Welcome to The VICI Code, where we unlock real stories of small business owners who've battled chaos, crushed doubt, and conquered their challenges. Faith, family, and finances. No fluff, just raw, honest conversations that decode the path to victory one story at a time. What is up? Thank you for joining us today as we explore our latest Purpose Driven Journey, Beyond the Streams, where we study the creator's breakthrough, how to pivot from VFX artist to full-time music entrepreneur using high-leverage systems instead of viral luck. Most creative professionals think they need to go viral or get signed to a label to make a living. But what if the secret to a six-figure creative career isn't luck at all? It's a system. Aurélie Kubel, also known as PLV to her fans, is a Vancouver-based former VFX lighting artist for major feature films who turned zero-dollar music passion into a six-figure business in just four years using only social media and emails. Aurélie dismantles the starving artist trope with the cold hard logic of a systems-driven entrepreneur. Her transition from high-pressure world of VFX for feature films to building a six-figure music business is a masterclass in discipline. Aurélie and I met in the trenches of Dan Martell's Elite Masterclass. She shows up, she does the work, and is a frequent contributor to the community. Today, we explore the myth of the starving artist. We're diving into how Aurélie used her hard worker mentality to build a music business that doesn't rely on streams or ads. From being a runner at the VFX World to becoming a permanent resident in Canada and lead and a leader for thousands of aspiring musicians, we are mapping the VICI pillars of her journey. Aurélie, we are so excited to have you. Welcome to the show. Hi, thank you. That is quite the introduction. Thank you. Very accurate as well. Um, yeah, yeah. Very excited to have you on and I'm gonna jump right in. We got a lot to, uh, to go over in a short period of time. Let's talk about the VFX Grit. Your LinkedIn shows a fascinating climb. You started as a runner in the VFX world, and if you don't know visual effects, if you're looking for a little bit of what that means, but, and you worked your way up to a lighting and compositing artist for feature films. How did the start from the bottom experience in the film industry prepare you for the loneliness and struggle of building your own music business? Yeah, that's interesting because it had been a while I haven't said the word runner. So it brought me back to there. I think it just goes to show that I had the same mentality of not staying where I am and just growing because you cannot start lower than a runner in the music, in the VFX industry, really. So, yeah, when I came there, there was like a team of 10 to 12 runners. And I remember the story of They told me that I could not start the training to be a roto artist, which is the next step on the ladder before being a lighting and compositing artist, before I was there as a runner for 2 weeks. And I was like, okay, that sucks, but why? And they couldn't give me an answer. So I went to the training. I asked the teacher and I was like, hey, I'm new. Can I join? And he's like, yeah, sure. And so I joined. I didn't really listen to that nonsense rule. And in 3 months, I was done being a runner and I I was an official artist on shows, whereas other runners were there since 9, 12 months. And I was like, nope, that's not going to happen for me. So I think I always had this mentality of going after what I want, not really following what other people tells me to do when it doesn't make sense. So I think you kind of have to have that mentality. And I think I got that from sports because I was like a tennis player before in competition for like 15 years when I was a kid to young adults. So yeah, I think that taught me a lot there and I needed the same grit. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, you mentioned that no one shares the years of struggles before the glorifying results. Why is transparency about the mess such a big part of your leadership brand? I think it's something that I understood when I looked into starting my own YouTube channel. Uh, I got the idea of when I read the book Crush It or Crushing It by Gary Vee. It was just a few months before I started the channel, and I had this idea of starting a YouTube channel because I was good in my professional career. So I had this extra time. And in that book, I just remember one sentence. It said, document, don't create. He gave the example of how cool would it be to have been able to witness the Beatles working on their first albums, learning all of that. But the Thing is, when I then went to YouTube to find some of the previous videos of artists to see how they learned, because I wanted to learn music and I wanted to see how they learned so that I could do the same thing, I've noticed that literally no one was doing that. Literally no one was doing that. So that plus that sentence of document, don't create. I was like, all right, I'll be that person because I'm just about to start something from zero. Might as well document it because maybe I can help someone learning music production in 3, 4, 5, 10 years, 20 years from now, right? So that's why it's been super important for me is because no one was doing it and it's just not real. It's not reality, you know? Like they've struggled for 20 years, if not more, learning a skill. So I just wanted to show that, how hard it is, but also how possible it is. Yeah. Was there an exact moment you realized you could make more impact and, you know, more money teaching music systems than working on movie sets? I think from the beginning, from the get-go, when I started my YouTube channel, I wanted it to turn into my full-time job. So from the beginning, sure, it was a passion project, but also I took it as seriously as a business as of day one. And then when I noticed that I was already making half of the income that I wanted or that I needed with this music business on the side of my 9 to 5, this is where I was like, okay, if I can make half a full-time income in just a side hustle, if I have full-time hours on it, I should be able to double, if not triple, quadruple that number. So that's when I decided that something had to go because also with the amount of work that it was taking and the movie industry, you often do 60, 80 hours a week, uh, for deadlines and stuff like that. So one had to go. I was going to burn out. Um, So I asked my job if I could take less time, like a 4-day or 3.5-day work week, but they refused. So I sent my, how do you call it, a letter? Sorry, it's my English. No, it's okay. How do you call that letter when you resign? Resignation letter. Yeah, there you go. I sent them my resignation letter instead. Well, there you go. Uh, I, I want to jump into the systems over streams. You built a $120K a year business without a huge audience or millions of streams for the business in Canadian dollars, Canadian, not US, just for people to know if you're fact-checking us. There you go. Yeah. Um, for the business owners listening who feel they need vanity metrics to succeed, can you explain the, finance pillar of your business? Yeah, I mean, it's just views and likes, they don't pay. Spotify, it's like 0.0003 cents or whatever per stream, which is really little. And it's the same thing on Instagram, TikTok views. AdSense is better on YouTube, but it's still not much, or you need a lot, a lot, a lot of views and a lot of traffic, right? Personally, I don't really want to go for that. And it's more about the audience that you have, because I know some artists, like some friends of mine that, for example, is a pianist that is really good. He does a lot of entertainment, entertaining videos. He has over a million subscribers, followers on Instagram. And he could not for the life of him sell a course or sell digital products or anything because his audience was not the right audience. It was not like they were were just loving his style of videos. Like, it was impressive, but they weren't really looking to learn the piano, right? So if the audience is not aligned with what you have to sell, it's just not going to work. So with me, 40K followers, I was making 6 times the amount of money than he was with a million followers. Wow. So that's why it just doesn't make sense. And vice versa. There's some people with less followers than me that monetize even more because they monetize it the right way. And it's just about having the right audience of really targeted people that really wants to work with you, buy from you, you know, learn from you, whatever it is that you decide to sell. Um, so that is way more important. Yeah. It's the quality of the audience. Now let's talk about going viral. How does social media and emails create more stability than just a viral hit? Well, I went viral like once. And that's the thing. It's like, it goes down fast, like as fast as it went up. I got one video on Instagram that went over a million or 2 million views, which helped for like 2 months. But then that's it. It died. Like it completely died. And by the way, since then, I haven't even gained one more follower. Like since then, I just lost 4,000 followers, I think. But since then, because it was just a month before I went full time, I scaled to 6 figures, like from $1,500 a month to$10,000 a month. Why? Because I focused on how I monetized and I focused more on having like email system, you know, like building my email list because the email list, I own it. If something ever happens to my Instagram, my YouTube, I still have the email list of 6,000 people. So I can do sales by email. And yeah, I prefer to go because like very often as well, if you go viral, it's the same thing. You might attract the wrong audience and then you're kind of done because you're not going to be able to monetize that audience and that audience isn't going to be interested in your other content, which then is not going to help the algorithm push those next videos. So yeah, I don't really care about going viral, really. That's not what I'm trying to do with my videos. Yeah, I know sometimes some people want that for maybe social proof and it's cool to have it like a certain type of number. For some social proof, but I don't really care about the million or stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah, no, and it makes sense. And you know, you've built the systems to find success. Now how do you take, how do you take that? How do you teach music creators to stop thinking like artists and going after that viral stuff and start thinking like business owners? Yeah, it's hard because obviously as creatives, you know, and sometimes it's all like, oh, the music should speak for itself, right? But that's very old music industry style. Now it changed a lot. Even the top artists like Taylor Swift, you know, she's the best businesswoman in the music industry. And other people like Jake or Alex Warren, they all got known thanks to social media. And they all have other stuff to you know, to sell so that their business— because like they cannot make a full-time, like a full-on income just from streams. Um, that's just impossible. Um, to make $10,000 per month on streams, you need 4 million streams a month, which is insane. It's an insane amount of streams as an independent artist. Um, so yeah, I'm just trying to show them that there is another way, and it's not like my way. It's not about not following your music career. It's more about having a music business where you sell your skills and your knowledge to people that need it, so that then those profits can then be reinvested in music marketing or studio time or better gear so that you can have your own music career on your own. But this way, you don't need a label. You don't need a manager. Like, you do your own money. You're in control of everything. You don't give royalties away to a label manager or whoever. You're in control of everything. That's kind of the idea. And it's something new. I think I was one of the first ones with a few others to really lean into that approach. So it's been hard at the beginning to be the one to kind of like draft the way. I don't know how you say it in English. Blaze the trail. Yeah, exactly. There you go. But I think more and more people are being interested in it. So it's pretty cool to see the evolution. But yeah, I just want more power to the artists themselves. Yeah, it's the new way of doing things. And I want to stay on the topic of monetizing. What's the biggest technical mistake creators make when trying to monetize their skills online? Yep. They go for 10+ 20+ low-ticket income streams because creatives, and you can, or maybe you can relate to this, but with the shiny objects, you always have so much imagination, so much creativity. You're like, oh, maybe I can do this. Maybe I can do that. Oh, maybe I can also do this. And so they kind of hope that some streams over there, some merch over here, some beat selling over there, some affiliation there is going to add up at the end of the month to a full-time income. But the thing is, because they're spread so thin, they don't make actual progress in one income source. And so they just have like pennies and little hundreds here and there, which adds up to usually like$500, $800 per month. That's usually when my students come to me. And then that's when I'm like, okay, let's remove all of those, focus on 1 to 3 maximum. And that's how we take them to like 5, 10K per month. And then after that, they can add more income source. But yeah, they just try to hustle everything so that it adds up to a full-time income, but it's just not how it works. And it's really hard to stay focused on one as a creative, you know, seeing those shiny objects everywhere. Yeah, no, it's great that you're teaching artists to be self-sustaining and do it on their own. It's, it's the new way. It's, it's, it's the, it's the new internet. It's the new media. And it's great. I mean, you're right on the edge of, you know, doing this and being the trailblazer. So that's great. I want to talk a little bit more about like, you know, the internal workings of how you do things, you know, In our VICI framework, we look at fitness as a mental and physical discipline. You say that anyone can learn a new creative skill with passion and self-discipline. How do you stay disciplined enough to produce content, music, and coaching materials without being burnt out? Well, I did burn out in the end of 2023, which taught me a lot. So now I know what not to do. And it's something that I have like strict rules now. Well, especially joining Dan Martell's coaching with his 5 daily non-negotiables. I work out every single day. So this morning, like 2 hours ago, I was at the gym, did the back and biceps. So yeah, exercising every single day, it keeps me sane, honestly. And it absolutely boosts me for the day. Like, I like to go in the morning. If it's after lunch, I'm done. I'm just never going to go. So I go in the morning. Like, I've just analyzed my behavior. I know I need to go in the morning. It boosts my confidence, it boosts my motivation, and then I'm good for the day. I also, if, because again, I analyze my behavior and I know that in the afternoon I usually have less energy, less focus. So if I really cannot do anything, I just won't try. I'll just take the time for hobbies and for myself, watching a show, going outside, reading my book, whatever it is. But then if I do this, then in the evening I come back and I do a little bit more work because that's usually when I get a little spike of creativity. But if I did work the afternoon, then I do not work in the evening. Like, I need to take it off. Otherwise, it's so easy. Like, I want to go back, but I really hold myself from doing this. And I try to take that time to really relax and recharge for the next day. I tried also to start taking more of the weekends. So at least a day, a day and a half is what I'm trying to take. Um, because otherwise I saw that I was just burning out. Yeah. Can you, can you take us back to that, that time when you were burning out? What, what weren't you doing? I know, I know you've talked about the things that you changed and what was that like? How did you, how'd you pull yourself out of that for anybody? I've experienced it. I know a lot of people have experienced that who are listening. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Um, yeah, well, first, you know, how, why it happened. Very simple. I was a 9 to 5 person. I, everyone around me is a 9 to 5. Like I literally have no one that does like me, like an entrepreneur or business owner. So I was born and raised in that mentality of being an employee. And so when I went full-time, at first I was working on the side, like, you know, 7 AM to 9 AM, 7 PM to 10 PM and the weekends. And so when I cleared my calendar of 40 hours in the week, I was like, great. And I put more, but I didn't change the schedule. I just stayed the same. And so I went from working, you know, 60 hours a week to working like 80, 100 hours a week. And so that was the mistake that I've done is just I continued with the same, you know, speed and hardcore motivation. And I quickly realized that it's not how it works, that the downtime is very important to be able to be refreshed the next day. And so I was really working way harder than I needed to, you know, not smart. I didn't really have systems in. I also had completely lost track of Aurelie. I was completely lost in PLV Music, the brand. And yeah, because as a 9 to 5, my hobby was YouTube and music. But now that YouTube and music was my job, I did not have any hobby to take me out of that. And I completely forgot what I liked. I was never going outside. That was all I was doing. And so it was just not healthy. So I I did burn out, uh, eventually. And that's when I learned all of those. It's just that I didn't adapt correctly when I went full-time. Yeah. Yeah. You, you found more time and you replaced it with more work and so— Exactly. Instead of, you know, taking that time to recover proper recovery. Exactly. Got it. Yeah. So as of that, as of that moment, and it took me, I'd say 3 to 4 months to really come back from it. Like first for 3 weeks, I could not put a foot in this studio without having a huge pain in my stomach. It was like impossible. It was physical. It was insane. So for 3 weeks I was on the couch, didn't do much. And then I was like, all right, let's pull myself together. And I just started by going back to 1 hour a week. Sorry, 1 hour a day, 2 hours a day, 3 hours, 4 hours. And right now I'd say I'm at like maybe 6 to 7. But it depends. There's some periods as well. Like, I've learned to also identify the periods of when I'm in like maintenance periods or when I'm in like growth periods, I feel like I need a good, you know, um, balance between those two. Cause you can't sprint all the time. No, you can't. So, but yeah, just learning by trial and error. Some things are left unfinished too. If you'd like keep chasing shiny objects or keep, you know, sometimes you gotta take the time to like go back, really assess what you accomplished, celebrate it. Yeah. Right. And, and really let it sink in and then you, then you start your next sprint. It is important to, uh, downshift gears, um, for, for any of the, the, uh, progress you've made to be sustainable. So yeah, those are really good points. Um, how does your French background and the move to Canada play into your motivation and optimism keywords? Actually, that's a great one because I don't think if I would have still been in France, I don't think I would have started this ever. I really don't think so. There's some clichés about every country, culture, or whatever. The cliché about French being judgmental, it's not a cliché. It's very real. So, yeah, I never really fit in France. I love France. I'm very family oriented. I call my family like 3 times a week. Yesterday I was on the phone with my grandma. I'm very family oriented. I miss them so much and I love the food. I love a lot of things about France a lot. But the mentality of French overall is very like this old style of like, nope, you're supposed to fit in a box. Everyone that doesn't fit in a box, not understanding. It's very weird. They're not as open-minded as the English, like, North American culture is from what I've seen and experienced. And so as I was like 12 years old, I decided like I wanted to learn English. So I asked my parents to subscribe me to some like journals in English. I started to watch TV shows in English with subtitles. And I knew deep down that I was going to live in an English-speaking country, honestly, which is quite crazy. But yeah, never felt like I fit. So, yeah, I came here. And then from here, because it's way more open-minded, people cheer you on way more for the things that you want to do, even if you don't fit in a box. They don't care. And so I felt very free to do that. So I did. And actually, when I started my YouTube channel and everything, except my parents knew. And obviously, I was at the time with my fiancé and living at his parents' place, so they knew as well. But that's it. No one else, like everyone else in my family or friends, no one knew. I didn't tell anyone. Yeah, for at least 6 months or a year. So yeah, I just didn't want to deal with the, oh, you really want to be a YouTuber? Are you? Come on. You know, like all this freaking judgment. I didn't need that. So I was like, I don't want it. That's a really huge hurdle for, I think, anybody going out on their own in a business. You just, I don't know what it is. You just, you're just worried about what people are going to think or say. And, um, I, I've, I've dealt with that challenge myself. And honestly, if I'm being, if I'm being candid, I still do. Um, but I'm more aware of it now. Am I, am I holding myself back because I don't think I can do it or the confidence, or am I worried about what people might think? And when I identify the reason why I might be hesitant, you know, and if that's the reason, then, you know, I really, I coach myself back up and I'm like, that's not what got us here. You know what I mean? Yeah, no, for sure. It's been a journey. I think as well, like, my fiancé who's Canadian, he's been super supportive as well. So I remember when I told him the idea, I was like, oh, you know, I should maybe wait that we have our own apartment so I can have a proper studio, a proper camera. You know, I don't want people to hear me talk to a camera right And then he was like, hey, I have a camera here, go film your first video. And like, he didn't give me a choice. So that was also super supportive of him. So I was lucky in that sense. But yeah, I'm glad I started when I did and that I didn't wait. So yeah, it sounds like you got a good partner. That's the type of person we need in our lives to help us through, you know, those moments of, you know, imposter syndrome and stuff like that and say, no, no, no, do this. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Your mission is to help thousands of creators make a full-time income. Looking at the faith pillar, not just in a religious sense, but if you want to take it that direction, that's fine. But in your belief in your students, how does seeing them achieve their goal change your perspective in your own legacy? That's an interesting question because yeah, I've never really been religious. And so I'm honestly just now learning about faith. I literally just read the chapter about faith this week in the Think and Grow Rich book that Dan recommends. And so I'm starting to see a bit the difference. Before, I thought they were kind of the same. And so I'm trying to learn and I'm trying to apply this better because I think I need that. But it's not something that I'm very good at yet. But that being said, when I saw like my first student going full time and showing me that he was quitting, I was like, Wow, that is crazy. That is so good. I literally made a difference in someone's life. And by now, I think there's been like a few more that's gone full-time and quit their job. And yeah, it always gives me a feeling of fulfillment because, yeah, just, you know, there's this book called Millionaire Habits by Dean Graziosi, I think. And he has that 7 levels deep exercise to find your why in life. And I did this back I think 2019 or 2020. And I've realized that my why is that I hate being useless. I want to have a positive impact in people's lives. I want to be useful. And so when I see that I actually do that, it really motivates me to do more and to grind harder. And almost, for example, I produce a bit less music these days because I'm so focused on helping them achieve that. But I'm like, that's okay. I'll take take the bullet because it's so good when I see them having that. I had another student, I think just 2 days ago, telling me that he went from charging $100 for his music service to $1,500. And before, he was scared, you know, to do that. He thought people were going to call him crazy. But now, because we reworked his offer, he feels very aligned. People have not said anything about his pricing. He sold that, he's feeling very normal and yeah, he's feeling so much fulfillment in his life. And when I see testimonials like this, I'm like, yes, this is what we need more. So yeah, and that's funny because I feel like even if I get hundreds, thousands of this, I feel like I'll always feel that imposter syndrome. And that's something that is really tough to deal with. But yeah, I'll just keep pushing. It always does. You hear it at all levels. And you know what, back to your why, like, I feel like having that why of like something beyond yourself, for me it is faith in Jesus Christ. It is doing it for my family, doing it for my team, for my clients. Since I was a kid, it's just putting other people first just made me feel good for one reason or another. I served my country. Uh, and now I'm serving my community. So having that why is just, it's just so rock solid. Um, when your why is just more than just yourself. Um, and it's a guiding beacon for making the right decisions, right? Like for making decisions that are selfish for us, we may not be making the right decision and it could end up hurting ourselves. Whereas we're making the right decision for other people. Um, it just makes sense. Yeah, there's that. And I think one big part that helped me for, in my experience is before I was full-time, when I was like still at the 9 to 5 and doing that side hustle, having this why helped me because I was focusing more on the comments and the messages I was receiving than the vanity metrics such as likes and follows, you know, because when you're like, oh, it doesn't work and all, and I have students like that and I'm like, it doesn't matter. What you want is this, right? So focus on this. And so when I was receiving comments saying like, oh, thank you, thanks to you, I decided to give it another go at music and I feel so good now. I'm so happy I didn't give up. Thank you for sharing this. And I'm like, yes, it was worth it. So yeah, it makes all the hard work worth it for sure. That's awesome. I love that you're helping people. Tell me how you balance your personal music production journey with the demands of being a taste influencer and educator. What do you mean exactly? How do you balance, you know, what you do, right? Like, how do you balance your own personal music production journey with, you know, being an educator? How you basically teach your students, right? I mean, to be honest, like, I've, as I said before, like, I'm spending way more time to help them. And so I haven't put out like as much music I would have, you know, that I would have wanted to. But it's like, it's okay. I don't mind it because I see like the good that I'm doing. So it doesn't matter as much. But I still, you know, for example, I still have a client or two here and there to do music production myself for them. And so right now I have a client, a singer like a songwriter that I'm producing 11 album tracks for them. And we're going to take it slow, like a song a month or a song every 2 months, something like this. So it's enough for me if a couple sessions here and there in the week, that's fine. Yeah. Because I have so much to do on the side to help my students that— Yeah. Good. Wow. So that's fine. I don't really care about— I'm just putting out the music that I have when I have it. It so that people that do enjoy it can enjoy it. But I don't really, you know, put like an extra focus on it. Got it. Yeah, that's great. So we're getting towards the end. I just want to, you know, take some time to recap some of the key takeaways, you know, systems, you know, over viral fame, you know, just think vanity, right? That it's short-lived, it doesn't last forever. Um, you know, having those systems will help you replicate and, and have more consistency in the future. And then the importance of working your way up from, you know, a runner to an artist. Um, you know, I talked to my kids, my, my, my two oldest kids are teenagers now. And it's like, they're, they're at that getting that stage of getting their first job. And like, I'm encouraging to get up, get those jobs that they think they don't want, right? The, the, the fast food job or the restaurant job, or or whatever, those jobs where they feel like, you know, um, they want to do more than that. Because, you know, you see a lot of other kids and see a lot of people doing things that seem more exciting and more important, but you learn so much from those, from working your way up, just how to deal with people, how to value, you know, your future more. Like, oh, this is where I started, and like, you look at where you're at now. There's just so much value in working your way up. And then the transparency, uh, transparency is the ultimate tool for trust and leadership. You know, just being honest and authentic will go so far, uh, in your leadership, uh, qualities. Uh, Aurélie, thank you for your candor and dedication to the music community. Um, if you're a creator ready to turn, ready to turn the, uh, your passion into a business, please give, uh, Aurélie a follow. Um, we've got her Instagram, her LinkedIn, her YouTube, and her website all in the show notes. Uh, Aurélie, anything that you wanna, uh, say to our guests before we close it out? Yeah. Um, you know, if they're interested in that, um, my teaching honestly like applies to all like creatives that wants to turn into, you know, a business, um, and, and make money from that. So I have like a whole free 14-day email course just Just message me 14 on Instagram and you'll automatically get it. It's totally free. 14-day bite-sized lessons with action steps every single day. So if it helps, perfect. Happy to. Yeah, we'll put that in the show notes as well. But yeah, thank you for having me. Really happy. And hopefully I can inspire with my story. Oh, you definitely are. And to our audience, stay blessed, stay disciplined, and keep making music. We'll see you in the next episode of The VICI Code. Thanks for tuning into The VICI Code, where the underdogs rise and the numbers finally make sense. If today's story hit home, share it. And remember, faith fuels a fight and your comeback is already in progress.