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. 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, 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.
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. 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. 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 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, 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 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. 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. 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.
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 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, 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, 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, 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 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. 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 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, 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.
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, 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 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. 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
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 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. 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.
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, 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, 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 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, 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 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.
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, 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, 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.
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. 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? 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 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 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. 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, 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.
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
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. 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, 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. 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, 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. 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? 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 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. 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 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. 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 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, 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, 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.
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. 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, 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. 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. 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, 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. 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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.
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, 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 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, 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 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, 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.
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 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 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 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 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.
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. 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, 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 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, 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. 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. 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 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. 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 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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 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 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. 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, 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 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.
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. 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.
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 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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? 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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 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, 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 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.
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
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, 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, 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 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 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, 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. 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, 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
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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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, 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.
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 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, 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 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, 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. 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 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. 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. 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 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.
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 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, 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, 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, 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. 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, 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. 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. 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 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? 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. 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%.
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. 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? 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? 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.
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 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. 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? 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? 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 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. 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, 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 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. 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. 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, 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, 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, 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 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.
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, 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. 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. 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 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 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, 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 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. 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? 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,
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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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 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. 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, 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.
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.