Only 30 Days until the start of the Biggest Art Selling Time of Year

In this edition of the Art Business Morning Show, Patrick and Nick discuss detailed strategies for artists and photographers to prepare for the biggest art selling season of the year, starting in 30 days. Topics covered include the critical importance of e-commerce websites, the significance of effective marketing, running sales, and live broadcasts. They emphasize the necessity of having physical samples of various media types to show potential buyers and discuss the accelerated shift towards online sales due to COVID-19. The episode is filled with actionable advice to help artists capitalize on the unprecedented e-commerce boom expected in Q4.

Podcast Transcribe

Patrick Shanahan: All right, coming up on today's edition of the Art Business Mornings, we're talking about 30 days until the start of the biggest art selling time of the year. Specifically, what to do now, between now and then, to best position yourself to capitalize on the coming buying season. (coffee pouring) Wonderful.

Nick Friend: Cheers.

Patrick Shanahan: Cheers, absolutely. Welcome to another edition of the Art Business Morning Show. The show that will put you on the path to a six-figure-a-year-plus art business. And it's a task, Nick, that I must admit is gonna be easier this year than most. Why? Two reasons, okay. Preparation and the situation on the ground.

So preparation, I think you would agree, is a very, very, very important task. And I've got a funny backstory. What did we all just live through? Okay, the dumpster fire that is COVID. Now, personally, okay, I am a bit of a conspiratorial type to begin with. I'm not saying I have a tin hat but if I did, I don't wear it all the time, it's in my closet, okay, but occasionally I'd bring that thing out.

I tend to monitor my own inputs quite carefully, okay, and they are a massive blend of news sources and many are not from this country. You couple those two things together with a massive distrust of the CCP for a whole and it's suffice to say that I personally, okay, saw the writing on the wall about COVID way before my peer group, okay.

And come to think of it, way before my entire town too. I started panic buying paper towels and toilet paper when those babies were still stacked in the aisles floor to ceiling, they're not the crappy ones, the good stuff, okay, the good stuff. It was normal, water was still available in abundance. So I've made my preparation, right? I got everything, I got my wife on board, she got all the kids' stuff.

I was so well equipped, in fact, that when things finally hit the fan and the true panic mode was activated in my hometown, I'll never forget this part, I mean, you could just feel the mayhem and the tension as you drove around town. People were scared and scattering and running in and out of stores and the lines and all the rest.

Me, calm as a cucumber. My garage was loaded, and I mean with everything. So much so, okay, and I will never forget this, that I went to my local liquor store to double up on that particular necessity, okay, and this is a big store, Nick, you've been into it. I walked into this thing, okay, and it's crowded at the best of times, always, and it was a ghost town in there.

An absolute ghost town in there, straight up. Turns out in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, COVID edition, booze is several rungs up the pyramid and it's certainly above water and food and toilet paper. So this would of course, you know, drastically change a few days later but my mind was several blocks down the road from the general populace and that level of preparation like really did serve me well, it seriously reduced the stress on myself, my family.

And had me in really good shape to weather the possible coming storm, whatever it might've been, right. So, pretty sure you understand where I go with this, right? We want to prepare you as best as we can in the same fashion. So, you know, as you best set yourself up between now, the start of Q4, the holiday buying season.

While we are certainly running out of time, there is still time and I think if you prepare as best you can you set yourself up for success. And to our credit, how long have we been talking about Q4?

Nick Friend: Like three months?

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, like three months. Because we know what it portends, but let's just talk about this Q4 and what this baby portends, okay.

We think, Nick and I, that it's going to be the biggest the art market has seen in years and perhaps even decades. And I think there's so many environmental factors that are in play that tip the scale in its favor. I've got kind of like a, you know, I made notes, you're getting ambushed, but let me go through my list and you throw in any other color that you got.

The economy prior to COVID was really good. Right now the stock market is still really good. The avenues for the dollars that normally get spent have been severely limited. People are staying home, there's no events, most restaurants are not open. There's no travel, there's no sports, et cetera, et cetera.

These are the big-ticket items that did just not get any money spent on them, right. So are there decent odds that there are gonna be new outbreaks given the coming fall and cold? I believe probably so, right? Lots and lots of folks still working from home, no end in sight. The available venues for people to buy art and photography this season mostly closed.

The galleries, the craft fairs, the shows not coming back in anytime soon. The widespread adoption of live streaming video and the ability to execute on it with nothing more than your phone, okay. There are a large number of circumstances, let's just say, that just bodes so well for art sales and photography sales coming up this Q4 and, did I forget any on that list?

Nick Friend: No.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, so it's gonna be a big win any which way you slice it. If it's just a normal Q4 it's gonna be the biggest art selling time of the year, which it always is. If any of those other trends combined it has the potential to be massive, massive. So the question becomes, honestly, what can you do between now and then to best prepare yourself? And I think that's where we are.

So 30 days til the start of Q4, in case you've not been following the trends lately, when we say 30 days until the start of the Q4. Like, what's happened, Nick, over the last, call it five to seven years? It used to be that there wasn't any sales nonsense until like Black Friday, right? What's happened since? The days just keep moving back and back and back.

Every single, I feel like there's like this crazy foot race between every retailer out there to try and suck the available dollars out of the economy. Like a quick, I mean, what has it been?

Nick Friend: Yeah, but here's the thing.

Patrick Shanahan: Earlier, earlier.

Nick Friend: But what you're talking about, I'm gonna have to pause you on, okay.

Patrick Shanahan: Okay.

Nick Friend: Because what you're talking about, most people don't know. And in the art industry, nobody knows. And so gotta hold that one back, gotta hold that one back a little bit, right, because like, yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: Expand on it, expand on it.

Nick Friend: Well what I'm saying is that like, you know, the way that you executed on Black Friday, you know, three, four, five years ago doesn't work as well as the way that you should be executing on it now. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and all of that, right? And so there's some arbitrage in there, there's some advantages where you could probably sell double or triple the amount that you normally would during that period by, you know, having the latest strategy, right. But that's a little bit secretive, you know? And so I think that, I don't think that we should announce that to the masses, I think there's a little bit of an arbitrage there.

Patrick Shanahan: Scratch that, rewind.

Nick Friend: Yeah, scratch that. Yeah, 'cause look, you know, that's something that we've got to hold back, just a touch, just a touch. But anyways, you know, another stat that came out, this was a big stat like two weeks ago, was that the 2020 e-commerce volume, okay, by the end of the third quarter, which means by the end of September is already projected to have surpassed the entire 2019 e-commerce volume.

Wrap your head around that, you guys. Like all of the e-commerce volume from 2019 is about to get surpassed three quarters through this year. And so like, if that doesn't tell you what the fourth quarter is gonna be, it's just gonna be massive. What's crazy about that, to me, Pat, what is crazy is that, what is the biggest quarter of 2019 by far? In terms of, you know, retail volume, e-commerce volume or anything? It's the fourth quarter, right? And so if 2020 has already surpassed all of 2019,

and that includes 2019's fourth quarter, do you realize how much volume has gone through this year already? And so this fourth quarter is gonna be off the chart. Now, we've talked about this literally week in and week out. We have been seeing at Art Storefronts Black Friday levels of sales every single week without a blip, including last week, including last week.

We just went over the numbers yesterday, we have a weekly meeting with the marketing team, right, and we look at the sales volume from our artist's and photographer websites, their own websites, not ours, their own websites, them driving traffic to their own websites. You know, like we are seeing that level of volume still every single week since the very first week of April.

That's when it first happened. There was this blip in March when everybody was freaked out about the pandemic, right, and then it just like popped. And then everything exploded and it has not stopped since. And a lot of people, you know, wondered, they're like, you know, are people buying art during a pandemic? I mean, they've been saying it for

four months, five months, almost six months, right.

And then also like, you know, like, are people buying art when nobody has money? Look, if you guys think nobody has money, like, I don't know who you think your customers are. Let me just tell you, okay, let me just tell you that there is a side of this economy that is winning in the pandemic, like record levels, everything through the roof, 100, 200% growth, okay.

And then there's the side that's been really hurt by the economy, travel, you know, hospitality go down the list, right? There's a lot of that. But this is not a global recession, you know, everything ruined, 2008 type of situation, not at all. The companies that are thriving. Look, the companies that are thriving, and we're one of them, we're one of them.

We happen to be one of these companies that has exploded because we happen to, you know, empower individual artists and photographers to sell online, learn how to market themselves, and offline as well, it's the whole business, right? But like everybody that got caught only selling through galleries, only selling through art shows, these indirect channels got killed.

And it's like, wait a minute, how do I, you know, it made everybody rethink everything. What have I been doing? Like, why did my whole business get pulled out from underneath me? How do I make that not happen again, how do I build a stable art business, right? And so the truth of the matter is that like the whole market has gone online 'cause there's no other choice.

There's a retail apocalypse that has happened, like 50 to 60% so far of like retail stores have gone out of business, right, and there's gonna be more, there's gonna be more because the retail demand, even if things start opening back up is not gonna be there anymore, right. Like, it's not going to be completely gone but it's not gonna be at the levels that they were.

And that percentage, you know, has shifted online. People realizing that they can do these things from home, it's so much easier. And you know what sells more than anything else, you know what the most like seductive sale is for human beings? Time, time.

Patrick Shanahan: Always.

Nick Friend: It's always time. Yup, and it's like, if you guys don't know this, you think about like like Amazon and Jeff Bezos and he says it, like, we're selling you time. We're selling our customers time back, right. It's like, wait, but you don't even realize the shampoo, but you don't care, the shampoo you're buying is like $2 more on Amazon than it is at the market but you don't care because it's your time, right, you didn't have to go. You didn't have to go and drive there and go pick it up and this is applying to every product in the world, right.

And so like when people's habits have changed and they realized like, whoa, it's actually like pretty awesome buying art online and seeing the artists and having relation, like, what's with all these artists and photographers that are now online? You know, going live, like showing their process, live painting, live shooting.

You know, whoa, this whole experience has changed. Nobody used to be doing that, right? Nobody was doing the requisite marketing that they should have been doing. What they were doing looking at it as a chore and a pain. How many posts do I need to do a month? What's the minimum amount of posts, Patrick and Nick, the minimum I can do to get by? And it's like, the minimum, really? You're trying to like, you know, build an audience and like make people's lives better through your art.

And your immediate thought in your mind is like, what's the least I can do, you know? When you're in this era of like, the whole world is changing, the whole world is changing. Like, we are coming from a world where you had to go to the galleries or you go to art shows, because online the experience was horrible.

Nobody was doing anything and the artist and the photographers didn't care. And all you had is, you know, art.com and Fine Art America, Saatchi art, all these cold, absolutely ice-cold website experiences, where it's a race to the bottom and everybody's uploading their art to them and there's more art every day and all this different stuff.

And it's like a Costco experience. Like here, bunch of images online on a website. No experience behind it, no understanding, no connection with the artist, nothing of that nature. And we're now in a world where that whole thing has changed. The consumer is winning in this, do you realize that? Like the experience that the consumer is getting is dramatically better online in terms of like the feel, the connection, you know, the ongoing updates, all that stuff.

Now, seeing the actual physical good in person will always be a little bit better. But video, high definition video is really changing that. It's taken that and it's brought them a lot closer together. But if you take the whole experience of buying art, right, and you, and you look at all the points in it.

Buying directly from the artist, communicating directly with the artists understanding their process, all that different stuff. You don't get that in person in a gallery in the old world, you just don't, you just don't. So if you weigh one side and the other you can see that the world has changed dramatically and so if you are positioned to do that, if you are like investing in your own skillset to learn how to do these things and market yourself directly you are doing yourself a great service

and you will be in a phenomenal position one year, two years, three years from now. Period, end of story. If you are doing anything else, you are wasting your time. You are wasting your time. It's like you're grabbing the anchor that's going down and you're like, I'm gonna to hold on to that anchor 'cause I know it's gone somewhere before, but it's do-do-do-do-do, you're just going down, right.

Patrick Shanahan: Grabbing the anchor, terrifying. It's I think 87 days out there abounds right now as we record this, September 1st, till the start of Black Friday. And you know, when you contemplate what that's gonna look like, it is going to be staggering. I read in Forbes this morning, e-commerce adoption as a result of COVID has been accelerated in their estimation four to six years.

So not only is there going to be the additional dollars in the ecosystem, but contemplate the thought of fall and winter coming. There's gonna be more COVID outbreaks, you know this, okay. And then having to wear masks to go everywhere, the thought of going to malls, big groups, the stupid lines we have to even wait in to go into the big box stores.

I mean, I had to go to Best Buy the other day and I felt like it was like an anal probe. I had to like stand outside the thing, they're like spraying off the counter in between every single solitary person, it was nonsense. Now, no matter how you feel, okay, about the whole COVID thing, people are going to be staying home way more than normal.

You combine those two parts, Black Friday, increased e-commerce adoption, with the fact that there's just going to be less people going out full stop. And I just don't see how it's not the biggest Q4 we've seen in 10 years, full stop, maybe ever.

Nick Friend: It's gonna be the biggest ever, and you have to think about this too, okay, and this goes for anybody that's like, let me frame like the retail future. Let's just say things open back up in a month or three months or whatever it is, right. Like, COVID is kind of dealt with or something like that. People are still going to be afraid of whatever but like, do you realize like, okay, so we live in Austin, Texas, right? And do you realize downtown, Pat, right now, downtown, I drive downtown, okay, and half the stores are boarded up.

They're done, they're boarded up, okay. So think about this, if you're the one art gallery that's gonna open his doors back up in a month or three months and half the stores around you, 60 to 70% are boarded up, okay, what does that do to the retail experience of people walking around down there? You know, you rely as a, like the reason why they call them like anchor tenants.

Like if you guys have ever heard the term anchor tenants, okay, like a Whole Foods in a commercial parking lot, or I'm sorry, a shopping center, is called an anchor tenant. And so when they get that anchor tenant all these stores try to open up around it because they're trying to take advantage of the fact that people are coming in there all the time, right.

And so that's the marketing, right? You're like, the anchor tenant is there, I'm gonna put my pizza shop there or my nail salon or my UPS Store, right, like that's how it works. And so other tenants help other tenants, right? That's how it always has gone. And so if all of these things are boarded up or a lot of them are, what's the experience like to actually go and walk downtown? Or at the shopping mall, Pat, right? Because if you're gonna go into the shopping mall, half of 'em are gonna be closed.

Half of 'em are gonna be closed already. They went out of business. And so there's less of a reason to go to these shopping malls, shopping centers, and downtowns. Like in Austin, Texas, all of the art shows, they're all basically in or around downtown. Now there's way less of a reason to go down there because all the other stuff that you would go down there for and enjoy are boarded up or

they're not gonna be there.

And so what does that do? What that does is it just further accelerates the online business, further cements the habits in that people have that are already, you know, cementing in. Like, there's a saying by very smart people about like, once habits get set like they never go back, you know? They never go back.

And so people are saying that like, you know, the online habits, everybody knew online habits were accelerating every single year, you know? And it was inevitable. It was inevitable that in 10 years we would be where we are today. It just happened to be that 10 years just got pulled back in three months, right.

2030 became 2020 in terms of online purchasing. This is where all the numbers were projected to be. And so, you know, like you gotta have a 2030 mindset, right, as an artist or a photographer. Like, you can't be on like, oh, I'm on the slow path to learning. Like how to market myself online and directly, and how to take advantage of the internet and learn computers and learn software and learn how these things all work.

Like, you can't do that. You need to actually go all in now. You have to go all in on it if you expect to be selling art in this market anymore. Because the galleries aren't gonna do it for you. They're not going to do it. I'm sorry, it's not going to happen. So it is what it is. I mean, just understand that, it ain't happen in anymore, that's over, right.

Art shows, you may get a little bit out of that, but if you relied on art shows before, mark my words, you will only get 25 to 50% out of any art show that you used to do, end of story. You may get less, you may end up getting less, okay. That's all you're gonna get.

Patrick Shanahan: So I made a list. I thought we needed to make a cheat sheet. So big picture with the time that they have left, okay, and then we can dive into some details. But I think you could safely consider this your cheat sheet. Because everyone's listening and they're like, okay, I'm buying into what you're selling. This makes sense. It's going to be huge, what can you do? So one, if e-commerce adoption, I mean, this is going to sound self-serving because we offer the website solution, okay, but let's just be honest.

If e-commerce adoption has accelerated four to six years, number one, you'd better have an e-commerce website, okay. You can't conduct any e-commerce without an e-commerce website. Period, full stop, so you need one.

Nick Friend: Yeah, and it should be up to the industry standards. It should be up to the industry standards of selling art. The industry standard is like, look, when we decided what features we were gonna have on Art Storefronts we looked at the companies selling billions of dollars of art sales online and we got all of those features and then we've added like 100 more. Right, that's what we did. Like, there is an industry standard experience so you should equip yourself with that.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, more important than that, like look, we know how technically challenging it is to get a website up, we know even just the cognitive load of the contemplation phase of getting a new website going will drive you nuts. We get people live in 14 days or less, we have great support, okay, sales pitch over, gotta have an e-commerce site.

Number two, need to be actively marketing starting right now. Gathering emails, emailing them, posting on the socials, growing your followers there, okay. Do not be intimidated by that either. In today's climate, even with a minimal, minimal fan base, an email list, you can do some damage. So just get going on it right away.

We have resources galore on how to help you do that. That's number two, number one, e-commerce website, number two, actively marketing right now. Number three, you need some practice, okay. Two things I recommend you practice. Number one, running a sale, okay. Opportunities abound to do this coming up, okay.

IE Halloween, IE end of summer, IE hello flash sales. There are a lot of moving pieces and mechanics and Tradecraft to a well-run sale. Best way to figure those out, run one, and then run another one and then run another one. So that you're ready for when the real sale happens you're good to go, so that's number one.

Number two, live broadcasts. We talked about this recently at all, I think we have. What is the MVA, minimum viable audience? Stated in another way, the minimum number of eyeballs you need to do a live for it to be worth your time. For sales purposes it's one, even if it's just a one on one. Even if it's a private video chat with your potential buyer where you're showing off the merchandise, okay.

Showing them their work, explaining who you are, getting to know them, that makes it worth it. From a content marketing standpoint, I don't care if you have a single solitary eyeball, zero, okay, on your show because what you can do with the content after the fact is incredible. So between now, and I mean, let's be honest, I say this all the time, and, you know, part of me thinks, need to adjust my language but I'm not gonna do it, I like being authentic.

Artists suck at selling art. Photographers suck at selling art. Artists suck at merchandising their art, and photographers usually suck at merchandising their photography. You know, a quick way to get better at that, start doing it, okay, start doing it. So, live broadcasts. There's plenty of time to literally ship 20, 30, 40, maybe even 50 of these before we get into this serious heat, right? Like, how many are we going to do right now probably in the month of September? Probably 40 or 50, okay, we're not telling you to do things

that we ourselves are not doing, okay. Let's talk about the merchandising. God, this is so important to me. This one is so underappreciated, but so important, okay. What is it that you sell? If you're a painter and all you sell is originals then you can scratch this one off your list, you're covered, you got everything you need, start showing 'em off.

For the rest of you though, better get your orders in now. You should have samples of your work available on all the best selling media types. And so let's talk about that, Nick, for people that don't know you, just out of curiosity, what business did you start before this one?

Nick Friend: Breathing Color in 2003, It's one of the largest manufacturers of fine art canvas, photography paper, fine art paper, and you know, other types of substrates for high quality art and photography printing.

Patrick Shanahan: Okay, so given that, would you say you have some experience in this particular industry and this particular topic?

Nick Friend: Yeah, just a bit.

Patrick Shanahan: Will you list for me the media types that people need to be thinking about and have ahead of this holiday season?

Nick Friend: Okay, so here's the offering that you should, here's the offering that you should have, okay. You should have one fine art paper, all right. Smooth or texture, whichever one you like working, you think works better for your art or photography. All right, one fine art paper, not two, just one, all right. Secondly, you can have a photo paper. Call it photo gloss, satin, luster, metallic, pick one of those, all right, just one.

You don't need more. Now, you may not want to offer a photo paper, that's kind of an optional one only because the price point is going to be the lowest, right? But it gives you that ability to have that lower price point, all right. So photo paper optional, most people do offer it, but fine art paper is not optional, you need to have one of those, okay.

Canvas, one canvas, one canvas, all right. Pick one canvas, gloss, satin, matte, whatever one you like the best, that's your offering, canvas, right. Metal, have to offer metal.

Patrick Shanahan: Mandatory.

Nick Friend: Mandatory, white gloss is the best selling metal, it's the most popular with consumers. So I tend to say white gloss, it's gonna be very glossy, it pops, it looks insane, it's incredible.

Especially for photography, right? If you are not into like the heavy gloss then go with the satin, the semi gloss, right? Satin and semi-gloss are the same thing, okay. Acrylic next, gotta have acrylic. Acrylic is high end, great price point. Now, something that's very important is that metal and acrylic, you guys, have a much higher price point and therefore a higher average order value for you.

So if you get somebody to buy it, you might think right now, like, well I don't care if they buy a canvas print or a metal print. Well, you should care, you should care. Because if they decide to go with metal you're going to get like 50% higher of a price point, roughly, and you're going to get way higher profit margin for the same work.

You sold that person, right, that person is sold on your art, right? You got the deal done. So if they're going to buy metal, you're in a way better position than if they bought canvas. If they buy acrylic you're in the same better position. So understand that, okay. That's something that people don't even realize when they're like coming up with their own offering.

And the last one is wood, okay, you should be offering

a wood. Now, all of these together, right, all of these, let me go through 'em, photo paper, fine art paper, all right, canvas, metal, acrylic, and wood. That's six, six media types with one optional. You are literally covering all of your bases, all right.

So that if an interior designer, you know, is outfitting a hotel and they're going to do everything in wood, you have the wood. It's not like, oh, I love this artist or I love this photographer, but they don't have the wood so I'm not doing a $30,000 order with them, right.

Patrick Shanahan: Go through the list, go through the list from the top one at a time.

Nick Friend: I should've had this ready ahead of time.

Patrick Shanahan: Okay, so we're starting at the bottom in terms of price point and we'll go upwards. Photo paper, right, so there you have one, there's a photo gloss, framed, ready to hang, right. Now let's go find art paper.

Nick Friend: That one's down there.

Patrick Shanahan: Okay, fine art paper.

Nick Friend: Well, it'll be harder to see if it's good too, but it'll look somewhat similar. Okay, next, canvas. There it is. There's the front, the sides, the gallery wrap, you know, nice one and a half inch off the wall, the back ready to hang. Beautiful, with the little, you know, black dots to hold it off the wall at the perfect position.

Patrick Shanahan: Let's go to metal. Now here's the metal. So like, notice what Patrick is doing, this is called merchandising, you guys. So what's gonna happen during Q4, people are gonna ask you, what is the metal? You're going to get this in DMs, you're going to get this an email replies, you're going to get this, you know, all over the place.

Nick Friend: You gotta be able to have that thing ready to go. Here it is, let's hop on a Zoom call. You know, or let's do a FaceTime, whatever it is. And you should be showing them, obviously when you're going live or doing videos on social media. So there's the metal right there, right? Nice gloss, ready to hang, beautiful, and now acrylic.

Patrick Shanahan: I think I gotta go get, is this acrylic, this one? No, yeah it is.

Nick Friend: Let me see the thickness. That's metal, that's metal. Acrylic you can see the thickness.

Patrick Shanahan: Sorry, this is gonna have to get the big dog out.

Nick Friend: Oh, bring out the big dog. Yeah, ooh! Woo, look at that. Now show the sides as best you can.

Patrick Shanahan: Ooh, yeah, exactly. Right, so that's like an eighth of an inch acrylic, you know, with a glossy paper face mounted to the back, ready to hang, super high end looking, ready to go. And the final is wood, do you have the wood? The wood is really cool. Look at that, it's beautiful. I love that wood.

Nick Friend: Yeah, amazing.

Patrick Shanahan: So there you go.

Nick Friend: I feel like this is such a gap that we've just identified in the market and, you know, we're not doing it from an accusatory tone but it's like, we're pushing this so hard and then we're realizing nobody's got this sorted, okay. You need to be able to show your product off.

Patrick Shanahan: You need to be able to talk about your product. You need to be able to hold it up on your lives, to show it off on one of your video chats with potential buyers. If you don't have the media types how are you going to properly explain the options? I would go as far to say, if you've not purchased all the media types, okay, and you don't have the ability to show those off and talk about them and potentially sell them, please don't tell me, you're not serious.

Nick Friend: Say the question so everybody knows what it is.

Patrick Shanahan: Okay, so Mod City Gallery, showing paper, should it be framed or just a print? Both work, both work.

Nick Friend: Both, try 'em both. Say, I've got it framed and unframed.

Patrick Shanahan: Nick, you need to make some sort of thing.

Nick Friend: And explain it. See, like, here, like that's the point. I'm gonna go off on this one right now, right, because that is the point. You need to explain, okay, you can buy this unframed, okay, and then you could go to your local frame shop or you could go to a Michael's or Aaron Brothers or whatever is in your town, right, and you could buy ready-made frame there.

So I recommend, you know, choosing a size that's like an eight by 10, you know, eight by 12, 16 by 20, the common sizes. Those are the ones they'll have, perfect thing to discuss. And you could get it like, and the paper, if they buy it that way, you know, then it's gonna be a little bit cheaper.

Then you can say, or you can get it framed. I've got the frames ready to go so you don't have to go to the store, right. This is exactly what you need to discuss, you're missing the point if you're like, what's the final, one last thing that I need to show, right? Talk about the whole thing.

Take the paper out of the frame, show the texture, talk about how beautiful it is in your hand. The thickness of it, this is a 100% cotton archival paper made from the greatest factories in the world for fine art. That's what these are. And my images are printed on these, I've hand selected these specifically for archivability and longevity, for crispness and for the way my images pop on them, right.

You're gonna love it, right. And so you can take these, you can frame 'em, you can float them in a matte. You know, when you're framing them, you can, and that's what this looks like and that's what that looks like. Like, go deep, this is your product. Like, think about a car salesman selling a car.

What do they do, they're playing with the air conditioning, this is how you do this, listen to the volume, listen to the speakers, you know, put your seat up and back, look how cool that is, it'll program that. It'll open the gate for you, it'll open the garage for you. I mean, every bell and whistle in there.

And, like the last thing that you do is just go, oh, here's what I have, it's a fine art paper print. Okay, next, you know. Like, sell these things, guys, like it's a product. This is where Patrick said, you know, most artists and photographers are not good at selling art. It's like, it's just selling a good, describing it, understanding like, you know, what might appeal to people and getting those details out there.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, we've got another question and it said, should they be, should they just be generic sample images? No, no, order the samples with your art on it. And what are we talking about, we need to figure out like the definitive. what is the number, no, the definitive number to get all of the various different media types.

Nick Friend: Just six, I just said it, that's it.

Patrick Shanahan: What is the investment on that? It's gonna be less than $100. It's less than $100. Yeah, 'cause if you just get them an eight by 10s, like it's probably gonna be less than 100 bucks.

Nick Friend: Which by the way, let me give you a little trick-

Patrick Shanahan: Maybe its 125 to have the whole thing, forever, forever.

Nick Friend: So that if anyone contacts you, I mean, do you know how ridiculous this is? That's what it is.

Patrick Shanahan: We need to put together the package, we need to put together the entire package.

Nick Friend: We already have, we already have, right? So like, here's the thing, some people want to overcomplicate it and they start asking questions.

Patrick Shanahan: Should they be 16 by 20s? Should they be 18 by 24s, have whatever you want, okay, have whatever you want. I think that you should have, you know, like I think the bigger size is actually, they command something a little bit more.

Nick Friend: It's hard though, it's hard though, the small size is all you need.

Patrick Shanahan: I don't think going too big.

Nick Friend: It's pretty damn hard to show that big one on video.

Patrick Shanahan: That acrylic, but it looks unbelievable. But the point here is that, like, don't worry about what, you get bigger ones or smaller ones, right? Like if all you can afford is the smaller ones you get the smaller ones. But the point here is, stop asking questions, get it done.

Nick Friend: Make the decision today, make the decision today, that's it. Make that decision today and ship it, stop with the questions, guys.

Patrick Shanahan: Stop with the questions. The questions, we're going to fire 'em back like, the answer to every question is, do whatever you can do today. That's the answer, right? Because every one of these perfectionism questions is stopping you from getting these things. You're going to come up with another one, expensive frames, this frames, this image, that image.

Nick Friend: Stop, just get 'em, just get 'em. Okay, because at one point if you want to switch, you can blow out those those images, those prints in a sale.

They'll be gone and then you replace them with new ones. It's so simple, just do whatever it takes today to get these things in hand.

Patrick Shanahan: Yep, straight up. I mean, our first business, right, clothing company. And, you know, you start out doing t-shirts, okay. And then the next thing that happens is you start getting into the cut and sew items. And we had this guy, showed up at my parents' house, Nick and I were sat down on the kitchen table with him and what did he do? He rolled in a rack of samples.

Nick Friend: Imagine that, he rolled in a rack of samples.

Patrick Shanahan: Put the board short down on the table. He put the pant down on the table, he put the short down on the table. He's like, here's what these things have. Could you imagine we're flipping through a book? Www.I'mnotorderinganything.com, show me the damn samples.

Nick Friend: Show me the product.

Patrick Shanahan: And the fact that you can do it for such a minimal expense is like, I'm to the point now where they're gonna ask the questions and I'm going to say, you're not serious. Stop, but what about, what about, I just need to figure out what my niche is. Do you have samples? Then you're not serious, right? Like, I've got all this great work.

I get all the likes and comments and shares, I've won awards. You have samples? Then you're not serious, okay, you are not serious. If you don't have the product you're not gonna sell any of the product, okay. You're not going to sell the product just based on an image, it's just not gonna happen.

Nick Friend: Yeah, so get the product. You have to, you know what I mean? Like I get so fired up on it because it's like, do you know how, that's where I say, if you missed that do you know how like, you are probably missing 1,000 other common sense things. If that was like, if showing the actual product that you are asking your customers to buy and having the ability to show them and talk about it is something you missed you are likely missing 1,000 other very simple, common sense business things that are hurting your art business

and will in the future. That's why I went back to like the, you know, rather than trying to like, you know, it's like all you're doing is when you one little like nugget is like, you're almost not helping anybody, Pat. Because you gotta solve the bigger problem, do you know what I'm saying? It's like, you do it and I know you're being nice when you do it and we're trying to give value as much as possible.

But the truth of the matter is, is that it's like, there's 1,000 other things that like are probably common sense that are getting missed and they will be in the future. And you know, the only time we get so fired up is when it's something that is so basic it's simple, but yet 99.

9% of the industry is missing it, right? And then they wonder why they don't sell well. And then, you know what I mean, they wonder why, like they don't like do as well as some other people. Like the other people that are selling a ton, they're doing this.

Patrick Shanahan: I'm not mad at them because it's just, for whatever reason, it's not common knowledge. I don't understand why it's not common knowledge but it's just not common knowledge. And I'm talking, you know, I can point the barrel at everyone. And if that's the case it's just not common knowledge, the portrait photographer, okay, that's shooting my kids and I show up and there's not a table of all the media types, what are you doing?

Nick Friend: Unbelievable.

Patrick Shanahan: What are you doing?

Nick Friend: Never once has, has that ever happened to me, right? Like, I've gotten so many pictures taken of my family and my daughters, you know, I've got three little daughters, every one of them had baby pictures and all sorts of stuff. Never once out of these 10 sessions, Pat, was I ever shown a sample of a print right there on the spot or asked or offered to buy the prints, right.

It was always like, after the fact loaded up on a website with some weird experience, and we never bought anything. We never bought any prints for any of them, we just got the images and then we ended up just doing everything on our own. But it's just insane 'cause they'd left thousands of dollars on the table.

Like, thousands, you know? It's just incredible, just incredible.

Patrick Shanahan: It's just a disconnect, dude. It's a disconnect, it's a problem, and I feel like we're not gonna, I'm gonna have to continue attacking it and attacking it and attacking it. And you know, it should be mentioned too. Everyone's like, you know, I hear you guys with the live video all the time.

I don't know what content to do, I'm nervous on video. Turn the camera on and talk about the media types. There you go.

Nick Friend: Easiest thing ever.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, whole thing's done, written. Explain what you like about them, done. Show your work off, done. It's like, just go on and on and on. Anyway, I think that's the cheat sheet.

Nick Friend: I think we need to cover a whole lot more between now and then. Most important, like e-commerce website, have your samples do some sales.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, that's like the bare bones minimum. Like, if you do that you're gonna be better off than most people, right. But you're gonna leave a ton on the table, but like, bare bones, if you don't have that you're not serious, right, at all.

Like, I don't know what you're doing. You're a little bit lost, right? Like, whatever information you're taking in, whoever's giving you guidance, it might be nobody, is like, that's actually your biggest problem, right? This brings up a great point. Like, if you haven't been crushing it at the biggest art selling time of the year in 2019 and 2018, right? Like, if you don't know, if some of these things that we're talking about that we're getting all fired up on are not already common sense and you didn't do it,

you really need to like sit back and audit yourself, audit your whole life. Because look, a business is a machine that produces outcomes. Your job is to build the machine that produces outcomes. Okay, that's your job. And so like, your machine is broken, okay. You're the one running this machine and you need to audit like your entire situation, step back and realize like, wait a minute, what's the big thing, what are the bigger problems that are affecting me, right? Like, what were my decisions in 2020 and 2019, right?

What happened there, why did I make those decisions? Why was I not selling more than, why did I not have this information, right? Why did I not have better from it, what is that? Like, unless you solve that, you guys, unless you really solve that the machine's gonna continue doing what it does, right, it looks like it's different, but the machine is exactly the same.

All you did was you undid a screw in one area and you changed that silver screw for a black screw. You think you're like, okay, wait a minute, you know what, now that I got the black screw this whole machine is gonna produce different outcomes. No, it's not, it doesn't matter. Like, it doesn't matter whether you use MailChimp or this kit or that kit, you know, or this or that, or you did, you know, a social media at this time of day or that time of day, or, you know, it doesn't matter what it is.

It makes no difference because all you're doing is you're changing screws on a machine that is doing the exact same thing. That's it, it's gonna produce the exact same outcomes over and over until you understand, like, wait a minute, like maybe I gotta operate this machine a little differently.

Maybe we need a new machine.

Patrick Shanahan: Yup, yup.

Nick Friend: If you want a different outcome you're gonna have to audit that situation.

Patrick Shanahan: Let me tell you, as we grow in this, and as we continue to learn more, like, it is so true. Like what are the first three letters of assume, don't make one of those out of you and me.

Nick Friend: You cannot assume, you cannot assume that something is common knowledge. Because we keep peeling these layers back and there's just like a massive disconnect, like a massive disconnect. How the sample thing is such a problem and so just endemic to the entire fucking industry, I don't know, like where that disconnect could have possibly come from? Could you imagine the lady at Costco trying sell yogurt or trying to sell the cocktail weenies with none of them on the table to try?

Nick Friend: Unbelievable.

Patrick Shanahan: Oh, here's a picture of the cocktail weenies, here's a picture of the guacamole, here's a picture of the cheese. What, what, where did that come from?

Nick Friend: And like what's amazing though, what's amazing about this is the types of questions that we get and like the priorities, the things that people are panicked over, artists and photographers are panicked over or like, they feel like they gotta have the information on this one thing.

And it's like, they wanna do, like, for example, great example right here, right. Like, Facebook ads, right? Like, they're asking about Facebook ads and boosting posts and things like that. And it's like, you don't even have samples of your products. Like,

it's unreal, unreal what we're talking about here.

Like, the prioritizing things that like you're gonna burn money on, things that don't matter that are not right for you when you're missing the most basic foundational elements. You know what I'm saying? It's just incredible, and we hear it every single day. And by the way, on that note, we should say, we have a art business workshop for free for non-Art Storefronts customers tomorrow to help you guys, okay.

You should come. If you're listening to this, you should come, you will learn a ton, okay. You will at least for the two hours that these sessions run you're gonna be around high-quality thinking, you know, you're gonna hear like good information, answers to real problems from artists and photographers.

And like we have people who come to five to seven of these things, even before they even become a customer, just learning, just soaking it in, right. And so it's for you guys, it's our service to the industry. So, you know, tell a friend and be there. It starts at, it's gonna be tomorrow, Wednesday, at 11:00 AM, Pacific 1:00 PM Central, 2:00 PM Eastern.

Free art business workshop to get consulting. Sign up for our email list at artstorefronts.com, okay. Sign up for our email list and follow us on Facebook or Instagram because you'll probably get notified when we go live, or on Twitter or on YouTube either or, or any of these, you probably will get notified when we go.

Nick Friend: Yeah, hopefully they will notify you. But if you're on our email list that's where you'll get the link to the Zoom call. That's what we want you on because that way, like everybody turns on their cameras or a lot of people do. And then there's a feature that allows you to raise your hand and like actually talk to us, right, and ask our team questions, right? Our leadership questions about where you're at, you know, what you're struggling with, what's in your way so that you can get your problem solved.

So we want to see you there, guys. Like, look, the fourth quarter's right around the corner, the biggest art selling time of the year. If you were thinking about starting your business or, you know, like you're a photographer who maybe, you know, you were a vet photographer or something like that and you're looking to start your fine art business or you've been an artist or a photographer for a while, you've been killed by the galleries or the art shows.

Look, like nothing's gonna change unless you pick up, you know, pick yourself up, get out of your chair, you know, take action, take personal responsibility, and understand the market has shifted. You know what you need to do, go do it. There is no waiting around, the old ways is not coming back, as we were talking about, right.

The cities are boarded up. Think about New York, like I think about New York, right? Like some of the biggest galleries in the world. Dude, people are moving away from New York like by the thousands. The wealthiest people are like fleeing New York, right? This city is boarded up in many areas and it's only going to be even more.

The retail experience as a result of the retail apocalypse is going to be, it's not gonna be good. It's gonna be awful. So you just flat out cannot rely on that at all. You've gotta move forward. You have to move forward and go where the market is, right. I love the saying, like the Wayne Gretzky saying, skate where the puck is going, not where it was, right.

That's what you've gotta do. So, you guys, you know exactly what to do. What's that?

Patrick Shanahan: I gotta leave it there. I got the natives are restless out here and they're banging on my door.

Nick Friend: Well, we've gone at long enough, it's been almost an hour. Anyways, all right, yep, 30 days until Q4, guys, biggest art selling time of the year.

If you're interested in learning more about Art Storefronts request a demo, there's a link in this post and one of our team members will reach out to you, you know, and see what your goals are, take a look at your art, see if we can help you with the proper art gallery website and the ongoing business and marketing consulting that we provide to help you get more eyeballs on your art.

Patrick Shanahan: So yeah, if you're interested in learning more your next step is to request a demo and go from there. Otherwise, we will see you next time, guys, thank you.

Nick Friend: Yep, bye.

 Never forget it.