FB Ads and Your Questions

In this episode, Patrick and Nick discuss the intricacies and challenges of utilizing Facebook and Instagram ads for artists and photographers. They emphasize the importance of having a solid marketing system in place before investing in ads and the common pitfalls of relying on paid ads without proper marketing strategies. The discussion covers the difference between warm and cold traffic, the necessity of consistent marketing efforts, and the long-term investment required to see a return on ad spend. Practical advice, personal anecdotes, and upcoming Art Storefronts events are also shared to help viewers optimize their marketing efforts.

Podcast Transcribe

Patrick Shanahan: Underpinning because you know attention and everything else. Okay, we're now live on all of them. Hi, Instagram. Hi, Facebook. Hi, Twitter. Uh, YouTube. Hey guys. Hi, Facebook. So the subject, okay, is Facebook ads and what informs essentially all of these sessions. You have conversations. You have conversations with artists and photographers. You have lots of conversations with artists and photographers. In fact, going forward, just for one week to have a little stats, have a little analytics, I am going to write down how many individual artists and photographer questions I field via live video. Okay, via live video. We're gonna talk about email or the Facebook comments or Instagram comments. No trolls. I'm sick of the trolls, by the way. This is Sparta. That's what you know what you don't do with the trolls. This is Sparta. Kick down into the pit block. That's really what it comes down to. There's always going to be trolls, but the Facebook and Instagram ads is a very important one and it's a very pertinent and timely topic, okay, because I'm making the new warm ads Facebook playbook for our customers because it's one of the most requested topics out there, period. Actually, it's... Is it 2.0 by the way? Because there's already... It's 2.0, right?

Nick Friend: Yeah, I mean, you made this a year or two ago. It's now 2.0. Is it 3.0? What is it? I don't know. I mean, we're so far into this.

Patrick Shanahan: Okay, we'll call it 4.72.

Nick Friend: Yeah, version 4.7, 2.9.

Patrick Shanahan: No, I would call it, I would call it... It's Facebook ads playbook 2.0 is what was released last time. This is going to be 3.0. And sadly, and then it's going to go 4.0 and 5.0 and 6.0. Why? Because the goal posts get moved. They get moved like that. You think you're shooting on them. Ooh, I even got my Chelsea background. They're over here, and then they're over here. Then they get moved over here and then they get moved over here. Sadly, why I hate talking about Facebook ads is because how could I explain it most succinctly for people that don't want to do any marketing? Okay, that don't want to do any marketing. Stay safe, Kim's have... Yeah, I know. For people that don't want it, for people that don't want to do any marketing, Facebook ads is the first place that they go to because the premise underpinning it is there's a way where you can just throw a couple of dollars at it, throw a couple of dollars at it and solve your marketing problem. Sadly, that world doesn't exist. It doesn't exist, does it?

Nick Friend: Um, yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: So we need to talk about it. And yeah, customers that are on there, I'm creating what I would love to say is the penultimate... I've always loved that penultimate term, second to last. Not second to last anything. I'm creating one of the most important Facebook ad tutorials I've ever made and this thing is going to be a beast. I mean, it is going to be a beast. Cheers, by the way. I'm embarrassed to say I'm drinking a seltzer, but at least it's a local seltzer.

Nick Friend: Yeah, cheers.

Patrick Shanahan: A long day, long day. Number one, if you think you are gonna run Facebook ads, okay, and you don't have a marketing machine set up, you are going to lose, full stop. In some cases, it might be, i.e., you're trying to run Facebook ads and you don't have the full marketing system. Betting on horses, but I don't even think the odds are that high. I think it's the lotto. What do I mean? I mean, the odds of you going and putting dollars and cents into the Facebook ads market when you don't have a proper marketing system in place, I think the odds are better of you getting an ROI out of that, or worse than winning the lotto. You play the lotto, Nick?

Nick Friend: No, I do not.

Patrick Shanahan: No, I do not. No, I do not. You wanna know why I don't play the lotto? Because the odds are terrible, okay? My grandpa, in his last few years of his life, God love him, I'd go out to see him in the desert, okay? Had lung issues, goes out to the desert, okay? And he'd give me a couple of bucks. He'll give me a couple of lotto tickets, right? My grandpa was a successful man. He did not need the money. You know why he did it? I don't know why he did it. He just liked it. He just looked at the axle for a little tingle. Fine. I'm okay with that. I get that. That's not a problem. But ordinarily, you don't wanna play the lotto. You're not going to win. Problems with Facebook ads, one, you don't have the marketing machine, the marketing muscles to back you up, meaning you're not posting content regularly, you're not capturing emails regularly, you're not emailing the list regularly, you're not having a sale when the time comes when it's important to have a sale. You don't know the mechanics of properly running a sale. You're not running live art shows. You're not running flash sales. Shout out tomorrow's art business morning's topic, okay? 9 a.m. Pacific, 11 a.m. Central, noon Eastern Standard Time. Have your second coffee of the day. We're going to be talking about flash sales. You're not running flash sales, okay? You're not doing any of the things that are necessary to actually see an ROI out of Facebook ads. That's number one. Number two, you think when I say the word Facebook ads, that means you having a sale with a percentage off, hopefully some scarcity, sprinkle in some scarcity on there, i.e., the sale is going to end at a certain point in time, okay? And that is what your ad is, okay? Is that completely correct? No, it's partially correct, okay? You need to be running ads when you have a sale, yes, absolutely, but you also need to be running ads when you don't have a sale. Everyone forgets about that one, don't they? The sales cycle exists, okay? Romancing, talking about your content, not asking for anything in return, giving, showing you're awesome. Kim Zabi is painting in the... Hurricanes coming, the windows are going. I'd make an ad out of that. No link in that, Nick. No link, no sale, no discount. Hurricane's coming, you're painting, right? And you're talking about it. The larger point is, okay, if I talk to a hundred artists, 99 of them are going to tell me that the only thing that they run ads on is when they have a sale. That's because they don't understand how art sells. They don't get it. You know, they don't get it. That's not how it works. I need to know who you are. I want to get to know you, your personality. What was the inspiration for your pieces? What makes you tick? What makes you interesting? You have really funny humor? I need to know all of that stuff, okay? And if you're spending money on the sale and not on all these interesting things, then all I feel like is you're out for my wallet. Of course you're not gonna make it.

Nick Friend: Yeah, I think there's like, there's a... Like, that is all true. And there's like an additional component to it, which is Facebook and like, which is, okay, when you post on Facebook and Instagram, less than four percent, I think it's like, what, two percent of your followers, your audience is going to see a post, okay?

Patrick Shanahan: Organically.

Nick Friend: Say organically.

Patrick Shanahan: Or organically.

Nick Friend: Organically, right. Like, and so what does that mean? It means that Facebook and Instagram, same company, right? I'm just gonna say I'm different. Facebook and Instagram, they are holding 90 percent of your audience with lock and key behind a paywall. A paywall, you guys. And what a paywall is, where you have to pay to play, right? They give you some peace for free, but it's all there to get you to pay. Let's just be honest here. Do you think Facebook exists for us to have fun on the internet? Do you think Instagram exists for us to all have fun and share photos and images? Like, wake up. Free, just free, is there to... Is that why? Do you think they're dangling those ads at you? Hey, hey, just click this button and boost this post. Somebody in the growth hacking department of that company created that, you know? Hey, let's make it easier for the suckers, you know what I mean? They're not saying that, but like, let's make it easy for people to just try their first app. They might be to try their first ad. We'll just put a button right there. It pops up. You put your credit card in, and before you know it, you know, that person is now buying ads, and maybe, maybe that'll work, right? Maybe that'll work for our business. But when you really wrap your head around this, if you are building a warm audience, you know, if you've been, like, you know, doing things on social media, like you've been posting a lot, you've been building your following and working at it, which many of you have...

Patrick Shanahan: Live art shows.

Nick Friend: Yeah, you're getting... You've

been building a warm audience, and most of that, 98 percent of it, is behind the lock and key, behind this paywall, okay? And so, you know, in order to, like, with romance marketing, okay, and like to get art sales, people that are following you and that are on your email list and things like that, you guys know, you should know by now if you've been watching us long enough, or if you're a customer, you're a member of our storefronts, that you gotta water the plant, right? If you don't water the plant, it dies. It dies, okay? And that's how marketing is. If you get a lead and you don't water that plant, and then you go back to it six months later and ask for the sale, like around a sale time, you're not gonna get it. Like, your odds have just gone down to, like, less than one percent, you know? So, you've got the water, right?

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. So think about this. About this 98, and Facebook will switch it around, so they might feed some people here or there, but the vast majority of the time, your warm audience on social is not seeing what you post. Not seeing it, so you're not romancing them. That's the biggest problem, right? So, when you have a big enough audience, okay, or you have some established sales, I would say, right? Not much, but let's call it five thousand dollars, like, you know, like five or ten thousand dollars, you and I will pinpoint the number a little bit further, but I'm just gonna say it for now, like, yeah, there's a certain level there. But at that point, you should be running... You should have a dedicated budget, very small, very small, just making sure that the audience that you've built, this warm audience, is actually seeing, you know, what you are posting. And you're guaranteeing it, right? Like we, like, for example, at Art Storefronts, for the last, I don't even know, since ever we started, you know, like advertising, we've literally been running warm advertising at perpetually. Perpetually. Just, we write a blog post, we don't ask for a sit... We don't ask for anything, ever, and we just put an ad behind it because we just want everybody to see it, right? Because we know that they won't. And here's the thing, even if you have people on your email list, you guys, not every... As you guys know, what are your open rates on your emails? You know, not everybody is reading email every day. They're busy, right? So, if that's a mix, right? One person might only see one out of every five emails, you just, you don't know, you know? So, like, any opportunity you have to pay and get attention at a good price, I gotta say too, Pat, more marketing, warm ads, it's a really good price. It's a really good price because those are people that, like, they've already opted in, you know what I mean? Like, they've... Like, our biggest return is always on warm, you know, main... On warm advertising. Always, always, always, always, always, right? Cold is extremely expensive at the end of the day. And, uh, and so, that's my take on it, though. It's like, you know, it's not just about the sale time, it's like, you need to make sure that everybody... Like, think about it, if you, if you're not doing warm, if you're not doing warm, and you're somebody who should be doing warm, when you run a sale and you hammer it, I mean, or something like an incentive, and you hammer it, there's a lot of people in there that might not have been gotten the romancing treatment for the last three months, you know what I mean? They might not have even seen it. So, that's, uh, that's, that's the case.

Patrick Shanahan: I can't believe I'm gonna say it because I'm sure someone said it before. Nothing new under the sun. Unbeknownst to most people, okay, Facebook and Instagram has two plans. There's the free plan, and there's the paid plan, okay? The free plan and the paid plan. There's a pricing table for this. There's actually not a pricing table, it doesn't exist. But the people that understand marketing know this. Most people don't know this. The free plan, everybody's on. You're just posting your stuff regularly. You're just doing your normal stuff. Great, free plan, not paying anything. The paid plan is, okay, I'm actually going to pay to reach my audience. And I'm gonna pay on a daily basis, on a monthly basis, on a yearly basis. And the plan is not published. You have to know the difference. You have to understand what's going on. And the plan, the way you pay, is you show ads all year long to your warm traffic. That's what you do. Now again, you have to have your art validated. You have to be at a certain level. Before we get into the next layer, we got a sale going on, ending in five days. What do we call this one?

Nick Friend: It's the Q4 early bird.

Patrick Shanahan: Got it. Got it. And then, what is it, fourth quarter is coming up and getting in early. We're gonna incentivize you to sign up now because it just becomes crazy in October, like November. Everybody's trying to get, like, sign up for Art Storefronts, get your website live before Black Friday. It's like a... We have to literally step up because, and because, like, there's so many people hitting up tech support and things like that.

Nick Friend: Yep.

Patrick Shanahan: Now we did get one best unknown, unknown tip for Facebook ads you can share right now. Amber, I'll give it to you. Do not ever, and by ever, I mean ever, boost a post, okay?

Nick Friend: Yup, exactly.

Patrick Shanahan: Yes, the 11th commandment. It would have been written but Facebook was not around yet. Thou shall not boost posts on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or anywhere else because it does... I got... I've got my own answer to that question. Don't do Facebook ads, Amber. Don't do them. Not ready. And I'm giving, I'm giving a pause for...

Nick Friend: Yeah, because I know Pat have.

Patrick Shanahan: Okay, let's talk about this, right? 150,000 artisan photographers that we've spoken to at Art Storefronts, okay, over the years. That's the number. Like, I looked it up. That's the number, all right? Literally, phone calls, okay, for our business with real artists and photographers. We have 4,000 members, right? Okay, here's the thing. How many artists and photographers have you ever spoken to, ever, that had the marketing system in place in order to earn an ROI off Facebook cold ads?

Nick Friend: I don't know any.

Patrick Shanahan: To me, it is zero. None. Not one. And even our members, even our members, like the ones that are halfway there, we're like, you're not even there yet. Like, you gotta, you like... We're still gonna tell you don't do it because you don't understand how hard it is, you guys. Do you know how hard it is to earn a return on your investment on Facebook and Instagram ads? I just want you to appreciate this. It is extremely hard. You gotta do everything right, okay? And I mean everything right off of Facebook, off of it, okay? You gotta be running tables all year round, the right times. You gotta be romance marketing, like, at the highest clip. You cannot be lazy. If you're someone who's lazy and isn't doing your marketing, just forget it. Just, just close the door. Don't ever do it. Flush the money down the toilet or buy something else with that money, okay? If you're not on your, on the ball, on your game, you will never make money. Tell that to every friend you have that has any business in any industry on Facebook because you're talking to a couple people here who have spent millions on Facebook ads.

Nick Friend: Millions.

Patrick Shanahan: We've spent, how much, Pat? How much? How much have we spent?

Nick Friend: Two and a half, three million.

Patrick Shanahan: I'd... [Music] Whatever. Many years. It's gotta be two and a half to three million at this point. So, yeah, that's the best advice. Like, I want you guys to win. I don't want you to burn money, you know? I don't want any of you to burn money and waste your time. And also, here's the other thing too. This is something that we haven't really talked about a lot but it's very, very important, you know, is the dopamine that comes from the Facebook ads, right? Like, the emails that, that could be vanity emails. They may not even be valuable, right? The likes and the... And like, Facebook is so good. This is, this is, this is like the big one. This is like a pitfall of like 755,000 pit falls.

Nick Friend: The easiest way to explain it is like, let's say we weren't on a Caribbean island and you had a restaurant and you had a sign up that said no shoes, no shirt, no service. Now, I'm not judging people that don't have shoes or shirts, okay? But I'm just saying, if that sign is up, no one is gonna show up without shoes or shirt. And if they don't have shoes or shirt, they likely don't have a wallet, okay? So they're not gonna be buying anything. They're gonna be in there annoying

you because we're not on a Caribbean island, okay? This isn't, this isn't spring break Cancun, uh, uh, 1992, okay? Facebook will always take the lowest common denominator, i.e., always. You want likes? I'm gonna get people that are really, really good at delivering likes. They're not going to be the high net worth individuals. They're going to buy your art. They're not going to be people that are really going to even follow what you do. But let me tell you, they'll hammer that like button like it's going out of style. Everybody messes up on that one too, massively. So all the customers are asking and like Rick's in the Facebook group and it's a little weird. We can't show the comments because the Facebook group does a weird thing. Don't worry. We have the warm ads playbook coming. We're not completely down on Facebook ads, you guys. It's just no one has the right conditions. It's like you're asking me, you're saying, Patrick, I've heard good things about Facebook ads. And let's just say that Facebook ads is actually like, I've heard good things about growing a vegetable garden. And I said, yeah, growing a vegetable garden is amazing. You can feed yourself. Incredible, right? The problem is, is your soil conditions are off. You don't know when to water. You don't have the right watering or irrigation system. So all you're going to do is go and put a bunch of seeds in the ground, your hard-earned dollars, and you're going to wait for them to sprout. You're going to be like... And then nothing's going to show up. You don't have those things in place to properly, fully take advantage. And what we're talking about, robust, full marketing system in place, of which I've gone over a lot of times. Posting regularly, okay? Posting regularly, constantly building your engagement audiences on Facebook and Instagram. So not just posting regularly, engaging with your commenters, okay? Doing live videos, various different types of content, gathering emails all the time, okay? Emailing the emails all the time with engaging content, not just having sale after sale after sale after sale, but romancing, romancing that list on a regular basis, okay? Having a sale when the time is right to have a sale, understanding the mechanics of that whole sale, and then doing it consistently all year long, okay? If you don't... If you miss on even any of those, the odds are just really, really bad that you're gonna make it, okay? And everyone thinks that they can go and do this one little part of it, and maybe they're just doing the one little thing, and you're gonna send an email once a month, and then you're gonna go to the affordable spring break in Cancun and not market for the next month. You are not going to see the sales to justify the spend, okay? They work incredibly well if you get this marketing system in place. I don't want to sound like, you know, Negative Nancy here. So that is the larger picture. And what we're trying to do is just prevent you from paying the idiot taxes and lighting your money on fire. I'm not trying to be negative about the whole thing. Nick's not trying to be negative about the whole thing. We're just trying to fundamentally make you understand what you need to have in place to get the ROI. What almost no artists have in place to actually get the ROI. I have two to three people that come on to the non-customer workshops, the art business workshops. I shout out art business workshops thrice weekly, okay? Zoom calls with either Nick or I, or both of us, or people from our marketing team. We walk you through what we do. We answer your questions. Love for you to come. Link in the bio. Link in the bio on Instagram. Promo over. Every time somebody says on there, okay, I ran Facebook ads, I sit there and I take a deep breath because I love people and I want to be gracious. But I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they ran those ads and failed. And I inevitably say, oh, you have, you've ran some ads, you boosted some posts. How did it go? What do they tell me? They got a bunch of...

Nick Friend: Nick.

Patrick Shanahan: Bunch of likes, bunch of comments, a bunch of shares, some comments. What do they, what do they tell me they didn't get any of?

Nick Friend: Nick.

Patrick Shanahan: Sales.

Nick Friend: Sales.

Patrick Shanahan: Because they did not have the marketing system in place. You have the marketing system in place, well, you're in the game. You're in the game, right? You just moved from the lotto. Now you're sat down at the poker table with the rest of us, okay? You shuffle, love, and deal, right? That's it. That's it. And it's just so, it's so important.

Nick Friend: I think we should say that, like, the way that I look at it too is like, I'm not even... This doesn't even just apply to Facebook and Instagram ads. It just applies to cold marketing. Like, if you're, if period, if, like, radio advertising for artists was in style, you know, or print ads for artists, like, these are all forms of paid marketing. It applies to all of them.

Patrick Shanahan: It applies to all of them.

Nick Friend: Do you know what's scary?

Patrick Shanahan: What's scary is that Facebook allows you guys to make that investment right away, right? Without, like, the normal barriers that normally you wouldn't get suckered in on because you wouldn't do a direct mail campaign, you know what I mean? Like, you'd have to spend, you'd have to spend a lot on that in order to even do it. And so you want to make sure before you did it that it would really work. So it's, but it applies to, it applies to any form of cold email or lead acquisition, right? Which means you need to have the marketing system in place, which I also think leads to, like, there's a... Like, this all funnels down to one spot, right? It funnels down to one spot. If you don't have the marketing system in place and you can't make, like, because of that, you can't make any paid advertising work, right? What about the rest of your cold leads that you're getting organically?

Patrick Shanahan: Yep.

Nick Friend: They're in trouble.

Patrick Shanahan: They're in trouble too.

Nick Friend: You can't, you can't make them work either. That's where most artists and photographers fail, right? It's cart before the horse. You have to have the marketing system in place, the consistency, before you're gonna do anything, before you're even gonna get an ROI of the people who are already following you and are on your email list now. So, you know, it's harder to do that. And so what does everybody do? They don't do that, and they want the dopamine, right? Buy the app. Maybe that'll solve my problems. It ain't gonna solve your problem. Stop doing it. Shut it off.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah.

Nick Friend: Yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: It ain't gonna solve your problem. Stop doing it. Shut it off. Yeah. I would, I would say also, like, you know, immediately someone's gonna get a retort, well, my friend sells such and such and they do great on Facebook and Instagram ads. Well, their sale is a little bit different than your sale, okay?

Nick Friend: Is there really a lot of people saying that? Do you know a lot of people? I don't.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, the tchotchke... I mean, that's the truth, right? The tchotchke type of stuff. I've seen books do well, you know, you, you got a nice pair of pants where you can spill water on them and the pair of pants are still wearable. Yeah, hot pot market. So I'm told. Hot market. The point is, is that we're not talking about anything other than selling art and photography online, okay? Which is a little bit, a little bit different of a process, a little bit harder to do. But the larger point is like, and you know, we're extemporaneously firing this, you know, from the hip here, but our job, Nick and I's job is to look out for our customers' best interests, okay? It is to prevent them from focusing on the nonsense. And it's like, it's almost like, you know, you get this, like, superhero, like, giant beam of light that's, like, looking to fry our customers. So we're sitting there holding the shield because the minute you have the marketing system in place, if I, if we can build up that muscle and get the marketing system in place, then you've got your own shield, right? Then you've got your own shield. And that's exactly what David Schipper is talking about here. David Schipper, he's a great Art Storefronts member and he's saying, you know, small wins is our private members-only Facebook group where we were talking about this, actually earlier today, like, there's a big discussion on Facebook ads.

Nick Friend: Yeah, and that's it. And that's, and David, David, what I'll say, what I'll say is, like, you know, here's the thing is, like, you know, I see it, like, I could speak, I could speak totally frankly on this, right? There are posts in there sometimes that, that I have, that we have to, we have to, like, regulate a little bit because people don't know who's talking and who's selling the most and whether they should be, you know, listened to or not. And, and when it comes to people, like, starting to spend money out of their pocket on something, like, I'm going to step in for all of you. You're my

family. We call it the Art Storefronts family. I'm going to step in. I'm the most experienced person in the group, okay? Most experienced entrepreneur. I'm burning money like crazy on these ads. I've... Patrick knows, like, how much have I, how much have I earned at this, right? You always joke, you're like, I love burning Nick's money on ads, right?

Patrick Shanahan: I've made a hundred thousands of dollars of your money on that.

Nick Friend: Exactly.

Patrick Shanahan: Straight up.

Nick Friend: Like...

Patrick Shanahan: Payments, house payments, right?

Nick Friend: But, but, and like, so protect us, you know? And it's, it's like, we have to be, it comes from a place of caring so deeply because you and I know, I mean, I, I'm going to say this right now, like, 20-year entrepreneur, like, you know, you're an entrepreneur 20 years, like, if you had to rank the top three problems that are the most difficult problems you've ever sold in your entire life in business, please tell me, Pat, because my number one, my, I'm talking about, I, I have, I have architected and written, like, massive applications with millions of lines of code. And I will tell you this with absolute certainty, with absolute certainty, that Facebook ads and Instagram is the hardest thing I have ever done in life. Like, serious, like, that needs to be said. That's...

Patrick Shanahan: There's no question.

Nick Friend: What's your...

Patrick Shanahan: There's no question. It, it, it, it, it's difficult, but it's also an extremely con... I mean, it's a hydra. It's a multi-headed hydra, right? There's so many different, like, facets and ways to go about it and different ways to approach it and do it. The good news is, the good news is, when you understand the whole system from top to bottom and you start in the right place and you have the perspective of how long it takes, guess what? You have to run ads 365 every single solitary day. You have to have an ad in the water all year long. Good news, once you can do the hundred push-ups, once you have the marketing system in place, once that system is running consistently all year long, okay? All year long. Cannot give up. If that bar is met, if you have a certain amount of sales, i.e., you actually truly have validation, you have a product the market wants, then they become extremely effective almost instantaneously if you start in the right place, okay? You have to start by showing ads to warm traffic and making that work. Once you have that done, then you can move into the cold traffic. But it's a stepped-up, tiered approach and it's not easy. And that's, you know, the fact that it's not easy should be the thing that chases everyone away from it because the majority of the people that we talk to, whether it's customers or non, it's, I'm gonna boost a couple of posts, okay? I'm gonna, I'm gonna give this, like, 150, 250 shot. Hell, I'm flush. I just, I just sold the house. I just, I'm gonna throw five thousand dollars at it. And then what? And then what? And then what are you gonna do? You're gonna fail because all you're gonna do is put ads up. It says 30% off, buy my art now. You either haven't validated your art or you're going to run it for two months. You can't figure out the targeting. Can't take the licks. Can't get anything going in that period of time. So, if you do it correctly, there's a tremendous amount of opportunity. At a macro, all we want for our art or our photography or our software are more eyeballs. Facebook and Instagram have all the eyeballs. You can't get them for free. You have to pay to get them in any sort of volume. So, step one, marketing system in place, can never come off the gas. And that's literally our biggest priority, right? And you know what's crazy as, like, we zoom out and we have a ton of customers on this thing, so I'll say it. In some cases, that might be a three to five-year project for some of our customers. It might take them that long until they're ready.

Nick Friend: Yeah, yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: Others of you are already there. You're there now, right? Like, if you sold a couple of thousand dollars' worth of art on your own without going to the traffic route, then you clearly have validation. If you're posting regularly, if you're following our playbook, you're having sales, you're doing the live broadcast, you're charging up your audiences, you're ready. You're ready. I mean, I saw Tony Canton on here. He's ready. He's ready to go.

Nick Friend: Yeah, exactly. Tony, you're ready.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, exactly. But, but the key distinction here, I want to continue to say this. The key distinction, like, when you see us, the parts where we're warning and we're against is cold Facebook advertising to brand new people. The warm, completely different story. It's like, it's like a whole different world. The warm is a mandatory thing, right? That's, and that's where we always say, Pat, you've been advocating this for so long, right, to our members that, like, warm, warm, warm, right? You spend every dollar on warm. And then when that's completely exhausted, like, because there's a point where you exhaust it. Like, not that you end up stopping, you're always going to continue running the warm. But there's a point when you're running these ads where, where, like, you can't spend more. Like, Facebook will basically show you, your costs will just go through the roof and you've reached your limit because your audience size for warm is only so big, right? So, you, you, you need, but you need to fully exhaust that first. And then, only then, would you consider cold.

Patrick Shanahan: Okay, now, any... The method for cold leads that's being asked, it says Facebook user, so I can't see who name it is. Um, but, but you gotta go, like, if you are buying old ads, if you are buying cold leads off Facebook, I don't care who you're doing it with, okay? You better be happy just earning your money back in one year. That's it. That's, that, like, that's all you're gonna get, okay? Now, you may get into profit into year two, but you better be able to sustain that cash flow, okay, to pay for those ads to get your money back. That's it, right? Because that's really all you're gonna get with the investment.

Nick Friend: Yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: Most people, most people don't even understand that. Ninety-five, like, like, it's a very high percentage of people that, like, that buy Google ads. Now, you guys are very old, right? Like, old platform. Um, you know, like, it was hard to make an ROI, like, 10 years ago, right? The arbitrage was in the beginning, 2002, 2003, you know, I, I, that's one of the things I said a lot. It's one of the things that I built my first company on, right? It was very, very effective, and it got less and less and less and less effective to the point where we actually stopped, right? To the point where we actually stopped. But, um, like, you know, the, the people that, that I know, friends of mine and everybody else that's still doing them, the entire philosophy is all they're gonna do is earn their money back on the ads, and what they're hoping for is to get the second sale, and the third sale, and the fourth sale, and they're really good at doing that. And it's the only reason that they can make Google ads pay, okay?

Nick Friend: Because the other people can't. Pat, how are they getting second, third, and fourth sale, right?

Patrick Shanahan: By having the marketing...

Nick Friend: Everything that we're talking about, right?

Patrick Shanahan: But, like, that's a tough game to play. That is a very, very tough game to play, you know? So, as an artist, like, the way you better be looking at it is, like, are you turning first sales into second sales? How many people are you doing that with? Are you doing a good job of turning a first sale into a collector? If you are good at doing that, you are much higher qualified to be doing colds, right? But otherwise, literally a hundred percent of you, no, I don't think anyone is. They're not. They're one or one percent or two percent people. But seriously, I, I do not believe anybody is going to earn more than a one-to-one money back in their first year, probably, right?

Nick Friend: There's no question. I just, I think that you, you have to have that mindset, so it's not going to get you a big profit. You're just gonna get your money back, and it's gonna be an investment for the future. So, if you're not willing to do that, then you need to reevaluate your situation. And I'm just being dead honest with you. So, I would say, too, like, you know, if, like, uh, to answer that question, I would spend as least as possible, you know? Because don't hope that you're just going to have, like, a huge, highly profitable third quarter. Nobody can say that that's going to happen.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. Look, you have kids, I have kids. Advising somebody jumps right

into the cold is like giving your kid the bike without the training wheels and they've never ridden a bike before. Would you do that? I wouldn't do that. I'm not going to give my damn kids a bike without the training wheels. No. Ride the bike, okay, with the training wheels. Don't flip it and knock out your two front teeth, okay? And be good at that and have that and be able to do that correctly. Then, then you can go, you can go to cold ads. You can go to cold ads. And, and obviously, like, you know, for, for, for those people that are not customers, we have some customers that are asking about one customer that we have that helps people with Facebook ads, and I love John. I love the guy. He's an awesome member. It sort of skews, it sort of skews the argument a little bit because at this point, you have a specialist that understands the market and all he does is one market, and that, that gives it a huge level up. But the larger point remains, everyone's in it for the short term mentally, and you can't be in it for the short term. Everyone that John's running ads for knows that they're gonna be an artist or a photographer marketing regularly and consistently this year, next year, year after, year after, year after. Some of those leads that they bring in right now are not going to buy anything for four to five years. And you know why they're going to snag those sales, and they could be big ones? Maybe four to five years from now, your prices have gone up 400 percent, right? Maybe you're, maybe, maybe right now your originals are going for 1,200 bucks, and your originals then are gonna go for 10,000 bucks, okay? And you paid now, in year one, 275 dollars to acquire that person on your email list, and you marketed regularly for years and years and years, and you just kept doing price increases and price increases and price increases. Year four, your originals are now 10,000 dollars, and there it is. That person pulled the trigger on the 10,000 dollar sale, okay? You spent 250 dollars to acquire them, but you did that four years ago, and the only reason that you got that 10,000 dollar sale in year four was because you were marketing consistently the whole time. No one understands the long game. That's what, that's what selling photography is, building up the massive art and photography business is, and no one understands that.

Nick Friend: That's right. And like, you know, like, where do 60 percent of our sales come from at Art Storefronts, right? From what we call the long tail. People who, people who we paid for in advertising or whatever, you know, six months ago, a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, right? So when we're, you know, so the question about, like, you know, uh, with, uh, with, you know, uh, Lechner, like, with whether it's, uh, not cost-effective or not, no, it's doing that. He's actually, like, it's, he's actually, it's, you guys, it's you misunderstanding what, how advertising actually works, right? And, you know, and for you, okay, and, and the fact that it's, you're after, like, this is how it goes. I buy ads for Art Storefronts. We have a budget for it, knowing that it is a very long time. I'm gonna get a sale in 30 days or six months or a year, right?

Patrick Shanahan: Like...

Nick Friend: Years.

Patrick Shanahan: Years. And no artists or photographers, right there, so I want you to know that, that it may never pay for you, ever. Ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. It may never pay for you. You need to know that it may never pay, and that you are making an investment in your future, okay? And you may, you probably, if it works well, you know, you more than likely, you will get a one-to-one money back on your, on, on your spend, right? So, like, so that means you spend 2,000 dollars. I would say you'll, let's, let's say you have 50 percent profit margins. You'll probably sell 4,000 dollars or 3,000 dollars or something like that. You'll make your money back, and the way you profit from those people is by having them in your funnel for two years, three years, four years, five years, and by accept, by turning each person who buys one thing into a collector, where they're buying two, three, and four. This has nothing to do with the individual providing you with leads, right? This has to do with, this is how advertising works. Paid. This is why Patrick and I are telling every, like, all of our members the truth about it, and making sure everyone knows before they all just fall for, I got a thousand emails, you know, from this. Like, you, you need to understand what it is, okay? You need to have the right mindset, because if you're not ready for that, then you shouldn't be doing it. If you're not ready for that, you need to have the long-term mindset, okay? And you need to know that it may not ever work for you. That's the truth. Can't varnish it.

Patrick Shanahan: Nope.

Nick Friend: And the larger reality, like, you know, the more... And if you're not doing anything... Sorry, I got to jump in. If you're not doing warm ads, if you're not, that's like, if you're, if you're not doing warm ads and you're jumping into cold, right? Like, there's a bigger problem there, because you should be doing the warm first, you know? And if you don't have any, if you don't have enough sales to do warm, like, because we're saying you shouldn't be doing warm unless you sold, like, what? We're going to get to this number, right? We're going to pin this down.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah.

Nick Friend: A thousand dollars more in sales, right? Um, but, but if you don't have that, there's another problem. And it's not going to be solved with ads, with cold ads, right? Like, you are not a candidate for cold ads. If you have not sold a lot of your art, cold ads are not going to solve your, your, your sales problem because you can't figure out how to get people by, start, or get on your list or things like that. You got to solve that first, okay? That's a hard problem, right? Like, that's a harder problem, like, but you got to solve that. You can't just, you know, get the dopamine rush of, you know, letting Facebook just get you a bunch of emails that, and you don't know whether they're quality or not. The, the earlier you are in your business, the harder it's going to be to target those people, the harder it's going to be to explain to somebody else, like John, you know, or anybody else, like any, any, anybody who's buying ads for, like, whoever's going to do it or yourself, how to target them. Like, it doesn't mean they're doing a bad job. You know what I mean? It's just like, if you don't understand advertising, you're going in with the wrong mindset and the wrong... It doesn't mean that person is doing a bad job at all. You know, it's sort of like... That's my man.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, no, it's a good one. It, it, it's, you guys, again, this is parenting, right? Like, I am saying this from a place of caring and helping you. This is, I mean, again, hardest thing we've ever done in our lives is do the Facebook ads, right? And make them pay. It's a very hard thing. So we just, we want to protect our members, you know, to, so that they're, they're not wasting money, flushing it down the toilet, and instead are doing it at the right time for them, right? And we know what it is.

Nick Friend: Yeah. I mean, there's layers to it, right? Like, if you're just getting started, you're a solopreneur and you know, you're trying to figure your way and get validation and just get started, it's very easy. Don't do it. Don't do it. Like, done. Don't do it. If you've worked up your marketing system, okay, and you, you have some decent consistency to it, then you're ready to go on warm ads and you had the validation, right? If you are 100 pot committed to be an artist or a photographer now, five years from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from now, you're never gonna stop consistently marketing, you're ready to enter into the conversation of cold. But let me tell you, if in year two or year three or year four, you decide to take a little, uh, little trip around the world or a little six-month, nine-month year off on your marketing, guess what happens to the ROI of that whole spend? Bye-bye.

Nick Friend: Bye-bye.

Patrick Shanahan: Yep.

Nick Friend: So yeah, you have to be talk committed, right?

Patrick Shanahan: Planned on going on vacation and doing nothing for a month or two. Bye-bye spend. You just wasted all those leads. We call it burning the leads. They're gone.

Nick Friend: Yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: Gone.

Nick Friend: Yep. You're not just going to revive them. I'm just going to tell you, they don't just, when they cool off and they cool off, they, it's very hard to get them

back. And you know, you see, this is hard. You look at the artists and photographers that are on our platform that are killing it, you know, six figures plus in revenue. And I mean...

Patrick Shanahan: Such a great point here.

Nick Friend: Can we help them take, take them to the next level and like work on some strategies? Yeah. But they're not the ones that are coming to our workshops and answering the questions. And I go to their social profiles and I mean, I could potentially average like six to seven posts a day on some of them. And they never stop. And they've never stopped.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah.

Nick Friend: For even a second.

Patrick Shanahan: Let's get to the, let's get to the crescendo here. Let's get to the crescendo. All right, you guys ready for this? All right, Pat, how many of the artists and the photographers that we have, okay, that are selling 50K plus a year, 100K plus a year and anywhere, how many of them are doing cold ads right now and, and also have used cold ads to get themselves there from the ones that have recently engaged John?

Nick Friend: Zero.

Patrick Shanahan: Not a one.

Nick Friend: Zero.

Patrick Shanahan: Not a one.

Nick Friend: Zero, guys.

Patrick Shanahan: Zero.

Nick Friend: So everyone we know that's what, like, you like, this is where the compassion comes from. Our job is to reverse engineer success, correct?

Patrick Shanahan: Right.

Nick Friend: That's what we do at Art Storefronts. We reverse engineer real success, not wasted money or anything like that, okay? And if I don't see it, then I'm not telling you to do it as a member. I will not ever do that. That is our promise, right? We have to be that, we have to be that for our members. We have to be that, like, that, that, like, foundation, that thing that everyone can rely on. Like, if they get an answer from us, you know, it doesn't mean it can't be done, that some fringe person is doing it somewhere, right? Of course, that's gotta be happening somewhere, right? But it means that on the whole, we are not seeing it anywhere, okay? And with people that are selling a lot, and we have a lot of those people now, guys, a lot of them, okay? And the fact that we're gonna say that none of them use Facebook ads, you know, to get to where they're at and are not doing it now, cold, cold Facebook ads, cold, right? Um, and that, that number is zero should tell you enough that if you're trying to do it, you're trying to be the first. Hey, and maybe you will, maybe you will be, maybe you'll be one of the people, you know, but, but hey, it's kind of interesting, isn't it? Kind of interesting.

Patrick Shanahan: Playbook's coming, teaching on, and it's coming. We're evolving and moving quickly on what's the best system, what to do if you're already...

Nick Friend: Yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: If your art is validated, if you've got, if you can do 100 push-ups, you have your marketing muscles, you are ready to go. There is a free plan and a paid plan for Facebook showing ads to warm traffic. What is, some of you guys don't know a warm traffic, I realize, we get so into these doggone definitions and saying so often, we think in our minds that everyone knows what it means. The difference between cold and warm is if you walked into a bar and the bar was Cheers and you knew everybody, that's warm traffic. They've met you, they know you. If you walk into a bar and no one knows who you are, that's cold traffic. Hi, my name is Patrick. You have to introduce yourself. You have to get this person to know you. So much harder to turn cold traffic into a sale than it is warm traffic, right? So that's the distinction between the two. But if you validated your art and you have the marketing system in place, you should be running warm ads on Facebook and Instagram every single solitary day with a minimal spend. Five dollars a day gets it done for most people. Ten dollars if you have, if you've got decent traffic. Twenty dollars at a peak, even for some of the biggest artists, right? Always in perpetuity, 365 days a year. You have to have the marketing muscles. You have to continue marketing consistently. But all it's doing is saying, Facebook, Instagram, I know your secret. Turns out you have two plans. You have a free plan and you have a paid plan. I'm gonna go on the paid plan. That's it.

Nick Friend: Yep.

Patrick Shanahan: Yep, that's right. That's what, that's exactly it right there, right? So we'll be coming out with the warm playbook. Art Storefront members, half working on it right now. The version 4.379. Um, but yeah, the cold's like, you just need to have the right understanding of the cold, right? That's the, that's the lesson, okay? You have the right understanding. You gotta have the same, same understanding that I have on it. And, and that's the most important lesson to take away, which is, I'm not gonna make any money on this for probably a year and a half or two years with my advertising spend. That's how advertisers think. It's not, I'm spending money for 30 days and I better make a profit on that or it didn't work, right? If you do that, you just might as well not do it. You know, and there's a lot of pitfalls. So if you jumped in on this late, I would recommend as soon as we get off, go back, watch the beginning, because this was a good one. This is a good one. We got into it. We got into a lot of the details. Sometimes you just have to flush it out, right?

Nick Friend: You do.

Patrick Shanahan: You do.

Nick Friend: What's so...

Patrick Shanahan: And customers, you guys know this, but you'll hear it again. Selfishly, we realize as a business, the only metric that matters for us is if our customers do better, i.e. you guys make more money. Every metric that we care about as a business tends to just go up like that. And it's way better for us as a business than spending ads, spending money on ads. That coming live on Facebook and trying to snare you guys with our sales ending soon, five days, okay? Q4 sale, get on. Significantly better because what happens when you guys have success? When our customers have success, it turns out they get to all these places our ads can't get to, i.e. their friends at coffee shops, the people in the Facebook groups, the conversations they're having with other artists when they're having... Boost. God, go away. Go the dumpster fire and have boosts. You know, talking to... How are you doing this? How are you doing so well? How is your marketing so good? When our customers are successful, okay, they tell all of their friends. And though I can't get my ads there, Nick and I, doesn't matter how good we get at our targeting, I can't slide an ad in there inside that coffee shop. Pop up from the table behind, hey, Art Storefronts Q4 sale. Can't do it. There's no targeting in the world that's that good. Otherwise, I would know about it. Independent of that, independent of that, I'm sitting there writing, like, the stages of this playbook today, and I'm like, my job is to make these people successful. So I have to give you the entire context. And let me tell you, the free versus paid plan on Facebook is a big one. But I will not put a dollar in the slot machine of your business and say, this is gonna win if you don't have the damn marketing muscles. And so we've got to solve the marketing muscles. And let me tell you, we're getting there. We're making... We've made a hell of a lot of progress in this year. Like, we've got people now that are posting on all the socials regularly. We've got people that are going live on Facebook, on Instagram, multiple times a week. And by the way, hashtag eat our own dog food. What are we doing right now? We're live on all of them. Why? So it charges up our Facebook and Instagram engagement audiences, which make it easier for us to pay traffic, warm ads, and more people see it, okay? We do not... I do not tell you to do anything, okay? I go to, you know, I sleep at night extremely soundly, okay? Because I am not on here to B.S. you, to B.S. Nick, or anyone else. Everything that I teach, I do in a daily practice, day in and day out. And I'm not gonna stop because I value integrity in my freaking, uh, uh, uh, uh... What, not relationship, what is it? When people know you buy something, that's such a good rant there.

Nick Friend: Reputation.

Patrick Shanahan: Reputation, thank you. Because I value my reputation, okay? It's been a long day. So the larger point is the grass is green over here. The ocean is blue, okay? It's gonna be phenomenal once we get people there. But I have to, I have to make sure all the sheep, okay, all get herded into the pen that is regular and consistent marketing, okay? Regular and consistent marketing. If I can get you there, we could talk about ads. If you're not there, if you're not in the pen, get in the pen. Get on the path, right? So we're talking

about... But all of it, all of it matters. All of it matters. And Nick, I swear, I'm not kidding. I honestly believe you take any one of those, you know, call them whatever you want, arrows not being fired out, and you're messing with that conversion rate, man. You are messing with that conversion rate.

Nick Friend: Oh yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: And not mess with that conversion rate. You cannot do it. Like, you need to do all that. Good news is, once you do that, the snowball starts picking up steam. It's getting bigger and bigger and bigger as it goes down the hill. And believe it or not, like, year three or four, you could take that month vacation and potentially, potentially not do any marketing in that. I never recommend that, but you could potentially do it, right? Because you have, you have what's called the halo effect of it all.

Nick Friend: That was a good rant.

Patrick Shanahan: It was a good rant right there.

Nick Friend: Yeah. You know, I gotta, I gotta say one last thing, which I think is, like, also really, really interesting, right? Like, do you realize, like, you know this, okay? But I'm gonna say this to everybody. You guys, you realize, like, any agency that was working with you, right? Um, or consultants or whatever, who is just like, oh my goodness, I gotta make sure that these people get sales. I gotta do whatever possible. Do what most of them will do. They would tell us, buy an ad, because they just, they're trying to give you any shot that you can to do anything, right? Even if it means burning your money, because they don't care. They're never going to do that thing. The odds are already, right? Like, like, you're not, probably not going to look accountable.

Patrick Shanahan: You're not around long enough.

Nick Friend: Exactly. They don't even know you. You like that. It's like, it's so easy for someone to do that. And yet, what do we do? We do the opposite, right? We're doing the exact opposite. Like, you could say that it would be good for us to do that. You wouldn't know it wouldn't, right? Because all we need is successful customers, but it's easy to just say, hey, yeah, go, go do that and get some emails, whatever, right? It's, we're literally like, like, I, I, I think what I'm getting to like this too, is that like the amount that we have to fight to stop people from doing cold ads, right? Who are not ready, who don't have the right mindset for it is shocking. Shocking. Okay. Not only with our members. I did so I did the art business workshop today for non-Art Storefronts members, right? The one that's, you know, the next one's on Friday. I did it today. And sure, if I had a lately discussion about ads, I think there was two separate people that were talking about, I said, you're not ready for ads. What are you doing? Stop. You want me to give you value right now? Stop doing them, right?

Patrick Shanahan: Always.

Nick Friend: Exactly.

Patrick Shanahan: You just said it.

Nick Friend: Always.

Patrick Shanahan: Every time.

Nick Friend: It's non-stop.

Patrick Shanahan: It's non-stop.

Nick Friend: And so we, like, we are deflecting it. We are deflecting this, like, and, and, and stopping the industry, stopping the artists and the photographers, whether their customers are not, from getting hosed, from getting roost, right? And understanding, like, this, if you are ready to think about it this way and do it this way and understand the long-term investment in it and that you may not ever get an ROI, be my guest. If you have any other mindset about it, don't do it. Don't do it. Don't sit there at the end and say, I didn't get an ROI on it, and complain to the guy who did it for you, okay? Because you didn't understand the risks, right? You need to understand that you're literally at the craps table or the roulette table.

Patrick Shanahan: What's the famous saying? I don't like, 50 percent of my advertising is wasted. I just don't know where it was wasted, right? Like, I mean, there's so many ads.

Nick Friend: Half my ads, half of my marketing budget is, is completely wasted. Problem is, I don't know which half.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. It's not a perfect science. It's like, it's a lot of guessing, a lot of strategy, a lot of aeration, right? It like, I mean, you're gonna waste a ton of money on it. Like, straight up, you are going to waste a ton of money on advertising. If you're ready for all of that, then you are ready. Then you are ready. And that's the key, right? And so nobody's saying this. Why are we the only ones saying this?

Nick Friend: We are the only ones saying this. And by the way, the reason we're saying it is because, and the reason like, like, we're talking about this as often as we are, it's because it doesn't stop coming up. It's like, it's, it's like this, this thing that keeps emerging. That's like, easy thing that everyone wants to latch onto as soon as they see it. But it's fraught with danger, you know what I mean? And we, being the, you know, the per, the protectionists that we are about this, we gotta speak the truth and, and, and, uh, and let everybody know, like, gotta be careful. Gotta, gotta go and do it with the right mindset on the cold, right? The warm is different.

Patrick Shanahan: As much as I'd love this to be our last presentation on the subject...

Nick Friend: Oh, not gonna be.

Patrick Shanahan: It's almost like a once a week.

Nick Friend: Like tomorrow morning.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, tomorrow morning, shifting gears. Tomorrow morning, uh, 9 a.m. live, all the socials, uh, uh, doing our rant on flash sales, okay? Love, love flash sales. Did a rant, this is, this is, this is honestly like one of my favorite things about being close to the customer, okay? In, in the instantaneous feedback loop. So, Taylor, okay, and I'm not gonna read this person's name, um, I'm not gonna reverse his name. Great last name though. And this was on the office hours on Tuesday, okay? And here it is. I quote, today, after listening to office hours, I took the suggestion of doing a live flash sale on a single item. I have inventory on hand to move, so I deeply discounted a 20 by 30 inch metal print. Bam, sold. Yay, win.

Nick Friend: So that inspired me, okay? Inspired me. Art business mornings, tomorrow, live, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter. Is anyone even really on Twitter? Uh, uh, small wins Facebook group. Gonna do it, gonna get, gonna do the entire show on flash sales. Let me fire, that's tomorrow morning. Bring your coffee. We have regular office hours tomorrow. We have an art business workshop, which is, for those not in the know, thrice weekly, uh, zoom calls. You can come on just like this, except you get to answer your questions, and it's going to be fire. That one's Friday at 11 o'clock. We went an hour, so Instagram kicked off. Um, we're on fire right now, man. We went an hour. We, I know we got fired up on that one. That's kind of nice. We got fired up. Lots of good stuff. Um, and that is going to be on Friday. And then what else? Q4 sale ending Monday. Big sale before we record demo right away. Guys, if you want to save money, uh, to join Art Storefronts, you know, take your business to the next level, um, ask, request a demo. There's a link, I think there's a link in the post.

Nick Friend: Yes, always.

Patrick Shanahan: Always, always a link in the post. And, uh, you know, you can also go to the website. There's always a button in the upper right-hand corner, request a demo, uh, click that, fill out the form, takes like 20 seconds. One of our team members will reach out. Please do it quickly if you want to try to take advantage of the sale. There's only, what, today, there's, today's over, so there's Thursday, Friday, and Monday. But you've got to get your demo request in as soon as possible so you can get in the queue. There's limited time for us to run the demos and potentially, um, have you join on as a new member. So if you're looking to save money, go ahead and do that. Um, and then if you still have any other questions, you know, for, for, for us, um, we will be on Art Business Mornings tomorrow, right? With the coffee, go over the flash sales. You can always ask questions, submit questions on these things, um, to help your business move forward. So yeah, that's what's on the agenda.

Nick Friend: And don't forget people... [Music] The kind words, that's, that's always awesome. And by the way, do you see this one from Philip? Most web host services support stops after you buy in. Where is it? ASF, that's when it starts.

Patrick Shanahan: We might need to work that in marketing coffee, uh,

Philip. I will, of course, uh, uh, give shout outs, uh, uh, where shout outs are, uh, uh, due, uh, but that's, that's, I like that. I like [ __ ]. Um, let's see what works. And is that not the way that we look at it?

Nick Friend: Yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: It's just...

Nick Friend: Except for customers, like, to just, that's, that's their job. That's my full-time job. That's your full-time job. Not gonna end. Won't end. Never end. All right, I gotta go pick my kids up. Bye guys.

Patrick Shanahan: Okay. See you guys.