Sneaking Past the Gilded Gates: A Story for Creative Rebels

The wind tickled my arm as I drove with the windows down making a meandering diagonal from New Hampshire to Los Angeles from the wet, green forests of incubating and learning to the vast desert of possibility.

After finishing school at Yale and leaving a stack of giant paintings in my dad’s basement, I left to experiment with what might be possible in a place with deep summers and a buzzing art world.

Where I hoped for openings, I found mostly locked doors and hard realities. Very young with little money and no connections or friends, the city was a destroying angel.

I lived out of my golden Nissan Sentra covered in a prevailing dust that desaturated everything. Looking for a job and an apartment, I faced rejection after rejection.

Meanwhile, I watched the perfect sunshine people gliding around in crisp designer clothing, sliding into their shiny luxury cars. Our worlds were separated by an impenetrable glass.

After countless nights with my knees screaming from sleeping like a contortionist in my car, a kindly woman rented me a tiny, ticky-tacky oasis in a neighborhood of strip malls and my degree finally worked its magic to land me a meagerly-paying position at a prestigious art gallery.

I hoped entering the art world would help me conjure an opportunity to enter through those gilded gates and make my iridescent, brush-stroke-shaped mark on the world.

But that is not what happened….

Instead, I was the messenger who turned away hundreds of artists hoping for gallery representation. Powerless to let anyone in, I witnessed a never-ending stream of talent, vision, and passion banging against a gate that never opened.

I would like to say that this only made my determination stronger -- that I powered through -- but instead, I felt defeated before beginning. I never submitted my art to a single gallery.

Have you ever, like me, felt like an outsider looking in? Have you felt intimidated by the gatekeepers or discouraged by failed attempts at entry into that golden world of the chosen?

Well, my rebel-friend, there is a way to magically bypass these gates, get your creation into the world and make your own pot of gold.

This is exactly what I did with my Spirit Cats Deck.

And let me tell you, after the radiant success of my Spirit Cats (selling 29K in pre-orders in just 30 days), the gatekeepers (publishers, agents, and galleries) came to knock on my door for a change. The tides had turned.

Kickstarter was my chosen tool but even a brilliant tool can’t work magic on its own. I have seen many crowdfunding campaigns for amazing things never gain any traction, fading out with only a few hundred dollars raised.

Having that specter of public failure nipping at my heels, I did intensive research. I experimented widely. I learned what worked and what was just a lot of useless work.

I creatively translated information designed for tech bros to apply to my magical world of Spirit Cats. I synthesized all this piecemeal advice from disparate sources into a clear and powerful strategy.

Now, I am sharing all these secrets with you in my Crowdfunding Essential course so that you too can sneak past the gatekeepers and entice them with your shining victory to come knocking at your door.

As Willy Wonka says, “We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of the dream.” It is time for your dream to enter the collective dream.

Don’t be diminished by the gatekeepers like I was all those years ago while working in the art gallery. Your creations can transform us in unseen ways. We need your magic. Let it reach us.

With love,
Nicole