The Unexpected Mentor
By Dan Vado & Emily Parent
Categories: Arts, Books, Business, Entrepreneurship, Education, Self-Improvement
Dan Vado is a glass-half-empty sixty-something San Jose music venue owner and the founder of SLG Publishing, a comic book publishing company that achieved notoriety in the 90s for publishing popular alternative comics such as Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and Lenore, the Cute Little Dead Girl. Emily Parent is a twenty-something social media content girl and self-published author whose ambitions to be a creative professional are clouded by dreams of being famous. Though Dan is best known for publishing creator-owned comics and providing a platform to new and untried artists, he never intended to be anyone’s mentor. However, when Emily came crashing through the front door of his venue, unwaveringly insistent that she was special, Dan thought it might be satisfying to bring her back to reality. They may have gotten more than they bargained for in this series of weekly conversations that attempt to scale the intergenerational barrier between the way things once were for creative people and the way they are now in the age of social media.
9 episodes indexed on PodSearch.
Recent episodes
- [#8] You're Giving Away Your Power
Dan and Emily together here! (Emily typing) We just took this Thursday morning to eat a load of bread raccoon-style and listen to this episode on the big speakers in the Art Boutiki. We set out at the beginning of this episode to talk about joy, but as is often the case with us we meandered about…
- [#7] Will Having a Child be the End of my Creative Career?
From Dan: While it was not part of the plan, this episode about having a family while working in the creative world is coming out a few days before Father’s Day (in 2025, or whatever stardate equivalent if you are reading this from some ancient looking device after the collapse of humanity…
- [#6] Making Money as an Artist
Hi! Emily here! A few months after this episode was recorded, tax season came around and I had to file my taxes for the first time as a person who had made real money from her creative business. I was so freaked out about doing something wrong that I big-brain-smartly waited until the literal day…
- [#5] Lessons from SLG Publishing
Hi from Dan Vado... Listening to this episode the night before its release, what stands out to me is that I was surprised by how much Emily had remembered from the previous weeks of work. It gave me the feeling that there was something here worth listening to. You'll hear Emily recite parts of…
- [#4] Telling a Genuine Story
Em here! I called Dan this morning to tell him how nervous I was about this episode because we attempt to tackle so much in this short 30 minutes. We move from the idea of having a creative process to applying that process toward writing about identity to the use of identity as a pathway to…
- [#3] Fear of Screwing Up
Hiya! Emily again. Episode three. Fear of screwing up.Back in November when we recorded these first few episodes, I was so excited about the vision for this project that I would often go home and edit our long conversations down to a rough-cut episode just a day or two after recording. It became a…
- [#2] Creative Criticism & Seeking Validation
Dan Vado here, welcome to the second episode of The Unexpected Mentor. I’m assuming you are here because you listened to and found something interesting in the first episode. As Emily mentioned in the previous episode notes, I was (at the time of this recording) involved mainly because I was…
- [#1] You Will Get Better
Emily here. Truly, honestly, thanks for tuning in. This podcast means a lot to us.This episode was our proof of concept. Neither of us were convinced at the time of recording this that the other party would have anything of value to say. At the time, I think Dan was just hoping to get some free…
- The Unexpected Mentor | An SLG Publishing Podcast
On The Unexpected Mentor, unlikely friends Dan Vado and Emily Parent attempt to sort out the truth of what it means to live – and attempt to make a living – as an authentic, independent artist.
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