We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brian Frazier Wright. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brian Frazier below.
Brian Frazier, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
To be honest, the first time I wanted to pursue a career in entertainment was when I was about 5 years old. I told my mom I wanted to be in movies like Jaws and King Kong but I didn’t want to get eaten. So I took a stab at acting for awhile, booked a few gigs here and there but nothing too significant. I had always been interested in music and performing on stage, eventually in college I decided to dive all in and haven’t looked back.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Of course! My name is Brian Frazier Wright. I’m from Chicago, IL, I am a diehard Kansas Jayhawks fan (Rock Chalk!) and I’ve had a passion for entertaining my entire life. I’ve always considered myself a man of many hats. But my dad always said, in order to do a job to the best of your ability you have to go all in. I think I stretched myself a bit thin in my early years. I tried to do too much. Then when covid hit and I was unable to perform, I had to really re-evaluate my life and commitments. Now I try my best to delegate my time between work, family and performing. And I think I’ve found a great balance. My business (Green Pet), a company that specializes in top-of-the-line, eco-friendly pet supplies has also become my muse. It’s a family business. My dad and I started together about 13 years ago. We hired my fiancé about a year and a half ago and I get to work side by side with the people I love every day. It’s truly a rewarding experience and it allows me the opportunity to continue to pursue my passions on stage and in business with an incredible support system. I’m a lucky man!
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
Building my audience or a brand is something I worked very hard at from the get go. It’s an art form of it’s own. As a creative, the first thing you have to do is consider yourself a brand. Take yourself seriously. You have to define yourself and then figure out what your audience is. For me, it was about creating timely, relatable content that I knew people would gravitate toward and then tie it in with a purpose and encourage engagement. For example, when Chicago had the polar vortex a few years back. I went outside in short shorts and a fur coat in -120 degrees. That was the “shock” to get users attention, Once I had it, I drove my followers to a link that would help spread awareness about warming shelter locations across the city. Social media is always evolving and even today I am still rebranding and redefining. TikTok has become an absolute dynamo and allows you to really reach a specific targeted audience in a whole new way. Presently, I am using my music to reach an audience I know quite a bit about — Harry Potter! I grew up absolutely loving the books and movies so I’ve been writing parody songs about characters and reaching an entirely new audience! In the past month, my audience has doubled. So on that note, my best advice would be to write down the topics, skills or passions that you have in life and can relate to, observe how other people have been successful in a similar net and then put out content that fits the mold, yet is unique to your own voice. Don’t be discouraged if it takes some time to build, but if you stick to it and something starts to pop, stay on top of it. Replicate it. Listen to the comments and keep cranking out content. You got this!
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
I recently I came across the concept of “killing your clone” in a podcast with Ethan Suplee and Will Friedle– though it seems a bit morbid, stick with me here. The idea behind this is to wake up each day and beat the version of previous yourself. How can I be better today than I was yesterday? Whether it’s in business, content creation, performing, or even fitness. Wake up each day and try to be better, try to DO better. This is something that is fairly new to me and I am working on so by no means am I an expert here. But it’s something I’ve found to be helping me and driving me lately. How can I be a better businessman? How can I become a better singer? How can I be a better partner? Can I do one more set in the gym? What skill can I learn today that I didn’t yesterday (ex) I just started learning Italian because why not? If we wake up each day and try to be a bit better than the previous, imagine how far you’ll come in a month. A year. 2 years. 10….etc. And on that note, one last piece of advice I would offer anyone on a creative journey is to set small goals that you can check off along the way. If you only focus on the one BIG goal it may seem like it will take forever to get there or it may be unachievable. But if you set minor checkpoints along the way, you’ll look back at your journey and see how far you’ve actually come. When I first started performing me BIG goal was to play the House of Blues. But berfore I could get there I had to book a show. Shoot I had to put out music! So I put a song out. Then another. Then another. Then I booked a show. “Checkpoint.” Then it was ok let’s see my name on a ticket. Let’s see my name on a Marquee. Let’s play a show here. After a mountain of checkpoints, by the time I was 26, I was on the main stage at House of Blues. But it didn’t happen over night. Now I’m on to the next one. Set your checkpoints, kill your clone, get a bit better each day. You’ll be ok.
Contact Info:
- Website: greenpetshop.com
- Instagram: @tkfraze
- Facebook: facebook.com/thekidfraze
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfrazierwright
- Twitter: NA
- Other: TikTok: @FrazeHasFun
Image Credits
All images are my own.