We recently connected with Eric Callero and have shared our conversation below.

Eric, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

I have never really made a full-time living from creative work. It’s always been a struggle. I’ve always had to have multiple jobs, be creative about making money and I don’t know if there’s anything I could’ve done to speed up the process.

I guess I could’ve been more diligent in terms of carving out say a couple of months and just work work work in a job that is probably not what I want to be doing, but it pays and then do something my creative work the rest of the year. But It’s just really hard especially as an actor because you’re kind of always on call, like you never know when that audition is going to come in and then it’s basically you have to drop everything you were doing, any sort of plans you had and focus on the audition, learn your lines.

Pre-pandemic you had to spend half your work day, traveling to the Casting Office depending on where it’s located, and then be stuck in two hours of traffic, which has happened to me more than more than once. And sometimes you have multiple auditions in one day which you never complain about, that’s amazing but that’s your day and you don’t get paid for any of that time.

These days however, self tapes have really taken over so you really don’t have to go anywhere and this is specifically for like TV and movies auditions. Generally speaking commercial auditions don’t require as much, meaning they’re really just looking for an authentic person. Yes, there are lines on occasion, but usually they’re pretty understanding if you don’t stick to the script exactly.

It’s difficult and most people making YouTube videos don’t really make a lot of money. I mean I’m making more money than I ever have from YouTube but yeah for like maybe 15 years I worked as a videographer shooting mostly weddings, but sometimes corporate videos. Just like covering events, sort of documentary style, cutting it together and delivering it to the client. All independent contractor stuff and that was like my supplemental income and with the pandemic that all went away so I had to lean into YouTube. Thankfully it really lifted me up and 2022 I actually made more than the best year I made as a videographer so that’s really encouraging but it’s not a living wage. It is a full-time for the amount of time and effort I put into it. And unfortunately YouTube is kind of seasonal with its ads so you make more money during certain times of the year than other times and so you have to kind of really just plan ahead for that. When it rains it pours and when it doesn’t, it’s a drought and you just learn to live with that.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I want to say when I was a little kid (like 7 or 8), I was watching Singing in the Rain with my parents and there’s that musical sequence “make them laugh” and I just remember thinking, “that’s what I want to do, I want to be him, I want to make people laugh.” but I didn’t know how to get there so I acted in plays throughout Elementary School, Junior High and high school. Also in High school, I got into Santa Cruz public access television because there wasn’t YouTube back then and this was the closest I could get to being on TV and I made a couple of feature-length films and a short with my friends and my dad. It was a blast, I loved it, I loved editing, the whole process of filmmaking and it was a real learning experience especially on videotape because this was linear editing. You had to start at the beginning and go forward so it was a real discipline and I enjoyed it

In 2002 I went to San Francisco State University and I enrolled in the film program. I thought about the theatre program but I knew that I didn’t want to go into the theater world, I wanted to act in movies and TV. I was inspired by actors who also made films like John Cassavetes, Erich von Stroheim, and Gene Kelly and I thought I might as well learn everything there is to know about filmmaking and at the same time, see if I can audition as an actor while at the college. Which I ended up doing the fall production of Uncle Vanya which was an amazing experience.

I graduated in 2005 and it was around this time that I made what I consider more a true feature film titled Flying Saucer Rock and Roll inspired by 50s b-movies, rockabilly music and a little bit of Back to the Future. It was a really good time with a great cast and a lot of heart but there were a lot of limitations due to the small budget. I mean HD was just around the corner but it wasn’t really available so we shot it on DV and it doesn’t look the best. I spent a lot of time editing it and making the best it could be and even did some re-shoots and you know in the end it got distribution which is pretty cool and it premiered in 2006.

Around this time, I also started working as an actor/model in San Francisco. One of my first gigs was being a hand model, I also did a bunch of corporate videos and a Northern California Toyota commercial. I was cast in a $3 million feature film but I was let go about a week before filming started and that was a hard pill to swallow, it definitely humbled me but it also made me realize I needed to move to LA because it was so rare to have a feature film with that budget come to NorCal and cast the leads locally. Usually, they hired people out of LA. And so in December 2007, I made the move and I’ve been here ever since

In that time, I’ve had a lot of ups and downs, it’s definitely been a journey. When I first got here I had a pretty good run of bookings, in 2008 I was in a national Super Bowl commercial for Pepsi and I did some other smaller commercials. Between 2009 and 2010 I had a recurring role on Conan O’Brien’s Tonight Show. I also booked some smaller roles on some feature films and a co-star on Terminator – The Sarah Connor Chronicles. So things were really looking good but I sort it like hit a speed bump in 2010 and just wasn’t working that much and I was sort of struggling to stay creative and because so much of being an actor at the whim of other people. So much is out of your control, basically your job is primarily to audition and then hopefully you book it and then it’s awesome but you know, you can be the best actor in the world but if you’re not right for the part, you’re not right, you know what I mean. So it can be very hard, very difficult and so you want to continuously keep your chops up because that’s in your control.

Also, around this time, I was working as a wedding photographer/videographer, so I had all this camera equipment and I thought I should use this to promote myself somehow. And I decided to start a YouTube channel talking about music on vinyl because I’m an avid vinyl collector. And so in late 2010, I filmed my first seven episodes and in February of 2011, I started releasing them and I’ve been doing the show ever since then. It has morphed and changed over the years, I’ve tried a lot of ideas out and some work and some doing. Initially had a lot of help making the episodes but now I’m pretty much a one-man crew. And I’m really happy where it’s at now, I just hit 239,000 subscribers and it keeps growing every day and it’s starting to really supplement my income. To me, that’s pretty incredible and I love doing it and I’m passionate about it and I love that I get to be curious and do research and discover these stories in music history that haven’t been told and tell it in a compelling way and people are responding to it and it’s awesome.

I’m also pursuing acting which is great. One of the coolest experiences was working on a period drama by Ryan Murphy and it was so amazing to see the production recreate the 1963 Oscars with current Oscar winners (Jessica Lange & Susan Sarandon) playing Hollywood Legends Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. I played Hawaii 5-0 star Jack Lord in that project. I also worked on a Lifetime Channel movie which is a pretty cool notch in my acting belt. Most recently I was in Tecate commercial and I got to work with Bruce Willis which was so cool and yeah I’m really looking forward to the future and what it holds, I’m pretty positive about that!

How did you build your audience on social media?

I’ll talk about how I specifically built my audience on YouTube because that’s really been my main focus even though I do post on on other platforms. So I started the channel in February 2011 and at that time I didn’t actually post on YouTube. I posted on this site called blip.tv because they had a better monetization program. It didn’t matter how many views you got, you can start making money right away versus YouTube. There’s a threshold you have to hit before they invite you into the partner program.

I think my first mistake was putting all my eggs in one basket on that platform because it’s no longer around and for the first couple years, YouTube was sort of an after thought I didn’t really try to build the audience there. I think if I could go back, I would’ve put more effort into YouTube initially. I think the smarter thing to do would to not give one more energy over the other.

Another thing I learned is when I first started doing the channel, after the initial first 30 episodes, I don’t wanna call an act but I definitely had a like a tongue-in-cheek delivery when talking about music. I think that hurt me in the long run because I don’t think a lot of people understood what I was trying to do. I was trying to mimic a sort of talk show / game show host, sort of like mimicking how people talk back in the 60s and 70s cause that’s the shows aesthetic but I think it was a step too far. Unlike other formats, generally speaking people go to YouTube to, in my opinion, laugh or learn, and with that there’s a level of authenticity that people expect. People sort of expect you to be a real person when you’re presenting things on YouTube.

I had to learn how to present this information in a way that’s clear and concise but that doesn’t come off as pretentious or like I’m gatekeeping information or somehow I have all the secrets and I’m gonna let you in on them. I inadvertently brought some of that with this style of speaking and I think that definitely prevented me from growing my channel quicker because when I did all that on top of this vintage looking set and the suits that I wear, it was a bit too much.

I mean the show is an extension of who I am and what I love but people who are seeing you for the first time, aren’t used to that. They’re used to seeing people in their bedrooms or their kitchens or whatever even if it’s like lit and shot well. So I had to learn to tone it down a bit and just show up as me.

Another thing that really helped me was to look at what people are searching for on Google and try to capture that search query because YouTube is Google and your video can be like the top suggested video and that’s a great way to capture an audience outside of YouTube. You also have to look at your analytics to see what does well and do that again and again but also try new things and see what sticks.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

My curiosity really drives me in my work. One day was driving and the jeep in front of me had a Beatles sticker on the tire cover and I wondered, how did they come up with that logo and this lead me down a fantastic journey that was as much about the logo as it was about Ringo’s drum set and it was a blast to turn that into a video.

But in general I love to ask why and how, those seem to be the most interesting questions that leads to interesting videos

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.vinylrewind.tv/
• Instagram: @vinylrewind
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vinylrewind
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/vinylrewindtv
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT2PC-JqpTK-B9aUeUe01KA
• Other: http://ericcallero.com/