Episode 27- The Business of Doing Art With Bruno Pesec

Today, we discuss the journey of Bruno Pesec! Thank you for joining our journey through the arts. Like we always say "Pursuing your Passions is a Bitch... But it's worth it!"

Please Check out our friend, Bruno Pesec-
His Website- https://www.pesec.no/

Also Check us out and our future projects at The Rogue Scientist Productions
Website- https://theroguescientistproductions.com/
Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100087537946337
Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/roguescientistproductions/

Check out "The World Beyond" by Charles Dockham on Kindle- https://www.amazon.com/World-Beyond-Charles-Dockham-ebook/dp/B0C9QZYQB3/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2I1LDRGBVAYWN&keywords=Charles+Dockham&qid=1688338231&sprefix=charles+dockh%2Caps%2C801&sr=8-1

Check out "The Beautiful Beast" by Carolyn Clark on Kindle Vella-https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B0BVMNPBKZ

Check out Watsynthebox- Guest host William Thornhill- https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100094728966282&mibextid=b06tZ0

Transcript

The Rogue Scientist Productions (00:01.174)
Thank you and welcome to Pursuing Your Passions as a Bitch. I'm your host Charles Dockrum, the owner of the Road Sciences Productions and the author of The World Beyond, an ongoing story on Kindle Vella. With me I have my guest host Bruno Pesec, who helps businesses gain profitability. Bruno?

Bruno Pesec (00:20.598)
Hello, pleasure to be here and looking forward to sharing more with your audience.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (00:25.81)
Yes, thank you so much. And the primary reason why I really wanted to kind of talk to you today is a huge piece of the entertainment industry that a lot of people don't necessarily have a chance to look at or have a chance to think about is the fact that you are setting up your own business to kind of gain a certain level of intrigue from.

basically the world. You start in LLC, you start building your brand, you start trying to focus on gaining profitability. And I figured the best way to kind of get that insight is to talk to a business leader. So what kind of got you into this field?

Bruno Pesec (01:14.159)
Well, it's a long story that I will try to cut short. So I actually started as an engineer in my specific field, which was defense back in the day. And I worked a lot on developing new products and services. And we had this one project where basically we had a customer who came in and asked for the impossible. And I was part of a team of very young engineers, and we were very ambitious.

And we were like, oh yeah, we're going to make it possible. And the worst part of the story is we did make it possible. In fact, we created the product that was so good, nobody in the market believed us that such a product could physically exist. So we couldn't sell it for several years. For me, that was a very, very important trigger point in my development because I realized that value creation isn't just about creating something that's perfect.

It is also about how we speak about value, how we sell it, how we present it to others. And from then, I somehow ended up traveling the world, working with entrepreneurs and large companies, helping them create more value for themselves and their customers.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (02:26.678)
Great, and it really kind of sounds like you gained a lot of insight during that time period.

Bruno Pesec (02:35.106)
Absolutely, and what I'm hoping for in sharing more with your audience is that they don't have to learn the hard way like I did. They say smart people learn from mistakes and wise people learn from mistakes of others. So I hope your audience is wiser than I was.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (02:54.902)
Oh yeah, no for sure. And the huge piece that I kind of find as that translates across multiple marketplaces is that while you started in a completely different field and you've started by growing in a completely different area, entertainment as a whole is a huge piece of just a completely different industry, but it just kind of follows the same pathway. Sure, you're...

when it comes to business and development of a product and certain projects, the difference is when it comes to entertainment, you're selling yourself and you are the value and you're presenting yourself as the value, you're presenting what you can offer to other individuals as the product and what you're able to do in terms of services. And it just kind of, it kind of translates, I've seen

because I previously worked in sales doing, we sold products. So we sold touchscreen interactive kiosks. So the computer kiosks that kind of go into different things. And so I found working in different sales industries and coming back to the entertainment industry, there's very similar things across the board. And so that's why I'm really kind of excited to talk about that because with the entertainment industry, everybody has to start their own LLC. So through your knowledge,

when it comes to creating a business, what are certain things that you might say that my listeners would want to focus on?

Bruno Pesec (04:31.97)
Well, I'm hoping that your listeners will focus on this, but unfortunately the data tells us that this is the most overlooked part of starting a new business. And that is actually understanding what the customer wants. And I've seen this in many, many industries. So yes, I started in the defense industry many, many years ago, but since then, I worked with a number of industries, financial services, entertainment in Europe.

education, healthcare, oil and gas, etc. And I see one thing again and again and again, when it comes to both small enterprises, solopreneurs and large companies. And that is, they keep overlooking the most important part of the value creation engine. And that is understanding what the customer is actually trying to buy or trying to get at. So in entertainment industry, when we're thinking about either individuals or smaller businesses,

You actually often have a scenario where you might have an end user and a customer who are not the same thing. So, for example, think about if you're in the business of writing plays and you sell your plays to theater or production or something else. So your play must satisfy the requirements of both this theater, but also of the attendees that will watch this play. So when you are setting up your business, you must be quite aware.

and ideally quite knowledgeable about what your ideal customers want, what are they currently spending to get that desire fulfilled, and ideally how flexible they are in that regard. Some of these things are impossible to find out without first-hand experience, which isn't a bad thing, but it's something to be aware of.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (06:24.39)
No, that's actually a great point. And the fact that you kind of have to do some trial and error to first get your customer base, figure out what they're precisely wanting, and then focusing your product or service to try and meet your customers' needs.

Bruno Pesec (06:45.534)
Yes, and why that is also important is often in the more creative industries, I mean, this is not just in creative, this is in all industries, but is prominent in more creative industries is we put a lot of us into our product, into our offering. So to some extent, rejection of what we have to offer also feels much more personal compared to, let's say, if you're selling nuts and bolts.

Kind of if somebody says no to nuts and bolts, you don't take it personally. But if somebody says no to you, and you made yourself part of the product, service, whatever it is you're offering, it can hurt more. And it's important for your own wellbeing to remember, hey, this isn't personal. They're just saying no to what I explained to them at the moment. They're not denying me as a creative, as a businessman, as a solopreneur.

I know this might sound like a small thing, but it's so, so important for personal wellbeing because being a solopreneur or being part of a small business is a difficult journey. So you must take care of yourself. You have to have this tenacity. People will talk about the grit, but self-care is part of that process because it's not always going perfectly, as we have seen over the last three years.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (08:07.33)
Especially with COVID and just how that's really kind of transformed the business landscape as a whole.

Bruno Pesec (08:17.546)
Absolutely. Back to why having understanding of the customer is important. When it comes to sales and marketing, which is what a lot of people actually struggle with, I struggle with it myself. I was like, okay, if I do great work, then I will get more work by itself. But unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. So you have to talk about what's valuable about your business, what's valuable about your product. You cannot assume

that it will talk or sell itself. Such products are very, very rare. You have to do the work. The best way to do the work is actually to get the customers to describe and explain your product. Why? Because first, you will see if they really understand what are we offering. And second, you will get in their own words, which is the words of customers, that then you can reuse to other customers because your potential customers are much more likely to react.

positively to something that's expressed the way they would express it versus how you might express it yourself. Because what's really, really important to remember is you are not your own customer. Even if your product came out of your own need, you're still not your own customer. So never confuse yourself and what you think to be the ultimate truth of what customer is going to find valuable.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (09:42.43)
No, that's actually a great point. And so when it comes to that kind of research, so there's development of the product, there's building your service, you're doing all those different things, but how much time should you spend on the marketing portion when it comes to being able to understand your customers and understand, like, I know that when it comes to certain projects or certain movies or books, you kind of gear it towards an age range, but kind of understanding that

range of who you're gearing it towards. You kind of have to do a little bit of knowledge, or at least research. So how much research do you think you should, as a business or a small business, you should put into it, if you're to put a percentage-wise in there.

Bruno Pesec (10:29.79)
I would consider it as a scale. In the beginning, you want a hundred percent and then you should scale it down, but you should never scale it down to less than 50% of your time. And what I mean by that is that ideally you weave it through everything you do. So in the beginning, it's very, very intense because in understanding your customers needs and requirements deeply, some people will talk about problems.

But let's face it, not everything we do is about solving problems. Sometimes it's about satisfying needs that have nothing to do with problem alleviation. It may just be helping somebody get the job done better or enjoy something better or something like that. Back to the main point. So in the beginning, you want to spend nearly 100% of your time. Forget about fancy website or perfect this, perfect that. If you don't understand your customer, you have nothing to sell.

you're just wasting your time and money on setting everything else up. Of course, not saying, you know, legal stuff always needs to be settled. Don't harm people. Don't break the law. That's, that's assumed. But I'm talking about, you know, people getting stuck on, on perfect logo, color palette for their website, a perfect LinkedIn page or whatever is the social media of the choice. Uh, it just has to be serviced.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (11:26.655)
Mm-hmm.

Bruno Pesec (11:47.838)
in the first few days or months, you want to spend nearly 100% of the time on understanding what makes your customers stick. You want to have a mental image of how do they decide to buy a product or service like yours, so that you can eventually get them to buy a product or service like yours. You have to be able to draw it on a piece of paper like, oh, this is how they go, aha, and this is what they think, and this is how they feel.

and then they do this and then they do that and then they finally put in or call or put car details or something. That's the level of detail you're looking for because it's not about just one sale. You have to have a repeated sale. You have to sell again and again and again and again. Basically, you can either sell multiple products to the same customers or you can sell the same product to multiple customers. If you want your business to grow, you have to be doing both. So in the beginning, the...

best return on investment for your time and effort is to spend as much time as possible to understand what makes customer tick. And then it's not like you put that knowledge in the drawer or closet or whatever and forget it, but you weave it intelligently throughout all your other processes. So customer support, I don't know, let's say you wrote a book, you start selling book and some books and somebody writes back to you and they have a question or they give you a comment, compliment, whatever.

Hey, you just include a small question at the end. What have you thought about it? How have you used it? What else would you like to see in the future? So you kind of keep this customer research and customer development running all the time, but maybe not at the same level of intensity as in the beginning, because that's how you ensure that you always keep creating new value that's relevant for your customers. So you always have to be listening. You always have to be doing this.

research. How's that landing with you? Is this making sense?

The Rogue Scientist Productions (13:46.95)
No, it's actually making a lot of sense in terms of establishing reliability in terms of like setting up your business. It's your, you stop focusing on the image of your business and you focus on the, what you can produce for the customer and what the customer is actually interested in.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (14:13.819)
And so, no, I see that. Yeah.

Bruno Pesec (14:14.542)
Absolutely. So packaging, of course.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (14:19.41)
No, go ahead.

Bruno Pesec (14:23.702)
Packaging, of course, is very important, especially as you start growing your business. But in those initial days, it's all about understanding the customer and meeting their needs. Trust me, if you have something that makes them tick, they will not care if you are a little bit rough or imperfect around the edges. They just won't care. They only care about getting their core needs satisfied. If you can find it.

and you can find a way to do that, then you actually have a chance of building a business that will not close within a year. If you're not able to do that, but you're going from sale to sale, from sale to sale, then what you might be doing is actually might be doing a non-repeatable sales, non-repeatable value propositions. And what you're basically doing is surviving. Ideally.

when you put your own money into the business, you have to think about it, okay, this is the amount of money I have to find a repeatable business model. So I want to be spending that money to learn as much as possible about my customers so I can start delivering value to them, so I can start earning some value back myself. So if you think about it as a series of loops that are continuously progressing forward.

My suggestion would also be when you're setting out, if you still haven't started your business, is to clearly write down, okay, what is a fail and success for this business? And why do I write that? Say that. When we define failure criteria up in advance, we are actually signaling before we are too biased, okay, when is the red light we want to stop? Sometimes we have an idea and it doesn't work out.

Just because you worked on it for 12 months, 18 months, doesn't mean you should continue working on it. I know this might be difficult to hear, but sometimes it's better to stop, take your learnings, close whatever you have started, and then come up with new idea and start exploring that instead. What I just described is sometimes we call sunk cost fallacy. Sunk cost fallacy is when you think that you should continue with whatever you've been doing.

based on how much money, time, resources you have spent so far. Just because you worked on something for very, very long or invested a lot of resources doesn't mean that is promising. If we define a fail or stop criteria up in advance, that makes it much more easier to say, hey, this is what I said is the criteria for stopping. So now is the time and the criteria is hit. So maybe...

I should either pivot the business, that means finding new customers and some new offerings for them, or I should close the business. Fail criteria could be, for example, if I don't get three paying clients within 18 months, I will stop the business or I will find a new idea to work on. Of course, this is just an example. My proclivity is towards shorter.

time ranges, especially if you're a solopreneur or a solo professional that's starting a business, you can usually test that within six to nine months, if not less. It really depends if you're trying to sell to end consumers or if you're trying to sell to other businesses or professionals.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (18:07.502)
No, that makes a lot of sense. And what you were saying earlier when it kind of comes to the marketing of a project to businesses and then having it also lay on the customers in order to kind of understand or want to see it in the first place, because a lot of the industry, at least when it comes to

the entertainment industry, you might be able to sell your project or you might be able to sell your product to a business. Like you go to an agent or you're going to, like you said, a theater or you're going to a different agency to try and sell your product. But then when it doesn't reach the customer base or if it doesn't meet the customer base's needs, it can be a completely failed project because they're not seeing a return on investment. They're not seeing a return on...

the money that you put into it, they're not seeing a return. So it's huge to kind of understand that, understand your customers, understand what you're bringing across, understand what the business needs are, and then to kind of take a look at what you're saying in terms of if you're not seeing the return that you're looking for, or if you're not seeing the project return that you're needing, it might be a little bit better to kind of take a step back.

re-evaluate your situation, probably take a different direction while you can and stop putting more money into a sinking project.

Bruno Pesec (19:44.986)
Absolutely agreed. And what's important to remember is learn from everything you do. So kind of write down, this is what I thought would happen. This is what has actually happened. And then answer why. So just do your best. This doesn't have to be a big exercise. Have a notebook and just write down all these things. This will help you learn from everything you do in the business. And hopefully will also help you avoid

the mistakes and repeat the successes you did. Because the worst thing is not failing to sell. The worst thing is succeeding to sell and not understanding why your customer bought it. Because if you don't get it, then you cannot repeat it. So don't just study a failure, study success as well.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (20:39.694)
Exactly, and making sure to do that research and making sure you can repeat it. Like you said, you want repeat customers, you want repeat people coming to see your stuff, you want repeat people to keep reading what you're producing, you want the repeat business because that's going to be important in helping create your base. I keep applying it to the entertainment industry.

That's where you have people who are fans of your production company. You have fans of your movies, you have fans of your books, you have fans. That's what we keep saying in terms of repeat customers is creating a fan base, really kind of nurturing that fan base and having it grow. And if you don't know what's kind of really bringing joy to your fan base or you don't know what's working for you,

then you can't repeat it. You're shooting yourself in the foot by not doing that research.

Bruno Pesec (21:44.302)
Absolutely. So kind of, especially in a community or fan based businesses, as you say, you must embrace and understand that they're also part of your business model. So it's understanding community, their needs, what makes them tick, understanding customers, understanding end users. Like it's a system and you're better off thinking of your business as a system versus thinking of your business as I write books or I produce plays or I do this or that. No, no, no, no, no, no. All of that together. That's your business.

And if you're able to connect these dots, you're already going to be ahead of your competition.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (22:21.006)
Exactly. And that's it's it's putting the work into everything just to make sure. Like with us, we work on podcasting to really kind of help the the industry as a whole, but also help our base and our fan base in terms of anybody who's looking to kind of set up certain projects or set up certain businesses like this. We want to be able to provide everybody with the correct tools and provide everybody with everything that they need. But it's it's important to.

recognize that what if certain things that we're producing that people are relating to, we try to at least kind of highlight those and make sure to kind of, like I said before, nurture those and help them grow because that's gonna help grow our base, that's gonna help grow important things because we want to not only have certain things translate from one project, but we wanna have that translate to another project or another business portion that we're doing.

And to do that, like you said, it is a machine. It is a huge piece. And it's not just I'm an author. It's I'm having this project translate to this project. And then this project translates to this project. And it's just an interwoven mesh of just everything coming together.

Bruno Pesec (23:46.894)
Absolutely. One last thing that I would maybe propose to people to always think and that's especially valuable for smaller businesses and solopreneurs. You have to embrace this selling and marketing. You just need to find the way that works for your personality.

And your values, you know, it doesn't have to always be closing, like in old movies or Wall Street movies or something like that. There are different ways to sell that they're organic and kind of fit your character. And ideally, you want to create this scenario where people and your customers, they want to pull from you. Instead of you showing it down the throat, pushing it on them. You always think about, okay, how can we create this effect where they're coming to me and asking.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (24:12.487)
Yeah.

Bruno Pesec (24:37.122)
for it. It's difficult in the first months or even years of business, but that is a very sustainable sales machine if you can set it up. And that's why I like you mentioned like fans, communities, et cetera. One of the big advantages of having and nurturing fan communities is that you're creating more of this pooling environment where you have basically end users intermingled with customers and potential customers that are pooling.

and recommending to each other without your direct intervention. That's a beautiful effect, but it will not happen overnight. It will not happen just by itself. Or sometimes it happens by itself, but you cannot count on your business happening for itself. You have to work on it deliberately. And then you can have it as a part of your business. Again, everything is a system. Everything is interconnected. And the good news is you can deliberately work.

on elements of your business. And should.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (25:40.29)
Exactly. And one thing that I've kind of seen, especially is with myself, like you said, when you're when you're kind of starting out, create goals, make sure that you are you are setting yourself up. I like it's you want to be at a certain place by this time frame. But how are you going to get there? And what are the paths you're going to have to do? How much marketing are you going to have to kind of put into?

trying to spread the word about your business, but also getting the, like you said, the feedback from your customer base in terms of is this actually working? Is this actually something that we need to do? And then you kind of reevaluate things once you kind of hit a certain timeframe. You go, like you gave yourself two months, see what happens. Was that enough time? Do we think that this is just not working in this timeframe? Should we kind of take a step back and kind of see where reevaluate things?

Should we put more money into this or should we kind of take that huge or just go in a different direction to see if that will work a little bit better. But making sure to keep those goals going instead of just going, I'm gonna make $10,000 at the end of the year. No, but how are you gonna get there? Well, I wanna set up this by this point. I wanna make sure that this is built by this point. I wanna make sure that this is set up by this point. And then from there, you're...

also reevaluating your customer base and your fans, your community and kind of building that portion to keep eyesight on everything that you're doing. And then you're just trying to make sure that as you're building more, you're interacting with that community, you're responding to that community, you're talking to that community. Like you said, customer feedback or having a customer department where if they reach out to you, you say, thank you for reaching out to me. You connect, you react, you make sure that you're talking to your base

That's important too, and that's a huge piece about some of these LLCs and some of these things is customers want to be heard and they want you to recognize that you're putting in the work and they're putting in the work to reach out to you. So they love that you recognize that.

Bruno Pesec (27:53.498)
Absolutely. And a small thing just to add, people hate being ignored more than being rejected. That's very important to remember when engaging with community.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (28:08.29)
Exactly. Like people don't like it when it's you just don't you don't react to them. They would much rather you interact, try and figure out what you're looking for. Either that or just try and take that information to heart and but just react to them. Make sure that you are answering their questions. Make sure that you are talking to them because it is a huge piece in growing your industry.

business growing your future goals because it starts becoming your, when you're building your business, you start growing what people recognize you for. And so like you said, when you start growing that pool, you start growing that community, you start growing that fan base, you're going to find out that what you knew of your fan base is probably significantly.

larger than what you kind of realized you had. Where you might have, you might know of the five or 10 people that might be commenting on your Facebook posts or commenting on your Instagram posts, but you could have a hundred people who always sit and watch and make sure that, and actually are supporting you, just not talking to you. And then it just kind of becomes a huge thing of recognition of your brand that you start realizing your fan base is significantly larger.

than you and you become your brand and you just kind of want to make sure that you are, like I said, nurturing your community.

The Rogue Scientist Productions (29:49.842)
Well, our time is kind of running to an end. I wanted to thank you, Bruno, for being on our show today. Are there any websites, any events coming up, any social media platforms that you would like our listeners to kind of follow you on?

Bruno Pesec (30:14.442)
Charles, it's been a pleasure sharing more with your audience. One of the things that I was very fortunate in life is to have parents that always supported my education, to have mentors that were always happy to engage my curiosity. So what I pledge to very early on is whatever I learn, I will openly share. No gateways, no payments, no, you know, leave your kid's name to get it. So

Everything I talked about and much, much more you can find on my website. P E S E C dot and no, uh, go there, look into different advice, templates, tools for developing your business, understanding your customers, innovating, creating value, everything is there. If you have any questions, child has my contact details. Otherwise feel free to connect on LinkedIn and ask if I can help. I will help.

I hope that at least each of you that's listened that you take at least one one little thing and try to apply it tomorrow

The Rogue Scientist Productions (31:19.51)
Thank you. And as for me, you'll be able to find this on our website, the road scientist productions.com, where you have our merchandise and links to my story on Kindle, the world beyond. You also have all of our road scientists, social media platforms, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter. The best way to support us is to like our podcast on your favorite podcast platform of choice and let us know how much you've enjoyed the show. I really do want to thank you, Bruno, for being on our show today.

And I want to thank our guests and everybody listening for joining us. This has been our podcast to all those out there looking to start a new career in the arts, such as acting, writing, music, comedy, and more. Always remember, pursuing your passions is a bitch, but it's worth it.