What Do I Actually Want To Do?

A lot of people don't know this but KZ3 actually came from this unnamed poodle character created by the artist Nokemy. When I was a senior at MCAD in 2017 I got debilitatingly sick with Guillain barre syndrome. Every waking moment of every single day I was riddled with pain and eventually lost the ability to be able to walk properly. I had to go on medical leave from school and spent 3 months at home bed-ridden.

During this period, I had lots of time to chat with friends and come up with stories (though most of them were through a pain killer/drug-induced brain fog). One of the images that I was inspired by was the one above and I started to come up with this story about this closeted homosexual bully becoming a flamboyant charismatic loving werepoodle in the same manner of the old Buster E. Wilde comics.

I really liked the idea but never got around to fully fleshing it out due to other life obstacles getting in the way, so the project fell to the wayside. Still, I really enjoyed the character design and concept so when it came time to figure out another sona' in 2019, the werepoodle idea really stuck with me and it's ultimately what I ended up going with. (More on that in the About Me section).

Echos of a Past

I've written multiple blogs about my wants and wishes as KZ3, so I'll skip the revile and get right to the point:

I know what I want, I just don't know how to do it yet.

Recently I was heavily inspired by a furry animated music video by Scratch21Music:

And that's when I came to the realization that I want to be good at many things, at the cost of not being great at any one thing. Jack of all trades, master of none is the cliche' but it rings true. It's very difficult to keep up with someone who spends 4-6 hours a day on their craft when you're spending some of those hours honing another craft, but at the same time, the craft you're honing instead is one the other person isn't doing at all.

I spoke with few friends and it ultimately comes down to the goal: Why are you doing the craft and what are you trying to get out of it?

With KZ3, I want to be a creator who's well received. I want to make good creations across the board (art, writing, music, dance, performance) and make a positive impact wherever I go. But after watching that video, I realized that, if I don't really start digging deep and pursuing these crafts now consistently, I'm never going to do it. So I buckled down, went to Guitar Center after work and bought myself a bass guitar because I want to be able to play an instrument and sing - something I've always wanted to do since childhood despite not having any affinity for it.

But that puts me at that Jack of All Trades dilemma; without steady practice in each craft, I'll never be good at all of them but with steady practice in each craft, I can never truly be elite at any. (The math doesn't work- 2 hours spent on another craft is 2 hours not spent on another.) My friends all get concerned that I'm spreading myself too thin and that's where my problem was - I absolutely was spread too thin, and the scope of my ambition was too great for the resources I had at my disposal (time and energy being the biggest).

I need to think small and efficient, not massive and ambitious. While grinding like there's no tomorrow is romanticized - it's causing a great deal of consequences and nearly cost me my day job that makes all of this possible in the first place. That said, the goal remains the same - use my skillsets to make money, enough to do it for a living as KZ3.

But how can I make this money? I've pondered this time and time again because it's very tricky.

The common mantra for the "starving artist" (or any creator trying to do their passion full time) is that your day job pays for your side hustle, and once you earn enough with your side hustle, you leave your day job to do it full time. I've been perpetually caught in a paralysis by analysis loop. I train and study so I can develop the skill to make money, but all the while I don't make money in the craft, so I train and study so I can make money, and so on and so forth. As a result, I've many skills, and any one of them could have been used to make money by this point, but I have yet to get started.

Truthfully, I have no actual financial plan for myself despite studying how to put them together for so long. The truth is, I'm terrified of getting burnt out and killing my passion for the crafts (again), so I'm looking for ways to utilize talents in a way people will enjoy without it being too taxing on resources.

Different Paths

• I could be a commissioning artist. It's a quick way to get instant money at the cost of 3-6 hours of my time doing the work per artwork, but I'd need to make $150 per day minimum. The truth is, to be a consistent money making commissioning artist you have to do it for a little bit (a few months at least) and build up a trusted list of clientele - all of which take time to do and, under my current sporadic schedule, it's too risky to do by itself. I'd need a way to take the financial pressure off having to produce so much work each day.

• I could sell personal projects. Comics, Games, Books, Art Packs, Animations, Music, etc., Things I'm truly passionate about and each of which could produce decent passive income under the right marketing model, but all of which take lots of time to create and even more time to sell. I would love to create the Zach Cooner series full time, but time is the biggest resource cost here, and it's one I've very little of as it is. Honestly, the solution here is to free up the time needed to produce the project. (About 200 hours of work time required).

• I could go into graphic design and craft making. I've the equipment to produce almost any attire or craft design I want and I know lots of people would love custom apparel or stickers/decals of their sonas or characters and such. It's not as taxing as being a commissioning artist but it requires a larger amount of upkeep to pay for material and shipping. In short, if this is going to work it has to be marketed well.

• I could go into programming. I can blow the dust off my Masters degree in Software Engineering and get to creating something (probably in gaming, comics, dance, or fitness) that furries would enjoy that would require a small monthly subscription.

• I could teach e-courses. The biggest thing I learned during my quest to financially help the TF community (before it blew up in my face) was that you can sell anything so long as you market it well. I could put together something that taps into a niche' market with a need - but again, this would take calculated planning and time.

• Become a social media influencer. I've always wanted to take KZ3 and have some level mainstream success on Youtube, Instagram, TikTok. I know I have the skillset to do it (because there's lots of other people dumber and less skilled than us that have done it - let's be honest), it all comes down to marketing, consistency, and time.

• I could go into music. This is a new craft I'm learning, but I've been working with music and entertainment executives for years already and know what to do to find opportunity. Musicians earn their money these days from merch, shows, and deals, but ultimately musicians live and die by who negotiates on their behalf to everyone (whether it's a marketing agency, an agent, their manager, or themselves). You have to be charismatic or, at the very least, unafraid to talk to strangers and skeptics, to get anywhere.

Again, any one of these are avenues I could go down and yet I find myself struggling choose one and am in that loop of training to make money and not making money so I train more. It's very frustrating these days watching other people find success while I'm stuck in place with a winning lottery ticket, too afraid to cash it in.

When I was about to quit my job from Mediacom in 2021 in order to pursue my dream (boy have I gotten off track from that...), a financial advisor told me, "Empires are built from 6pm - 10pm", and she's not lying. In order for any of this work, it's going to take consistent and dedicated time to create and market, as well as proficiency at the craft being promoted. I used to believe, if one was "good enough", then the money would just magically come because people would clamor after my skill but very rarely is that actually how that works.

Figuring Out The Master Plan

The KZ3 Fursuit is coming in April, just in time for Furry Weekend Atlanta (FWA)

I know for sure I want to do content on social media and create videos as a furry, that's a 100% certainty. Those videos would be everything from dance videos, reactions, animations, shorts, and more. Those wouldn't make money by themselves, but it'd be a platform from which step up and launch activity off of.

I worry I won't be able to make personal projects of any moderate/large scope without leaving my day job because those projects require significant time and dedication to create, however, my "perfect day" is one where I can wake up and just work on the Zach Cooner series while not having to necessarily worry about income for the month. The only way that can happen is if I'm earning income passively through investments or a low energy side hustle. $1500 in passive income is my magic number in order to do this. (Currently at $0 as of writing this.)

I'd like to make the most of my income from Graphic Design and Craft creation (Creating T-shirts, Hoodies, Stickers, Buttons, etc.,) . It's something that I don't mind at all and doesn't suck the joy out of making art work like long-term standard commissions do. I'd also like to make income through selling e-courses (because I like teaching and am good at it) but this is a process that heavily relies on marketing, compounding success, and a proof of concept; how can one say "I can teach you to do this feat." If the teacher can't demonstrate that they or their students performed that feat? If this is going to happen, it's gotta start small and simple then build up over time.

Finally I'd like to make decent income through projects released - mostly games in the form of visual novels (being able to combine my art, music, and animation skills with technology and my programming skillset).

Any other side-hustle would come from part-time work, such as being a private contract instructor in any of the skills mentioned above.

In Conclusion

I've been confused for quite awhile about how to proceed making a living off being a furry, but truthfully it's not that much different from trying to make a career as any kind of creator, the only difference is I dress up in a costume. I had always been held up on the idea that artists had to be commissioning artists to make income, a task that has proved to be very boring (and rather stressful) to me, and it halted me from understanding that, due to my multiple skillsets, there's many different avenues that can be explored to reach the same destination.

Ironically it's no longer about if I'll be successful in an endeavor (since the secret ingredients to all of this is simply consistency, marketing, and time) but what endeavor do I actually want to be successful in? Sorting that out into its most simple forms helps formulate the plan to bring the dream to reality.

At this point, the only thing I'm waiting for to get started is that fursuit, everything else has been skill development and training for what's to come. Here's to future endeavors!

KZ3