We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Cole Cuchna. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Cole below.

Cole, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

I’m currently earning a full-time living with my creative work. For me, this was a goal that took 20 years to accomplish. When I first started playing music at 13, I wanted to do it the rest of my life. I wanted to make a living doing something I loved. My attempts to fulfill this goal took on many iterations over the years. But the one thing I never did was stop trying. Even when I was in my 30s, had a wife, child, and full time job, I still pursued this goal, when I really had every excuse to stop trying. My biggest recommendation for anyone attempting to do something similar is just to keep trying. Keep giving yourself at bats. Keep shooting. It might take 20 years, but if you want it bad enough, one of your shots will go in.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I’ve been a musician since I was 13 when I taught myself to play guitar. From that moment, my life has revolved around music — I played in bands until I was in my mid-2os, then went to formally study composition and music theory at CSUS, where I fell in love with studying and writing about music.

When I graduated, I took the analysis skills I honed in college and applied them to contemporary music – specifically hip hop, as I felt this genre was underserved in academic study. I recorded and published my work as a podcast called Dissect, where I dissected the music, lyrics, and meaning of one album per season, one song per episode. Each season would essentially amount to a dissertation — 10-14 hours of analysis on a single album.

Surprisingly, Dissect found an audience. I always say that if I were trying to start a successful podcast, it would not be this one. But turns out there are like-minded people out there who also enjoy thorough deep dives on the music they love.

With Season 2 of the podcast in 2018, things really started to pick up in terms of audience, press, and potential partners wanting to bring the show to their network. Coincidentally, this was also the time when Spotify started to take podcasting seriously. They offered me a deal, I quit my job, and I have since made a living making Dissect.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When I started Dissect, I was working a full time job and I just had my first daughter. I would work 8-9 hours, come home and spend time with my family, and when they went to bed, I would stay up late working on the show. I would also regularly wake up early to work on the show as well, before going to work. It was a grind. I was exhausted all the time. It wasn’t a sustainable way to live, but in retrospect, it was this time that ultimately lead to fulfilling my lifelong goal of doing something I loved for a living. And I was able to grind so hard because I genuinely LOVED making the show. It’s all I wanted to do. I believe whole-heartedly if I had not loved it so much, if I were simply doing it for the rewards that it could possibly get me, it would not be successful.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

There are more resources than ever to do anything you want creatively. It’s not about resources. It’s about actually doing the thing. What I see holding back potential aspiring creatives is very often a self-created barrier to entry, as it’s very easy to get caught up in all the things you think you need to get started at something. And very often these are just excuses to justify not actually doing the thing, which I find is mostly fear-based.

When I started Dissect, I had a $100 microphone, a Google doc, and a bootleg copy of an audio editing program. That’s it. I started IMMEDIATELY. I didn’t think about it too hard. I just started writing. The first thing you hear on episode 1 of the show is the first thing I ever wrote. “Dissect” was the first name I thought of.

You will learn in the process of doing the thing than you ever will “preparing” to do the thing. I’m a big believer in getting your hands dirty and learning as you go, as again, so many get stuck in “preparing” that they never make it to actually “doing.”

Contact Info:

• Website: dissectpodcast.com
• Instagram: @dissectpodcast
• Linkedin: Cole Cuchna
• Twitter: @dissectpodcast
• Other: Listen to Dissect on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2b025hq3gJ17tQdxS3aV43?si=e3b01ac5e87d4535

Image Credits
Raoul Ortega