Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Episode 23.
Who is Corn Man? Is he a music album, a children’s book or a way to expose where our food comes from?
Charles Wiley is a lifelong musician who was caught off guard by one of the best-kept-secrets in the world of nutrition today: the amount of corn byproducts that are artificially added to EVERYTHING.
Hear host Brian J. Pombo and Charles discuss how his art form has been inspired by his mission to inform. How can you use the Corn Man to stand-out in your crowded market? LISTEN NOW!
Find out more about Charles Wiley and Corn Man: https://charleswiley.net/cornman/
Find out the business events secrets for growing and strengthening ANY company: http://brianjpombo.com/secrets/
Full Transcript
Charles: Dovetailing back when we talked about before, I was like, how do I separate myself in this market of a million musicians, a million bands a million this and it kind of all kind of came together coalesced and here we are.
Podcast Intro: If you’re someone who refuses to go along to get along, if you question whether the status quo was good enough for you and your family.
If you want to leave this world better off than you found it and you consider independence a sacred thing.
You may be a prepper, a gardener, a homesteader, a survivalist, or a farmer or rancher, an environmentalist or a rugged outdoorsman.
We are here to celebrate you whether you’re looking to improve your Maverick business or to find out more about the latest products and services available to the weekend rebel.
From selling chicken eggs online, to building up your food storage or collecting handmade soap.This show is for those who choose the road less traveled the road to self-reliance for those that are living a daring adventure life off the grid.
Brian: Charles Wiley he has been writing music and playing drums for 25 years, he currently lives in Los Angeles and plays with various bands and artists, including rock band Dark Horse Rising, Riot award winning singer songwriter Chris Angeles and Americana Band Circus 62.
In addition to playing drums, he also writes music for television.
His music has been played on Oprah, Dateline NBC Late Night with Seth Meyers, the Dr. Oz Show, The Young and the Restless and more Charles created the corner Man project to bring awareness to how much corn is in everything we eat.
Corn man is an ongoing action adventure children’s book series and progressive rock concept album. Charles was inspired to call attention to the issue using music and humor.
Corn man hopes to be the conversation starter and tackling the complex issues surrounding the food industry, the environmental impacts of it and the unsustainable nature of how we eat and grow food. Charles Wiley, welcome to the off the grid biz podcast.
Charles: Thank you so much for having me. Pleasure to be here.
Brian: So besides what we heard in your bio, tell us a little bit about who you are or what you do.
Charles: Okay, well basically, as a bio said, I’ve been drumming for over 25 years and for the last six to seven years, I’ve been a full time musician, make my living playing drums in various bands, some of the bands you mentioned, doing session, work with other bands, writing some music for TV, and then also I guess, the Corn Man project is kind of dovetailed its way into that.
And between those three things, that’s kind of how I kind of break up my time.
In between projects, I had this desire to start creating my own music, writing my own music, and from there kind of morphed into my own solo stuff. And then the core main project kind of started coming about because of that, so
Brian: Fabulous.
So how did you end up at this point in your life?
What’s your life story?
Charles: Well, long story very short.
My background in music is very common to musician. I played in bands growing up. I was lucky, my dad’s a musician. He still teaches guitar in his retirement.
My older brother plays his guitar.
So him and I, we always played in bands. And my goal was always to be a full time touring musician, you know, writing and recording doing that thing. So that’s been my goal.
I’d say about eight or nine years ago, it kind of deviated from having my own band to kind of working with other bands. And I kind of became a sideman in that realm and really enjoyed that.
But I always had this desire to create my own music and things. Rewind I’d say a about four or five years ago.
My wife and I were kind of doing some research on trying to eat healthier kind of change our lifestyle because we bought a Costco membership and I got very excited about all the food there and bought too much and ate too much and gained a lot of weight and wasn’t Costco fault.
But um, I was just like, I want to do something to kind of change the way we’re eating and it started with the book, Forks Over Knives from there kind of dovetailed into the book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Foodopoly.
I just really became interested in the food industry, the food we were eating, and what it was doing to our bodies, and I was on a three month cruise gig, where I was the drummer in a cruise band.
I was reading the book Foodopoly, it was talking about the various ways we raised food and things like that and It was actually making me sick reading it, because you know, you’re trying to I was reading, I was eating lunch, you know, trying to reading about the food industry.
I was like, Oh gosh, I don’t feel good.
But for whatever reason, corn just popped out at me as this thing that was in virtually everything we eat.
Now, as you know, it’s in the fuel we burn as an ethanol and things like that. And I just became kind of obsessed with how did corn become this thing?
How did how did it turn into this kind of juggernaut that’s in everything we eat?
So I wanted to bring awareness to the issue.
I thought, what, how could I do that, you know, being a musician, obviously, had to be involved. But I’m not a big fan of when people try to persuade you with new information and they kind of bleed with it, you know, kind of hit you over the head with it.
So I wanted to do that in a fun way, where it would kind of engage people.
Evidently, drawing my head on stock of corn is one way to kind of bring people’s defenses down.
You know, they’re like, what is this all about?
As you mentioned, in the intro, I came up with the story.
My wife and I wrote the book series together, I wrote all the music, I hired musician friends to play on it. And we basically just wanted to get this conversation going, you know, because as you know, I’m sure there’s, I think over 50 or 60 ingredients that are all corn based that are in most of the food we eat on a daily basis.
The studies are coming back that it’s the health implications for kids and adults and the planet on top of that. It’s just kind of astronomical that kind of brought us here.
Brian: Oh, fabulous.
Was the concept of the book first or was the music album first How did that transpire?
Charles: I want to say the music was first the music came first and then I tend to kind of have a lot of ideas.
I kid with my wife because I think all my ideas are great obviously you know and but it’s when an idea sticks in my head and I keep chewing on it and I’m like and the idea of the artwork came with the music and when I saw my head on a stock of corn and the artist
Andy West off a buddy of ours who did that when he drew it I was like, Man, that’s so funny that looks at you know, and then I was like, let’s do this story.
The music came first the story came second. And as of now chapter one and two are out for the music and the ebooks, but Chapter One is the only one that is on paperback.
Chapter Two is coming out in paperback hopefully by the holiday.
Brian: I originally got to see you at the Mother Earth News Fair in Albany, Oregon. And you had a booth there you had your your first book there you had your music.
What led you to putting this out on display like that?
What tied you in with the Mother Earth News Fair specifically?
Charles: Great question.
Well, corn man is kind of a difficult, difficult concept to explain.
Everyone talks about you know, you need your elevator pitch. Give me three or four sentences on what this is.
I tell people it’s a action adventure kids story and a progressive rock concept album and they’re like, those don’t go together.
Long story short, I was trying to find it I still am in the process of trying to find best audience to get the story out to. And I was reaching out to some radio stations for promotion for corn man, and came across a radio station in Portland.
They basically said if you’re in the area, we could probably get you on the air can get you an interview and I was like, oh, shoot, okay, I need to find something.
I was looking and I knew of Mother Earth News Fair for a while. I knew of their podcast, and then I saw they were going to be in Albany, Oregon, and I was like, Huh, okay.
My in-laws live about three and a half hours south of Albany. So it all just kind of made sense to just go there and test the waters with the Mother Earth News Fair attendees because you know, where I met you there.
So many of those people there are already involved doing things to for sustainability, conservation, all that stuff. So I knew in that aspect, it will would work, they would relate to it. But am I already telling them stuff they already know, you know what I mean?
It’s like so we just went to check it out. The response was great. You know, we talked to a lot of amazing people, yourself included. And it just became a nice kind of…that was the first major fair we went to.
So we had a good time that the turnout was good.
Brian: You plan on doing any other type of live events like that?
Charles: Yeah, I hope to do maybe once every couple months or so.
And then the thing I really want to start doing is, at the Mother Earth News Fair, I read chapter one at the kids stage they had there, and the audio book is coming out in a couple months.
That has a soundtrack that I wrote to it.
So I had that soundtrack playing as I read the book live, and I want to start going to schools and I want to start doing maybe like an hour, hour and a half demonstration.
Hopefully that the ideal is to play two or three songs off the record where I can play drums live with in front I think the class and then read the story at the fair, I think you might have saw we had like the the word search they can take with them that shows and just get that conversation started.
I remember when I was a kid, like if I got the bit in my teeth about something, I would nag my parents to know and like, hey, let’s do this, let’s do this.
So the goal is to get the kids involved and they can go home, and they can start looking at the ingredients, they can start looking at the food and, you know, helping their parents shop.
I’m not a parent, so I don’t know if that’s gonna be fun for the parent or not, but um, but that’s the goal.
I want to start going to more schools, I want to start doing more fairs and I want to start playing this music out live with a full band. That won’t be probably till next year.
Commercial Break: Okay, we’re going to pause the conversation right there. What you’re listening to right now is a special edition podcast.
These episodes all have to do with the Mother Earth News fair in Albany, Oregon of 2019 at the time I’m recording this, we have learned so much about how to take advantage of events and I want you to be able to use this information in your own business.
Go to BrianJPombo.com/secrets.
We are going to be putting out helpful materials on how you can use events to grow your business.
When you go to this page, you will either see our latest programs or if you make it there early enough, you will see an email address, capture page, put in your email address and we will be sure and update you. As soon as we get these out there, you’re not going to want to miss this.
If you get in early enough, you can get a special deal. These are principles that never go away. These programs will be based on the experience of people who have written books, spoken at the events or exhibited.
They’re talking about how to use events, books, and speaking all to build your business.
That’s BrianJPombo.com/secrets.
BrianJPombo.com/secrets and now back to the conversation.
Brian: What you’ve heard weaved in and out of this episode are quick little selections from Charles Wiley’s corn man album. You can find out more at CharlesWiley.net/cornman.
Music
Brian: So what age group do you think’s ideal for this?
Charles: You know, I do think it’s gonna kind of following the 10 to 14 year old range for the younger kids. I think they were related to the illustrations, the story is a little, I don’t wanna say dark. But I think that that 10 to 14, 15 year old year old range is going to be really good. And it’s also for adults too.
I’ve had some adult friends say they liked the story and all that stuff.
The story is basically following a dog and a cat as they go on an adventure looking for their owner who goes missing. And in-between all this, there are these corn facts that are being, you know, put into the book.
The reason why the owner went missing has to do with corn. So it’s just kind of a fun way to kind of get the whole family involved and talking about it.
Brian: Very cool.
Is there any other way that you’re finding new customers for the Corn Man series?
Besides doing a fair like this or going to classrooms?
Have you found any other way that you’ve been able to reach people so far?
Charles: It’s kind of been a combination of all that, you know, going to fairs obviously, being on social media.
You can go to CharlesWiley.net/CornMan.
And I have a Facebook page that’s for Corn Man and Instagram page for Corn Man.
But a lot of it’s just been word of mouth, grassroots. And I’m okay with that because I find talking to people in person or over online or whatever about the project in more depth is kind of the best way.
You know, it kind of slowly gets them involved.
And as I said before the elevator pitches kind of convoluted. So having a 2, 3, 4 minute conversation with someone about it has really been good.
Between the fairs, the social media music angle, we’re reaching quite a few people. So it’s been good.
Brian: Oh, that’s great.
So you’ve got the album, you’ve got the book, and now you got the audio book, which is a great hybrid between the two. That’s a really neat process.
Do you see anything else? And I see you have a couple t-shirts in the background.
Charles: Yeah.
Brian: And besides that, what else do you see in Corn Man’s future.
Charles: I’d like to finish up with the kids story aspect of it by next year, I think three chapters is going to kind of tie in the story together.
After that, though, I kind of see it being an ongoing project where I’m performing the music.
We’re kind of dovetails into education, slash music, slash reading, and basically just kind of going to events, going to schools talking about it, I really want the project to help kind of get that awareness out there, kind of get that attention to the issue.
We’re not villainizing farmers in any way because I think their struggle is is incredible what they have to go through and all that stuff.
But it’s all about the awareness to a while there’s corn and like everything we eat.
Be wise, there’s so much corn and everything we eat and see what can I do as a consumer to help that and I think that’s just going to be a ongoing thing for you know, hopefully the rest of my life.
Brian: So if we were looking at years ahead down the road.
What do you think would be an ideal scenario to come about?
Like if this was just a runaway hit?
I mean, you get cartoons, movies, whatever else. If it could just be as big as you could possibly imagine. And it gets the proper attention that you want and people start waking up to this idea.
What would be a great thing to for you to see change out there?
What’s something that’s measurable that you can see happening?
Charles: Wow, great question.
I think what I would start to see is a everything you mentioned.
I would love to see it turned into a movie, I think an animated movie, that’d be awesome.
I would love to perform this music to it live on stages, either with the animation movie behind it, or even some live theatrical representation of it.
So for the entertainment part of it. That’s kind of the goal.
Large shows festival goals, things of that nature, performing the music would be great.
But for the impact of how do I know, this is making a change?
How do we how do we know?
I think it’s kind of multifaceted. I think one way is we’re going to start to see changes, and hopefully reversals in type two diabetes and kids and obesity and kids.
For the first time we’re seeing this stuff I just heard to where I think if we continue down this path, the youngest generation is going to be the first generation in a long time, not to outlive the previous generation.
You know, so seeing reversals and those health trends, I would like to see more community gardening, farming, that sort of thing.
For myself. I thought food came from the fast food joints.
I thought food came from the grocery stores, you know, it’s like, that’s just what I was accustomed to.
But I really wish there was something in my school when I was growing up saying, No, this is how you grow your own food.
This is where that stuff comes from a return to having a vested interest in our food.
I would like to see a change in that, you know, I would like to see, the big corporations are financing all this stuff, I think the biggest indicator is will see those brands start to shrink.
I think their foothold in the market will start to shrink. It’s already happening. And some rounds.
I mean, when you have a, you know, these huge corporations buying, these Mom and Pop organic places, not to be facetious, but they’re not doing it because they care about organic, they’re doing it because they can make money, so it’s like it got enough attention.
Yeah, I hope that answered your question.
Brian: No, that’s great. That’s great.
What are the main obstacles standing in your way of being able to do that being able to expand this corn man project?
Charles: I think one of the obstacles is kind of trying to find the right audience for it.
I think that that’s been a challenge.
But I also think it’s been a good learning lesson for myself because I’m figuring out who needs to hear This message and I can only use myself as an example.
So I’m using what gets me excited about things to kind of try to brand it to kind of market it. And yeah, I just think over time, it’s going to start to kind of gain momentum and build, build, build and build and with people like yourself, reaching out and being so kind and helpful and spreading the word, I can’t thank you enough, but individually like yourself as well, who’s helping build the momentum?
Brian: What advice would you have for people that come from a creative background like yourself that are going into building kind of a larger project like this?
It’s almost a business entity unto itself.
What advice would you have for people like that?
Charles: I think you hit the nail right on the head.
It is a business and a thing on the creative aspect is keep the creativity happening, that keep that inspiration going, and don’t get bogged down by the details.
You know what I mean? It’s like, and don’t be afraid to work with people, that are going to help.
That’s one thing I really had to learn.
I’m still learning about but it’s like, I think I read in one of those business investing or small business books, like 95% of all small businesses fail because the owner tries to do everything themselves selves, it’s being okay with relinquishing control because this company can help expand the brand or get the word out because that’s their specialty.
That’s, you know, my specialty is coming up with weird concepts, writing the music, playing drums.
That’s my thing.
It’s like, so my advice would be to anyone starting this, keep creating and use the business side of it to channel that creativity to because in today’s market, and the music industry is flipped completely on its ear compared to the way it was 20 years ago.
So you have to be okay with that.
You can’t cry about what was you just got to pick up and be like, this is the reality of it.
How do I make it ago?
How do I make it work in today’s day age and just keep going?
That’s all I can say.
Brian: That’s great advice.
I’ve never quite seen anything quite like the Corn Man concept.
So have you? Have you done anything like this before?
Have you seen anything that has inspired you to go in this direction?
Or is it just kind of taken on a life of its own?
Charles: I don’t think I’ve seen anything, I guess food related in this way? No.
I will say there are bands that have followed that they do concept albums and and they have themes, and some of them do have a pretty big footprint in a cause or a foundation.
But there wasn’t one particular band or anything that I was looking at for inspiration.
Basically, I just had the ideas and then dovetailing back to what we were talking about before I was like, how do I separate myself in this market of a million musicians, a million bands a million this and it kind of all kind of came together coalesced and here we are.
Brian: Wow, that’s really good point that differentiating yourself in just the sea of musicians out there that are trying to cope with the change in the industry and everything that I was hoping you touch on that, that you it’s really cool that you can see that about yourself and that you’re taking it that direction.
That’s very cool.
Charles: Thank you so much. Yeah.
Brian: What could a listener who’s interested in finding out more about corn man and the whole project?
Where would you suggest they go?
Is it CharlesWiley.net/CornMan?
Or do you have anywhere else you send them?
Charles: That’s kind of the hub. That’s my website and that CharlesWiley.net/CornMan will give you all the information about the quarter man project.
There are a couple of videos up talking about its release on paperback.
There’s some video of me drumming to some of the songs there. There’s links to buy the book, by the music, all that stuff. And you can also just get in contact with me. You know that way too.
But yeah, CharlesWiley.net/CornMan should have everything you need right there.
Brian: And there’s new details out coming all the time. I mean, with your new audio book coming out, I saw that on social media before we met here.
So it’s really neat to see, you’re always trying something new. If you’d like, we’d love to have you back on the show another time and find out where Corn Man takes you from here on out.
Charles: Oh, that’d be great that’d be awesome. Yeah.
Brian: Charles Wiley, thanks so much for being on the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.
Charles: My pleasure, Brian, thank you so much.
Brian’s Closing Thoughts: Soon as I came across Charles at the Mother Earth News Fair, he really stood out.
Obviously, what he’s offering is something that you’ve never quite seen before, which I think is really neat.
One of the most important pieces that you can take away from this is the concept of having a cause tied in with your business somewhere somehow, if your business isn’t already a cause unto itself, as The Corn Man project has been for him, then you need to find a cause you need to find what makes what you’re doing important beyond the relationship between you and your customer.
What is the big idea?
Obviously, Charles is relating this back to World Health.
So that’s a big idea. That is something that is major and talking about the proliferation of corn into our entire lives.
These are big concepts, and not the type of thing that would normally be handled by a children’s book or any type of musical piece.
I love the conversation we were having about finding the audience. So obviously, he’s come up with a product, he’s come up with a concept he’s come up with something that can go on to many different formats already.
He’s gone from musical pieces to children’s books. Two coloring books.
Now to audio books, this can translate into multiple media’s, which is cool, but really finding that audience is so important. And this ties into so many of the things that I’ve talked about with people.
Ideally, most of us never do it this way.
Ideally, it would be great if you can find your audience first, and then produce a product or service that would help them directly.
The finding of the audience is such a difficult, painstaking process and you could hear Charles going through it.
But it’s cool that he is and I can’t wait to find out who the audiences are that he’s able to truly connect with in the long run.
The neat thing that he has a handle on is that differentiation that we were talking about being different standing out, doing things that other people can’t possibly do, in a way that they can’t possibly do them in media.
Mediums that no one’s using for these purposes, he’s willing to do that, that he can see that that’s his true value to the marketplace and his ability to stand out.
I mean, just the picture of his face on a piece of corn makes a person stop and say,
Okay, what is this?
What’s going on here?
It’s really great. How are you channeling the creativity in your business?
How are you really putting it on the line?
And doing something that’s so unique, that it causes people to stop and say, Okay, what is this?
What are you talking about?
What are you offering to do?
These are good questions to have. These are the ways that you get attention in your market. And when you’re really out there looking for the ideal audience for your ideal customer or client.
You really got to be willing to look outside the box like Charles is doing, he’s willing to go to events like the Mother Earth News Fair.
While at the same time having readings in classrooms. I mean, he’s going all over the place, it seems that he’s really willing to do anything which is a great attitude to have and something I think we can all learn from.
Can’t wait to find out more about corn man’s adventures in the future and really see where this ends up taking them. It can go in so many directions.
So really exciting to see something like this out there on the market.
Outro: Join us again on the next Off The Grid Biz Podcast brought to you by the team at BrianJPombo.com, helping successful but overworked entrepreneurs, transform their companies into dream assets.
That’s BrianJPombo.com.
If you or someone you know would like to be a guest on The Off The Grid Biz Podcast, offthegridbiz.com/contact.
Those who appear on the show do not necessarily endorse my beliefs, suggestions, or advice or any of the services provided by our sponsor.
Our theme music is Cold Sun by Dell. Our executive producer and head researcher is Sean E Douglas.
I’m Brian Pombo and until next time, I wish you peace, freedom, and success.