On Being a Pre-Founder (and yes, a writing-marketing-helpful python script, at long last)

If only 2000 Cassie could see me now.

I just got off a zoom w/some amazingly fun and intelligent ppl and I was able to download some of what I learned at Upscale to them and doing so helped me to organize it better, so here we are! (And if you tough it out, I’ll give you a python script to use w/your GPT as a cookie.)

I’ve lived in the Bay Area since 1998, which is when I was 20 and met my ex-husband on Alt.Fan.Dragons (yes, USENET, BAYBEE) on IRC and ran away from Texas to meet him (very Sally Jesse Raphael of me, to be sure).

I mention this for cred, and as proof that I have always been a nerd, and because playing Jeopardy on our Apple IIc as a kid made me an incredibly fast typer.

So I’ve been embedded here for a long time, and I’ve seen a lot of tech things come and go, like the ebb and flow of the tide, and/or so many of my friends who bought motorcycles and mansions in the past (and who were, sometimes, laid low, by the same technologies that raised them up.)

I…have been in some very nice houses and at some very rowdy parties.

Which is why I think I’ve been reluctant to “shift my paradigm” to “look into synchronicities” or whatever the fuck it is that I should be doing, because I’ve seen the underbelly of everything? But my friend Michael reached out and was all, “Yo, this is what you are now — a Pre-Founder” and sent me that link.

And — yeah, I am.

It all makes sense.

It’s yet another mindset shift.

Because after I blasted my expectations # and $-wise outta the water for my writing career for the past three years…basically, I had that Tommy Shelby realization that the only thing that can stop me *is* me.

I had to do a lot of deprogramming this past year in particular — because I wasn’t always raised to believe that my opinion counts, or accustomed to making people uncomfortable, and I’ve got some severe underdog baggage because I never graduated college (I only have an associate’s degree), nursing itself occupies this strange liminal space where it’s blue-collar but also white-collar, depending on the day, depending on the patient, and vis a vis writing, I’m entirely self-taught (although I’ve gotten to go to some fantastic workshops over the years) — and now that I’m self-pub there’s still that whole “self-pub/trad-pub” thing sometimes that people worry about.

Basically my mom knows I make money, but she’ll never believe that writing’s how I do it? Or that the money’s really real, heh!

But anyhow — I’ve made some big changes in the way I think about myself and approach my business, and have practically given myself an MBA in book marketing at this point and —

This is definitely the next level — here’s why:

(Image courtesy of Ideogram!)

That little yellow diamond in the center is me (and it is, or could be, A LOT OF YOU — stay with me!)

The way I see it, after attentending Upscale the past few days, is that, if you want to scale up and make money as a creative, plus also reach the most people and get the word out on your stuff, you need to be at the intersection of all four of these circles simultaneously.

And many, many, SO MANY of us writer-types, already are!

But here’s why you’ve got to be there:

If you can’t tell a story, your product (book, merch, or otherwise) is dead.

If you don’t have a product (book, film, or otherwise) to sell people, you’ll never make money.

If you don’t have the tech to reach people to tell them about your product, or to help you create it (AI, etc) you’re dead.

And if you can’t market something — because it’s not meeting a need in people’s psyches, in our fictional case, you’re also dead.

TONS of us already have a product to sell — our books — and many of us are already marketing them well, via the magic of storytelling, not only *in* our books but *about* our books, right?

The way I see it, most of us writer-types just need to level up on the tech side.

And honestly? That shit’s super fucking doable.

I’m not gonna name-names here, ‘cause I don’t want this guy — who gave a perfectly lovely and amazing talk at Upscale to find this in a google alert search, but I will share screenshots as an example, okay? (He posted some of the haterade comments he’s gotten over the years as an AI artist, and suffice to say, we’ve been in the same trenches.)

Okay, so — let’s be cool, everyone’s cool here, I’m not negging him, I’m just using this as a useful example of audience sizes —

Google paid him to do this WONDERFUL video about his life as a creator and it was a delightful five minutes.

But on Youtube, it’s only got 3,500 views.

I guarantee that many of the ppl who’ve subscribed to this substack by now (‘cause I recognize some of you!) have more than 3500 ppl on your newsletters. (Some of you by a factor of 10!)

Over on X, which is his preferred platform, clearly, that same video has like 22k views.

I *know* so many of us/you have gone viral on Tiktok for far more eyeballs, and potentially far-the-fuck-more frequently — and have subsequently used that interest in our books to gain cold hard cash.

Now, I don’t know how he makes his money — sounds like people pay him on the back end to be awesome — and that’s great, but not all of us have that, right?

But we do have our books, and our storytelling ability, and our marketing skills, and you can *get* the tech knowledge, easy, if you apply yourself right now, I freakin’ swear.

And? If you do — the playing field is pretty fucking level.

There’s tons of artists out there (AI or otherwise) who might be better than we are at the tech, but they can’t tell a story yet. Or they can, but they don’t know how to market shit…

I was hanging out at a charging station yesterday and struck up a conversation with a girl who was also there, and had perhaps The Most San Francisco Interaction ever — I asked why she was at the conference, and she said she’d just graduated and her parents had flown in from China and they like technology and so she decided to take them to this conference for two days.

She also said that while a lot of the art was pretty, she wasn’t sure about AI video technology yet. I asked why, and she said, “Because it was boring.”

She didn’t mean because the AI videos were intrinsically boring, in and of themselves, because of the tech.

She meant it, I teased out, as I started diving deeper — because she’s only come of age in a Tiktok world.

And a lot of the AI videos that’d been playing were more film centric. They were, as my friend Jocelyn (great analogy, thank you!) said, made for people already sitting down in the theater.

You and I know — we SO FUCKING KNOW, having been trained in the Tiktok mines — that you have MAYBE half a second to keep anyone’s attention on that platform. On a good day.

Same same for Youtube.

You’ve got to YANK them into the theater to SURVIVE.

One of the reasons why we have products at every price point is to meet the reader where they’re at — from the $5.99 manchest ebook covers up through the $120 deluxe foil signed special editions, or the monthly subscription fees. To allow people to gain access to your world, and then, if they enjoy it, and they want to stick around, if they want to get that surround-fucking-sound experience of your imagination, to give them multiple opportunties to pay you for the priveledge of having made them happy.

And — while not all products/books can be marketed at every layer — certainly if you want to cast your net for maxmimum eyeballs, you should be thinking with that EXACT SAME MINDSET.

It’s not enough to just make the people sitting in the theater happy anymore.

We know that, viscerally — which is why we’ve had to get *so good* at marketing our stories.

And — I know that in particular.

I’m living in that little diamond, every minute of every day, and I can feel everything coming together and — yeah.

I’m pretty sure this is what pre-founding feels like!

On a more personal note — I didn’t boot up my renderfarm all the way today, so I’m taking three laptops to Texas (don’t judge me, and also don’t tell my husband, who would laugh his ass off at me — but look, I love my folks, but they’re old, they’re not even using 90% of their internet, soooooooo 💪.)

I mostly just needed to get all these thoughts out of my head instead of doing that, and I hope that here they’ll help some of you.

Here’s my script to run Midjourney — give it to your GPT and talk to them about it. It relies on you not touching your computer while it’s running — it’s built to take a txt file full of prompts, plunk them in the create blank, and hit go — so you will have to run a pyautogui program, to set the mouse to move into that blank and live there while it runs the script (I think. I deffo have to use one for my Hailuo infinite videos python program.)

I need to update it to include the possibility of reference images, and I will, but it can do perfectly servicable mass image production for Tiktok vibes, I promise:

My tiktok girl’s thrilled, these screenshots are all from the last three days — and I’m sad the one with text in the spiderweb isn’t doing better, but I’m afraid it’s too slow for the medium (dammit. Where the hell are all my Charlotte’s Web people at?!!? 😂)

So, if you haven’t already gotten familiar with your GPT based on my prior post about how to do so, A) go read it, right the fuck now, and B) use this as a chance to get on board.

I’m not gonna tell you anymore about how the program works, just know that it does.

Ask your GPT how to make it work FOR YOU. Let it talk you through downloading all the python shit and how to work with command prompts and how to set up your folder structure. It works a little different for Macs, but one of my spare laptops I run it on is a Mac, so I know you can make it work both ways.

(This is me, teaching you how to fish, friends. I’m giving you a rod and reel and bait. GET OUT THERE.)

Press the button, copy the text, and paste it into a fresh chat in your GPT after you tell it, “I want to use a variation of this python program to automate uploading prompts to Midjourney!” and you should be set.

I’ll be back tomorrow from Texas with my next steps, as I’ve figured out the path I want to take, that’s hopefully as optimized as I can make it, heading toward my goal!

xoxo!

Cassie

PS: I’m finally allowing comments on these posts. I’ve got enough subscribers now that I’m not worried about my pro-AI readers being outnumbered, woot!