How To Run Flash Sales with Live Video
In this episode of Art Business Mornings, Patrick and Nick discuss the concept of flash sales and how live art shows can revolutionize selling art and photography. They emphasize the importance of removing friction in the sales process and provide actionable advice for artists to start live selling immediately. Through engaging anecdotes, including an example of a high school paradigm story, they debunk the traditional paradigm of art shows requiring extensive planning. Instead, they advocate for consistently doing smaller, impromptu shows to build skill, comfort, and audience engagement. They demonstrate live flash sales themselves, highlighting the ease and effectiveness of the method. Patrick and Nick stress the importance of persistence, practice, and direct customer engagement in making live sales successful.
Podcast Transcribe
Patrick Shanahan: One second, Instagram, we're gonna get rolling. All right. Coming up on today's edition of the Art Business Mornings, we're talking about flash sales, specifically, you want to try lives. You need a creative way that will remove friction and how to do just that, with a little ship-it thrown in for good measure.
(coffee machine steaming) (coffee dripping)
Nick Friend: Morning. Got your cup?
Patrick Shanahan: Yeah.
Nick Friend: Yeah.
Patrick Shanahan: Love it. All right, welcome to another edition of Art Business Mornings. The show, okay, that will put you on the path to a six-figure a year plus art business. Now, you know when you have a moment in school and it sticks with you for whatever reason, you know? I was super into mountain biking when I was in high school, actually still super into bikes now that I think about it, anyway, I was in high school auto shop class of all places, okay? And the teacher was teaching us what a paradigm was, right? And I know this is weird in an auto shop class, I don't know what this guy was doing, but, as an example, he asked, "What are bicycle seats called?" "What are bicycle seats called?" And I knew bikes, so I answered, right? A saddle.
Nick Friend: He's like "Correct." You know, I felt all smart. Um. And he goes "Why?" He goes "Do you know why?" And he goes "This is an example of a paradigm." Okay? He said, "So where did it come from?" It came from horses. Everyone used to ride horses. And so if you were riding a horse, what were you sitting on? A saddle. So when the bikes came along, and here you are riding this thing that's similar to a horse, the seat became a saddle. That was it, okay? So, just an example of a paradigm. They're powerful. They end up becoming like extremely entrenched mental models for things, right? Like this thing was thought of as a saddle, now it's always gonna be a saddle. We don't think it's a saddle, it's a seat, it's a saddle, right?
Patrick Shanahan: Okay fine, let's pivot to the art world. Nick and I rant nonstop about doing live shows, okay? We eat our own dog food. We're live now, we're live five to six days a week, sometimes multiple times per day, so we're living it, okay? That's an important thing to me. We are living it. There's no guru BS going on here. We are living it daily, okay? Do that and you'll earn a lot! Bolster that with twice weekly office hours with our customers and you learn what is preventing folks from doing that, okay? Where the friction exists in the process of going live. So we're back to our paradigm, all right? Let's go back to our paradigm.
Live art shows, okay the live part is not the paradigm, the art show part is. What an art show evokes in our minds is what we've done in the past. Read big setup, big preparation, weeks and months of planning, thinking everything through, right? Like read, like an extremely friction-filled process, okay? That is the paradigm of the art show, okay? So, I teach our customers how to do them. What do they tell me? Patrick, I was nervous. I had tech issues, but it was fun. Sometimes sold well on the very first one, sometimes not. I say great, fantastic, well-done. Now go do 1,000 of 'em, okay? Now go do 1,000 of 'em. And I'm usually met with a blank stare, okay? Imagine that. (Nick laughing) 1,000 of them, and I'm not kidding, why? It's the future of selling photography and art, not just online, period.
Period. We need to break the paradigm, okay? The lens that an art show needs to have a ton of planning and properly selected works, the agenda, the food setup, all of it, we need to break that completely, okay? The success of the live art show concept, or the flash sale, and really the lives in general, okay? It's less about one big show, okay? And more about thousands of little ones.
Let me say that again, it's not about one big show, or one big show a quarter, or one big show a month, it's about thousands of little shows. Thousands. Why? Why? Okay? Lots of reasons. One, they take practice. Two, you suck at selling your art and you need work. How to quote price, how to talk about it, all of the various different aspects of selling.
Also, you suck at merchandising, you need to work at that. I see all you doing your merchandise and you're terrible at it. It takes learning, okay? I'm gonna be critical, but it's truth, okay? You're gonna run into tech issues. You need to learn how to deal with them and not let them fluster you, not let them get your heart rate up, not ruin the show, okay? You likely do not have a career in broadcast TV, okay? Turns out you don't! I don't! Nick doesn't! Understanding things like timing, transitions, segue,
how to prevent dead air. No dead air, okay? How to think on your feet, how to roll with the punches, all takes practice. The next one, I lost whatever my numbering was. You don't have a huge social following on the platforms anyway, okay? So you need to build that up. The lives help, okay? You need to learn how to sort out your shtick.
Get comfortable, get comfortable being you. Test your jokes, see what resonates. Uh, uh, uh. It's just an additional email. Each one of these is just an additional email. It's just a content touch, okay? I mean, let me just frame this out for you, I mean, we go live, we create a playbook, we teach a playbook, we get in an office hours session, and with one of our customers, I hear from this brilliant lady in her late 60's that could just as easily have been my mom or Nick's mom, and this quote, I'm not kidding,
is near verbatim from earlier in this week, okay? To the best of my memory. Telling me how her first show went. "Patrick, I went live. "I had some tech issues. "I was nervous as hell, but I did it. "I had fun now. "I actually sold three pieces. "I finished the video, I downloaded it, "I saved it to Instagram TV, "it went into my Instagram feed", she's telling me all this, "I placed the IG TV video into my story "like you showed me to on the playbook"
Nick Friend: Amazing.
Patrick Shanahan: "And then I posted the video "on Facebook and emailed my list." Did you get all of that? Jaw dropped to the floor. A woman our mother's age just did all of that. And let me just, ask yourself for a moment out there, okay? Is your content marketing game that strong? Is it even close to that strong? Let me answer for you, ish don't think so.
It's not. I know it's not. It's not even close, right?
Nick Friend: That's impressive.
Patrick Shanahan: Absolutely amazing. So impressive. And look it's fishing, okay? The live sessions are just fishing. If the goal is to catch fish, it stands to reason the person who has a line in the water more will likely beat out the one that doesn't, okay? More lives, more lines in the water.
You're gonna have your big art show. I'm gonna have my big art show, okay? And that's the day that I'm gonna go fish. I'm gonna spend weeks and months planning for it and getting everything dialed and then that's it. Nick on the other hand is gonna do thousands of 'em. Well guess what? What happens if on the day that I go to do my live art show there's not that many fish in the water and they're not biting? You on the other hand because you're doing the thousands, there's gonna be people just all over it,
all over it, and all over it. So it's just fishing. Those are a lot of the reasons, there's even more I could go into. I'm gonna leave it there for now. When you start looking at things, okay, at the lives, at selling art and photography through this lens, it's when things crystallize for you, okay? You have the proverbial ah-ha moment, right? The live broadcasts themselves, they're just golf clubs, okay? They're just golf clubs.
Play the game of golf, you need a bag full of clubs, right? There are different shots that you need to make at different times in the game, okay? The lives are just no different. Is there a club for the big production, thought out, suit on, wine poured, formal art show, the one wood? Yeah, there is. There is.
But there's also a club for the one-on-one, the live video. You talking to an individual customer, showing them your pieces, there's a club for that. Is there a club for the zero prep, moment of inspiration hit the live button and go for it? There is, there's a club for that one too. Is there a club for flash sales? You better believe it is.
So, now is when we get into flash sales, okay? Let me define 'em and then I'm gonna ambush you a little bit Nick, so prepare yourself. Um. A flash sale as we define them, okay? A spur of the moment sale, short duration, usually isolated to a particular piece or media type or image category, okay
? Usually lasts much shorter in, you know, in duration than the bigger sales, okay? What are the nuts and bolts of an art sale? We went over this a couple of weeks ago.
Incentive plus scarcity, okay? The discount is an incentive. The scarcity is the fact that the flash sale is gonna end really, really quickly. You combine those two, you have the requisite motivation to coax the proverbial credit card out of the purse of the wallet, all right? Now, taught this live, the flash sale, okay? Spur of the moment on Tuesday.
Nick, I don't even know if you saw this yet. Taylor from my team shared me the following from Mickey Shanks, shoutout to Mickey Shanks, hopefully no shanks on the golf course. Today, and 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 metal print.
Bam! Sold. Yay. A win, right? So, let's obliterate the friction and show how easy this is, okay? We're gonna go impromptu right now, okay? And run one. I'm gonna run a flash sale and then Nick's gonna run one. You have something you can sell there?
Nick Friend: Sure.
Patrick Shanahan: Fine, you find something. I got one. So, I'm gonna run mine first, okay? Show you how simple this is. Eat our own dog food, okay? And then I'll finish mine off, you run yours, deal?
Nick Friend: Deal, go.
Patrick Shanahan: What's up Facebook? What's up Instagram? Patrick here from Patrick's Beachside Photography. Just got back from the Turks and Caicos, had to take a boat to get there to avoid the COVID nonsense, there was no mask rule on the boat, it was awesome.
And I took this photograph. Can you see it? I'm trying to show it on Instagram. Here it is. Beautiful, the green screen might be making it look a little wonky. Beautiful sunset on the beach. Turns out my printer's a bonehead, okay? I put in an order for one of these, he sent me 20. I said, "I didn't order 20! I ordered one!" He goes, "You got 20!" So, I normally sell these things, okay? $399 dollars.
Canvas gallery wrap, edge-to-edge, nice metal here, ready to hang. I can even hand sign it on the back if you'd prefer, or a special message in here. I normally sell these things for $399 dollars. Because I have the extras, I'm gonna start selling them for $150 bucks. Here's the kicker though, in true flash sale fashion, it ends the minute that this live broadcast ends.
So in order to get in on the sale all you have to do, send me a message DM, here on Instagram. You can send me a message on Messenger. You can send me an email. I've got a link in the bio. I can hold up a piece of paper with my phone number on it if you'd like. But let me just tell you the story, quickly, of how I got this incredible shot, right? The trade winds were blowing, I just finished up, you know, a lovely little rum punch, umbrella in the drink, the whole thing, and I had to usher some kids who were playing soccer
off the beach here. I actually had to challenge them to a game of one-on-one and I won because I'm really good at soccer. These kids didn't have it coming. So I'm telling my story, and that's it you guys. That's the end of the flash sale. If you want it, I'm gonna stay on for a few extra minutes.
I.e. I'm inserting some stories, some romance, about where this image came from. The why? The how? I'll ship it to you. Ready to hang too. Ready to hang, right? Like, get rid of your ugly Zoom background and get this beautiful piece of paradise on your wall, right? Like how much happier do you feel when you see paradise Nick? It's great.
Nick Friend: I loved paradise. I wanna be on that beach again. I miss it already.
Patrick Shanahan: So, that's it you guys. The flash sale is gonna end in just a few minutes. I will honor anybody that leaves a comment, okay? Or sends me an Instagram direct message, or does any variation thereof, and stay tuned for more flash sales to come in the future.
That's it guys. Thanks for watching. I'm out. (picture thudding)
Nick Friend: Well done!
Patrick Shanahan: I prepared none of that. I'm not even saying it was good, but I shipped it didn't I?
Nick Friend: Exactly.
Patrick Shanahan: I just shipped it.
Nick Friend: And every single person could do that literally right now.
Patrick Shanahan: Yep.
Nick Friend: Literally.
Patrick Shanahan: Right now!
Nick Friend: You know what I mean?
Patrick Shanahan: Nothing.
Nick Friend: With nothing but your cellphone.
Patrick Shanahan: With nothing. Nothing.
Nick Friend: All right, go.
Patrick Shanahan: Okay?
Nick Friend: Go.
Patrick Shanahan: All right, so I've got a set of coasters here, okay? Fine art coasters, right? You guys, I'm feeling really good today and I think that these are absolutely amazing and what I'm gonna do, I normally sell these for $50 dollars, but I am hand signing every single one of these, okay? Every single one of these.
Let me show you. Let me show you how great these are, right? They got a nice gloss level to 'em, really high-end, right? My photograph's on there, okay? There's the thickness. There's the cork backing. It's a set of four, okay? It's a set of four. There's a different image on each one and um, yeah, so since these are signed by me they would probably go for about $75 dollars each, but today, I have one set right here, okay? I'm gonna let one person, the first person, who's the first person that wants it for $35 dollars?
Okay? $35 dollars, one set of coasters right here. All right? And if you have any questions let me know, but the first taker's gonna get these babies and just so you know, the signature, it's not gonna come off. So it's like a limited edition, you've got 'em signed by me, you know, a set of my fine art coasters.
I don't even sell 'em signed on my website. You can't even go there and buy 'em on my website. This is a one-off, you know, so it's only today, so let me know who wants one.
Patrick Shanahan: Hold on, hold on, don't end the stream. Don't end the stream 'cause I'd really, I'd really like to get those.
Nick Friend: How can I get 'em? How can I get 'em?
Patrick Shanahan: Just PayPal me right now. I'll DM you my PayPal.
Nick Friend: Perfect. Perfect. Love to do PayPal.
Patrick Shanahan: Done.
Nick Friend: That's fantastic. I'm absolutely gonna love these. I'm absolutely gonna love these.
Patrick Shanahan: Yeah.
Nick Friend: To be honest--
Patrick Shanahan: So there ya go.
Nick Friend: The comments are exploding on this one like I've never seen.
Patrick Shanahan: You and I should probably run 20 of 'em back to back with every single solitary piece that we have in our houses. It's that easy. It's that easy.
Nick Friend: Yeah.
Patrick Shanahan: At the end, you press end, okay? At the end, you press end. The key here is you remove any friction at all. I mean--
Nick Friend: Yeah.
Patrick Shanahan: On Nick's, I didn't even tell him he was gonna do this until 30 seconds ago.
Nick Friend: And he had to find the coasters and go and do it. Janine's making fun of you 'cause she says you love those coasters. (Patrick laughing) But--
Patrick Shanahan: It's the only thing I have here.
Nick Friend: Yeah, I gotta ship you some of the smaller pieces. The large--
Patrick Shanahan: Yeah.
Nick Friend: And you know, and I see some of the questions that are coming in.
Patrick Shanahan: Number one, ship one today. Stop listening--
Nick Friend: Yeah. Exactly.
Patrick Shanahan: Like we mentioned, some people are--
Nick Friend: Just ship one today.
Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, some people are gonna be listening to this on the podcast after the fact, if you're on the podcast, just come to Facebook, come to Instagram and look at it. It'll say flash sales and it'll walk you through the whole thing.
Nick Friend: Well one, ship one today. Remove all friction. We don't care how you take payment. PayPal, if you want to send 'em to your site, if you're an Art Storefronts customer, you can send 'em to the site and have them do the transaction. You remember back in the day, we used to take credit cards over the phone? Do that.
Patrick Shanahan: You want to send me a check. Do that. Venmo, possibility. Doesn't matter. The idea is you removed the friction. Look, you're not gonna be selling hundreds of pieces, okay? Chat people up, send 'em to your website, do whatever, just make it easy. Now, for those, hi Marie Stephens. What if you run one and it's crickets, didn't sell anything, worry not, okay? Number one, you got practice, okay? Number two, uh, uh, number two most important, I just saw Taylor joined, what's up Taylor? He's doing his homework, we like that.
Um. Number two, okay? You
just created a bunch of content. Number three, you're getting better practicing for all the reasons. And number four, Marie Stephens, okay? You ever heard of Pavlov and his dogs? Ring a bell, feed the dog. Do it enough times, what happens? The dog starts salivating when you ring the bell and the food's not even there yet.
So, Marie Stephens, okay, looking at you, you run your flash sale, (Nick laughing) it's crickets, after the fact, you send the email out. All of a sudden everyone that sees that is like wait a minute, she ran a flash sale, okay? And that was a heck of a deal and I missed it, okay? The FOMO starts building.
All of a sudden, you just rang the bell before you put the food out, okay? So what's gonna happen next time when I'm browsing around on Instagram or Facebook and I get a little notification that says "Marie Stephens Art is now live." Whoa! Whoa! Could be flash sale! It could be a flash sale, give me that phone! Give me that phone, let me get on there, right? So, it just works on so many levels, okay? It will work.
I don't care if it's crickets. I don't care if it's crickets for months, okay? You think I'm on here for my health? Do you know how long it took us to get 10 people on Instagram to watch this? Or whatever we have on Facebook or Instagram? I don't care. I'm still practicing. I'm still getting better at it.
Nick Friend: You're getting better at it. So, that is the flash sale. I've just removed all the crap you had in your drain. Nick and I just took, you know, he's got the snake, I've got the giant plumbing wrench, we had to knock that clog out, it's gone. Clog's gone now. Start running them. And I mean--
Nick Friend: Yeah.
Patrick Shanahan: --today. Do one today.
Nick Friend: And David Artiega, Art Storefronts member, he's asking, "So just go ahead and do it? Don't send out a Facebook post like I'm going live in 30 minutes?"
Patrick Shanahan: No!
Nick Friend: No, don't. No, don't, okay? Now don't confuse this with like the live art show playbook that we are, you know, that we are--
Patrick Shanahan: Different golf club.
Nick Friend: Different club.
Patrick Shanahan: It's a different golf club. It's a different strategy, right? But the purpose of this today, the purpose of what we're talking about here is, you know, we get way too many of our Art Storefronts members, like oh, I didn't have the landing page ready. Or I didn't have this, or what do I do, how many platforms should I go live on? And we're trying to show you, you know, how do I accept payment? Literally trying to show you that you can just do it right now.
Just remove all barriers. Don't ask about a landing page. Don't ask about payment, I just told you PayPal, Venmo. None of that stuff matters. None of that stuff really matters, right? Like, it's going live, right? It's having this item that you have scarcity on, this one-off, doing a great deal on it and selling that one item today, okay? So go do it you guys.
You're literally going to sell an item today. It should be almost impossible for it not to happen, all right? If you do it, we just gave you the example, we both just did it on the spot.
Patrick Shanahan: Yep.
Nick Friend: If you have any following whatsoever, even if it's small, you're probably gonna sell that item. If not, then...
Either way you win because if you don't sell the item, then at least you know that your following is useless. Useless. And you need to get back to lead generation immediately. It's the only thing you need to focus on, right? Like, if you can't sell an amazing item at a great price, a one-off, you know what I mean? With scarcity on the spot that day, then, you know, you got nothing there and, so either way you win.
You either sell the item, right? And you learned and you went live and you got comfortable and you realize there's nothing stopping you from doing it, or you realize, which is a big realization, okay? That you gotta get back to lead acquisition. It's the only thing, it's the only metric that really matters at the end of the day, all right? I always say it's the number one metric.
You gotta acquire leads. You gotta acquire quality leads, right? Emails, in your guys' case. Followers is not enough, right? You gotta own these email addresses, all right? But, either way you win. So go ahead and do it.
Patrick Shanahan: You win no matter what. And like look, the larger, the larger, you know, lesson here is like whatever the friction is, get it out of the way.
Nick Friend: Get it out of the way.
Patrick Shanahan: Get it out of the way. Do you know how long, so some of you guys have listened to the podcast in the past, right? And do you know how long between episodes it would take me, because all the preparation and all the nonsense and everything else? We've churned out, I think this is number nine.
We've churned out nine of these. You wanna know why? Because all that prep, I'm gonna take that friction right away. I'm gonna take it away! It's gone. I'm not doing all that prep anymore. We're live. We're live going right now. Just right in the flow, making it happen. It is a weight off my shoulders.
Nick Friend: Look what Marie says here, "The thing I'm finding with the flash sale "is that", my phone's blocking it. I have way more authentic energy as I present because I haven't wasted all my energy on doing the prep work. Exactly.
Patrick Shanahan: Exactly.
Nick Friend: Exactly. Remove the friction. And by the way--
Patrick Shanahan: Remove the friction.
Nick Friend: What I love about this too, he and/or she who is closest to their customer wins, right? On Tuesday, okay? I presented this topic, no prep, spur of the moment, top of my head, somebody shipped that thing. Got the sale. And I also heard from all of you guys on the call that you were getting hung up on the landing page.
That's friction. That's friction. We don't need the friction. We want to remove the friction. You need to do thousands of these. Thousands of these, okay? Thousands of these. This is full-stop the future of selling art and photography, period. It works with an MVA, minimum viable audience of one. Okay? It works in a content marketing context with a minimum viable audience of zero.
Minimum viable audience being the number that makes the exercise worth it, producing an ROI. From a content marketing standpoint it's goose egg, it's zero, it's worth it, i.e. start doing it. From a sales standpoint, audience of one up to audience as big as you can generate. This is absolutely the future, and I'm telling you, we are so much earlier to the party than anyone else.
I mean what is someone like, take the abstraction, right? What is someone like Kim Kardashian gonna do when she realizes she wants to sell her spandex or whatever wacky women's product she makes, and she just starts selling it like that? What would happen if that woman had a flash sale? Why isn't she doing 'em already? Why isn't she doing 'em already?
Nick Friend: Yeah. Exactly.
Patrick Shanahan: Right?
Nick Friend: Look, guys, the abstraction, and Patrick and I, we've talked about this before, but the abstraction here is that you guys are a retail store, okay? You need to operate like you are a retail store. Like, like a real retail store. It just happens to be virtual, but think about it like you're running an art gallery.
You're running your own international art gallery business. So when you go live, right? And you're, and, you know, you're broadcasting, you're literally opening the door of your gallery and people are walking in, right? And then you're presenting them and selling them the products. It's the same thing as when you go into a store, you know, and, and, you know, you get to see the different products that are being offered, you're opening up the store.
You're bringing the store, okay, let me back up. When you email out, okay? And somebody clicks on the link and comes back to your website, you've invited them to come back to your website, right? To come into your venue, right? But when you go live on the social media, you're bringing the store to them, okay? They didn't ask to walk in the store.
It's like they're walking through the mall which is their Facebook feed, right? They're walking through the mall and then all of a sudden you're live and it's like oh, I'm gonna go look at that, right? And your window dressing, it comes right in their face, they see it, they might click on it, and then now they are officially in your store, looking at your products, and you are selling your product to them, even if you're just talking about it, right? And so when you think about it from that perspective
there is a lot of different types of content that you're gonna wanna do, you know? And obviously we're teaching all of that to our members. And I want to talk about Katie Neeley. Katie, one of our members, she was on our private members workshop on Tuesday and I was talking about the 80-20, right? Like you've gotta look for where is 80% of the value
of what you're doing and where is the 20%, right? And forget the 20%, focus on the 80%, okay? You can eliminate a lot of things off your plate because there's no value in that final 20%,
but that's where the perfectionists get caught up and it can take you weeks if not months to finish a project, and stress you out, when it's like all those little things, they're not moving the needle. It's like tiny, tiny percentages. The 80% is where the big gain is, right? And that's exactly what we're talking about right now.
If you stressed over a landing page and payment methods, right? You, and you didn't run a live art show because of it, you got hung up on the 20% and you missed the whole point. The whole point was the 80% was actually running the show, showing people your products, having the items done the right way, take the payment however you can get it, but run the show! That's the 80-20, right? That's the 80-20.
You gotta, you can't let the 20%--
Patrick Shanahan: Gotta ship it.
Nick Friend: --stop you. And that's where so many people go wrong and that's the lesson that we're teaching today. That's the lesson, especially for our members, is like, you know, when you come out of one of our workshops and you see so many people getting hung up on details you're like, hold on a second, forget all of that, all right? Do we need to just have like a bare bones version of just like understand like this is all you need to do, you gotta do it, you know?
So that you actually do the thing that is of value and don't let the little things that hang you up stop you from doing that.
Patrick Shanahan: Two things. Number one, and I love saying this because transparency for me is really important, and also integrity is really important, right? Multiple episodes on success, okay? The 2nd episodes of this show was on success, I think, and how important success is and the fact that we're constantly reverse engineering it.
And most importantly in the success is we know the number one metric for us as a company is if our customers are more successful, we win, right? If there's one big--
Nick Friend: The only way we win.
Patrick Shanahan: Not looking--
Nick Friend: It's the only way we win.
Patrick Shanahan: Or bounce rate, or time on site, or conversions, or email address, or DMer requests, if our customers are successful, we win.
Nick Friend: If they're successful.
Patrick Shanahan: So if we make that the North Star, we win. The advice, we are a platform that has transaction fees, okay? The advice we are giving our customers now is to go around the transaction fees and take the payment any which way you can, right? Why? Because we don't care about the damn transaction fees, okay? We want you guys to be successful and I saw that the landing page and going through everything was hanging us up, so I don't care about that.
I don't care about the damn transaction fees. Get success, right? Go to that North Star, that's number one. Number two, I say that most of you guys suck in merchandising and that's totally true, but you know what the problem is? Most of you are not even to the point where you suck at merchandising because most of you have not ordered samples of all the various different media types.
You can't even suck at showing 'em off until you have the damn samples, you know?
Nick Friend: You don't even have the products you sell.
Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, you're going door-to-door selling knives and you don't have any knives. You're showing me pictures in a catalog. I'm not buying knives on a picture in a catalog! Are you out of your mind? Order a wood print, order a metal print, order an acrylic print, okay? Order the paper prints, get framed up, okay? Order, I have them all right here, order the canvas gallery wrap
and you can never sell those. These are your props that we're taking to the live show game. Okay? You gotta have the props. You have to be able to show them. You have to be able to articulate. You have to say hey guys, I had a great day today. Okay? I had a nice glass of wine, white wine at lunch, met up with someone I hadn't seen in a long time and I'm feeling generous.
Let me tell you about acrylic, okay? Acrylic's not a medium anyone really knows about. Let me show you what it looks like. How incredible the acrylic is. The light just dancing off of it just nice, right? I'm gonna do a flash sale. I'm in such a good mood I'm gonna do a flash sale. What do I care? Okay? I'm gonna make $10 dollars per print, or $20 dollars per print, I don't even care, next 24 hours.
Whatever you do it's irrelevant, right? But you can't even get merchandising if you don't have the damn merchandise, okay? If you're only selling originals, not for you. You've got your originals, you can do it, right? But if you're a photographer, especially with photographers, my goodness, if you don't have your photographs on every single solitary media type, you are missing the boat.
So too all the artists doing reproduction, if you're selling your Chachki, whatever it is, and you're trying to sell your, you're trying to sell me a mask and you don't have a mask in your hand, what are you doing? What are you doing?
Nick Friend: Yeah.
Patrick Shanahan: Can you imagine if you walked into the Apple Store and instead of stands they just had little posters? Like what?
Nick Friend: Yeah.
Patrick Shanahan: What are you doing?
Nick Friend: That's the equivalent. That's the equivalent of what people have been doing, what artists and photographers have been doing for years, right? Like they post a flat image and that's not the physical good that the person is going to receive. Show your product. Show your actual product that people are going to receive, you know? And a lot of good things will happen.
You know the other thing too about this is that like if any of you out there have not validated whether your art will sell, or you're wondering whether it will sell--
Patrick Shanahan: This is it.
Nick Friend: This is it. We have a validation playbook and it's essentially this, right? This is all you need to do. There's nothing in your way.
Patrick Shanahan: This is even better, right? Run a flash, for anyone that's listening that is wondering whether their art or photography will sell, or if you are like I've got these different niches, I'm not sure which subject matter I should go with and sell, run a flash sale today. Today. Okay? Now you gotta have the prints there if you're a photographer, right? So you gotta have a couple of prints and, you know, get a print made of each of these niches if that's what you have to do, right? If you have the content there, if you're a painter,
and you got originals, just show the ones that you have, you know? Pull 'em out, run this flash sale today, not tomorrow, today, right? And I say that because as soon as I say tomorrow or next week you're gonna start over-complicating it, right? And adding things in there that don't need to be done.
You just need to run your flash sale, go live, show it to the people and the audience that you have, you know, in the exact way that we just showed you at the very beginning of this, right? The exact way that we just showed you, and see what happens. You might have, let's say you've got five niches.
You got ducks, you got beaches, you got horses, you got lions, and you got elephants, right? And you're trying to figure that out. Run your flash sale, find out what sells. Find out which ones people like, you know? And start there. Now you have real market feedback immediately on the spot and you can start going from there.
You now are one step closer to figuring out the truth of your product, the truth of your business, and now you got something that you can start moving forward with.
Patrick Shanahan: Oh, it's so true. And to be honest with you, this gives us a profound ability to suffocate the BS, right? Because how many people come on the calls, okay, on the workshop calls and give me excuse from A to Zed why they haven't sold anything yet, why they haven't figured out what their niche is yet, why they'll just get going once they get some feedback
and the COVID goes away or whatever else, and sitting on the sidelines. All you have to do is get the product you're selling, turn on the camera and start talking about it. That's it. And if you don't wanna do that, then you're not serious and stop wasting our time. Don't even give me, stop it, stop it! I'm not gonna hear it anymore.
This is this simple. I don't care if you have to do it on your personal page. Do it on your personal page. And worst case scenario, if that doesn't work, then you're gonna have to rely on the offline, but either way like what are we talking, get the product and go sell the damn product. Like I wanna be an artist, I wanna be a photographer, get the product and go sell the damn product or stop talking about it, no you don't.
You don't wanna be an artist and you don't wanna be a photographer, and if you do, you wanna do it for your health because you for sure don't wanna make a damn career out of it if you're not willing to take the step. You gotta take the step. That's it. That's it. And Melodie--
**Nick
:** So Melodie,
Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, yeah, let's crush that.
Nick Friend: Yeah she's asking "You need a landing page to get sales don't you? How will you get the payment?" No, you don't. Like that's our point.
Patrick Shanahan: Check, cash, PayPal, Venmo--
Nick Friend: Venmo, whatever.
Patrick Shanahan: Take the credit card over the phone.
Nick Friend: You can do a landing page. You can do a landing page, we have no problem with that, obviously, that's in our playbook, but what we're saying here, we're making a point here that that's not a reason to not do the art show or the flash sale, right?
Patrick Shanahan: If you can't figure it out or it's too much work, just say PayPal me or Venmo me, right? DM me and we'll arrange payment. Don't miss the point that you gotta do the show, you gotta do the sale, right? Like that's where the value actually is so that's the point that we're making.
Patrick Shanahan: By the way, do you see, like I can see the feedback between the two of 'em, we absolutely need to do like a guide or a playbook on sales language, right? Such and such normally sells for uh, market it down to this--
Nick Friend: That's in the live art show playbook, I wrote it. I wrote it. It's all, oh it's there.
Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. Yeah, so--
Nick Friend: It is there.
Patrick Shanahan: You can go and get that. We'll go through some live exercises of it too because I know a lot of people get hung up on, you know, on the prices, right? Um. And so for art, this is, you know, how many times has this trope come up, here it is again, she's on Instagram she's like "People love my artwork but they don't offer or place orders."
Nick Friend: And Sephora, I answer that one way, there's no button on the ATM machine for "Love my artwork." I've been down to the ATM machine, it's not down there. So, you've either not tried selling it in places or that's the market telling you your work is not gonna sell.
Patrick Shanahan: Right, but Sephora, if all you're doing is showing your art, like, and nobody's buying it, like what you need to do is you need to do exactly what we're talking about today.
Nick Friend: You need to have an offer, right? With scarcity. Offer an incentive with scarcity. That means the incentive is I normally, I'm gonna say this again guys, make sure you're listening, right? I normally sell this, or I would normally sell this item for $500 dollars but I'm having a flash sale today 'cause I'm feeling great, you know, and I've got this item here and I don't have enough room for it, or whatever you're gonna say, right? And I'm going to offer it today to the one person who buys it, for $250 dollars.
Who wants it? Okay? Then see what happens. Then see what happens. Okay, Sephora? Then see what happens. Because if you can't sell the item, you know, at a 50% discount or a 40% or a 30%, and it's a one-off item, then the people who are following you are not ever going to buy. There's just nothing there and you need to focus on what we call lead acquisition, right? It's not what we call lead acquisition, it's just a common term, right? It's called marketing and getting your artwork in front of more eyeballs, right?
And then acquiring those leads onto your email list. It's the biggest problem in the whole industry and that's, you know, that's the thing that you gotta do.
Patrick Shanahan: All right, I got a warm Matt's playbook to ship, what do we have in terms of announcements?
Nick Friend: Uh. Announcements?
Patrick Shanahan: Thrice weekly, thrice weekly art business workshops, discussions like these, Zoom calls with you, free consulting for non-customers, thrice weekly. Link anywhere you're seeing this. And you can register for the Zoom. The Zoom, we'll email you, tell you when the next one is. Come on. You know, Sephora, you've got these questions, you should come to one, we will delve into it, give you some strategies how you can get there and tactics, get you on the path.
Nick Friend: So, we've got that one and then well, we've got a sale going too.
Patrick Shanahan: Yep, we do. We've got a sale ending to join Art Storefronts at a big discount. It ends on Monday. That's today, tomorrow, it's three business days left. But if you're interested in that, if you're interested in learning more about Art Storefronts, possibly taking advantage of the sale, you'd wanna request a demo, okay? ASAP.
The demo request link is in this post, okay? If you're on Facebook or YouTube, on Instagram, you'll see it in the bio. Click the link in the bio and request a demo as soon as possible. One of our team members will reach out to you, take a look at your art, learn what your goals are, make sure you're a good fit, show you everything you wanna see, all the pricing details, features, and everything, and then you can figure out, you know, if it's a good decision for your business.
So, if you're interested in doing that, request a demo.
Patrick Shanahan: Wonderful. On that note, before I close, 'cause Coral left a good question, "I may have missed this, but should I be doing it on Facebook, or Instagram, or both, on these flash sales?" Typically Facebook is easier. Today, grab your phone, do one on Facebook, end it.
Nick Friend: The point here is do what is easiest, right?
Patrick Shanahan: Ship one today.
Nick Friend: Ship it. No more questions. That's the whole point, right? No landing pages, no nothing, no questions, no should I do this, should I do that, just do it. We just showed you how to do it.
Patrick Shanahan: Just do it. If you came on later, go back after we're done and watch this video from the beginning, okay? But just do it. There is no, no details, no perfectionist questions, none, we showed you how to do it, go do it. And do it today.
Patrick Shanahan: You can come up--
Nick Friend: And then let us know how it went.
Patrick Shanahan: Any arbitrary excuse you like for why you're doing it, you guys are artists and photographers, you're supposed to be creative.
Nick Friend: Yeah.
Patrick Shanahan: Come up with something creative, okay?
Nick Friend: Yeah.
Patrick Shanahan: Whatever it is. It's International Dog Day, I have a dog, I love dogs, and so as a result of honoring my dog, here he is. (Patrick yelling) I'm doing a flash sale. 24 hours only, or the soon as this live ends. There's no rules, okay? There's no rules, you can get creative, this is one of the ones where you don't have to completely stay in your lane.
Nick Friend: You know, you can color outside the lines a little bit, Janine. Okay? Eyes on you. But that's it. (Nick laughing) That's what we got. That's what we got--
Nick Friend: We love you Janine.
Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, we love you. Um. Thanks for listening, and as always, have a great day.
Nick Friend: Thank you guys.
Patrick Shanahan: I didn't play the outro. I didn't play the outro.
Nick Friend: Play that outro.
Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. I'll have (mumbling) post for the podcast. But thanks guys.
Nick Friend: Thank you guys.
Patrick Shanahan: Real blast, as always.
Nick Friend: Until next time.
Patrick Shanahan: I want to hear about if you guys get some wins on this one, all right?
Nick Friend: We'll see you on the private members workshop in an hour guys. I will see you there, all right? Maybe some of you will have run your flash sale by the time we get there, but looking forward to seeing you.
Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, bonus to somebody who does it in the next hour.
Nick Friend: Big bonus points if you did that and you got a sale within the next hour. All right guys.
Patrick Shanahan: Bye.
