Balancing Creativity and Business: Paul Pape Helps Creatives Go from Starving Artist to Creative Hero

In this powerful episode of Tech Diva Biz Talks, Audrey Wiggins dives into the world of creative entrepreneurship with TEDx speaker, author, and legendary “Santa for Nerds,” Paul Pape.

For over 20 years, Paul has designed custom collectibles for Disney, Universal, Nickelodeon, and fans around the world — all while building a profitable creative studio from scratch. Today, he teaches artists and makers how to build thriving businesses using his Gamify Business framework, a uniquely playful approach that turns business planning into character creation, pricing into magic-item valuation, and clients into campaigns worth conquering.

Inside this conversation, you’ll learn:

• Why creatives often undercharge—and how to fix it immediately
• How to turn your business plan into a fun, creative “character sheet”
• The truth behind the Rule of 100 and why you only need a small group of true supporters
• How to price your art like a magic item, not a commodity
• How to align your creativity with sustainable profit
• The mindset shift that moves you from starving artist to creative hero

Whether you're a designer, maker, writer, performer, or creative entrepreneur, Paul’s insights will help you level up, charge your worth, and embrace the adventure of running a business with joy — not fear.

This episode is your invitation to become the hero of your own creative story.

GamifyBusiness.com/podcast

paulpapedesigns.com

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Transcript

[00:00:01 - 00:00:17]
Welcome to Tech Diva Biz Talks, where we tune in, dive deep and level up. I'm your host, Audrey Wiggins, AKA the Tech Diva brand strategist, marketing mind, and your guide through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. Let's talk tech.

[00:00:18 - 00:00:36]
Today on Tech Diva Biz Talks. We're diving into the world where creativity meets strategy with a true original Paul Eric Pape, the TEDx speaker, author and creative business strategist, affectionately known as Santa for Nerds. Paul. I love that.

[00:00:37 - 00:00:37]
Thanks.

[00:00:37 - 00:01:37]
For more than two decades, Paul has designed custom collectibles for powerhouse brands like Disney, Universal and Nickelodeon, all while building his own thriving design studio. He's the creator of Gamify Business and author of the Creative Players Handbook to Business, a groundbreaking. A ground baking. We're gonna bake here. A groundbreaking guide that turns intimidating business concepts into something creatives actually enjoy. Through the lens of gaming and adventure, Paul helps artists, designers and makers level up their business skills without losing their artistic soul. His mission? To prove that you don't have to be a starving artist to be a successful one. Get ready to play the business game on your own terms because Paul Pape is about to show us how fun, fulfilling and profitable creativity can be. We'll hear from Paul Pape after this message from my business, All Together Marketing.

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[00:01:39 - 00:02:08]
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Welcome, Paul, to Tech Diva Biz Talks.

[00:02:09 - 00:02:11]
Thanks for having me, Audrey. I appreciate it.

[00:02:11 - 00:02:24]
Yes, absolutely. I'm glad that you're here and excited to learn what this gamified big business and whatever else you have for us today so we can level up. Okay, so before we get deep though, please share your fun fact with us.

[00:02:25 - 00:02:33]
Well, I mean, you already mentioned it once during the intro, but my fun fact is that I am colloquially known as Santa for nerds.

[00:02:34 - 00:02:35]
How did that come up? Come up?

[00:02:35 - 00:03:28]
Come about being so I spent the last 20 years of my life being a full time artist, but my specialty wasn't painting or sculptures. It was basically fulfilling wishes of people that couldn't find things elsewhere. And so they would ask me to make whatever they can come up with and I could do it. And that's actually what got me into businesses like Disney and Universal is because they would Ask me. You know, they, they. I had the reputation of being able to make whatever anybody wished for. And I had one client actually say, you are just like Santa for nerd people. And I'm like, absolutely, I'm Santa for nerds. And it just really stuck because I had spent years trying to figure out how to put exactly what I do on a business card. And it was really difficult because it's. I can make anything you want is people don't get it and. But if I put Santa for Nerds on there, they, it makes them stop. They understand Santa, they understand nerd. So it just worked out really well.

[00:03:28 - 00:03:35]
Yeah, that is really cool. Is there anything you want to show us? We don't know that those listening can't see it, but if they're doing the video.

[00:03:35 - 00:03:43]
Well, I mean, you already mentioned it once during the intro. But my fun fact is, is that I am colloquially known as Santa for nerds.

[00:03:44 - 00:03:45]
How did that come about? Being.

[00:03:45 - 00:04:33]
I spent the last 20 years of my life being a full time artist, but my specialty wasn't painting or sculptures. It was basically fulfilling wishes of that couldn't find things elsewhere. And so they would ask me to make whatever they can come up with and I could do it. And that's actually what got me into businesses like Disney and Universal is because they would ask me, I had the reputation of being able to make whatever anybody wished for. And I had one client actually say, you're just like Santa for nerd people. And I'm like, yeah, absolutely. I'm Santa for nerds. And it just really stuck because I had spent years trying to figure out how to put exactly what I do on a business card. And it was really difficult because it's. I can make anything you want is people don't get it. And. But if I put Santa for Nerds on there, they, it makes them stop. They understand Santa, they understand nerd. So it just worked out really well.

[00:04:33 - 00:04:40]
Yeah, that is really cool. Is there anything you want to show us? We don't know the. Those listening can't see it. But the video.

[00:04:40 - 00:05:10]
If you're a fan of Star wars, this is one of the things that I make which is like you frozen as Han Solo. So I can make anybody doing any pose frozen in carbonite. That's one that I've done. This is from a movie called Death Becomes her. And yeah, yeah, it's from the, from the 90s. It's a very popular piece. But what I wanted to show you is actually the piece inside. So inside we have this gorgeous Box here. And then this comes out. And as I'm making a mess here on my desk.

[00:05:12 - 00:05:18]
Oh, I will not. Trust me. And then this one opens up and inside of it is this gorgeous.

[00:05:19 - 00:05:48]
Gold and ruby egg. Yep. And then inside this is actually. You can open it up and they spring open and inside of it is actually a vial that holds the elixir to immortality is what's inside that. So, so that's. So that's one of the pieces. So that was just something from a movie that somebody wanted to have inside their home. And so they said, is that something that you could build because they don't sell it. And I said, oh, absolutely. And while it takes a while, it is definitely something that I can put together for them. And then they have these beautiful pieces.

[00:05:48 - 00:05:51]
That's an amazing keepsake. Oh, my goodness.

[00:05:51 - 00:05:52]
Thank you.

[00:05:52 - 00:06:01]
Yeah, I mean, I know I asked you like how you got into this. How did you really get into like making things? So not just because somebody asked you, but where did that come from?

[00:06:01 - 00:06:13]
I started in theater. I was a theater kid and I start. I started off as an actor and found out pretty quickly I'm. I'm bad at not acting, but I'm bad at memorizing my lines.

[00:06:13 - 00:06:14]
Okay.

[00:06:14 - 00:06:58]
So I'm horrible to be on stage with. I could do a one man show, no problem, but having to compete with other people. And so when I was in college, I was going to be an actor and then they told me, well, we're not going to cast you in any other shows. You're just not that good, so you got to find something else. And I still wanted to be a theater major. So I had a mentor actually ask me if I wanted to learn every other aspect of theater. And I'm a sponge for knowledge. So I was like, absolutely, let's do it. And he showed me every variable in theater, from sweeping the floors to management to box office to design. And I fell in love with the design aspect of it. And so from there I kind of like launched into it and I won a bunch of awards recognized by the Prince of Monaco Faberge Co. For being a designer and then just kind of went from there. And so, yeah. So theater kid.

[00:06:58 - 00:07:17]
Wow. Yeah. That's amazing. I know that was in my major is communications, but I did go to. I don't know if you're familiar with Caramu theater. It's nationally known. A lot of our actors, famous actors now, have actually went through there. And so I thought I really wasn't that great either. And I ended up ended up doing the lighting.

[00:07:17 - 00:07:25]
Okay, okay. But still, you got your foot in the door, and that's the whole point. You get to do the theater. So experiencing it live is wonderful, right?

[00:07:25 - 00:07:43]
Exactly. It is fun. Well, that. That's, that's amazing. Thanks for sharing that. I really want to say what's behind that. That he's a maker, and I love that. All right, let's get going here. What's the number one misstep you see creatives make when they first try to turn their art into a real business?

[00:07:44 - 00:07:47]
They do not charge for labor.

[00:07:49 - 00:08:02]
Yeah, that's the, that's the biggest one. They'll. They'll cover their materials and then they'll just maybe put a little bit extra on there. I'm like, what about your time? Like, oh, but I love doing this. And I'm like, that's why you're going to be a starving artist. You got to charge for labor.

[00:08:02 - 00:08:08]
So thank you. Yes. I'm going to send this, this, this podcast is going to a few folks that I know.

[00:08:09 - 00:08:30]
They'Re gonna get, like, they're gonna do like, the royal delivery. That's what for sure. Oh, my. Oh, my goodness. You know, and in, in business, in general, entrepreneurs, it is charging, though, is. I think that's probably the hardest thing other than the marketing piece. Sometimes they get, they get hung up there. But, yeah, pricing, that's. That's major. Oh, my God.

[00:08:30 - 00:09:00]
I actually figured out a mathematic equation to allow people, especially new people, to figure out what to charge. Now, obviously, it's a, It's a three step process. The first thing you have to do is you have material cost. That doesn't change. It costs. That's the materials you're going to pay for. There's also labor. And labor is the one that you have to work with. If you're just getting into starting to sell your work as an artist, you want to at least price your hourly rate at the same rate that you would get if you went out and got a minimum wage job in your area. Because if you're charging less than that, you might as well go get that job.

[00:09:02 - 00:09:04]
Because you got to make a living, you know, and so.

[00:09:04 - 00:09:05]
Exactly.

[00:09:05 - 00:09:56]
And then from there, we got to add in the most important thing that most people, entrepreneurs, artists, whoever, forget. And that is profit. Because without profit, you're not a business, you're a hobby. And your profit helps to propel your business forward from there. And so those are the three things you need to know. Your parts, your materials, your labor, and your profit. And then when you add those up, there's your price and what I have found. And this is. It shocks everybody because people love to haggle with creative people about their pricing. It's like, oh, well, could you do it for half that? Yeah. And so what I do is I say I could. And I used to be like, well, can I come into your work and tell you you can only earn half as much this week because that's how much I want to pay you? But they don't like that kind of return. And so what I said in DO instead is I show them the math. And it is really hard to negotiate math. Like, they look at the numbers and they're like, oh, okay, I see that. That is why it is what it is.

[00:09:56 - 00:09:58]
Yeah, it makes sense. And can I add a number four?

[00:09:58 - 00:09:59]
Oh, yes, please.

[00:09:59 - 00:10:10]
Okay, so go back to that. That job, whether it's a minimum wage or whatever type of job it is, there's something else that you get that's part of your pay, but you don't really see it. And those are the benefits.

[00:10:12 - 00:10:12]
Yes.

[00:10:12 - 00:10:34]
But you can almost end up. If it's 15 an hour, you can say it's $30 an hour. 25, make it 50 somewhere around in there. Because there's your life insurance, there's health, there's those other whatever benefits that you might, you know, the regular benefits that you might get from a job, not the tuition remission, because that's. That's special or something like that, when everybody doesn't take advantage of, but those main things.

[00:10:35 - 00:10:38]
Yeah, that's. That's a good one. I had not thought of that. And I appreciate that, Audrey. That's great.

[00:10:38 - 00:10:40]
Okay, everybody, you just got a raise.

[00:10:42 - 00:10:42]
There you go.

[00:10:42 - 00:11:06]
Moving right along then. So you went from theater design to Santa Fe nerds, building your own thriving collectible studio, which is fantastic. Thanks for sharing the pieces that you did with us today. When did it hit you that you could create something totally new, something only you could bring to life? And you may have answered this a little bit in the intro, but if you can just bring that back in a scientific statement, I guess.

[00:11:07 - 00:11:14]
Let's think about that. The reality was, is acting. I was a professor for theater for three years.

[00:11:16 - 00:12:32]
My wife had brought me in. She wanted to move back to Nebraska. We were living in la, trying to do the movie thing for a while, and she was fed up. She's like, I'm moving back to Nebraska. You can come with me if you want. Yeah. And I did. So we came back here, and I needed to find something to fill the time, I was still an entrepreneur. I was selling a product, but it wasn't doing as well as I'd want. And my alma mater came up and said, hey, we'll just give you the job. You don't even have to apply. Would you like to be the design professor? And I was like, okay, sure. So I did that for three years. And I loved teaching the students everything that they needed to know. I hated the bureaucracy of working at a university. So after about three years. Yeah. So after about three years, I had a student ask me, can you make me something? And I said, sure. So I made it for him. And it was a popular culture thing at the moment. And unbeknownst to me, he actually submitted it to an online blog. And this was before Facebook and Instagram and all the social media that we have. And it. It blew up. It went viral. And I had people calling me up, asking me, can you make mine? Can you make mine? Can you make mine? And I started doing it on the side and was making more money at that than I was teaching. And that was really the moment where I asked My wife, after three years of working in this theater, I was working 16, 18 hour days. I said, can I quit and try and do this full time? And of course, because, I'm sorry, if you're married, you've got to ask your partner. You don't make these unilateral decisions.

[00:12:32 - 00:12:37]
I totally agree with. The two became one. Okay, so, yeah, I agree with that. Yeah.

[00:12:37 - 00:12:52]
And she said, I'll give you one year. And I said, that's fair. And then about three months into that one year, I had another viral thing went viral. I made $50,000 about three weeks. And she's like, okay, you've got this. You know what you're doing. And that's been 20 years. That's. That's 20 years ago. So.

[00:12:53 - 00:12:55]
Wow. So did she ask, can I quit my job now?

[00:12:55 - 00:13:01]
Not yet. She loves her job. She's. Believe it or not, she's a costume designer. And so we're both from theater.

[00:13:01 - 00:13:02]
Yeah.

[00:13:02 - 00:13:11]
Yeah. And so she's the. She's the. Has the best. Basically the top job as a costume designer here in the city that we live in. And she does. She just loves that. So. Yeah.

[00:13:11 - 00:13:23]
That's awesome. Okay, so you turned the dreaded business plan into what you call character creation. I love that. What does that process actually look like when a creative puts it into play?

[00:13:23 - 00:16:42]
So if you're going to gamify your business, the whole point of it is that A lot of creative minded people, and I don't mean just artists, but creative minded people. Any entrepreneur is creative minded. But what happens is they are not linear thinkers. They are, I like to liken it is there's linear thinkers and then there's the creative people who have like more of a nebulous cloud type of process. They're not thinking things A to B, it's a Z, Q, V, whatever, we're all over the place. And so what I found is that when you try to then push them into business structure, they get overwhelmed or they're very confused because they're being forced to do something that is out of character for them. And so what I thought was, what if we instead used something that we're all very familiar with, which is playing games because we all have our devices or whatever, board games and such, and we take the same processes that you would learn from leveling a character up in a video game or in a board game, and then apply that to actual business processes. Since they're already familiar with the structure. It's not a relearn of anything and it's also still creative. And so then we apply those techniques to how you go about doing a business. And so we start with character creation, which is what your business is, the seed, the idea that you germinate and be build a business around that. Then we go looking for group, which is how we build the business employees around you. And that one's really eye opening because in the character creation process we figure out what works for you and what doesn't as far as like your strengths and weaknesses. And then the, the biggest misconception I've had with artists is that they like to surround themselves with people who are very similar to them because then they have things to talk about. But in business that's the worst way to go about business. You want to make sure that you have people who can support your weaknesses and that you support theirs, creating a very solid foundation. And so that's the group that we form. And then from there we create challenges which we call campaigns, which is the gaming theme and where we go out and we attack monsters. Those monsters are typically your types of clients that you find like the Scope Creeper or the Price Haggler or those. And we actually go and we talk it through. The great thing is, is that the characters that you have within your group, they have their own strengths and weaknesses. And when I say characters, I'm not talking about a like a ranger or a wizard. What I'm talking about is like your marketing team or your creative department or your CEO. How you approach the, the attack on the monster, the client or whatnot, is spearheaded by the person who has the best approach to that. So if you need to tackle the monster, that is Advertising campaigns, you need your marketing person to take the lead. And so what that does is it allows the loud person and the quiet person to level out. Because we all have that group where we have that one really quiet person, but they're always thinking. But that loud person who doesn't think nearly as much is always saying their stuff really loudly. They have to take a back seat intentionally because otherwise they'll fail. Because that's what happens in business. If somebody thinks they can do it, all that are wrong. And so we need to work as a group and then that, and then we conquer. And what's really nice is we build reward systems into this. So it's always pushing the dopamine aspect of it. So we do a task, we get rewarded, then it encourages us to want to do the next task and get rewarded. Then we level ourselves up in Pay customers, sales, etc.

[00:16:42 - 00:16:45]
You've worked with billion dollar brands.

[00:16:45 - 00:16:46]
I have.

[00:16:47 - 00:16:59]
Yet you've championed the idea that a Creative only needs 100 true supporters to THR. How do you bridge those two worlds and be like massive companies and micro communities?

[00:17:00 - 00:19:36]
Well, I think a lot of that, that idea of a hundred ideal customers comes from, from talking to a lot of creatives who are afraid to start because they think that social media has broken us into thinking that every post that we have has to have a million or 2 or 5 million people liking it. And the reality is your business is not for 5 million people. You need to find your tribe, your group, those hundred people that you find. And that's really who you should be concentrating on. It's the people who truly understand what you're trying to do, what you're selling. They become advocates for you, they start to sell your product for you. And so if you can nurture those hundred people, find your, your tribe. And it's not always going to be the same hundred people, it's going to shift, you know, but about 100 of those will give you a sustainable lifestyle and that's it. You can always expand after that. But what I found is that when you go to work for companies like Disney, which is a multi billion dollar company, what happens is you're actually compartmentalized. It's not just one giant entity with 10,000 people that you talk to all the time. When I've Worked for them. I've worked with them multiple times. It's always been a smaller group. And then that group is very insular. It's the exact same thing. When you're doing any kind of business, you need to find that small group. And so when I say 100 customers, it can be like, this customer is a business of 10 people. That's a customer because they're all working towards the same goal. And so that's really what it, what it breaks down to. And Disney, I think, applies the same technique they, when they're marketing, they're marketing to a very specific set of people, you know, as we, as we do. Because you need that market to really sing. They're going to buy your product. If you cannot narrow it down like that. If you're still trying to shotgun approach advertising, you're going to miss a lot of opportunities because the depth of what you're trying to sell isn't there. I have a statement that I use for a lot of my customers. I said, quit selling your stuff, sell yourself. Because the story of you as a creative is going to sell more merchandise, more product, more coaching, more services than anybody saying, buy this from me, buy this from me, buy this from me. Because we're always inundated with commercials. But what we, what we actually, when we're purchasing, we purchase through an emotion. We don't purchase through the desire to have a thing. We want it to have an emotional tie to us. Especially post Covid when we all got locked, locked down and we had to really. There's a lot of introspection in our homes, you know, and my business thrived during COVID because people would look around and like, I'm tired of all this stuff. And if I'm, if this is the way it's going to end, I want to be surrounded by stuff that I love. And that's what I did as I appealed to their emotional side and then instead of me selling them anything, they were coming to me wanting to buy. And that's the best way to approach it.

[00:19:36 - 00:19:51]
Getting back to this pricing thing again, you said pricing is where many creatives get stuck because they're using the wrong framework. What's the, the difference between pricing like a magic item and pricing it like the old school way?

[00:19:52 - 00:20:50]
Okay, so we are in an Amazon Walmart society. I'm sure you would agree with that. Everything's a dollar. Unfortunately, as a creative or as an artist, you can't sell stuff for it. We cannot compete with that. There's no way we can't even buy our materials for the cost that they're selling the end product for. And so what we have to do is we have to approach it differently. And this goes back to the emotional pull and the storytelling aspect of of it. So you need to pitch it as a magic item. This thing, this unique thing, what I was just showing you this, if this was customized to look like you, this is a one of a kind thing. This is an object that you cannot get anywhere else from anyone else. It's high quality. I put my love and time into this. And it is for something that relates to you because you're a super fan of Star wars and you really want to see yourself in that world. That's an emotional poll. And so when I say that the pricing is X amount of dollars, it's. They're not buying an object. They're not buying the thing. They're buying the journey and the emotion that goes through it.

[00:20:50 - 00:21:24]
Yes. Yes. And we're going to hear some more from you on the other side of this other message.

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So we ended up talking about the magic item and pricing it the old school way. What moment pushed you to invent a whole new language for teaching business to creative minds?

[00:21:24 - 00:23:19]
I was coaching a. There was three people in this small company and they were building these little dragon figurines and they were grossing over a million dollars. They were doing really well there, netting $50,000. So that's a huge difference. And so I went out to meet them. They had hired me to coach them on this. And I was talking to them and I said, okay, what's everybody's role in the business? And they said, we do everything. I said, well, that's not how you run a business. It's the best way to ruin your business. So I said, let's actually figure it out. So I said, why don't, why don't I come back tomorrow? And what we're gonna do is we're gonna play Dungeons and Dragons Business Edition. And what we'll do is we'll take your actual role in the business and we'll make that your character. We sat down, we did it, and we played for about four hours. And I could see light bulbs going off that this. They've been in business for almost 11 years, but there were aspects of business. They had hired business people to kind of take over parts of it. They were losing money left and right as, as you could tell by the, the net on that. And then what happened is they started to understand complicated business terminology and aspects that were just over their head or that they didn't feel like they were businessy enough to do because they were all creative. And once I saw those light bulb moments going off and they were having fun, they, these were people who came to me in a, in a point of desperation. One of them was having medical issues due to the stress and all that. And by the end of it, we were, we were laughing, we were having a great time. And I was like this connected in a way that I have not yet connected with a creative. And I said, this is, this has got to be something. So it's just one of those heaven just kind of says, hey, by the way, you know, this is what, this is what needs to happen. And I kind of ran with it. And the books wrote themselves. I mean, they just, just, the process just really just poured out. And I was like, this is, this is something. And it's, it's been able to help a lot of people in a lot of different positions, not just artists, which is where I started it with, but just anybody who I feel has got a creative mindset and it just, it just flows, it works.

[00:23:19 - 00:23:29]
That's phenomenal. When someone's been told you'll never make it as a solo creative, how do you help them flip that script and start believing again?

[00:23:30 - 00:25:33]
Well, I think especially in the United States, I've had the opportunity to work around the world. And unfortunately in the United States, artists and creatives are not held to very high standards. We are kind of seen as less than, which helps perpetuate the starving artist myth. And what I find humorous in that is somebody who is wearing designer clothes, driving their sports car, listening to their ipod or iPhone, who just came back from a movie or is planning to go to a movie, comes up to me and says, hey, I need to negotiate the price for your art. And I'm like, but everything that you're wearing and everything you're doing took an artist to make. And you appreciate all of that because in the way that I view creatives is we are the soul of humanity. We can all be machines and we can do the job that we need to do. But when we want to become human again, we lean back on those things that are creative based. And so what I tell people is when they're looking at the negotiation, we talk about pricing, but we talk about like what you're actually bringing to the world. We don't have to affect the world as a whole. You need to. You need to touch person at a time. You need to affect their lives, because once their lives are changed for the better, then it affects them and how they appreciate other. It's a ripple effect. And so that's the very first thing that we have to get over as creatives, is that while we are in touch with something that seems intangible to most people with a traditional job, it doesn't mean that we're worthless in that regard or that we should take a hit, because I kind of liken it to clergy. They're closer to God, so they should live in poverty. Artists are closer to the universal soul. So we should be in poverty. It's like, no, we shouldn't. We should elevate ourselves, because this is what helps propel humanity forward. And I think it's really just a mind shift in that regard. It's like, you are special. And because you can do something, you can express tangibly or verbally a way that other people feel but cannot express it. And so they appreciate what you do because it gives the tangibility to, or helps them to voice a concern or a thought or an emotion that they have in a way that. That they appreciate. And that's a talent. And so it should be paid for as such.

[00:25:34 - 00:25:53]
Yes, absolutely. Oh, wow. For that listener who's still avoiding the business side because it feels scary or overwhelming. Oh, this is going out to so many people I could think of right now. What's one gaming principle they can apply today to make it fun instead of fearful?

[00:25:53 - 00:26:39]
I think the big one is understanding truly what. Who you serve and what you're trying to do. Do we all have a voice as a creative? If you're an inventor or if you're an artist, you have a voice of something that you're trying to get across. You have to understand who you're talking to. And if. And if you can't be everyone, you have to understand your market. And once you can speak to them, then it's. It sells itself. And the best way to understand your market when you're first starting off is you sell to yourself. You got into this because you love the thing that you're doing, and now you want to sell it to someone else. Don't try and chase millions of likes and views. Try to sell to one other person who's just like you, who would appreciate that. And once you make that first sale, the rest of them just get Easier and easier. So that's the first thing. Quit selling to everybody. Sell to yourself.

[00:26:39 - 00:27:00]
Then that goes to getting rid of the imposter syndrome and all of that. All right, so, Paul, you've given us so many creative power ups today. I love how you've turned business into a real life quest for creatives. But now it's time to switch controllers and move into our bonus round.

[00:27:02 - 00:27:11]
This is where the level. This is the level of Brown. Okay. All right, quick hits. No cheat codes, just instinct. You ready to play?

[00:27:11 - 00:27:11]
Ready to play.

[00:27:12 - 00:27:22]
All right, number one, email or dm, which gets your faster response? DM one hashtag that describes your sales strategy or your sales style.

[00:27:22 - 00:27:22]
Santa for nerds.

[00:27:23 - 00:27:26]
Okay, okay, okay. That's cheating. Okay, okay.

[00:27:28 - 00:27:28]
Okay.

[00:27:28 - 00:27:29]
Let's do.

[00:27:30 - 00:27:31]
You could go with it. You could go with it.

[00:27:31 - 00:27:36]
I'll go. I'll go. Gamification. We'll go with that. Hashtag, gamification.

[00:27:36 - 00:27:42]
Okay. All right. What's a phrase that people need to delete from their vocabulary today?

[00:27:42 - 00:27:44]
It's the way it's always been done.

[00:27:44 - 00:27:47]
Oh, I want to pay you just for saying that.

[00:27:51 - 00:28:01]
Okay. All right, the next one. If Gamified Business had its own soundtrack, what anthem will be playing while creators level up their goals?

[00:28:01 - 00:28:13]
Oh, dang. Move on up is gonna be the song that I would do. Move on up and man, Name of the artist is escaping me. But it's a soul classic soul song.

[00:28:13 - 00:28:14]
Right, right.

[00:28:14 - 00:28:16]
And that's the 100. That's the best one. Great motivator.

[00:28:17 - 00:28:25]
Yes, absolutely. Okay, what's your go to power move? When life or business throws a curveball.

[00:28:25 - 00:28:46]
I escape into other creative worlds. I love books and I loved. I love audiobooks because I'm a theater person, so to hear it performed. But if I'm feeling stuck, I escape into somebody else's world that they've created and that it just revives me because my imagination is the key to helping me out there. So that's. That'd be the answer.

[00:28:46 - 00:28:53]
Before we let you go, Paul, let our listeners know where can they find you online and tap into everything you're building?

[00:28:54 - 00:29:20]
Okay, well, you can find me at gamifybusiness.com and if you go there and you put gamifybusiness.com/podcast, you can actually download the first two chapters of my book for free. And then you can also find me at PaulPapeDesigns.com if you'd like a little something from Santa for nerd. And I am available on all social media as Paul Pape Designs. That's been around for 20 years. So gamify business is incorporated in that. But if you go there, that's my YouTube, my Insta, my TikTok everywhere it's PaulPape designs.

[00:29:21 - 00:29:38]
So Paul, thanks again for joining us. And to our listeners, you can catch this episode, show notes and more business resources at techdivabiztalks.com your a hub for smart strategies and bold conversations to keep you tech tuned. Paul, was there anything else that you wanted to say?

[00:29:38 - 00:29:46]
Yeah, "life and business should be an adventure. Don't be a non-playing character. Be the hero of your own story."

[00:29:47 - 00:29:59]
That's it for today's tech diva Biz Talks. Hope you caught a gem or two. If you did, share it, review it and most of all, put it into action. Until next time, tune in, level up and talk tech.