Producing hardcore punk chronicles live from New York attracted 90,000 fans to this film producer who now has a thriving business from his passion.

Want to build a passion into a profitable business? Then listen to Drew Stone explain how his love for Punk Rock has grown into a 90,000 fan following, with revenues on Patreon and an expanding line of merchandise made in real time using a Chinese just-in-time supplier.

Drew Stone is an American film director, producer, editor and musician. His works include music videos, commercials, documentary films and television. He founded the New York City-based film production company Stone Films NYC. He is a four-time X-Tremmy award winner with his Urban Street-Bike Warriors series of films and director of the MTV True Life episode “I Live To Ride."

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Transcript

Jim James: 0:01

Hello, and welcome to speak PR today. I am absolutely delighted to have drew stone. Who's joining us from upper West side in New York, drew. Hi.

Drew Stone: 0:09

Oh, what's happening, Jim. Thank you for having me and welcome to everybody from New York city. Lovely New York city in the, in the midst of the zombie apocalypse. Well, I have to say New York is a city full of glamor and you are living a life full of glamour because you're running your own business. And I wanted really to talk with you today about how you've managed to create a business online through a passion through the New York Hardcore Chronicles live, tell us how you're combining technologies like Patrion and live streaming, like streaming yard to build a sustainable business around your passion, which is punk music. Absolutely. let me just set the table a little bit and say that by nature, I'm a film. A filmmaker and an, a musician as a teenager I came up in the American hardcore punk scene and the ethos of that early American scene was it was a real DIY do it yourself ethic. And what I took away from that mostly was. Get up, get out and make it happen. Don't wait for a record company. Don't wait for, you know, don't wait for someone to hand you something. You can do it. You know, you want to put a record out, you know, put a record out yourself, you know, make flyers, push the shows and. That was, that was the, the, the environment and the ethos, you know, th th that I came up in when I got into film, when I got into filmmaking, I come from a filmmaking family, but I ended up having a career doing music videos, and I was also, I also sing for one of the early American New York hardcore bands, that band called antidote. So. Playing music with a lot of other bands and meeting a lot of the bands for a couple of years. and then the people started asking me to do music videos for them. And that led into a career in film. of course I still do music. I directed a couple of films. One of them was a film called the New York hardcore Chronicles film, which is on Amazon prime right now. And I've done it. I've done a couple of music documentaries, one of them that was on Netflix for a couple years. And so, so in doing that I kind of garnered a bit of a fan base. People know who I am, what I've done through the music and through the film work at a certain point when the pandemic hit. Somebody asked me to come on their show, very similar to what we're doing here today. And I came on his show and afterwards he, you know, he said to me, Hey, you know, could you subscribe? And there was a video streaming show and he said, Hey, could you subscribe to my YouTube channel? Because you know, you, you know, you, you wanna, you want to gather up. Subscription. So, you know, people will get alerts, you know, when your show is on. So I looked on his YouTube channel and I saw, Oh, okay. And he's got a couple hundred subscribers on his YouTube channel. And then I thought to myself, well, wait a second. My stone films, NYC YouTube channel that I've been posting clips on for a couple of years has almost 10,000 subscribers on it. Just from me, just for me posting up. You know, video clips in, you know, through the years, he also told me that th th the show that I just did with him also streams out on Facebook, and I looked on his Facebook page and he, you know, he had a couple of thousand people on Facebook and I thought to myself, well, wait a second. My Facebook page, the New York Hardcore Chronicles page has 90,000 people on it. So I did his show and that got me thinking I didn't set out to be a podcast host or a video host. you know, I did go to college for acting that didn't last long. I got, I got into music, you know, and, and way I went, but, you know, the pandemic was just starting at that moment. And I knew I was going to be locked in for a while. And I thought, you know what, let me start a show. I'll call it the New York hardcore Chronicles live. And I put it on the platform, the platform that, that he, that he turned me on to, it's a platform called stream yard. A stream yard is a platform similar to zoom. but you, you, you, you pay a couple bucks. I think, I think if I remember correctly, um you know, there's different tiers, but I pay, I think 24 95 a month and it streams stream yard. Puts it out onto three platforms. The three platforms that I chose to put my show out onto was, um YouTube Facebook. And and I w I, I was going to do LinkedIn, but I re, but instead I also stream stream it out onto my Facebook personal page as well. I chose to go that way. but of course the next tier up on stream yard. You could stream to, I think, five or six platforms and there's other tiers, which I felt that some of them didn't pertain to what I was doing. I think one of them is I forgot the name of it. It's more of like a, a gamer sort of platform for people to play

Jim James: 5:13

Twitch.

Drew Stone: 5:13

Thank you. Twitch. And that's I felt that that wasn't really. You know, my audience my big audience is on, on Facebook and is on YouTube. Now let me just say that after the show streams live, it's archived on YouTube. So if someone can't watch my show live, then. It streams live onto YouTube. Also, like I said, it's a live video streaming show. And when I've been very fortunate in, in, in getting here is that I didn't realize this. At first, my show, my show comes on at 3:00 PM. New York time. I had no idea. I didn't think it through, but that's prime time in Europe.

Jim James: 6:03

Eight o'clock nine o'clock here in Europe.

Drew Stone: 6:05

and then there's a live chat room during my show. My show is very interactive and people were saying, hello from Italy. Hello from Germany, what's happening. And I'm like, what? Where all these more people outside the country who were watching the show then inside and it was thrilling. And I realized that what a struggle, a stroke of luck, you know, Right away. The, the show garnered a worldwide audience. And, and part of the reason I have to say for its success is because it's a live interactive show. So people have made it a destination. They come to my show. And there's a little community and they enter and they interact with each other. Sometimes it was in my show. I say, Hey, excuse me, by the way, I'm doing a show here. And it will be because sometimes they have, they have their own thing going on. And I've been very fortunate that I've, that I've garnered this worldwide, you know, hardcore punk community. That is, that is very interactive and very social.

Jim James: 7:16

True. That's kind of where you're at now, which is sounds amazing. Can you just tell us a little bit about how you got that community of sort of 90,000 in the first place? Because many people including me have got some content and maybe a few thousand followers. What did you do over how much time to get that many people to watch your videos? Is it to do with tagging? Did you promote the videos because that's often a big part of people's challenge from a marketing point?

Drew Stone: 7:45

Sure. Well, well for me you know I'm a music lover. And, and I'm a music historian at this point, you know, and what started as a passion, as a teenager, you know, has developed into you know, quite, quite an obsession. You know, I think of myself as, as a musical, as a music archeologist in a lot of ways, you know, in, in the stuff that I do. And when I started putting up film clips on YouTube tagging, I would hashtag. You know the bands, the scenes, and another thing is, was important is continuity. It's important to have continuity when you, when, when you do this kind of stuff with, you know what your, what your brand, you know, my brand. My brand happens to be stone films, NYC. Right? My, you know, my name is drew stone. My film production company was stone films NYC, and my YouTube channel is called stone films, NYC. So that's, that's my personal brand. And I started getting that out there as early as possible and, and, and getting that in there. And I encouraged people to subscribe to my YouTube channel. And and to the Facebook page. and brand continuity is extremely important. I directed the film called the New York hard. W well, first off I started on Facebook, the New York hardcore Chronicles page. When I started the page and I saw the, the enthusiasm for it as a filmmaker, I, I decided, you know what, I'm going to make a film about, pretty much about the scene here in this page. It's going to be called the New York hardcore Chronicles film. The show that I've had success with now that streaming live is called the New York hardcore Chronicles live. So having that brand continuity has served me very well. People identify with it at this point and, and know what it is also with the New York hardcore Chronicles live. I like to say that I'm a sum of all parts and what I mean, what I mean by that is at this point, there's. A couple of things that contribute to me, actually being able to pay my rent and bills here. And that would be that would be first is I created a Patrion page. And, you know, for the, for those out there that may not know Patrion is a platform, right. That enables people to support you as an artist. And there's different tiers. Like for instance, You know, with my Patrion, there's a$2 tier, a$5 tier at$10 here,$25 and a hundred. And on each tier, there's, there's different incentives and people get different things. Now what I w how I described my Patrion on my show is it's our community within a community. And it's within this community, which at this point, I think I have, I have close to maybe 200 patrons people, people who enjoy my show, Which is free. And I tell people, Hey, this show is free, you know, but don't be a lurker. don't lurk out there. You support the show. I love doing this. You love watching the show. Let's keep it free. If you enjoy it, please contribute and support the show and people. People contribute to Patrion. And one of the biggest things I do in patriarch is I post never before seen photos and ever before seen video clips. And I do short private shows that I post and Patrion, I provide unique, special content. So the Patrion thing is one thing. The other thing is sponsorship. I have a couple of sponsors. That have come on board. And like I said, it's keeping with the ethos and the vibe of what I do. You know, I got, you know, a record store in, in, in Denver, Colorado is one of my sponsors. I have, I have a comic book store up here in New York. And, you know, it's sort of, as we say, as we say in the hardcore world, I'm keeping it real, you know, w with these kinds of sponsors, they, they, they, they, it, it really keeps it, it keeps it. Really w with real do it yourself, kind of feel to it. I've been, yeah, I've been approached by one single sponsor about, Hey, let's do, let us be your only sponsor. Let's put this thing in a studio and I feel like I'm not ready for that. And that's to sort of that's, I feel like that's going to take away from, in a certain regard from what people really love about. Oh,

Jim James: 12:21

You raised an interesting point at what stage does it become commercial to the degree that it's no longer kind of the specialness of it. And we see some of these big life coach, which is now moving from sort of intimate to corporate. Yes. And and it changes the dynamic entirely. and

Drew Stone: 12:38

I see that and I'm wary of it, but. The finish as the sum of all my parts, we have Patrion, we have my sponsors, I have my YouTube monetization. After many years, I have monetized my YouTube page I never wanted commercials on my clips back in the day. There was no need for it. I didn't want it, but when I decided to go all in with this, I, I. Went through the process and turned on my YouTube monetization now in my case. Okay. I'm not hitting any big, crazy upper deck home run balls here, but I have a huge body of work and a lot of posts that I've made on YouTube and they're all monetized now. So make it. So I'm making a fruit and volume really you know, I'm sure it would be great to have a million hits on something, but, you know, I've got, I've got a lot of little things that, that bring in a couple of cents here and there. And then the last thing that is connected with my show is I have a little merchandise line and a little March line with, you know, with some, t-shirts a couple unique items. That's through a platform called Teespring. Now Teespring connects to you too. So when you watch my show, I can say now underneath there's, you know, you'll see the link, they show a couple of the products. So as I'm doing my show, I could literally point and say, you know, check out down below there. And you know, what I've tried to do is make some unique products that not everybody has, like I have, I have the New York hardcore logo, shower curtain, and, and the, and the, and the girls leggings. And I have the mug. You know, and a little off the beaten path. And then what usual, what usually people do. So my story catchphrase is I'm a sum of all parts.

Jim James: 14:29

True. It sounds like you're really becoming the 360 degree brand right. Of this, of this content. What about getting your name out? Are you relying on people coming to your show and through word of mouth? Or are you doing some traditional media relations or are you going on other people's shows like, like mine, how you building the network beyond the, if you like the organic growth.

Drew Stone: 14:55

Well, you know, I've been told, by my sister who, who is really my media manager, that I should go on as many other podcasts as possible because that kind of cross pollinates things. I don't, I don't particularly believe a hundred percent in that. I feel that I like going on, you know, a couple of them, but actually getting a little tired of hearing myself, talk about myself but another way of course is, is traditionally I'm on I'm on Instagram. I, you know, I, I I've done the whole Instagram dance and you know, Facebook, Facebook has been very good to me. I know for a lot of people they S a lot of the younger people, shun Facebook these days. It's, it's, you know, it's for older people, you know, but, but I have, Facebook has been very, very good to be. I've created a couple of Facebook pages, and I just try to, you know, cross collateralize, everything.

Jim James: 15:50

tell us about this merchandise stood about Teespring. Can just show us an example. How's it working? What's the

Drew Stone: 15:55

strategy there? Yeah, sure. So like I said, you know, I come from the background, like give it away for free. You know this is my attitude. It's worked for me a lot of times, give it away from free develop the community. People will come and develop a community and then sell a couple of t-shirts and you know Teespring. Is is a company that they're like a fulfillment house they're in China and they put your logo on, on all kinds of different products. they do it one at a time and they ship it in where, in the world. So I've developed this community and created this March line. and, and people, you know, people, people buy a couple of t-shirts, people buy a couple of sweatshirts and that's just one of the things that I do. I'm a sum of all parts.

Jim James: 16:39

And he did that really well through. If people wanted to find out more about you and maybe buy some of your coolest pink merchandise, how do they find you?

Drew Stone: 16:48

Sure. I can be found on YouTube. my channel is stone films, NYC. That's the name of my YouTube channel. The show I do is called the New York hardcore Chronicles live. So check that out. I'm also on Instagram at stone films. N Y C please check me out. I'd love to hear from you. Don't be shy. say hi.

Jim James: 17:12

True. Thank you for saying hi to me. I know that you're in demand. and luckily your sister gave you some instructions. So talk to me, otherwise you may not have come down to my level. Oh, really? I think as well, to hear how you really built this amazing ecosystem all the way from upper West side of New Jersey. Thanks so much for joining me today on the speed PR podcast.

Drew Stone: 17:31

My pleasure and thank you to everyone out there. And I wish you, I wish you all the best and like the way I close my shows, do good things and good things will come to you.

Jim James: 17:41

And I can't top that. So we're going to close on Drew's comments. Best regards from the UK and from New york.

Drew Stone: 17:49

Take care, everyone.