Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Rick Gardner. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Rick , appreciate you joining us today. Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?

Drawing and creating makes me happy. I have a regular job doing fundraising for a non-profit and have found that creating and fundraising provide a nice balance for me. I use my art to help homeless pets through collaborations with rescues and shelters. I have been able to take my experiences in both areas to level up.

This past summer, I attended the Best Friends national conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, my home town. While at the event, I sold my art, learned about Best Friends goal of eliminating “kill shelters” as well as new ideas for helping our local rescues and shelters in their fundraising efforts. I was then able to take new ideas back to my non-profit that created new tools for fundraising.

At the conference, I learned about creating a used-car donation program, setting up an electronic donation jar and small improvements I could make in emailing donors. Once I got back, I was able to implement these ideas directly by sharing my knowledge with local rescues and shelters and on my job as a development officer for a foundation. By experimenting with the electronic donation jar, I have drastically increase the amount of donations I could make to these rescues and shelters.

My experiences as both an artist and fundraiser helped me develop my pitch, my confidence and keep all my various projects moving forward. It really has become symbiotic for me.

Someone once told me that you should treat everything as an experiment. So far the experiment has been very positive…I continue to find my audience, raise money for animal welfare and follow my artistic and creative passions.

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

My company is called Binky and Bell. I use my cartoon dog art to help homeless pets in collaboration with shelters and rescues. Dogs bring me joy, happiness, unconditional love, and my art is an experiment to follow this passion and to capture these feelings and share them with others.

Binky was my first dog. Bell is my best friend Mark Bell’s last name. I quickly decided when I first started selling my art that I wanted to give the profit to local rescues and shelters. From there it has grown organically through networking, special events and fundraising activities.

During the COVID lock downs, I used my free time to draw, learn online, and start numerous projects. One of these projects was a joke book full dad jokes and my illustrations called the Naughty Dog Joke Book. Next was a series of coloring books. I am now working on licensing my art to major rescues and pet supply retailers in an effort to create a new revenue stream and grow the Binky and Bell brand.

I’ve always been proud about how I have become more creative along my artistic journey. Challenging myself with my own projects…taking an idea and making something out of nothing. Making time to draw, sketch, and coloring every day. Learning or trying something new on a regular basis. Driving down the road and following someone with one of my Peace Love Adopt a Dog stickers always makes me glow with happiness.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

NFTs have been an experiment for me. I set up an account on OpenSea, Figured out how to create and upload the art and put myself out there. I’ve learned it is a lot of work, but my goal is to put myself out there for people to discover. If I sell one of the NFTs…GREAT! If I don’t, I continue to use it as a way to push myself to create more art.

Did I originally get into NFTs thinking I would make lots of money? Sure. But as time has passed, I realized that might be today or tomorrow. Maybe never. But I am glad that I have tried and continue to try. I feel a since of accomplishment when I look at my collections. I use NFTs to promote my brand and if they do sell, I will be helping a lot of rescues and shelters.

You can check out my collections at https://opensea.io/BinkyandBell

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

I recently finished a book by James Altucher called Skip the Line: The 10,000 Experiments Rule and Other Surprising Advice for Reaching Your Goals. One of his suggestions was to come with ten ideas everyday. Since reading that advice, I enjoy coming up with ten ideas into my long bike rides or walks. I try to focus on some area of my life such as streams of income or how to make that next event extra special for my customers. I then combine my exercise with brainstorming these ideas, capture them on my phone and harvest the lowest hanging fruit after I get home. For example, I had a booth at the IBMA Bluegrass Wide Open and I came up with ten ideas….most of them sucked. But from the low hanging fruit, I decided to create simple coloring pages for younger children to give away at the event with my website information at the bottom; I created a simple coupon with a $5 off discount and information about how to follow me on social media; and I added a picture of my dog Binky to my booth to create a touch point to engage my customers.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://binkyandbell.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/binkyandbell/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BinkyandBell/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/25003300/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/apexgardner
• Other: Stimulus: @binkyandBell OpenSea: https://opensea.io/BinkyandBell Amazon: https://amzn.to/3E1qiLb

Image Credits
(Photo of Rick Gardner holding books) Dan Jahn