Perfectionism is Poison when it comes to building an Art Biz

In this episode, Patrick and Nick dive into how perfectionism can be a major hindrance when building an art business. They emphasize the importance of the 80/20 rule—focusing on getting 80% of a task done to achieve most of the value, instead of spending excessive time perfecting minor details. The duo promotes the idea of 'shipping' or executing tasks quickly, which in turn allows for more experiments and faster growth. They also discuss how live video sales and flash sales can significantly boost art sales. The importance of validating one’s art and continuously improving through practice and customer feedback is also explored.

Podcast Transcribe

Patrick Shanahan: So let's get into it here, right? Let's get into it. Perfectionism is poison when building an art business. There's a lot of things where perfectionism is actually handy. You know, certain trades, certain things, but obviously like, you know, if you're, if you're, if you're a painter, like, you know, there's probably some merit to that when you're getting really detailed and trying to make something perfect.

But when you actually, you know, mentally shift over to running the business and doing marketing, you know, and executing, that's where perfectionism really can hurt you. It can really, really hurt you. Okay. And the reason is because the areas where you, you know, have your perfectionist tendencies will get in the way of actually executing tasks.

And so when you add up all the time that you waste, like being a perfectionist in something on a specific project and you add up all of the projects, you will end up wasting years of your life on things that aren't actually going to move the needle, right? They're not going to have an impact.

And so that's the biggest, biggest lesson in this, right? Is that when you put on your business hat, when you take off your artist hat and you put on your business hat, you need to look at every, like every task that you're going to do and look for the 80/20 in it, right? The 80/20 Pareto's law, right? I say this all the time, but it's just such a great principle, such a great lesson, you know, and, you know, mental heuristic to have when you're operating your business.

And it means, and in this case, what it means is that like, when you're looking at doing something, some task or some project, you can, there's a way to get 80 percent of it done. Like think about it, like getting it to a B level, a B/B+ level. And that's where all the value is because that final 10 or 20 percent, you know, will take you so much time to get done. But the marginal benefit of that last 20 percent is so small that you barely get any benefit from it, right? 80 percent of the value is already there by just executing the task and getting the main part of it done.

And so if you get really good at understanding the 80/20 on any task or project, right? What ends up happening is you end up executing more. You end up shipping more, right? When we say shipping, we mean executing, running experiments, doing things right. And over time, the way that your business is really going to grow is based on the number of experiments, you know, or the number, the quantity of experiments, the quantity of things that you execute on over time. People that are able to execute on more given a fixed amount of hours than somebody else are going to get further, just how it goes. Take a thousand hours, right? One artist or photographer might spend that thousand hours getting three projects done, right? Because they're just perfectionists the whole way, right? And then there's only so much value that you'll get out of three projects.

Then there's somebody else that with that thousand hours might get a hundred projects done or 50. Who do you think is going to get further? Who do you think is going to get further? Right? It's obvious. And so we had a great art business morning session. For those of you who don't know, Patrick and I are doing, we have a show, Art Business Mornings, every Tuesday and Thursday at 9 AM Pacific, 11 Central, 12 Eastern, where, you know, bring in twice weekly. Yeah, Tuesday and Thursday, every Tuesday and Thursday, bring in your coffee. So we're having coffee. And we're discussing, you know, art business topics. And yesterday, the topic was, or actually it was on Thursday, I think, right? It was on running a flash sale. Right. And the reason wasn't necessarily to like teach everyone to run a flash sale, right? That's not what it was. It was about the fact that with our Art Storefronts members in our private consulting sessions, right, we noticed a pattern. And that pattern was we have these really high value marketing tactics that we want them to do, right? We call 'em playbooks, you know, it doesn't matter whether it's playbooks or like individual tactics.

But we want them doing these things. Right. And so we're teaching them how to do it. We're giving them the step by step we're answering questions and the questions that have been coming up were so small and minor right on some of these things. And then we noticed after the fact, we're like, Hey, did you get this done? Like to a specific artist? And they're like, no, I didn't because I couldn't get my landing page done. Or I couldn't figure out this. Or I didn't know what to do about this. And it was always like things that didn't even matter. They didn't even matter at all. And so the purpose of this flash sale session that we did in Art Business Mornings was to show everyone that like, you can do this right now, get all the friction out of the way. Right. And understand that like, you know, running the flash sale, you know, and just doing it that day was the most important thing. That was the 80 of the 80/20 of that, right? The 20 percent was, Oh, do I have a perfect landing page to send everyone to? And are all my links perfect? And do I have the payment form ready to go so I can collect payment? And then what do I do? Do I have to email beforehand or do I do it after? Like, do I go live on Instagram or Facebook or both or how, you know, or what software should I use? Or should I have a camera? I mean, all these different things. It's like, stop, get it out of the way. All that stuff doesn't matter. And it's preventing you from just going live. That's where all the value is, was actually just going live and running the flash sale.

Nick Friend: Yeah, and it's so counterintuitive, right? Again, I talked about the flash sale one, and it's the paradigm that it has to be perfect, that it has to be this big production and we've got to break it. We've got to break that. That's not what it is. That's not what it is. You have to run thousands of them. I keep saying it and saying it and saying it you have to run thousands of them. It is the future of selling art and photography online, full stop. No two ways about it. And, you know, there's so much that, that underlies us. Right. And like, I love being able to give this advice because why? What are we doing right now? We're live on all the platforms on a Saturday morning. Why is the price? It's the future. This is the future of marketing. It is an elevator that the doors are closing on the bottom floor. How high the tower goes. I do not know, but it is going to go so big. Every other company. He's going to figure this out soon. Every other company is going to be doing this all the time. Any, any company in which there's like any sort of explicative slash merchandising slash whatever you want to call it, you now, as a result of live video, have the ability to essentially open a store on main street of the internet and you can keep it open as much as you like, that is exactly. That is a crazy thing to say, but it is absolute truth. And, you know, there's, there's that saying that, you know, you take the most flack when you're over the target. Right. And in this case, we taught this thing. I taught this thing on a workshop first on one of our office hour sessions. And we did the art business mornings, which we got to get the link to it. If you've not seen the flash sale rant, you need to see it. It is, it's really good. And already. What are we seeing? Like the wins are coming in already and the exact how rewarding it is when you teach something in marketing. Okay. And by the six seconds after the words are out of your mouth. Somebody's doing one. Somebody's doing one, right? And I'll share, I'll share my screen. Instagram. You're not going to be able to see this, but I'll, I'll, I'll read it so you can hear it. And where is it? Here it is. Small win. And this was Andy Crawford's. And it was, it was so fun for me because I have this phone plugged in, right? Like right next to right next to my computer. And it's like on all the time. Like a phone would be like an apple store or like a Best Buy or something. And I actually saw him doing it. Okay. So I'm doing it and it's like small win and I'll, then I'll read the quote, but you can, you can see the screen share and stream yard. You know, I watched Patrick and Nick's illustrating how to run a flash sale was so pumped. I ran into my living room, grabbed a satin metal print off the wall, jumped onto Facebook and Instagram sold. Sold a returning customer who just received his first order from me immediately claiming the print. And just like that, I'm just 8 short of my annual revenue goal. And you know, you, you, you look at that, sorry for the inception there. You look at that and it's just, it's mind boggling. It's mind boggling, right? Like we figured out a way to rip out the procrastination to rip out the friction to rip out the perfectionism to use your title. He went online. He didn't stress about it. He ripped the painting off the wall and look what happened.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, exactly. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You're going to run thousands of them when you take that pill right when you take the red pill there and you swallowed it. It's like, oh my gosh, there was stress there. The stress is now gone. I don't have the stress. I don't have the friction. It's amazing.

Nick Friend: And you realize that like anything that's getting in the way, right? Like the things that you're trying to get perfect, they're just total poison because then you just, you lose out on the sale on the thing that you, the only thing that you're actually trying to get at the end. It's the only thing that matters, right? This is all these roadblocks, mental roadblocks are in your way and they don't even matter. And so they're just poisoning the whole process. You know, and it's just, it's such an amazing thing, right? Like, you know, everybody listening right now, every artist, every photographer that is listening right now, I'm going to tell you this, okay? You can sell a piece of your art today. Today. If you don't, it's on you. I'm not kidding. You go watch that and you should be able to sell one piece today. One piece today with exactly what we showed you how to do. We've had too many people have done it already. Too many people have done it, right? And listen, like be careful. Watch as your mind is starting to talk you out of it already. Already. Right. Oh, I got things to do. Which piece am I going to hit? Should it be this one? Should it be that one? What do I do? Do I go on my phone? Do I do this? Just do it. The only reason you did not sell one today is because of you. That's it.

Patrick Shanahan: That's it. You don't have any of your product in your house. In which case we got a problem a little bit higher up on the funnel.

Nick Friend: That's exactly right. Like this, that's why this is so important. That's why it's so important to get out of the way. Like, why can't you sell one today? Right? Oh, you don't have the product? Well, that's a huge problem. You can't even show your customers what product you're selling. Right. So you got to solve that. So you got problems before the problem, you know, but get the perfectionism out of the way and understand that right now, today, whether you are a photographer, whether you're a painter, whether you're a sculptor, I don't care what, what it is. You can sell something today and you should, and there's nothing stopping you. If you, the vast majority of you will, if you take our advice and watch that session and just do it, we got to pull it up and just throw it in the comments here. We will do it. You guys. But by the time this session is done or a few minutes after we'll pull that thing up and we'll, we'll drop the link in the comments for you, put it in the link tree too.

Patrick Shanahan: So it's in there. But you know what I'll say? And I don't want to sound harsh when I say this. Okay. I don't want to sound harsh. I think, I think my character is well known because I do this enough times. So I'm going to, what I'm going to say here is I'm going to say with love, right? No disclaimers week after week. After a week, after a week, it doesn't matter if you're leaving me a Facebook comment, it doesn't matter if you're responding to an email, you're sending me an email, it doesn't matter if you're going into Messenger, and you're telling me all these things, I want to sell my art, I want to get started, I need to narrow down and figure out what niche I have, uh, uh, I've got some big pieces and some old inventory, and can you guys help me, uh, uh, and then, you know what the next iteration is? You post images of it and send it to me like I'm supposed to jury your art or something or I'm supposed to look at it and tell you what I think of it, right? Because you're looking for a little feedback, right? You're just looking for a little bit of that. And in every instance, I want to, I just want to sit there and go, you're not serious. Quit bsing yourself and quit bsing me and quit wasting my time and your time. Do you think you're going to sell your art? By coming to a company like this or somewhere else and posting your posting your image in the Facebook comments, you might, but that's not the way to do it. It's not a good use of your time, right? Like grab whatever you have, turn on the damn cell phone, start talking about it and then go do it 1000 times. That's how you'll find out. Whether or not your art is good enough, not by posting on someone's Facebook page, take a look at my art, or I do some really interesting things. Can I send it to you? No, you can't send it to me, turn it on and sell it. And if you don't have your art, like, look, if you're a painter, you have your art, you create, it's called originals. If you're a photographer, or if you're a painter and you don't have some reproductions of it that you can sell for like a lower price point, right? You know, if you're a painter and you're selling originals for 5,000, you better have some prints too, because you want a lower price point. But if you don't have any of that and you're claiming, you know, you want to get started and you don't know where to get started,

Patrick Shanahan: What does it cost to get a print? What does it cost?

Nick Friend: And guess what? It costs to go live. Nothing, nothing. Talk about it and see if anyone will buy it. Turn exactly. The point is, is that we now have a mechanism and we now have, uh, some posts to, to point people to that says, Patrick, I want to sell my art. I want to, I want to take my career to the next step. Nick. Fantastic. Go watch that and do it today. Today. Today. Today.

Patrick Shanahan: Exactly. Because here's the thing, you guys, nobody is going to tell you whether your art is going to sell. Okay. Because you, you, no, no, no, no, but here's, here's the big thing behind it, right? Here's the big thing behind it is that you, if you ask that question, you have the complete wrong mindset about how business works. Complete wrong mindset because the, because you're asking, like, will my art, like, will my art sell? Like, do you think it will sell as if it's going to be like, like this thing where you just like, kind of like upload it to a website and it's like a passive thing. And it's like, do you think the market, like if I just put it out there, like the market's just going to like buy it. Do you think that, right? And that is like, it's, that is exactly the opposite of how business works, how selling art works. Right. If you have to get it out there, you have to market it. You have to sell it. All right. So if you can't do that, you'll never have a business. You'll never have a business. You have to sell the art. Now I don't mean like a salesperson, right? Like, like you have to push it on people, but you have to actually talk about it. What was the inspiration? You know, get it out there, show that you can actually do it. Otherwise, why even start a business? Don't fool yourself. Don't even fool yourself. Right. And so that's not the way. So the way that it works is you got to get out there. You know, Patrick, when you go live on Facebook or Instagram, we're talking about, you get to go live, you know, you get to open up your retail store on main street of the internet. Right. And under normal times, non pandemic times, what we would tell people to do is actually go down to main street, right. Go to an art show in real, you know, in physical. Uh, person, um, and yeah, farmer's market, wherever, I mean, if you're like on the, like, if you're in like, uh, you know, Venice beach, like stand on the boardwalk. Like where's main street stand out there until they tell you to leave. And go with three pieces and try to sell them, you know, give people a great deal, just validate your art and get it done. Do it today. Do it today. If you can't do that, then you have the wrong, like you've got the wrong ingredients for where you're trying to get to. This is not like a, Hey, I wonder if my photography will sell, go and sell it today. You'll get your answer. Right. And so there's nothing stopping any of you. From selling something today, nothing. Okay. And so, um, yeah, you got to watch that. We're showing you how to do it. And the thing that we show you how to do is exactly what you can do in person as well. If you by any chance have the possibility of being in person, it's the same principle, right? But stop asking people to look at your work and judge your work, get out of your chair and get out there and try to sell it because that's all we care about. That's all we care about at Art Storefronts. Hey, when are you, you know, people ask us, when am I ready for Art Storefronts? Like when am I, and it's like, all we care about is that you've actually gone out there and sold your work, right? Two pieces, three pieces to someone that's not mom or dad or your best friend, right? Like to a stranger, you know, that's all we care about because that's all that matters. If you're dancing around that and you're hiding from that, you're not getting anywhere. You're only fooling yourself. You got to get out there and actually make that happen until you do. Like you're going to have problems, you know, but you can do it today. You can literally do it immediately. And then you've got the validation and you're ready to go after this business. How amazing is that? How amazing is that? You're literally at that moment. Like, okay, now I can give this, like I validated my product, which is what you're supposed to do when you start any business. Okay. As an entrepreneur, you validate your product and then you invest a little bit into it and you give it a shot. Right. And it may work and it may not, you may end up only making some decent side income. You may do extremely well and it might become your full time job. It doesn't, you never know. That's going to come down to your skill. As a business person, right, it's going to come down to how you execute, how much time you put into it, how much you care about your audience and your customers, you know, all these different factors, right? But you're ready to give it a shot

Nick Friend: Yep. And, and, you know, people are asking, like, let me, let me, let me just lay this on the line because it helps to do it visually and I'm getting a link and I'm putting the link in the comments because people are asking for it. Do you have a PayPal or a Venmo account? Yes. Good. If not, do you have the home address? Yes. Good. Do you have a piece of artwork? Yes. Good. Talk about, grab the phone, go to your social site. Which one do you have the most following on? You can do this on your personal Facebook page. If you don't even have the business page, you can do this on your Instagram account. You can do this on your Facebook business page, grab the phone, go live, talk about the piece of art. Talk about the fact that it's ready to hang. Let people know you signed it on the back. This is not my art, by the way. Talk about your inspiration. Where you were when you created it. Let people know that it normally sells for such and such. Let people know that you're looking to get your art business off the ground. Let people know that if they're stuck in their homes with these white walls and they're on Zoom calls and nobody wants to look at that busted ass background that they have, then you get them this nice piece of art. You show it to them. You say it's ready to go. Oh, by the way, the flash sale ends at the end of this video or not. I don't care, but hold it. Talk about it. If you have excess inventory, let people know that you're gonna have the basement blowout sale. That you're having a garage sale, all extra art, get ready to get your zoom background sorted. And if you don't have it and you can't show it, you're not in the game, but look at how quick I just did that. I just did that right now. I could probably sell 50 pieces of art today just by doing 50 in a row, just going flash sale status, everything must go. Well, how are you going to take payment, Nick? Send me a DM on Instagram. If you're on Instagram, send me an email. Here's my email address, write it on a piece of paper and show it. Like here's my PayPal address. Here's my phone number. Here's my phone number. Call me. Remember when we used to do that? Pick phone calls. It's awesome. Works. It turns out, you know, there is, there is literally no. And when I say no, I mean zero friction in this at all. It is the single, solitary, easiest thing to do. You can do it at any time, at any moment, for any reason. Yesterday was National Dog Day. Guys, I've got a dog. I love him. I'm having a flash sale. It's not anything more than that. Straight up. Right? And it's like, look, guys. I've been an artist for 20 years. I've got a ton of art that has been sitting in my basement. My spouse has finally told me it's either me or the art. So the art has got to go. No reasonable offer to be refused. Make me an offer. Okay, Matthew Laca did this with, with, with his basement art, right? Did he build a web page? He didn't, although he's starting to build them now on his new shows. Did, uh, did he do any big planning? No, he didn't. He started with the premise. I've been an artist for many years. I've got art all over my walls. I got art all over in my basement. It's got to go. You know, his husband said he wanted it out of there. It's got to go. And what did he do? He had a basement sale. And what does a basement sale evoke? A deal. And who likes, who likes a deal? Everybody, everybody. And so it, the larger point is I could come up with right now, 55 creative ways to pitch this. Okay. Uh, uh, preseason soccer started today. I'm a huge Chelsea fan. I'm having a soccer blowout sale for today. And today only the next 24 hours, anything that I show show on this live show. You can get for 70 percent off, 30 percent off, 20 percent off. None of it matters. Fundamentally, people need to understand this. A deal. Okay, a sale has two components. It has incentive. Okay, an incentive can be percentage off. Incentive can be, uh, uh, um, free shipping. Incentive can be anything. All it is, is an incentive to get people to ask. And the second thing it has is scarcity, i. e. a window of time that is going to close. Okay. You put those two things combined. You talk about your art, whatever you've got going on. It's got to get off my walls. Uh, Hey, uh, Nick, people have been telling me your zoom background looks ridiculous. Let me help you out with it. We'll call it a zoom background sale. I don't care what you do, get a little creative and hammer it, hammer it. It's that simple. It's that simple. Like, look, here's lean Pat. I have a whole room of art upstairs. So get it, put it all in a room, get your phone or lock, leave it on the wall, wherever it is, like show it off and start selling it. And Oh, by the way, if you do, just to give you some fun facts, the minute the pandemic hit art sales exploded, everything in the home decor section is exploding. It is selling at. Crazy, crazy clips and guess what? Where, where can you go to get art right now? There's shows. Nope. Closed. Okay. Closed. Uh, uh, the galleries, majority, I'm closed out of business, right? I had a terrible conversation with one of our customers that has this wonderful relationship with a gallery and the gal that runs the gallery is like, I had to lay off everybody, um, renegotiated on my lease right now. Uh, I don't know when we can next have a show. I need to sell some art to even get my employees back in. Like it's, it's bad out there, but art is still being sold. So if you can't get yours to market, then you're in trouble. Then you're in trouble. So get out of, get, get out of your own way. Okay. Get over yourself that you look like crap on video and do it and do it. That's what I got. We got Joseph on.

Patrick Shanahan: In one second that we have, uh, on, on Twitter, we've got, uh, Maurice asks, what's the number one thing an aspiring professional artist needs to know or do this. This, this is it. Everything that we've just talked about today, right? Yes. That's the, this is the number one thing, right? So if you're aspiring, I'm assuming that you haven't really sold your work, um, and, uh, and validated that people will buy it. Right. So this is what you need to do today, today. Right. Get it like follow this exactly. And, um, and that's your next step because everything else doesn't matter. Nothing else matters, right? You're wasting your time.

Nick Friend: Nope, that's the ballgame. And, and like, look, you know, okay, so, okay, so Maurice, so this is a perfect example. What's the number one thing an aspiring professional artist needs to know, do? You need to validate your art, and then you need to start selling your art, and then you need to start marketing your art, and you need to do it today. Literally today, today, how many, how many artists photographers out there? And by the way, this is not the pot calling the kettle black. Like I could turn the mirror on myself and look at 20 years of my life of doing this perpetually, right? Perpetually, you know, we're all farmers, right? We're all just essentially farmers and we live way out of town, right?

Way out of town. And we got to grow the thing. And then we got to harvest the thing, and then we got to load it up on the wagon, and then we got to drag it all the way down to the market, and then we got to sit in the market, and hope it was a good day, and things sold, and then come back. Are you kidding me? Now, with the interwebs, and the power of the interwebs, all we have to do is press a button on our cell phone and start talking. And that's it, instantaneously. And this works, by the way. You know, this works just as well for someone that's just getting started as someone who's really well established. Like, you know, I talked to Locka yesterday, right? And I'm like, dude, what are you working on? You know, you just had your big show. He's like, you know, I need to, I need to find a new direction. He's like, I'm going to look for some inspiration. So I'm just going to start painting. Okay. Okay. Well, then guess what? Paint. And take it online right away and see what kind of feedback you get. Am I on the right direction with this? Yes or no. And then paint the next one. Am I on the right direction with this? Yes or no. Turns out he does that four or five times. Something's going to pop, okay? And whatever pops, he just got his feedback. He now knows his direction. Instead of sitting in the studio for another six months painting 50 of them, he's got massive validation. This is the direction I need to be going, right?

Patrick Shanahan: Or, or, or even better, even better what we need to tell him to do is, you know, ask, ask the audience, what would you like to see from me next? And whoever I, I'm gonna pick from any of this, like make it a little contest, whoever wins will get a free print of whatever I end up painting. Yep. I mean, start with the market and move backwards.

Nick Friend: Yes. Yes. Look at, look at David, right? Like, yes. And David, you get it. Like now go do a thousand of them. Okay. And, and, and, and, and let me just push my right here. I don't care. Okay. If you don't sell on the first 50 of them, I do not care. I still find it to be a worthwhile activity. Why?

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah.

Nick Friend: Because, because you suck at selling your art. I already know this. You don't have to tell me. Okay. You suck at merchandising your art too. Because you suck at the both of them. Okay. You're a bike. It still has the trading wheels on it. You want to get those training wheels off? Ride it up and down the street all over the place, fall over a couple of times, fall flat on your face a couple of times, get some feedback, get back, get the training wheels off your bike. This is a new world. No one's going to sell your art for you. You learn how to sell. You need to learn how to sell. You need to learn how to merchandise. You suck at selling and you suck at merchandising. I know. I know. I talked to hundreds of you guys a week in, week out. Okay, you know, we should do we should have an exercise where we pull people in one at a time, and they have one minute to pitch their art for us. We run some sort of workshop like that, some sort of boot camp, you know, like those berries boot camps and everyone's out there jumping and yelling and he hon in the streets. I'll do one of those with artists. Okay, I'll get my training gear on. I'll get a whistle. Go, you're 30 seconds. I don't say it jokingly. I'm serious. I'm serious.

Patrick Shanahan: No, I know.

Nick Friend: Oh, I don't trust you. These, these are the reps and sets that you guys need to get good at selling. And when you get good at it, it's so subtle. It's so smooth. I'm sitting here talking like this and I just roll right into it. I don't even realize I'm selling and I'm selling right. Like it has to become. second nature. And the only way it's going to become second nature is if you practice it. And back in the day to practice it, you had to load your car up. Okay, you had to, you had to, you had to have everything in the back of the Honda Accord. You had to drive down somewhere where you paid for a booth. You had to sit on your feet for eight hours right in the hot sun, break that thing down, waste a saturday and come back. And maybe you got a whole bunch of reps and sets in there. And that's fantastic, right? That's incredible. But now with the interwebs, with the power of the Internet, you're just there instantaneously. You get a rep in, you get a set in, it doesn't even matter who's watching. You need to get comfortable doing this.

Patrick Shanahan: You know, what's really interesting is that like, we're going to have to test this. We're going to have to test what I'm about to say, but you may be more successful. Like you may, you may sell more by just offering one piece a day. Like, and doing like doing like 10 flash sales a month. And like just, like, if you're not selling 10 pieces a month right now, you probably could go live with a unique item, you know, 10 times, right? Like, you know, one item each day. That's all there is. You know, and sell that item on the spot. And then three days later, you do it again. And then three days later, you do it again. Like you, you may sell more doing that than anything you're doing right now. Like seriously, it's a very interesting concept.

Nick Friend: Do you realize what we could do right now? We could start a marketplace, a giant e-commerce store. Where there is no visual item on it at all. All it is, is a collection of artist videos, a giant grid of artist videos by style, where they pitch it in 30 seconds or less. Imagine a store like that. How engaging would that be? How engaging would that be?

Patrick Shanahan: Yep, and it's gone by the end of the day, right? Gone by the end of the day. So, so hey, uh, Debra, Katie, some of the ArtStoreFront's members that are on here, Jonah as well. Jonah, you gotta do this. You gotta do a flash sale today. All right. Sell one of your pieces for sure. Today, today, like every, every art storefronts member that is, that is listening to this should do this today or as quickly as possible. Okay. But, but I was going to say, you know, any of you guys, um, Katie, Deborah, you know, Kim, anybody that's on here, any art storefronts members, like if you want to try that, try this like you, you know, Andy who just people who have done the flash sale. If you sold your item, do it again. Three days later. And do another one and then do another one. I want to see, I want to see if it stops. Or I want to see if you continue selling every single time. It just needs to be tested. I'd love to see a 30 day. I'd love to see somebody do it for like 30 days and do like 5 of them or 10 of them. Right. One unique, awesome item, one print. Right. And, and, and, and, you know, articulate it the right way, you know, sell it the way that you know how, that we've taught you how and try to get all of them sold. It's a great experiment because these things are selling like it works. This concept works. Right. And so why would you not open up your store onto main street of the internet? Right. Which is going live on Facebook, Instagram. Why would you not do that and have one item that you love? That you can like make a little bit unique and add some value to and then sell it to somebody. Like you should be able to do that. There should be no problem with doing that.

Nick Friend: Yeah. And, and even if you don't sell and, and, and to be honest with you, the results are already clear as day, like the feedback that we're getting, like it's working right out of the gates on, on the first try, on the first try where they've ever even done it, which is amazing. But even if you don't, I'm telling you, you're going to get better and better and better and more comfortable and your heart rate won't go up and you won't care about the technical issues of what happened with the phone. And one day, you know, um, somebody on, so Maurice is asking about pricing. It's like, no one can tell you what your pricing should be. Only the market can tell you what your pricing should be. One great way to validate. I would grab the same piece and go live 25 times with the same piece with 25 different prices. I don't care. That's how you test. You don't know what you don't know. Right? Like no one, no one is going to see it either. And this is the other thing, like everyone thinks, and let me give you the, the, the sort of abstraction of it. Everyone thinks like sending two emails a week, I can't send two emails a week. I already sent an email to my list. The last thing I want them to do is get sick of me. They didn't see your email. No one's seeing your email. We are all extremely busy human beings. Do you think I look at every piece of the email? No one looks at every piece of the email. So when you get that in your head that they did not see it, whatever you did, they did not see it. Okay. You had a flash sale with this piece. No one saw it. Do another one. No one saw that one either. Okay. Yeah. Or a few people maybe saw it. It's you just, it's another one of those BS friction points that we need to snatch right out of the drain. Right.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. And resist the urge to ask any further questions on this. You guys resist the urge, right? What should I price it at? Just price it. Don't we don't care. Just price it. You know, any question that comes in your head is it's a nut. This is where the perfectionism is coming in, right? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Just price it. And then the next time price it higher. If you thought it was too low, if it's sold in like a second, you know, and then price it higher, the market will tell you what the price of your specific art should be. Your specific art is its own unique product. That it cannot be compared to anyone else's. Okay. And it's, it's, it's your pricing and the pricing that you, that you will command over time will be dependent on the quality of the imagery, right? You, how good you can, you can, you can sell it, describe it, talk about the inspiration, all of that, that whole package determines the price of your art, not just the image itself. And you, you don't like so early on when you're not good at marketing it. And selling it and stuff like that. Like you're going to obviously probably command a much lower price point, but over time you'll get way better and you can, you know, inch it up, but resist the urge to ask any question because that's going to stop you from doing the flash sale today, just do it, pick a price, doesn't matter what it is. As long as you're not losing money, you're good to go.