Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Ashley Van-de-cruize Lampkin. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Ashley, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We love asking folks what they would do differently if they were starting today – how they would speed up the process, etc. We’d love to hear how you would set everything up if you were to start from step 1 today
Honestly? I’d move slower. Taking my time, would have likely gotten me here faster. I know that simply sounds backwards, But the truth is slow-and-steady truly does win the race. I hate to keep throwing around all of these cliché lines and phrases, but when I get excited about something, or an opportunity to turn my passion into something bigger and more rewarding, presents itself, I have the tendency to think less clearly. And then I bulldoze through a project that required more time, and devotion. It was never about a lack of respect for my passion, it was a lack of respect for patience, and the process to see my passion come to its full fruition.
So if we’re going to be more specific, about what I’d do, I would do more research. I would devote more time to learning about my passion. Because I’ve also learned, that being passionate about something, does not, by any means, indicate that you know all there is to know about it. I’m passionate, not a professional. I mean, now I feel more professional, but at the time, no absolutely not. I will say, though, that I am grateful for how far I’ve come, because those setbacks, genuinely did play a major role into turning me into that professional.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My primary profession, is nursing. I am a registered nurse. However, my secondary profession which fuels my passion, is writing. I write poetry, I write romances, I write mysteries, and recently I wrote a comic book, titled, “Na Makasi.” so, knowing that the world is becoming one more digital every day, I figured, the best way to market myself is to start out by convincing people that I am a great storyteller digitally. And I don’t mean, release PDFs, I mean, literally sit in front of a camera and tell a story. Build a following simply based off of that. That idea started five years ago, and here I am with almost 500,000 followers across my platforms, simply telling stories.
I am incredibly grateful for my fans and my followers, because they are so outrageously encouraging. I get a lot of weird messages, if I’m being completely honest, but I also get a lot of dope messages. My fans simply take the time out their day to tell me, “I love what you do, keep doing it.” And that means a lot.
So my YouTube is, “ Ashley Paige story time.“ And my other social media platforms, such as TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook are all, “the soul of my pen,“ or “The soul of Graffiti.“ “the soul of my pen“ is my story telling platform, while “The Soul Of Graffiti” is my art platform.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Honestly, that communicating with other artists or creative could potentially set you back. It’s really all about your frame of mind. Communicating with other artists and creatives is a beautiful way to learn about what you’re doing wrong. It’s a beautiful way to understand that there are multiple ways to approach exactly what you’re trying to do. I had to unlearn that I needed to do this all by myself. It’s OK to do this with a team.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
So, My Business is definitely not traditional. I am simply out here trying to convince an audience, of which I’m both familiar and unfamiliar with, because it’s ever changing, that my literary masterpieces will be worth their time. That any story I can conjure up, will be worth Listening to, or reading about, or investing, their minds and their emotions into it. So when it came to marketing my comic book, I realized that I was completely unsure of whether I was speaking to the right audience. That all being said, I knew that I had to put some effort into the marketing and the promotion so I did a Kickstarter campaign. And it was a very low budget, but that’s because I knew that I needed to start Small. I still wasn’t fully aware of which portion of my audience was convinced that I could pivot and write a comic book. Needless to say that Kickstarter campaign was successful and I was so grateful to see how much faith my audience had in me
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.dirtywordsmith.com
- Instagram: https://Instagram.com/thesoulofmy_pen
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PENitatreMySoul?mibextid=wwXIfr&mibextid=wwXIfr
- Twitter: https://x.com/ashleywroteit__?s=21&t=CpzmCkxpN9bwiLCwt9x8Lw
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@ashley_paige?si=wVY2AbmMmX9uejCh
- Soundcloud: https://on.soundcloud.com/QhK76Qs7bn4ZmsUo7
Image Credits
Sasha Renee Photography