We recently connected with Thomas Kwiat and have shared our conversation below.
Thomas, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. The first dollar you earn is always exciting – it’s like the start of a new chapter and so we’d love to hear about the first time you sold or generated revenue from your creative work?
We were about 9 months into Live and Amplified, and one of the musicians we had worked with on our Video Series had pitched us to a Jazz Festival that he was a member of. We would come in and film and record all of the sets (For promotional use). We made a proposal and gave an estimate of how much it would cost and as usual (for freelancers)… They wanted a cheaper rate for the first time, so we gave it to them. $2500 for the weekend, $500 would go to gear (That we needed) and the other $2000 would get split up between 4 of us. by the end of the weekend, I lost Money because we ended up needing more gear than we thought, and a bunch of other things came up.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
So I was introduced to very rudimentary way of video editing in 8th grade (Using Power Point) and I fell in love with this visual way to tell stories. So every project in High School I had would be some sort of video I edited. Then when I started college, I started working on a film Script and it inspired me to take a script writing class. This spun out of control leading me all around the country, but it wasn’t till I landed in Roswell, NM. With the right idea (Of Live and Amplified) and the right group of people around me. We were able to build a brand that promotes and showcases original music from Independent artists.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
In 2020, When the pandemic hit… Like a lot of people it was an uncertain time. in the beginning of that year we were starting to work out some new content ideas and a Radio show, but like a lot of creatives we had to pivot… So we looked at what we could do remotely and doubled down on our Podcast and it brought new life to our entire platform.
Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
I wish I had known about sites Like Zoom and Streamlabs, That would have given us an affordable way to expand Live and Amplified early on without always needing to travel.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/livenamplified/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/liveNamplified
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-kwiat/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/livenamplified1
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDyxwsufiwDWTsj6EI_L4iA
- Other: Podcast https://open.spotify.com/show/5dZ2LgaPYqKWWEKhlkjndO?si=52f36cf877bf48d1 Radio Show https://www.mixcloud.com/indiefusionradio/