It's just cleaning up all the little details
and putting everything together. And that's,
it's satisfying to finish only then,
because I'm looking forward to
the next thing in that next moment of.
I can totally relate to that,
I do mini painting and miniature painting.
And it's like when you're looking at the
thing with the primer on it, you're like this.

(01:00:01):
It's your sketch, essentially.
And then once you start to add the color, then
you start to really see it. You're like, damn,
this is going to be really cool. But by
the time you're putting on the detail, painting
the highlights and all that, you're like, no,
I already know it. I mean, yeah.
Cool.
This looks cool. It looks cooler.
Are we ready for some random rolls?
Yeah. Do you have a d 100 on hand?

(01:00:22):
I can so go ahead and roll it.
Do you want like sexy ASMR
or is that a bit weird?
Yeah, bring that mic
really close to the dice, please.
Okay, I'm gonna roll this on my mouse
mat so that I don't ruin my dice.
Nice.
26.
What's the last nerdy
indulgence you made just for yourself?

(01:00:44):
Me, I guess it would be a baking
thing if it's for myself,
because I made a lot of indulgent,
nerdy purchases related to the business.
Because you can justify it for the business.
Oh, of course.
The last thing I bought that was for me,
was for baking. And it was.
It's a pie tin, a tart tin.
It's quite small and it's 15 cm.

(01:01:04):
It's about the right size for me to make
something tasty for me and my partner.
It's very thin sheet metal
with a yemenite pop out bottom,
and it's got holes in it.
And the reason this is a big deal
is because when you make a tart crust, like,
you press it into the tin,
and when you bake it,
all the kind of steam and everything
pushes the thin crust up and it warps

(01:01:26):
and all this horrible stuff happens to it.
So you have to put paper
in it and get ceramic beans.
And if you don't have beans,
you can use foods,
but different foods does do it differently.
And then you end up with
all these crinkly bits in your pastry.
And the few times I
tried to actually blind bake something,
it went terribly.
So if you have a cake tin with holes in it,
you don't need to do any of that faff.

(01:01:46):
And suddenly just
tarts became like my go to things. Like,
I kind of fancy making something.
I'll get a batch of tart dough out the freezer,
pop it in this magic tray, and it's fantastic.
That does sound really nice.
That's great. That's great. All right,
let's do a couple rapid.
Fires, you kick it off, Chris.
All right. How many cats? Or too many cats?

(01:02:07):
Three. Two is fine. More than that. That's two.
Do you have any?
Not anymore.
We had two cats growing up,
when I was a kid,
which is why two is my limit.
I agree with that.
More than that.
Your life would be ruled by the cats,
and that would be too much.
I assume you have read the Harry Potter books.
Some of them.
Oh, okay. Which one did you enjoy the most?

(01:02:30):
I don't actually like Harry Potter. I'm sorry.
Oh, that's so surprising to
me because of the books,
the animated books.
When I was a kid,
I used to read voraciously. That was okay.
Aside from art,
that was my other greatest hobby. Like,
I don't remember how many books I had,
but I remembered the entire bottom
of my wardrobe was just one

(01:02:51):
massive disorganized pile because
I would read them and throw them in there,
and it just grew, grew over time.
It's like I was spending all my time reading.
So Harry Potter,
when it first came out,
I was the right age for it, and it was, like,
wonderful and magical and different.
But as more time went by,
I just didn't think
the writing was actually very good.

(01:03:13):
Like, the world building is great, but
the writing itself
wasn't very exciting or interesting.
I just found myself getting bored of it.
I did get.
I can't remember if I finished the fifth book.
I think I did.
There was one point where, like,
they get attacked by
some weird brain things with tentacles.
And then the nurse is like,

(01:03:34):
memories leave the deepest scars.
Yeah.
All right, you know what? I'm done.
You lost me. That's it.
And I closed that book up.
If you're gonna leave Harry Potter,
it's you in the fifth book.
Because the fifth book is, like,
the whiniest and most angsty of the books.
I was all over the angst. Like,
all the angsty characters were

(01:03:55):
my favorite in shows and tvs and anime,
and so I don't mind that so much.
But I just didn't.
I just found the writing style quite
simplistic and it wasn't grabbing me.
Hashtag unpopular opinion.
Almost definitely.
All right, what's the best? Munchy.
Oh, my God. Okay. That one I could
talk about for a long time.

(01:04:16):
I think the thing that
me and my partner settled on like,
that we had to have in the house
for the longest time were roundtrees. Randoms.
What are those?
This might be a british thing.
I think roundtrees is still a UK company, but
they have a number of weird random shapes.

(01:04:36):
They could be anything.
They could be like a bicycle
or a dog or a jigsaw puzzle piece. Big Ben,
I think O'Hare.
It's just random shapes.
They're all the same flavors,
so it's like cherry and apple and orange,
and they're just really, really good.
Really strongly flavoured.
Really well done. It's fun,
even though I'm almost 30,
to just pull it out the bag and go, oh,

(01:04:56):
it's a pug. Oh, so clever.
So I have to ask.
Star Trek or Star Wars?
Trek.
Yes.
Yes.
We got one.
We got another one.
Which shows? Which series?
I was quite nerdy about
a lot of older Sci-Fi shows, so I, like,

(01:05:18):
dug down into all the archives of
Doctor who and all that nonsense as well.
So I do just have a lot of love for
the original series because it was just.
It was so different.
And it's looking back on it now and
the special effects are pretty ropey
and it's kind of adorable to see. Oh,

(01:05:39):
is the super space bandage that heals any
wound and it's just a bit sparkly, you know,
and how they.
Bring in the greek gods.
Yeah. Yeah.
I started.
I started watching next generation, like,
when I was at uni,
and I got through like a season
or two of it and it was fine,
but I had so much of it after a while

(01:06:00):
and nothing ever really captured my
heart the same way the original series did.
Wow, that's interesting. Yeah. Because
there is that fantasy aspect of.
In a Sci-Fi story of the original series.
So I've watched all of the series and. Okay,
not all of the original,
because I couldn't quite get it.
Every episode of the original is good, so.

(01:06:20):
But, yeah, the.
The original series, definitely, it's.
Its elements carried
over into the next generation, even
though it was about 20 years later, you know,
more than 20 years.
I just love the music
and the feel of the original series, too,
because it's like.
It is vintagey in the way.
Yeah.
Like the color scheme that they've chosen,
the music with the horns and the drama,

(01:06:43):
like the melodrama that gets raised
the entire show. Like, I don't know, it is.
You're going into a very different
world that you're surrendering to.
It's like watching old Batman
and Robin or you're watching old, like,
seventies versions of things.
Every. They were trying to squeeze every
single terrible pun out of that.

(01:07:03):
Yes.
From start to finish.
And so in the background,
there are just dozens of weird,
silly little details and you can pause any one
frame and spend ages just going through, like,
all the jokes. It's fantastic.
And now it's like, oh, yeah,
everyone's gritty and
real and punches things and God, darkness.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

(01:07:24):
But everything is so colorful back then, too.
Everyone was just like,
let's make choices about the background.
Let's make choices about where they are.
They built sets.
They built things that were, like,
very much of the time.
There was a lot of effort being put into
trying to make something look different
than what everyone else was living in.
Whereas you're right,
nowadays everyone's like,
let's make it look exactly

(01:07:45):
accurate to the way humans live.
And it's like, well, why do that?
That's probably
how I would do it, to be honest.
I'm one of those. Everything
must be perfect and logical and correct.
I kind of people.
Yeah, you know,
a real quick tangent. WandaVision,
that tv show,
because what we're talking about
is the different styles per decade.
WandaVision did a great job of

(01:08:08):
showing that off and, like, highlighting, oh,
the show that's set in, like, this,
being filmed in the sixties and seventies, it
captured those elements so well. And, I mean,
WandaVision
was cool. You know, it took, you have to,
you have to give it a leap of faith, but
it definitely touched on those cool things that
we're talking about from Star Trek and Batman.
Yeah, I like, I think WandaVision,

(01:08:29):
I should probably watch.
It's just this point.
I'm so tired of the MCU in general. People,
other people seem
to be coming around to this, but, like,
I don't know,
Iron man one and two
came out and they were all right.
And then once it started
to be this big ensemble thing,
I just fell out of it, frankly.
Yeah. I don't know. I just don't.
I haven't seen hardly any

(01:08:49):
of the new Marvel movies at all.
And I hear they
just keep getting better and better.
But I also like.
But they're all the same.
Forever.
They are the same. They are the same.
Well, and here's the thing.
When I watch Dune, all right,
I have to say,
when I watched Dune,
you know what I loved about Dune? The new
one with Villeneuve and the best soundtrack.

(01:09:12):
That's gonna win an Oscar.
I'm just gonna tell you, like,
the reason I love that movie.
It didn't feel like a Marvel movie.
It was just completely different in the
way that it was designed from the visuals,
from everything else.
So I think everyone's got to go watch Dune,
and that's the direction things need to go
in Sci-Fi have you been watching foundation?

(01:09:33):
Yes, actually, I did watch foundation.
I'm really enjoying it.
The first about five, five episodes,
six episodes in,
and I'm still really enjoying it.
I love foundation because there are very few
Sci-Fi shows that have such big time skips,
and it is such an important,
there are very few things
that are told across centuries,

(01:09:54):
which I think this will be at some point. Like,
there's been a 40 year
time skip already at one point.
And, yeah, it's a unique idea. Like,
was it Philip K. Dick originally?
Yeah.
No, no, the other one.
It's an Asimov one. Sorry. Yeah, it is. It's
a really interesting concept. And about, like,
an empire that's built on, like,

(01:10:16):
a genetic dynasty,
but the idea of a genetic dynasty
where they clone the original emperor,
and he's considered, like, the genetic perfect.
And it's like they have three
versions of him that are, like, the young,
the guy who's ruling,
and then the old who's there, and it's like,
that's a really interesting,
cool concept to me about how they govern the

(01:10:36):
universe and how long can that really last?
Yeah, that's getting so good. Especially.
Is they stuck? No. No, that is spoilers. No.
Okay.
We can't say anymore. No, we can't.
Oh, let's
just wrap this thing normally. I mean,
we went in deep on these rapid fire questions.
We did.
We did. We went, we went far.
Let's. I would love to kind

(01:10:58):
of wrap it up here with,
what is your definition of a nerd?
A nerd is just someone who is really
passionate about something. Like, there's.
There's all these different terms that people
kind of tend to manage together. A geek, I
think a geek is a very specific type of thing.
They have the traditional nerdy interests,
like science and maths and so on. But

(01:11:19):
a nerd just has to be really into one thing.
You can have a baseball nerd.
You can have a football nerd.
You can have a racing car nerd. I don't know.
You can have a food
nerd and a leather craft nerd.
It's just someone who is passionate
about something and puts time
and effort into it and wants to know
about it and learn about it and live it.
And just, yeah, that's,

(01:11:39):
that is pretty much exactly on point
with what we usually end up saying.
Yeah. Do you get the same answer
with that question a lot?
We actually don't.
We get a bunch of different answers.
And I'm very curious now if you know,
in the future when people start listening to
us and they hear answers to that question if

(01:11:59):
they're going to just conform to what we say.
Have actually thought about this already.
I definitely got that definite difference
between geek and nerd thing from a website
sometime when I was like twelve and it's
just kind of lived with me ever since.
Oh, someone else thought of that. Damn,
it was original.
No, that was. The specific example

(01:12:21):
of a baseball nerd was
what was in that thing that I read.
Baseball doesn't mean anything to me.
I'm from Britain.
Yeah, yeah, right.
Yeah, that's actually. That's the lie.
I have a Chicago Cubs hoodie
because I visited and I saw a game,
but otherwise nothing.
So you paid $100 for the hoodie?
I did,
because it was a souvenir from America

(01:12:42):
that I would have and enjoy and use.
Nice.
And now it's not embarrassing
because they did win a few years ago,
the World Series.
I want to say is that Cubs? Yeah, right.
That was like a thing
on the Internet for a while.
One of the longest losingest
teams of all time, I think, was the Cubs.
And then they won.

(01:13:02):
And of course it was crazy.
And I can say that because I'm
a Toronto Maple Leafs fan who is like, probably
the second most losingest team of all time, so.
Hash. Mostlosingest team.
I think that's a really funny expression.
You said it twice.
I'm originally
from Bolton and Bolton Wanderers.
The football club is the
most losingest football team in the UK.

(01:13:23):
So I know how you feel.
We should do a podcast just on
the most losingest teams and
go interview people who are like,
how's this really going?
The one show people don't want to be on?
Yeah, exactly. That's going to
be the hard one to get.
That won't be necessarily interviews.
That'll probably end up being more
research unless someone is okay and humble.

(01:13:45):
We requested to get the cubs on for this,
but they turned us down.
Did not. Well,
this has been really so much fun. I mean,
the 90 minutes,
the original 90 minutes just flew by,
so this has been fantastic.
Where can people find you?
I am on the Internet in various places.

(01:14:05):
I basically live on Instagram at
this point because I put my non
work social updates in there as well.
So sotiefiddle on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter,
when I remember that it exists.
Occasionally I'll post to Reddit if, like,
I need a sudden influx of eyes
on things to sell stuff. I don't know. Yeah.

(01:14:26):
And that's suety.
And then the regular fiddle word.
Yes.
F I d d l e.
Anyone who just wants some eye candy. Just
go and look at all those photos. It is. I mean,
I'm there right now,
and it is so cool. It really is.
Thank you very much for having me.
It was very fun.
It's dangerous when people ask me

(01:14:47):
questions because I couldn't talk forever.
Hey, we do, too. It's, well, kind of the
reason we started this in the first place.
We're gonna be talking anyways.
We might as well
try share it with the world, right?
Yeah.
Beautiful.
Absolutely. Well, keep it nerdy, everyone.
Is that our thing?
Keep it nerdy.

(01:15:08):
Keep it nerdy.
Keep it real, real nerdy.
Thank you for listening to nerdpreneur.
Be sure to subscribe wherever you found
us and leave a review on Apple podcasts.
Every review helps our show grow.
You can follow and chat
with us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.
Urdpreneurpodcast
Nerdpreneur is a labor of passion,

(01:15:29):
and Chris and I would
love to keep this thing going.
So if you want us to continue making content,
you can support us by going to patreon.com
nerdpreneur and become a member of the board.
Members of the board get shoutouts.
They can submit rapid fire questions.
They get behind the scenes peeks,
and we record super fun and valuable
content exclusive to our board members.

(01:15:50):
We love all of you nerds.
Keep it nerdy nerdpreneur.
You know I love my work. Life's the game,
so I'm gonna take my turn.
Nerds deserve to put the passion first, so
let Em rapper first so they can all be heard.

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Left their Day Job to Make Mimic Books with SuetyFiddle - Interview 6

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Left their Day Job to Make Mimic Books with SuetyFiddle - Interview 6