Art Sales up 300% Year over Year

In this episode of the Art Business Mornings Show, hosts Patrick and Nick discuss the significant increase in art sales, which are up 300% year-over-year. They emphasize the importance of not becoming complacent and outline three key trends for Q4: increased e-commerce adoption, extended holiday sales periods, and the prolonged impact of retail setbacks due to COVID-19. They highlight the shift towards online sales, the democratization of art markets due to the reduction of traditional gatekeepers like galleries and art shows, and the rise of the small business and micro-entrepreneur in the art world. The episode also stresses the urgency for artists and photographers to develop their online marketing and sales skills to take advantage of this unique moment.

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Patrick Shanahan: I'm excited about this one now. Okay. Coming up on today's edition of the Art Business Mornings Show, we're talking about how art sales are up 300% year over year and specifically, it's no time to gloat, Nick, okay? Three trends under planning this year's Q4, and while there's still time to get into the game.

All right. Intro. All right you guys, welcome back to another edition of the Art Business Mornings, the show, okay? That will put you on a path to a six-figure-a-year-plus art business. Now I've got a couple different sections going on. Nick, can you monitor the comments in the yard?

Nick Friend: Hmm.

Patrick Shanahan: Yep. Yep. Got it. So, the first topic I included is, "It's No Time To Gloat." Okay? And, I think that's an important line because it's sort of a reminder to me that it could have just as easily gone the other way for us. Could have just as easily gone the other way. That's number one, we could've had egg on our faces.

Patrick Shanahan: Number two, these are very interesting times in the sense that, what have we gone from? We've gone from like art business software and marketing educators to Sunday morning pontificators. Right? And like talking heads on the news stations. Since this pandemic hit and Nick and I found ourselves in this weird situation where we're literally like somebody on one of the cable news stations doing analysis on what's going on and making projections.

Patrick Shanahan: Right? And it's very easy to have egg on your face. But when I say it's no time to gloat, I don't wanna gloat. I don't think he and I are wizards of smart, but we've been saying things on record, on this show, since March things like, increased e-commerce adoption was gonna make this the biggest Q4 in the history of art, all home decor sales of which art is one was going to explode.

Patrick Shanahan: The fact that retail is not coming back in any substantive way. Okay? Selling art and photography directly via video is gonna be the biggest disruption in our art sold in the last hundred years. I wanna write on that one in a second too. And, like I think a lot of the trends Nick seem obvious and I don't think we were so far out on a limb.

Patrick Shanahan: But there's a whole lot of people that are still not believing a single solitary bit of them that I talk to week in, week out. And the writing is still on the wall.

Nick Friend: Yeah. And you know, the other thing that I'll add too, that the drum that I was banging particularly hard for the last six months or eight months, right? And you as well, but me particularly hard was, if there was one thing that you should do as an artist and photographer, it is to invest in your skill sets, to learn how to market yourself online. Okay?

Nick Friend: To learn how to run your business online. Don't wait. You know, many people who are listening to this, never really took it that seriously or maybe took it moderately seriously. You guys can only answer that question yourself, like on a scale of one to 10, how seriously did you take like I'm gonna become great at email marketing, I'm gonna become great at social media marketing.

Patrick Shanahan: How about just doing it? Doing it.

Nick Friend: Yeah. Well, that's the point, right? That's the point. It's like, you know, like my hope during that whole period, was I was really trying to get everybody to wake up and understand, the sooner that you do that the sooner you're going to get to whatever success level it is that you're after.

Nick Friend: Because otherwise what are you doing it for? Right? What are you doing it for? And like all of that advice, was literally just bullseye, just dead on, you know. And here we are. Here we are like, first week in November goes by, okay? And by the way, we should say like so art sales up 300% year over year, right? What we're showing you guys right there is that, from the artists and photographer websites at Art Storefronts, their sales are up 300% on the average year over year.

Nick Friend: So it's just a remarkable number but what is even more remarkable about that is that is, that's for the first week of November. And it happened during the election week. During the election week. Right? So this week's number once we get that on this upcoming Monday, is gonna be even more interesting.

Nick Friend: And then obviously all the way through to Black Friday, but the fact that the sales were up that much during an election week, is unbelievable.

Patrick Shanahan: That's staggering.

Nick Friend: Staggering. It's just another cherry on top of everything that we, everything we've been talking about the entire year, since the pandemic began.

Patrick Shanahan: Well let me go into my three trends. Let's give that some color and then we'll come back to the 300% and kind of ran on that for a little bit. The three trends that I wanted to address in particular and it's like, all you have to do is open up whatever site you get news from, okay? And pull an article on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Q4 sales, like what it portends the holiday buying season.

Patrick Shanahan: AMZ Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving, okay? And every single solitary one of the articles, it's like a goldmine out there right now like, in the three trends big picture are increased e-commerce adoption across the board. Sales are moving up and up in the holiday calendar plus lasting longer.

Patrick Shanahan: And retail is not coming back anytime soon. Just period full stop. So, a couple quotes that I took from the Newsweek and I'll put some of these things in the share notes too. The projection now is that e-commerce sales will jump 25 to 35% this year over last, which was compared to 14.7 increase in 2009.

Patrick Shanahan: That's according to Newsweek. And give you one more stat within the stat Nick, when you start Googling this a little bit lower is when they really get striking. The credit card usage of around 10 million credit card holders in Japan suggest that the increase in share of online purchases, was highest for users in their sixties and seventies.

Patrick Shanahan: So in their sixties is a jump from prior to COVID 15% now 21% of total purchases, okay? And from the seventies 10% to 16.4%. I mean what are your parents doing that they've never done before?

Nick Friend: Buy things online--

Patrick Shanahan: Buy things online, getting groceries sent to their house online, ordering from restaurants online, you know.

Nick Friend: Who would most argue has the highest amount of money, disposable income to spend on art by the way?

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. That group.

Nick Friend: Yeah. That group. So--

Patrick Shanahan: Seniors, right?

Nick Friend: Yeah, there's literally stats at like every single solitary clip. The shift from offline to e-commerce and it's just a big, big deal. I mean it's a huge deal across the board.

Nick Friend: And I think the takeaway is, if you're not online, you're not in the game.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. Do you know what else this do?

Nick Friend: Yeah that's it. You're out of the game.

Nick Friend: It's like, we are living in the age, we are now living in the age of like the rise of the small business, micro entrepreneur. Let's call it, right? Because you can operate from home.

Nick Friend: You're a photographer, you're a painter, right? If it's just a small side business, right? You just wanna earn an extra 10 grand a year, 20 grand a year or something like that. You can legitimately do it. No problem. You know what I mean? Like it takes work obviously everything takes work but you can do it and you can succeed doing it.

Nick Friend: And if you wanna have a 300, $300,000 a year art business, you can do it. It's happening. That's not like conjecture. That is fact. That is truth. We have people doing it at Art Storefronts straight up. And all the way from the lowest to the highest, you know what I mean? And so we are totally living in this age and that's what's so exciting.

Nick Friend: That's really what I would say is the takeaway for everybody from this, right? It's like don't get caught up in the rah-rah of like, yeah, art sales are up and like all this different stuff. Understand what's really happening there. What it means for you. What it means is, there's never been a better time for you, right? There's never been a better time for the micro entrepreneur to start their business, or take their business more, or take it to the next level.

Nick Friend: It was really hard before. I mean like that's the truth. Like in the age of the retail gallery and the art show pre-internet, okay? Where you had to just go to art shows and then you had to like hustle the galleries and then work through art publishers. I came from that world. I've been in the art industry for over 20 years.

Nick Friend: And I was at like the tail end of that. But I mean, for the small business owner, the micro entrepreneur, do you know how hard it was? It was near impossible. It was near impossible. That's why the starving artist problem was real, and it's a thousand year millennia old problem. But, obviously our mission at Art Storefronts is to solve that by making it easier for, small business owners and micro entrepreneurs, artists, and photographers to run and grow their business.

Nick Friend: But that's the takeaway. That's the big takeaway is that the more you see guys, the more articles that you see in the news, you're gonna see more and more of this over the holidays. Like it's gonna be non-stop trust me. Trust me, trust me, trust me. It's gonna be the biggest Black Friday ever.

Patrick Shanahan: You will see those articles the day after, you know what I mean? It's gonna be the biggest Cyber Monday ever by far. And then when the whole thing is over, after December, it's gonna be the biggest online holiday shopping season ever in history. And when you guys see those articles, that more business has moved online, you all should be jumping up and down because that just means that the power is shifting to you.

Patrick Shanahan: And in the art industry, okay? In the art business, what it means is the power is shifting away from the former gatekeepers which were the gallery owners and then the art shows having to go to the art shows, and the art publishers.

Nick Friend: Total gatekeepers too by the way it should be stated the ones, yeah.

Nick Friend: Total gatekeepers. Yeah. Oh yeah. Totally. Totally. Yeah, so COVID or with COVID like it doesn't matter. It's the fact that the power is shifting to the individual. And that's an amazing thing. Like it's something that should be celebrated, and I get, anytime I see those types of articles, I get super excited.

Nick Friend: I get super excited. Because you just know that like, it's no longer in the hands of the rare few, and it's now, everybody's empowered, everybody's empowered. It's like sort of control their own destiny. You know what I mean? To own their own customer lists not rent them. Like when you sell through a gallery or through a third party, like they own the customer.

Nick Friend: That's where all the value is because like, it's widely known, written in several books that the average collector should be buying about eight pieces from you in the lifetime. If you're running your business properly. Eight pieces. Okay? So the smart people, the smart people acquire the customer and own the customer, right? Because they wanna get the eight pieces.

Nick Friend: The gallery owner wants the eight pieces not the one sale. So they'll use your art to get that customer because that's where all the value is. And so whether and that's offline galleries and online. Because the online galleries, they hide the customers, they know what they're doing you know.

Patrick Shanahan: Hey, let me get this customer and I can sell them art for the rest of my life. So, that's the thing to celebrate. Anytime you see that more sales are happening online, all that means, is you have access to that customer. You have a bigger market that you can go after and target with your art business. And we want that thing to be as big as possible.

Patrick Shanahan: I want it to be as big as it can possibly be, because I know that it's great for all of you guys.

Patrick Shanahan: Honestly, the obliteration of gatekeepers is probably like one of the most exciting things, period. Like there's nothing better than someone that traditionally had like power in dominion over you, not having it anymore.

Patrick Shanahan: Like sorry, I don't need you anymore.

Nick Friend: Yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: It's just (mumbles).

Nick Friend: It's so big. It's liberating.

Patrick Shanahan: Yup. So that's number one, trend number one, increased e-commerce adoption, okay? Number two, sales have been moving up and up and up in the season. As well as lasting longer. How did it used to be? Used to be, Thanksgiving would end, and then everyone would take the holiday weekend and know that there's a sales starting the next day.

Patrick Shanahan: That's when we were kids essentially, or like 10 years ago. That's how it used to be. What happens though, is it's all changed. And I would say the leaders lead and, or Duke it out and we all follow, okay? Prime Day, October 13th to 14th. What is prime day? It is a made up holiday. It is a made up holiday that Amazon copied from the Chinese.

Patrick Shanahan: The Chinese had a day called "Singles Day," traditionally 11, 11. Actually yesterday as we're recording this. And they made this holiday, the Chinese, specifically it's like Alibaba and JD.com. They made this holiday up out of thin air, made it the biggest discount day in China, and it actually became the biggest day in terms of e-commerce online sales in the entire world.

Patrick Shanahan: Not even close, destroys it. Amazon said, anything you can do I can do better. And so they went ahead and created Prime Day, October 13th to the 14th, they started that. Right? So, that's what happened in years previous. And essentially they both moved well ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Amazon, even one-upped Singles Day.

Patrick Shanahan: And, that was previous to this year. I read the article today. You probably haven't even heard this you know what, do you know what Singles Day did? And--

Nick Friend: No.

Patrick Shanahan: You can't trust the data out of China in the slightest. You can't trust anything that those guys publish. It's all a joke to me. But what I can trust, is what they did.

Patrick Shanahan: Instead of starting Singles' Day on 11, 11, they went ahead and started it on November 1st and ran it for 11 days. (Nick laughing) They ran it 11 days. And you know, I've got this quote from Newsweek too which is, "This year brings additional variability because of the pull forward." Pull forward effect.

Patrick Shanahan: S&P's, Sarah Wyeth said in the research report, "What Amazon launched it's Prime Day in mid-October, retailers such as Best Buy, Target, Walmart announced their own promotions. Many viewed this is the kickoff to the holiday shopping in 2020." So no surprise here, right? This is a trend we've been watching for quite some time.

Patrick Shanahan: The holiday season is starting earlier and earlier and earlier, and it's really not stopping. It starts in Q4. How long have you and I been banging the drum on this? It starts Q4 and it just goes till Christmas. It just goes through.

Nick Friend: And for art, for our customers, when did we get them started with their marketing? So the whole holiday marketing playbook, right? When did we get them started?

Patrick Shanahan: That's when we get them started with their marketing.

Nick Friend: They've been marketing all year long, but when do we get them started with the sales? Like a month ago?

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, exactly. So they were in early.

Nick Friend: And when was the biggest one in the history of our company?

Patrick Shanahan: The biggest week.

Nick Friend: Week, yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: Last week.

Nick Friend: Last week.

Patrick Shanahan: Last week during the election week, highest sales ever on the platform in a given week.

Nick Friend: Is that crazy?

Patrick Shanahan: Thanksgiving--

Nick Friend: Thanksgiving this week.

Patrick Shanahan: I know. This week is gonna be bonkers. I mean it's gonna be insane.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. The point is, the takeaway is, that it's no longer how it used to be. The holiday buying season starts and you are on sale. You essentially have to be on sale from now till Christmas.

Patrick Shanahan: The better you are at executing a sale, understanding the mechanics, the better you're gonna do. That's it.

Nick Friend: Yeah. And the thing is, is like, you know we should say for those people who are asking like, do I still have time? Of course you still have time. You have time right now. Like you can either just keep listening to us, (chuckles) for the next couple of weeks and keep hearing all of this, and then miss the season.

Nick Friend: Or you can get going right now. Like you can absolutely get going right now. You don't have anything stopping you. I don't care what stage you're at. If you're like brand new, and you're still trying to work out your pricing and how many images you need and all that stuff. No. Like you're putting artificial barriers in your way.

Nick Friend: You need to get up and you need to be selling and you need to be in the market. Okay? What is your price? Your price is, what's the minimum price that you will be willing to accept for your work plus 20% . Start there. There you go. That's it. Start there. How many images do you need to launch your art gallery website? One. One. That's it.

Nick Friend: Because that one, you could end up selling 10 pieces of it, if you're selling reproductions, you know, on canvas metal, it doesn't matter. This is the time when the art buyers are pulling out their wallets. This is the biggest art selling time of the year. And so it's the best time to get in the game and to test what you've got.

Nick Friend: I love that part too. Especially for everybody who's been kind of waiting around or sitting around or hasn't taken it as seriously, it's like you wonder whether you have an art business. You wonder whether like, whether your current audience that's following you, it's probably your friends and family on social media, or maybe you've got a business and you're, you've been selling for a while and, but you haven't really taken the online that seriously, or you really wanna grow that.

Nick Friend: And it's like this is the perfect time to test, exactly what you've got. What assets do you have in terms of your email list and your current following? You might have very little or none in terms of email. You might only have a social following. That's okay. But you launch and you use the marketing tactics and you start trying to sell.

Nick Friend: And by the end of Cyber Monday, this is the plan that we have for a lot of people that are new at art storefronts, right? By the end of Cyber Monday, if you follow all of our stuff, all of our marketing plan and advice, if you have not sold anything by the end of Cyber Monday, then we're gonna be starting to work on adjustments with you.

Nick Friend: Because it's all about getting traction. So you may need to make some adjustments in the way that you're marketing. That might be the problem. You may need to consider pivoting, your subject matter, using your talent in other words, like on a slightly different subject matter, that has greater marketability.

Nick Friend: All of these things are on the table. Or you may just sell quite a bit of artwork and you have completely validated. You've completely validated at that point. And you know what you're working with and then, you're now going into 2021 with some firepower behind you. With some momentum, which is exactly what you want.

Nick Friend: Because I think 2021, if this year was big, 2021 is gonna be a really big year, really big. And so it's like, there's no better time. There's no better time. Get everything out of the way, and get on the ball.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. I would also say too like, the common misconceptions are one, that you have more time and you can wait for your sale and wait till Black Friday.

Patrick Shanahan: And then two, you run the one sale and you're done. Right? That's a conventional wisdom out there, and it is so wrong and so incorrect. If you go one episode back in this show, I gave this analogy but I'll give it again for those who don't hear it. The buyers that we're all trying to get are like pelagic fish.

Patrick Shanahan: Okay? Pelagic fish or open ocean fish. They don't have a home. Your boat is out there in the ocean, right? And your line that's in the water is your sale and you're trying to catch the fish. Here's the thing, from now till Christmas, sometimes the fish are gonna be up at the surface i.e. you can sell your product.

Patrick Shanahan: Sometimes they're gonna be down below. Sometimes they're gonna be 300 miles away. So what does everyone think? They motor their boat out, they throw their line in, they have their sale for three days and they leave. Problem is, there was only some small portion of the fish at the surface during that time, okay? What do we instruct our customers to do? What do we teach them to do? The boat left already and is not coming back until Christmas is over.

Patrick Shanahan: There will be lines in the water, at different times different fish are gonna be up. And if your deal is in the water the entire time, your well-executed sale is in the water the entire time, you stand the greatest chance at catching fish. We report last week during an election in which nobody won, in which the entire world was watching that, we had the biggest week of sales in the entire history of our company.

Patrick Shanahan: That is not normal. That is not--

Nick Friend: Not normal.

Patrick Shanahan: Guess what, we wouldn't have predicted it. But guess what? I don't have to predict it. It's essentially like going to the roulette table and I've got chips down on every single solitary square on the entire thing. I've got it on everyone. I don't care where it hits.

Patrick Shanahan: I don't care what it hits. Right? We wouldn't have predicted it was going to be last week. And it might just be one week from now till then. I don't care. You don't care. Winning period. Sales will be in the water. You need to be on sale from now till Christmas. That is such a critical point. Go ahead.

Nick Friend: It's such a critical point. It's such a critical point. And it's like, like think about the preparation, like the value of the preparation, right? Our members at Art Storefronts, are taking demand, art demand out of the market, a lot. Like last week they took a lot of demand out of the market.

Nick Friend: This week, they're taking a lot of demand out of the market. By the time it hits Black Friday, they're gonna have taken billions of dollars, millions and millions of dollars, straight up. Millions of dollars of art, out of the market. And that's an amazing thing. And so there's so much value in that preparation.

Nick Friend: And I say that also 'cause, I know there's a lot of Art Storefronts members that are listening to this right now and it's like, you gotta get on the ball if you haven't started the marketing in the art marketing calendar, and the whole playbook that we have for the holidays. You gotta start now.

Nick Friend: Like literally get off of this, just get off of this call or this live video and just get started now. Like because, you're gonna have a big advantage immediately. And for those of you sitting on the sidelines, get in the game. Get in the game quick. And if you want us to help you, we can help you. Request a demo. You can get live.

Nick Friend: We're gonna get you live at Art Storefronts. We can get you live like, and show you the way within days. Obviously depending on your tech skill but our team, our team right now, our whole support team is like packed. They're working extra hours. They're working overtime, they're doing everything because, all the new members at Art Storefronts are like, mad dashing right now to get live and to get in the game.

Nick Friend: So we got the resources here for anybody that's looking to get up right away. So.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah and it gives me a good pivot. It's like you know, the next topic is retail is not coming back anytime soon. But the fact that the retail is not coming back, we're gonna get into it, is what creates this opportunity for the direct to consumer small merchant to like all of a sudden find their wings and like really kill it.

Patrick Shanahan: But the takeaways of being on sale from now till Christmas, like the big boy players are already doing it, right? The leaders lead and we all follow. That's really what it comes down to. Like we're not reinventing the wheel. You just need to adjust your mind and understand like, Oh, wait a minute. Of course I'm not the size of Amazon.com, but I can copy what they're doing and apply it to my little operation and bank all of those retail learnings that this giant has gotten to the last 20 years, which is all we've done, which is why we're recommending you start earlier and have that going the entire time. It's just my fish analogy.

Patrick Shanahan: I didn't come up with that analogy, Amazon did. They know the rules. They're gonna be on sale from now until then. So we're all the big box boys. So now we get into retail not coming back anytime soon. By the way this sucks. I pulled this one from the Newsweek but, several major retailers have already filed for bankruptcy protection including J.

Patrick Shanahan: Crew, Neiman Marcus, Brooks Brothers, Lord and Taylor, Century 21, Tailored Brands, Moores Clothing, JoS. A. Bank and Men's Wearhouse. And you know what?

Nick Friend: Wow.

Patrick Shanahan: Those are all clothing lines. But I didn't know that. I did read that they all filed for bankruptcy.

Nick Friend: Those are a lot of big names.

Patrick Shanahan: A lot of big names.

Patrick Shanahan: A lot of-- Listen to this stat. Okay this one was from Deloitte, also from the Newsweek article. "Thanks in part to coronavirus fears, 64% of this year's holiday budget is expected to be spent online. Nearly two-thirds of those who plan to shop online said they sought to avoid crowds and like the convenience of shopping from home," Deloitte said.

Patrick Shanahan: That one's nuts. So not doing anything until the vaccine comes. And then this one, a survey of 4,102 shoppers nationwide by New York-based consulting and advisory Deloitte, Deloitte again. 51% are anxious about in-store shopping and 49% they don't plan to resume pre-pandemic shopping patterns until a vaccine is developed.

Patrick Shanahan: It's like, what more takeaway do you want? Galleries are toast. Fairs are not coming back. Until it like you know, I read a lot of the hyperbolic statements like the world will never be the same post-COVID, right? I ain't buying that. It's gonna go back to normal but, I don't think it's gonna be years.

Patrick Shanahan: It's gonna be years. It's going to be--

Nick Friend: Yeah. I don't think it's gonna go back. I don't think it's gonna go back to normal. I think that anytime these changes happen, if you look at history, there is never, you never ever go back. Ever. There's like books written about this. When things change, you never go back.

Nick Friend: It's a different world. It literally never ever goes back. That doesn't mean that like art shows won't exist. Like all of these.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, they'll come back.

Nick Friend: It's just gonna be a little bit different. It's just gonna be a little bit different. You know, the behaviors of people, the buyers.

Nick Friend: Like, everybody knowing what they can buy online, the convenience of it and all that type of stuff. It's just gonna be, everybody's gonna spend their time a little differently. Like 'cause one of the biggest things there too, is that I love when really smart business people talk about this, right? Like some of the most successful businesses out there are the ones that sell you time.

Nick Friend: You don't realize it but they're selling you time. Like Amazon is actually selling you time. Like a lot of goods on Amazon are more expensive. Like a shampoo bottle is probably more expensive than it is actually at the store. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You know what I mean? Because you got that thing coming right to you, and it's free shipping and all that stuff and the convenience is just insane, you know? And so the businesses that sell you time are the ones that are the most successful.

Nick Friend: And so everybody experiencing that, in the pandemic that maybe weren't as apt to buying online, buying a lot of different stuff online experienced that. And you're not just gonna go, unless you have nothing to do. You're not just gonna go and just give all that time right back to where it was when you've enjoyed having that time back.

Nick Friend: I think it's something that we can really appreciate. And everybody out here like that's parents, you know what I mean? Or if you have like if you've got a part-time job or a full-time job, and you're trying to run your art business on the side, like anybody that has a lot of like time restraints, which most of us do.

Nick Friend: I'm assuming almost everybody on that listening to this does, right? You appreciate all that time. That time is important,

Patrick Shanahan: No, no question. Yeah. I mean, there's gonna be some sort of new normal, right? I had an art business workshop yesterday. And, for the uninitiated zoom calls where you get to come talk to me, get some free consulting, link in the bio, if you ever wanna join they're fun.

Patrick Shanahan: Anyway, glass artists on, right? And, in his sixties done extremely well at the shows and theaters forever. And he finally realized like my goose is cooked. Those things are done. Like my health issues don't allow me to do it anymore and they're not coming back in any level of certainty. And to go back to where we started it, in many ways it's liberating, right? Because lack of boothies, lack of gatekeepers, lack of loading up the car, lack of having to go there.

Patrick Shanahan: That part's liberating. That part's amazing. That part's awesome. The difficult part is what's in between, which means you have to get work at your marketing. You have to build your attention and you have to do that work. But what's at the top of the hill is the most amazing thing and I keep explaining this on the workshops.

Patrick Shanahan: This is the age of the new solo entrepreneur merchant where you can jump the gatekeepers, yes you have to work on your marketing, but then, instead of paying the booth fees, and leaving your house and setting up, staying at a hotel, you broadcast live to an international audience and get to sell direct. You could run three live shows from the comfort of your house in the time that it would take you to load up the car and go to the show.

Patrick Shanahan: There's no booth fee, there's no driving, there's no split. You get your time, energy effort in life back. And, there's no gallery either. I mean--

Nick Friend: Yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: It's truly one of the most exciting times and it's even bigger just seeing the artists and the photographer. It's like the direct-to-consumer merchant, the direct-to-consumer merchant.

Nick Friend: Yeah. You know, the thing is, is that like, I think that going like with the art shows, it's like, I love the art shows. Like my wife and I, we take our kid, we go to them all the time. We go to all the time for years, We go to like the Sawdust Festival and the Pageant of the Masters in Laguna beach when we lived in California.

Nick Friend: We're in Austin, Texas now. There's a lot of great art shows here, love those things. But here's the thing, here's the thing that I'll say, is that pre-COVID regardless, right? Most artists and photographers had the wrong perception, the wrong mental model, the wrong premises of what the art shows were for their business.

Nick Friend: Too many of them viewed their business model as like, I'm just doing art shows. I'm doing pretty good at these art shows. The art shows are unscalable. They're totally unscalable. So there's only, you can't drive across the whole country and get, I mean you could, you could but like, you're talking about a lot of costs, a lot of effort, and a whole different situation to do that.

Nick Friend: So they were already unscalable. Okay? And so that's why you and I both know this, the people that did really well at art shows, it was still only making like 30 or $40,000 a year typically. Like that's it. And you know, let's call it that, right? Maybe a little bit more, maybe a little bit less but, but they also were tapped out.

Nick Friend: They were tapped out with like the amount of time and energy they were putting into those things. And the reality is, the right mindset for art shows, in the past and in the future, is that their lead generation. They're a lead generator. That's what they are. Because, you can go to the shows, and you can also validate your art there right? If you're brand new, it used to be the easiest way to validate your art.

Nick Friend: Just go to an art show, try to sell some stuff. If you don't, nobody bought it. Like you got some problems. So you could see whether your art was going to sell or not and how much it would, right? But the art shows, you'll probably make a couple of sales which is nice. And if you do the lead generation strategy, you could collect 50 to 100 emails at each one.

Nick Friend: And so you could use that. You can use that to put a little bit of money in your pocket, but also to start seeding, to start seeding your audience which you need. You need that. You need to get those emails. You need to take them, you need to start emailing these people, get them to your online gallery, which is your permanent store that's open 24/7, and then get them following you on social media and there's tactics for doing that, so that you have their attention and you can market to them for years.

Nick Friend: Not just that one show that's come and gone, which is what all the vast majority of artists and photographers did. They would sell something at the show and then it was done. They would really never do anything with that customer afterwards. Some did, but they certainly the artist and photographer weren't collecting leads.

Nick Friend: They weren't looking at it as a lead generation thing. So, going forward, if it were me and I was successful at art shows, I would still be incorporating those as they came up, but I would be viewing them completely differently. I'd be like, what are all the art shows that I can do? I'm gonna go and make as much, many sales at those as I can.

Nick Friend: But every weekend that I'm doing one of these things here and there, I wanna be generating leads. I'm hopefully gonna collect a thousand leads. I'm gonna grow my email list by a thousand, right? Because if you get all those people, and then they're start following you on social media, those are a thousand new people sharing your posts, commenting on your posts.

Nick Friend: And potentially you can get second, third, fourth, fifth sale. That's what's so important about it and there's a key stat that we've talked about. We released it in our blog and it was in, the online annual art market report from insurers Hiscox. Who releases this big report. And it said, only I think it was about 62% is what the number was.

Nick Friend: It was like 62 or 64%, only 64% of the sales that you make are made at the actual art show. If you actually collect leads and follow up, in the way that we're talking about, there's like another 35 to 38% of sales that you could be getting after the fact. And so, you should have been doing this anyway.

Nick Friend: You should have been doing it anyway. But that is the right mental model, I believe, for the art shows in the past and going forward, they should be easy ways for you to increase the size of your list, your lead list to make some sales and get some money in your pocket. But, to take all of that and get it into your broader online strategy to build your global international art gallery business.

Nick Friend: Which is highly scalable. So it's just one tactic in the whole scheme of your business. Does that make sense?

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, what a very important one, right? Like, the tendency is to think that we're anti-show or anti having your stuff in the gallery, or even anti having your stuff in and do an online gallery and nothing could be further from the truth.

Patrick Shanahan: They all present various different opportunities to grow the business. The online shows and the ability to get new art, new photography, new test in the water, and directly talk to people, very difficult to replicate, very difficult to replicate in the same capacity online as well, even with live art shows.

Patrick Shanahan: So there's a tremendous amount of value in there across the board. But, but, but, never, never art galleries, shows and fairs, online galleries in lieu of building your own online business where you own the customers, you own the email addresses.

Nick Friend: There you go.

Patrick Shanahan: You own all of it.

Nick Friend: Well said.

Patrick Shanahan: The most heartbreaking thing over the last six to nine months, are all of these folks that have been, incredible career selling art of photography, many cases, 30, 20, 10, 15 years, killing it with the offline revenue sources,

Patrick Shanahan: Doing fantastic, but not growing their socials, not capturing email addresses, not having their own website.

Nick Friend: Big mistake.

Patrick Shanahan: All of a sudden, boom! Pandemic hits. All of those revenue sources are done. They can't go to any of them. The galleries are closed. That income is not coming in period and they have nothing.

Patrick Shanahan: They have nothing. What can you do? What you can do is start gathering emails. Well, Patrick I only have one person on my email address. And to have to tell somebody that's like cut their teeth, and is been at the top of their game, for 25 years and it's so personable and good it's own in a booth.

Patrick Shanahan: I'm sorry. You have to start from scratch. The internet don't care, it's a tough conversation to have, right? It's a tough conversation to have. So, in any time you have a massive disruption like what's going on now in COVID, it presents incredible opportunities. The big picture that we're trying to say is that, if you understand the business model, if you take it serious and you start growing it, the next time COVID comes around, I mean we're gonna get through COVID whether it's vaccine

Patrick Shanahan: Or whatever, but there's always another COVID on the horizon. The thing that shapes--

Nick Friend: Yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: The entire industry, the key is just, understand the moment in time, DTC being the model, owning your own attention, owning your own email lists, and then never stopped growing that. Never stop.

Nick Friend: Yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: Never stop.

Nick Friend: Yeah, exactly.

Patrick Shanahan: But that's what I got in notes. I think that was a pretty good session. And, you know again, I really loved the roulette analogy that it came with spur of the moment. But the fact that our sales were up 300% is where I wanted to finish. Year over year, last week. Do you have any idea what that portends between now and the end of the year? It doesn't matter whether you want to take our data seriously or Newsweek's or Deloitte's, there is time to get your operation often running

Patrick Shanahan: And get a sale in the water. If you're an artist or a photographer, whether you sold nothing or you've sold a tremendous amount of art before, if you don't get a doggone sale in the water and by which I mean immediately, and keep it up for the rest of Christmas, you are missing out on the single solitary greatest opportunity that's existed to sell art and photography in the last 10 years, full stop.

Patrick Shanahan: I don't have any other way to say it than that.

Nick Friend: There's no other way to say it. I mean it's like, there are no excuses. There's no excuses for anyone like, if you have a piece of art sitting in front of you, you should be selling it. Straight up. If you have photographs that you have taken, that you've been wanting to sell, and you've been thinking about selling, you need to get some prints made, a couple of prints.

Nick Friend: It takes minutes to get that done, and you'll be ready in a week. Or 10 days you'll have those things in hand and you're ready to go. Like but, you're taking advantage of this exact time, which no matter what the outcome is, everybody wins during this time. You know what I mean? Like some people may not feel that way.

Nick Friend: And I wanna encourage everyone because there's going to be artists who don't do as well as they hoped. And then there's gonna be people who totally exceeded their expectations. Everyone wins. Why? Because if you didn't do as well as you hoped, it's one of the best things that, it's the best information that you can get as an entrepreneur, okay? Is like the real truth from the market about what the state of your business is.

Nick Friend: Whether your art is really scalable, whether you need to maybe pivot a little bit, like that information is gold. It can hurt, but like, yeah, sometimes the truth hurts and like growing hurts, right? Growing as a human being, growing a business, no different, it all hurts. It hurts. So, like but that information is how you actually make progress.

Nick Friend: And that's what I love about it. There's so many artists and photographers who have been sitting here in like fantasy land, right? Like contemplating about what they're gonna do, or thinking about this or thinking about that. And like you know, you have the opportunity to like get all of those questions answered and actually move forward.

Nick Friend: Otherwise, this season worldwide--

Patrick Shanahan: You can go back--

Nick Friend: You can go back all of that (mumbles) after you've run a sale. After you've run a sale from them.

Patrick Shanahan: That's right after you'd gone to the market and really tried and executed, you know. Like 'cause otherwise what happens? They go into next year. They go to January, February, still in fantasy land, with no real truth from the market.

Patrick Shanahan: And like, it's just this is the time that you got everybody's attention. There's other times throughout the year that these situations happen but it's not like this one right now. So get on the ball right now guys. Get on the ball right now. Like this is gonna be a, it's gonna be an amazing time.

Nick Friend: Don't we have a sale running?

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, we do. We do.

Nick Friend: We got a bonus sandwich coming too. I don't even know if we're allowed to mention that yet.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. that's a great tease. By the way why don't you talk about forever? You're running a workshop tomorrow so anybody that has their doubts, or unanswered questions, or when I say has your doubts, has your doubts about whether you can get up right now, get live online and start marketing immediately and start making sales.

Nick Friend: If you don't think you can come to Pat's. I gotta point which way? Yeah. I gotta come to Pat's workshop tomorrow.

Nick Friend: Point all directions. Yeah.

Nick Friend: Come to Pat's workshop tomorrow. What time is it at? It's a live Zoom call guys. Live on Facebook, live on YouTube. And you can ask him questions verbally.

Patrick Shanahan: What is it? It's 11:00 AM Pacific, one central, two Eastern, two Eastern.

Nick Friend: Perfect. So get on our email list.

Patrick Shanahan: Make sure you're on our email list and don't--

Nick Friend: There's links everywhere where you can go to Zoom and just register. And come off.

Patrick Shanahan: Perfect.

Nick Friend: And hear the rest of it. But yeah that's--

Patrick Shanahan: So there's links on this post and links in Instagram to register and you'll be notified. But yeah, you got any doubts, go there.

Patrick Shanahan: Otherwise, if you wanna learn more about Art Storefronts and potentially get up right away with us, request a demo ASAP. ASAP. And yeah, we're gonna be announcing a very special deal, which will apply to any of you tomorrow in Pat, Pat's gonna announce it tomorrow in the workshop. And then it will be publicly announced, I think on Sunday or Monday.

Nick Friend: Something like that if you're on our email list. But the people who come to the workshop are gonna get a little special heads up to try to maybe reserve a spot in advance.

Patrick Shanahan: Don't tease me.

Nick Friend: Yeah. Especially because if you need help, that's one of the things, if you need help, if you're gonna need help getting your website launched and live, we got a few spots where our team will do it for you.

Nick Friend: Okay? They will do it for you and they will set it up perfectly, according to best practices, which we know. And so that way, you are going to be live a hundred percent. But there's only gonna be very limited spots for that, because we just don't have enough staff to be able to do the full service for that many people.

Nick Friend: So, but even if you wanna do it yourself there's a phenomenal deal that is going to be announced. So take advantage of that and keep your eyes peeled guys but yeah, there's nothing in your way. There's nothing in your way.

Patrick Shanahan: Nope. Tall till we come back on cite the stats next week. Woo!

Nick Friend: Yeah, it's gonna be exciting.

Patrick Shanahan: All right. We live with that?

Nick Friend: Yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: All right. I'm gonna play the music.

Nick Friend: Perfect. Good to see you everyone.

Patrick Shanahan: The three trends, some rants and raves on where we think things are. And on that note, thanks for listening. And as always have a great day.

Patrick Shanahan: I'm gonna end the stream yard one.