Artist Bob Gherardi

Join us for an inspiring episode of the Art Marketing Podcast as we sit down with artist Bob Gherardi, who shares his incredible journey from struggling illustrator to successful fine artist. Discover how Bob transformed his approach to marketing, embraced local art fairs, and found his niche with crows and ravens, leading to a remarkable $30,000 weekend in sales. Tune in to learn valuable insights on pricing, building connections, and the importance of stepping out of your comfort zone in the art world. Whether you're an emerging artist or a seasoned pro, Bob's story is sure to motivate and encourage you on your own artistic journey!

Podcast Transcribe

Bob Gherardi: The next show in Spring went from $7,000 to $330,000. I had a $30,000 weekend. I've just absolutely lost my mind. Every artist that's young and has the ability to do it has got to do local shows and fairs if they can. My motto is when I talk to anyone is I pray like it's all up to God, I work like it's all up to me, and I listen to what Art Storefronts says.

Patrick Shanahan: All right, coming up on today's edition of the Art Marketing Podcast, we're back with another artist interview. Like all of these interviews, I'm super excited about this one. We have Art Storefronts customer Bob Gherardi, who I've never met. This is literally our first time talking, so I'm excited to get to know you. Let's come right in on the top. Give me the origin story. How long have you been an artist? Do you do it full-time? Where do you live? How did this whole thing come together?

Bob Gherardi: Okay, first, I'm totally excited to be here, so thanks. I can't believe this is even happening. I was waiting for another two or three years before I was like, "Oh, I'll do an interview with Patrick when I'm doing great." So this feels premature, but very cool.

Patrick Shanahan: But that's what's great about it, though. Not to stop you midstream, but I love the ability because we have such a diverse customer base now to grab people from all the different stages. The challenges are a little bit different depending on what stage of the game you're in. I think where people get encouragement is they see someone that's like, "Oh, I see how many followers he has," and we'll get into your email list and all these things. That's exactly where I am. I wonder how he's doing, and then they keep an eye on you. Overall, that can be incredibly encouraging. I love that aspect of it. So back to the origin story.

Bob Gherardi: Okay, I went to school at Syracuse University to be an illustrator. That didn't go well at all. The illustration market imploded on itself because people started using stock illustration, and they would pay $100 for an illustration instead of a thousand because now everyone had rights to it. So I turned to fine art, and probably for the last 20 years, I just could not get it going. I have a resume that is every artist's dream—winning competitions in magazines, in galleries—and they would just hang in galleries for years. Then I pretty much just gave up. I was probably maybe 30, and I literally packed up all my paints and sold them on eBay. I kept my table, just in case. I got a design job, graphic design, and I was doing okay. Then I don't know what got me back into painting, but I started doing one here and there. Long story short, like I said, awards, magazines, and books, but still, my biggest year before Art Storefronts was $37,000 grossing.

I saw your advertisements on Facebook probably for three years, and I was like, "What are these guys?" I went to a couple of people's sites and got a little overwhelmed. I was like, "Ah, I don't know, this isn't for me. This is all prints and framing, and I don't know, this isn't for me." Then I don't know what changed, but I said, "Let me give it a shot." And that was the boost. That was you guys are the map that I've always needed instead of just posting something on my Facebook page and having some crappy website and hoping someone sees it and buys it. That's all I was doing. I didn't know what to send in an email, how often to send them, how to get names, nothing. My motto is when I talk to anyone is I pray like it's all up to God, I work like it's all up to me, and I listen to what Art Storefronts says.

Patrick Shanahan: Oh my gosh, quote that. That's getting clipped. That's great. So surprise, surprise, the number one thing that you struggled with, which is the number one thing all artists struggle with, is getting noticed. It's just marketing. You were doing very little when you joined. I'd be curious to hear how consistent you've been since you did join and what has been the hardest thing to overcome. Was it knowing what to post, knowing when to post, how to run sales, how to think about your lineup? I'm always curious about that because I know it's all of the above to some degree.

Bob Gherardi: What really worked for me was the niche course. The interesting thing about it is it's all my crows and ravens. There are so many crow and raven sites or groups out there, and people are nuts about crows and ravens. Niches will never cease to blow me away.

Patrick Shanahan: Absolutely amazing. I instantaneously when I was looking at your profile, I was like, "Serious Edgar Allen Poe vibes here." But the interesting thing is all my award-winning work, none of it, zero, is of the crows and ravens. It's all my landscapes and abandoned homes and stuff like that. And I can't get that going with the niche course. It's really strange. So I would say 95% of my online sales are the crows and ravens. Art fairs, which I just started doing the last couple of years, is where my other stuff is moving. That piece right there, the house, just sold. It was a $5,000 piece. I couldn't believe it.

That was another thing that I never did was art fairs. I did this tiny little show for maybe the last 10 years. Actually, a woman named Ena, who's an Art Storefronts member, she runs it, and she's been telling me for 10 years, "You need to do art fairs." I didn't know how to do it. I was scared. I'm afraid of looking like an idiot or wasting money and my time, and she just kept pushing and pushing. Then I saw the Art Storefronts playbook for art fairs, so I took the leap. I went online, I went to Facebook Marketplace, and in 10 minutes, I found the tent and pro panels. I drove four and a half hours each way in one day to go pick it up. I was like, "I'll take it." Then I got home at like 11 p.m., and my wife was like, "You're back?" I'm like, "Look at this, I got my tent."

I did some like a test run. There was this little Pork Roll Palooza around the corner from my house. I'm in New Jersey, right next to Pennsylvania, near Philly. So I did the neighbor across the street from me loves my work. She says, "Why don't you set up a tent at Pork Roll Palooza?" I'm like, "Pork Roll Palooza? Who's Pork Roll?" She said, "Believe me, people with money come there. They want to see some other stuff other than food." So I set it up and got a little buzz. It was a good test. It took me like three or four hours to set up the tent, and it just got me to feel more comfortable before I just went to an art fair and said, "Let's give this a shot."

So I had that practice run. I maybe sold like two or $300 worth of stuff. Everyone else was done cleaning up, and me and my wife were breaking it down till the sun went down because it was new and it was confusing. But the more you do it, the more comfortable you get. Now we can set up in two hours and break down in three, which is pretty good, I think.

Patrick Shanahan: That's super. How much of the guide are you actually putting into practice? I'm like more proud of that piece of content than just about anything else, the Art Storefronts art fair one.

Bob Gherardi: Pretty much all of it. I think I read it a while ago, but I think you said something about sales. If you put anything for sale, like a sale price, like you cannot put 25% off all prints or whatever, people will lose it. I did it at one show, and people were pissed, so I never did that again. If I do put anything for sale, I'll put a price tag next to it and just put a red line through the original price and then the sale price next to it. So it doesn't look like Marshalls is having a sale. It's just, "Hey, this particular piece is discounted." And I love what you say. You said it once, "Inventory clearance in my studio. Make something up. I got too much work. I'm just letting this one go. I've had it for a while. I love it, but I'm willing to let it go now."

From where you started doing the shows and fairs, and I should say, a lot of times, artists that aren't customers will see us and it's like, "Okay, they're the digital guys," and like their whole ball game is just social media. And of course, social media is important, and we're on social media right now. I feel like every artist that's young and has the ability to do it has got to do local shows and fairs if they can because it's just such a shortcut to get in front of actual eyeballs, have actual conversations, and start gathering leads and start building a business. And I know instinctively, having so many of these conversations over the years, whatever age you're at now, there's going to come a time when you're 75, and you're still going to have the business, but you're not going to want to be on your feet for eight hours a day and breaking a booth down and putting it up. So get these reps in now.

It's a lot of work. I've been doing that little local show, like I said, for 10 years. I got into Rittenhouse. Most all the shows I apply for, they're all juried, and luckily, I've been getting into all of them. And when I say all of them, it's five, and they're all within a drivable distance. You meet people there who do this like they're literally, yeah, it's like a traveling musician or something.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, traveling circus pretty much.

Bob Gherardi: So I got into Rittenhouse, which is in Philadelphia. It's, I think, the longest-running, largest outdoor art fair in the country. The first time there, I sold $7,000 worth of stuff. Me and my wife were just like, "Holy crap, we can't believe this is happening." And I remember we're wrapping up one piece, and I'm like, "I can't believe this." She's like, "Be cool." We were just so excited. That was in June. Here it comes. I hope everyone's sitting down because the next show in Spring went from $7,000 to $330,000. I had a $30,000 weekend. I just absolutely lost my mind. I sold a $20,000 painting, that $5,000 painting that I showed you earlier, and then some other little stuff. So now that's exciting. That's great. Pumped up. It was like just blew my socks off.

The next show I did was a complete zero. So it's an emotional roller coaster. I mean, I don't know if I could ever outdo a $30,000 show and then have backed up against a zero. It's one of those things that I say in the guide that like I've been working with artists and photographers for so long, I know how it is. And it's like the same approach whether it's I'm going to try Facebook and Instagram ads or whether it's I'm going to finally get the courage to do a local show. Everyone tells themselves the same lie, which is, "I'm just going to give this one shot and see how it goes." And if it doesn't, they're like, "Look, I'm just going to give this thing $250, and if $500 comes out, I'll keep doing it." And they're essentially hanging everything on one hope and a prayer, just one shot. And it can't work like that. You're destined to fail if you're going to contemplate running ads on Facebook and Instagram. Write the check in your mind for an entire year, and you'll be successful because you'll figure it out. You'll create, you'll iterate. If you're going to do shows and fairs, book three or five because one is going to be a dud. And if that's the only one that you do, you're like, "This doesn't work for me. My art sucks. I quit." You're depressed. But in your case, if you would have just done the one and it was a zero, done. But you do three or five, and it's like, you didn't have a $30,000 sale and a zero sale. You had $15,000 at each show. That's the way you have to think about it.

But what I would be curious to know is how did you get to pricing an original at $20,000? Which one is it, by the way? Do you have it in your Instagram?

Bob Gherardi: Yeah, it's called "Up on My Site." It's my dreams. Remember, it's a very wavy-looking piece, looks like Christina's World. It was like seven feet long. Yeah, won an award, a couple of awards. And follow the playbook—have one grossly expensive piece, yep, and then all the way down to $250. And people come into my booth at Rittenhouse and were just like, "Whoa." People were walking by, looking at that. They were just drawn in. Even if it didn't sell, it brought people into my booth. And then people were like, "Wow, man, you must have a really fancy clientele." I was like, "But I also have stuff for the regular people like me, $50." So every base is covered, like the playbook says.

Patrick Shanahan: Yep. Knowing what you know now, just out of curiosity, with all of that, what do you think the perfect number of shows per year for you will be? Is it a scenario where you want to go to 15, or is like five to seven your sweet spot?

Bob Gherardi: Like I said, I just started doing it. I would like to do 12, maybe at least 12. But you got to do it and keep your cost down because I did a show in the Hamptons, and I was like, "Man, this is where the rich and famous live." I literally saw Christie Brinkley while I was getting sushi. So I was like, "I'm going to clean up here." And it was nothing. I sold $250 worth of stuff. Luckily, I had my friend's place to stay, so that would have been a really expensive art fair. That would have been thousands of dollars, maybe two or three thousand loss across the board—booth, driving all the way up there, bed and breakfast. So I say 12 to 15 shows. I want to get them as local as I can. Now I have a little cushion, so if I do travel somewhere and whiff, okay, I sold a $20,000 painting. The anxiety level in the studio has completely plummeted, which is a real nice change of pace because I lost my job a year ago. I was still doing the design, and I was like, it was perfectly timed. I had started doing Art Storefronts a year ago before I lost my job, so getting the wheels all greased up. Lost my job, I was like, "All right, let's do this. I'm here." And then the art fairs coming in, you have to do the art. It's not an option to not do them.

I made $50,000 this year from art fairs, which I would not have sold on my site. No one's going to come to my site without seeing the painting live and pay $20,000. So well, the painting was priced at $24,000. He saw it at the fair, went to my site, called me the next day, and said, "Hey, can I use that coupon, the 20% off on the big painting?" I was like, "Sure." I'm not going to say no. You don't argue when you got that thing.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, everybody, like most artists and photographers out there, rightly or wrongly, have been sold this dream about the website and the fact that it can generate passive income, and you just put your art up there, and people will find it. And it's not a complete dream. You have to drive traffic to the site to get the sales over the line. The nuance about it is it's never binary. Yes, you have to have a website because it's up 24 hours a day. It works when you sleep. It can take transactions. It can take credit cards. It can move people closer to a sale. But the reality is that there is and never has been nor ever will be a better way to sell art than in person, face to face. You cannot appreciate a piece of artwork online in any capacity like you can in person. And that's okay. That's the way it's supposed to be. But guess what? You can't be all over the world in a whole bunch of different places. You're geographically stuck to this planet like the rest of us. So the website does what the website does for you, and the other thing, in person, when you can get it, and once you come to terms with that, you're like, "Oh, that makes so much sense." I've got some guy on Instagram that's just really leaving me lovely comments. Later, buddy. Just reported you.

Okay, talk to me about the online sales and what's happened over there because you found us via Facebook ad or whatever. I love that you found us, and you were on the list for three years. The sheer volume of email I must have sent you over those three years.

Bob Gherardi: I wasn't getting emails. I was just seeing you in my Facebook feed. And here's what got me. I worked with some guy. It was a disaster. He made all these promises about Facebook ads, and he makes north of $250,000 a year, and he's guaranteeing this, guaranteeing that. I don't want to say his name, but it was bad. I lost around $7,000, and I literally didn't get a single contact.

Patrick Shanahan: I know who it is too, by the way, so don't worry.

Bob Gherardi: Then I was like, "Man, if I just spent $7,000, and Art Storefronts is going to charge me three—at the time when I joined, it was three for the gold package, and whatever, I don't know what it is now—and it's for life. That was $7,000 for a year. This is for life and marketing for so I was like, "If you can do that, you can at least try Art Storefronts." And when I talked to Randall, that was my big hangup. And I think I may have spoken to you on a call if you weren't members yet and the webinars. Yeah, and I spoke to you about this very thing. And so between you and Randall, you guys helped me calm down and take the leap.

I'm working with another guy now, and again, super. He's an Art Storefronts member. He places Facebook ads for people. His name is John Lechner. Fantastic. Instant results. I'm getting crazy amounts of contacts every month. It's expensive, but it's paying for itself. I'm getting three to four hundred names a month, contacts, and he streams it through the website. He makes a landing page, goes to my contacts, and goes to my MailChimp. Super nice guy, super helpful. I couldn't recommend him enough. So that's where I'm getting all my names from.

Patrick Shanahan: What size is your email list up to now?

Bob Gherardi: 5,500.

Patrick Shanahan: 5,500. That's great. Rolling. It's rolling. Yeah, it's good. And all of my subject matter is working with him. If I put up a landscape, I'm getting a lot of names. If I put up crows, I'm getting a lot of names. So I don't know how he does it or what he does, but it's good, and it works.

Patrick Shanahan: How does the crow subject material, just out of curiosity, how does that do at the fairs and shows? I'm always so fascinated by just the notion that there's like a die-hard audience of insert whatever for just about every single solitary thing imaginable. And when you're able to really tap into it, you have a built-in audience. The fact that there was one for crows doesn't surprise me, but that's amazing.

Bob Gherardi: It's amazing. They do okay at the shows too, just as good as the landscapes. It's just online, people love them. Like you, I did the shark piece that's right here. I was like, "This is going to just explode. Everybody loves sharks. It's just going to sell prints. I'm going to be amazing." I've had that piece for two years. People love it. No one wants it. I don't know what the deal is. In East Hampton, where I had that show, I was like, "Oh, it's right. It's an island. It's on the ocean. This is going to go on a heartbeat." So you know, you never know what's going to work. And I don't paint to think, "Oh, this is going to be the one that makes a lot of money." I don't go at it like Meg says. You got to do what's in your heart. You can't when she talked about newsjacking. It's got to be passionate to you. Like I paint crows because they're black, they're cool, they're mysterious. That's why I do it. And luckily, people like them too.

And the cardinals. I did another thing. Kudos to you. I did a commission that I never would have painted a cardinal if someone didn't commission me to paint one. I painted it, and it exploded. Everybody loved it. Another guy commissioned me to do another cardinal. Then that same guy commissioned me to do a picture of his baby. The cardinals sell at art fairs as well. People have a spiritual connection to them. They feel like a loved one is visiting them. So when people see the cardinals, they get all emotional. And I write a story next to every painting I do. I write a little narrative. Huge in helping people get connected. And sometimes people talk about the narrative more than they talk about the piece.

Patrick Shanahan: Oh my goodness. That totally describes where my heart is. And it reminds me of where I grew up in Alabama. I was like, "Okay, great. I'm glad it spoke to you that way." And once you're getting on a connection like that with a customer, and you're having that face-to-face conversation, you can't do that online. You're having that face-to-face conversation. You can get emails from people, "Oh, that reminded me of this." It's not the same thing. And that's another thing that Art Storefronts does. I know I'm talking a mile a minute. There's so much going on in my head.

Bob Gherardi: I love it. I love it. The automatic email you guys send out when someone signs up, I can't tell you how many people think I wrote that just to them and how much they appreciate it. And then they get into a conversation. That game. Yeah, yeah. And this week, I'm having a 20% off sale, which is all the time when you sign up or you get the popup that says 20% off. "Hey, if you weren't aware, I have 20% off this week. I hope that piece really speaks to you. Let me know if I can be of any help." So that's huge too, and the conversations that come from it.

Patrick Shanahan: Like the most important thing, right? Subtly, that email that we send, the design for that email is to look conversational so that they will reply. Not to start the conversation, but early on, the more people reply to emails, the more the ESPs—Gmail, Mac Mail, Hotmail, Yahoo, take your pick—the more they think you're not a spammer and you're an actual email account. So the design of that is actually technical to begin with, but you win multiple ways. The second win is having that conversation, which is the most important thing to the entire thing. Get to know who your buyers are and get to the bottom of it and figure it out. So it works on multiple levels. But I love that you're doing that. And I love too that you touched on the commission aspect of it because it is people holding the credit card up saying, "I like your style, but do this." Like, how would you have gotten the idea for cardinals? How would you have known the cardinals were even a thing? Now you have to consider whether or not doing birds is your jam. Now you've learned about the important story that comes out of the image, right? And it's more the story than it is the image. None of that would have been possible without the commissions, which is why I always say everyone should open themselves up to commissions, even if they have no intention of actually painting it or doing it. Just get the intel. Like, what direction? What can you learn about where you might go for a future niche? If you have that, so powerful.

Bob Gherardi: So powerful. And then you get the prints from it. And my favorite thing when I get a canvas sale is that it's just like found money because they're pretty expensive. They go from $255 all the way up to $1,800. I can do a 40x60 for—I'll get to why I don't use Art Storefronts in a minute—for my canvases, I can get a 40x60 for $300 shipped to my studio. Then I want to send it out. I don't want it to go from there to the customer. I want it to come to my studio first where I can sign it. I write a personal letter, put some goodies in there, some extra stuff, and then send it to them. So I'm making, $1,500, well, minus I have to ship it again, which is another $100. I'm making $1,300 for just packing a canvas. Yeah, and that takes about an hour. I use—I don't want to mention anyone's name—I use an outside vendor just because the cost for Art Storefronts is just too much. It's not going to—it's just I won't make that kind of money. So my dream is to be selling canvases on a consistent level from the website, and everything else is just gravy. Like the art fairs are just extra money to buy my wife a car or to get a house that has more than two bedrooms because we're stuffed in here. The ultimate goal is to get canvas going.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, and trust me, it doesn't break my heart. All I care about is that you're making money. You know what I always say is I've never met a revenue source for artists I don't like. So that's okay in the printing. I would be curious to see that's a deficiency in our system that we have to see whether or not we can compete with that. We can talk about that offline, but I'm just happy you're making money.

A great question I would have for you, and I'm scrolling through your Instagram here, if I asked you point blank—his IG, if you're listening to this and not watching, says "Painter. Landscapes. Wildlife. Rural. Finding the beauty in hidden places." Not really a niche. Would you say you have the niche just what I wrote up there, the rural landscape and the birds?

Bob Gherardi: Yeah, I love it. I did blow up myself. I don't know if it's current or you guys have changed things. My Instagram is like a graveyard. The biggest amount of likes I've gotten in the last couple of months is 21. So I don't count on Instagram, but I still listen to you guys. I still go there and post, and I'm on Co-Pilot. Here's the thing. I don't do like it's a graveyard. One guy bought over the last year $110,000 worth of art. One guy. I've become friends with him. He, yeah, from Instagram. So while it's a graveyard, and I get nothing—and like I said, when I say nothing, 21 with 3,000 followers and the publicity I get on Facebook and Art Fair, I don't understand. Is my Instagram broken? I don't know. But I still listen to you guys, and it paid off $10,000 worth. So over a year, this guy bought one piece, then another piece, and another. He drove five hours to come to one of my shows. We've become friends.

Patrick Shanahan: Wow. So even though it's just keep doing what Art Storefronts says, even though it looks like it's not working, yeah, work for one guy, and one guy made a difference. Mickey on YouTube says all you need is one. And that's correct. And it's like, what is the ROI of that one guy who is now clearly a collector? They will likely be with you for the rest of their lives. The $5,000 will turn into $10,000, will turn into $20,000, will turn into $100,000 by the time you're done with this whole thing. So the collectors are so important. And what's interesting is that we continue to grow as a business and get more and more customers. There's so many stories that are like this. Some are 100% reliant on Instagram. Some could care less. Right? Some sell direct only. Some are doing the gallery. Some are doing the hybrids. There's not any one way that works for everybody. But some way, you need to get attention.

Now, in your case, on the Instagram profile, yeah, you're on Co-Pilot. No, there's not a ton of personal content from you on here, right? I do think there's some. I do think you should take Instagram more seriously. But to the hammer, everything looks like a nail, right? I'm like the digital marketing expert, and so of course, I always just pound it into the ground. So I do think you have growth there, right? And I think you've already proven the ROI. You got to get going.

Out of curiosity, you've been with us about two years, right? What is the overall level of growth in the business between year one and year two? That's my first question. It doesn't need to be exact, back of the napkin.

Bob Gherardi: Almost double.

Patrick Shanahan: Almost double because of the art fairs because you didn't do art fairs the first year. Second year, you did. Yeah, and now it's going to be a major part of your business. Yeah. If you could go back in time to when you started, what advice would you have for yourself? It's a good question.

Bob Gherardi: Yeah, I forget the guy's name, the guy who leads the things. Just get out of your artist head and stop making everything so perfect and noodling everything. It took me two months to set up my site because I wanted it just right. Everything had to look just right. And that works, and it's great, and it pays off because everything looks just right. And I modified some things on the site that, like, I don't do any automatic fulfillments. Everything I do myself. So I modified some stuff. When I sell a print, I just have—I set up product options so that there's different sizes and different mediums. That took a while to figure out. I made my own gift shop navigation bar. I think you guys do that now. I'm not sure, but that took a while to figure out.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, yeah. What advice? Don't make it harder than it has to be. Just like you always say, "Just ship it." Just ship it applies across the board to anyone. And it comes from the code world, and the idea is just do the thing. Don't overthink it. It applies to everyone. It applies a thousand times to artists because you guys overthink everything. And that perfection thing comes in, and that perfection thing just kills everything from going because you don't know what's going to work. You don't know early on. And the website is the one that infuriates me. It's why we build everyone's website for them because I don't want them screwing around with it. It's not the differentiator. It's getting the eyeballs there. So you got to work on the traffic.

Another thing is, don't be like—I'm very—and I hear this on the calls a lot—"Oh, I'm afraid to get on camera. I'm afraid of this. I'm afraid of that." As soon as I stopped worrying about looking like an idiot, things started getting better because you have to step out. You have to go where it's uncomfortable. You have to do the things you don't want to do. The only way you grow. No one grows by being comfortable. So you got to suffer. You have to suffer.

When I went to Rittenhouse first, it was in the city. I did one test show at a Pork Roll event, and then I'm going to the biggest art fair in the country. I was crapping in my pants. I don't like being in cities to begin with, and then figuring out these guys, I'm around all seasoned art fair pros, and I was terrified. And I had to go there. Look what happened. That first show was $7,000. That was such a huge confidence boost. So now I'm not afraid to do art fairs. I was afraid to do—there's one in New York City, Gracie Square, I think it is. I could have signed up for it last year. I didn't because I was scared. And I'm going to do it this year. So yeah, don't be afraid. You gotta get out there.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, and people were asking if you sell off the website. What portion of the business at this juncture is online versus offline?

Bob Gherardi: This year, it's half and half. So 50-50.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, amazing. And that's a great balance because if you have it at 50-50 already, as you go, as you continue to grow the email list, the balance is just going to keep shifting to online more and more, which is, you know, it's nice because then you don't have to be in person for all of those things. And some people at the art fairs, the lady who bought the $5,000 piece, she bought a little cardinal from my site, then just bought a metal print. She just came to the last show I did, which was an hour and a half drive for her. So you're making connections. People get excited. They love it. They want to get into your head. They want to know what—once they like your art and you start talking about it, it's almost like meeting your favorite musician and, "Wow, I'm getting to talk to him and hear what makes him tick and why they painted it or why they sang this song." It's so important.

How seriously are you going to take upcoming Black Friday, Cyber Monday marketing, all of those efforts because this will be the second Black Friday you've been through with us? Did you go through one last year?

Bob Gherardi: Yeah, I feel like I did better last year. I felt like I already had the wheels moving. This year, it's so far—I have maybe—I'm not remembering it correctly. Maybe after Black Friday is when everything exploded, and it did. I sold, I think, $77,000 worth of crow calendars last year. Again, I was like, "I can't believe this is happening."

Patrick Shanahan: Amazing. You just got to be careful on those Facebook groups. Like the Niche Course says, "Hey, look, I got this really cool crow calendar." I didn't say I'm selling them. I didn't say it's mine. Or, "I got this. Hey, where'd you get it?" Oh, sometimes I would DM them. Now I'm just putting it right in the comments, and if the admin gets pissed at me, I'll deal with it. But so far, I started the calendars like two months earlier this year. Up till $4,000 in sales, and I just put the link right in the Facebook group, and no one's getting bent out of shape yet.

Patrick Shanahan: That you can also do that because that's not the first thing that you did in the Facebook group, right? You joined it. You posted some stuff. You replied to some comments. You'd been in there a while. After you've been in there a while, you've earned the right to do that, right? Which is so important.

About the crows, I'm still so fascinated about the crows. And last year, Reddit was red hot for me. Just completely shut down like nothing. I don't know what changed, but people were just—I was getting commissions, pet commissions, crow commissions, cardinal commissions. And now, I don't even bother with Reddit anymore.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, so they've undergone a bunch of different changes recently. And look, this is the nature of any marketing source, right? You get to it early. It's working. It's working great. And then its efficiency just drops. But we'll see. It might come back. Reddit's had a bunch of different ups and downs and different iterations and everything else and has been sold and changed hands a bunch of times. So we'll see how it all shakes up.

I ask everybody—good answer your question before things keep popping into my head. I'm sure I'll think of 20 other cool things I should have said. Meg's interview was so fantastic, and the thing that really stuck out—which I remember—it was her artist interview where she, I think it was after Jonah, and she said, "No one's coming. No one's coming for you." Yeah, yeah. And that's another thing that runs parallel with you have to stick your neck out and go where it's scary. And if you don't ask for $20,000 confidently, no one's going to offer it to you. No.

So that painting, like I said, it was priced at $24,000. I think I put it on my site at like maybe $15,000. And then my neighbor was like, "Dude, what are you doing? Your paintings are amazing. That should be a $50,000 painting." All right, Tom. All right, Tom. So then I cranked it up to $24,000. And rightly so. It's an award-winning piece. It took me months to create it. And then I tell my artist story. "Hey, this is just the tip of the iceberg. You're just seeing the painting. This is the very—oh, that's all? Man, this was a lifetime of learning and face plants. Look at all the texture and the layers in there. It may have taken me 100 hours to paint, but in reality, it took me a lifetime to be." So now when you speak confidently about what you do, and luckily, I have a laundry list of awards, and a couple of them were with that painting, so that helped. When the guy called me the next day, he said, "I went to your site. I saw all your credentials, and I saw that this painting won awards." So while the awards don't really sell the paintings, they help sell the painting if that makes sense.

Patrick Shanahan: Social proof. Social proof is so important. But you also—people freak out about pricing and charging enough and how to charge their time. It all changes when you have a range, doesn't it? When you have the lower price point items, when you have the mid-price point items, it makes it much easier for you in your own head to value what the big original should be, right? And then having that one big one up there—if you wouldn't have asked, you wouldn't have got it. Like, I agree with your neighbor. It should have been $50,000. You might have got $35,000 for it, maybe. This guy, because he was—he bought—he got the discount. I said, "Let me frame it for you." He goes, "Oh, you want me to pay extra for the frame?" And I was like, "No, that's all right. It should come." So he probably would have.

But one guy came to my booth, and he like sucker-punched me. He came in and said, "Are your prices negotiable?" And I said, "To a degree." And then he got pissed off, and he said, "Where do you get off with these prices?" And I was surprised that—I'm usually pretty calm and cool—I snapped back a little bit. I said, "What do you think they should be?" And as soon as that came out of my mouth, I was like, "Reel it in, Bob." And then I just started talking like I spoke earlier. "Hey, you're just seeing the tip of the iceberg here. This is a lifetime worth of work. These are award-winning paintings. I don't bang these out in an afternoon. I'm in galleries, museums, private collections all over the world." And he turned in a second and goes, "That makes a lot of sense." So even if someone gets bent out of shape about your prices, be ready to not defend yourself but just explain why they are what they are. My paintings aren't cheap because my paintings aren't cheap. This is the real deal.

Patrick Shanahan: I love that. There's nothing better than when you have a range, and somebody comes in hot like that, and then you just go, "What? Don't you tell me. What do you want to pay for that one?" And then they go, "I'll give you $500 bucks for it." Let me show you what I have in my range for $500 bucks. And then you take them away from that thing, and then you take them right down to their price range piece. Anything in here, $500, right? And it instantaneously sets the stage. I find that this is such a trope with artists. Like, "Do you have any idea how much time I spent on this thing, and you're offering me that?" Human beings, by nature, are not nasty people. We're all pretty good to one another. The nasty stuff comes out without the basis of comparison. It's really hard to establish the value. If you walked into a car dealership and there wasn't the entry model cars, and then the entry model cars with more options, and then the midsize cars, and the midsize cars with more options, and then the SUVs, you would never understand why that thing inside the glass box is worth a million dollars, right? Like a car dealership, it's very easy to step yourself up in value. And it's okay. Now I understand why that—we human beings are wired to make decisions on the basis of comparison. So when you have that range, it's much easier to get there, right?

But by the way, because I'm curious, are you now going to paint another gigantic one like that to replace it?

Bob Gherardi: I already did. There we go. It's already hanging up in my living room. A little—it's a little smaller because that was a bear carrying that thing around. And I literally—I pack it up. It's too big for the back of my pickup truck, so I literally strapped it to the top of my wife and I. We have a heart attack every time we drive that thing to an art fair. One little nick on the road, and it's done.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, so the new bigger one is a little bit smaller. I priced it at $18,000, but it had—I showed it once at an art fair, and it had the exact same effect as the other one. Drew people in. "Wow, this is amazing." Yeah, if I had the money, I would totally buy that. It's totally worth it. So you got to have that $100,000 car in the showroom along with—exactly right.

And what's so crazy about—and you've heard me say this—but after the high end of the scale, you get a toaster. And I should mention for everyone, I always recommend putting something ridiculously expensive inside of your shop. Right? In his case, let's say his originals capped out at $5,000 to $7,000. He had one in there for $24,000. Yeah, $24,000. That really expensive thing does two things. One, in the best of best situations, like he had, "I'll take it. I'll take it." You're like, "Oh my gosh." That filled up his emotional gas tank for six months. He's still working on that energy. Absolutely. But the other role that it plays is because it's so expensive, it helps establish the value for everything else that you're doing, right? Because secretly, human beings also—we want to rationalize how much we're spending in the middle by saying, "At least I'm not spending that for that one." It makes them feel better about the purchases that they do make. And it establishes value. So it needs to be in there for everybody, period, because psychologically, it's just got mojo, right? Like, "I'm okay buying this car because look at what that one costs. I'm not getting that one. I'm not being flippant with my money. I'm going to get this one." So it plays such a huge role.

You've been so gracious with your time, and this interview was fantastic. What is there—was there only one way, one thing that we could do to improve Art Storefronts? I always ask my one thing question. What would the one thing be?

Bob Gherardi: Oh, you were—you came prepared. Notes. You got notes. I—this is nitpicking. There really is nothing that I'm just—man, these guys really suck at this. The Co-Pilot email—it is not easy to swap out or add a product. You have to do like this liquid code. Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. And I think in the email, it takes the image that we've uploaded to our site, and it makes it a little bit bigger in the email, so the image starts to break down a little bit. So what I've been doing is I'm just taking all your email content and redoing it myself in—yeah, because people love how sharp and detailed my work is in Co-Pilot. They're not getting to see that from the emails.

Patrick Shanahan: Did you get the email for Art Helper, just out of curiosity? Art Helper. Do you know what Art Helper is?

Bob Gherardi: I probably saw it somewhere, and I was like, "I'll read this later."

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, or maybe you didn't. So let me ask you this, and we'll wrap the interview up on this because I want to be gracious to your time. Have you played around with AI at all so far in any capacity? Personally, have it done anything?

Bob Gherardi: Sometimes just with writing some of my narratives, I'll let AI get the ball rolling, and then I always make it my own. But I maybe pick a couple of words out. That's about it.

Patrick Shanahan: Which one did you use? CLA or ChatGPT?

Bob Gherardi: ChatGPT.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, ChatGPT. I know it's—I think if they had it to do all over again, they probably would take that one back in terms of the terminology on it. I'm going to get an image from your site because I want to show you one of the things that is just really cool. Of course, this is like when I go into demo mode, everything is breaking down. I might just show you this offline. But one of the amazing things about AI in its current iteration—and calm down everyone because no one's talking about AI doing the art for you. We're talking about it making you better marketers and faster, right?—is you can upload images, and they do a really good job on the description, on the title, and it really cracks up on some amazing stuff.

I might as well just give a quick preview. I'll just show it very briefly. We've been working on this for a while now, some months, and are just so excited to unleash it. So what it does is it allows you to upload an image directly to it. Okay, and I'll pick one of these dog images just because it's already in here, and I was using it. And just ChatGPT, it will do the writing for you, right? And so one of the things that you can do is you can say, "Hey, give me a product title," right? And I already have one in here, so it's going to spin and do its thing. Where it's unique, where it's interesting, is we have this ability to tune your voice. So you can tune your voice between friendly, funny, relaxed, direct, engaging, passionate, professional, and do any combinations that you like. And then with the combinations in place, you can restart it. And so you can tune it to the way that you want to speak. And we've got this thing doing product titles, product descriptions, and even full-blown emails already. And once you tune in the voice, you will be blown away at how much time this saves you. So for each individual piece, you can have this thing churn out a quick email. And we've trained this AI based on what we know about art stuff. So I don't want to go—I don't want to hijack your podcast episode too much, make it a commercial for this. But go check your email because I think we probably sent you an invite, and you need to start playing with it.

Bob Gherardi: 100%. Okay, yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: Eric, interview. I really enjoyed it. I can't wait to see the next piece that's in the shop for $50,000, hopefully $75,000, right? To see where it goes. We do need to tighten up your Instagram game. I will. I'll talk to the Co-Pilot about the Co-Pilot thing because I saw—I think Scott was saying that was an issue for him too. So we'll get that dialed in and sorted. Co-Pilot's going to go through so many iterations here, especially with their new AI. Where can people find you online? Where do you want them to find you online? Do you have a bigger following on Facebook or Instagram?

Bob Gherardi: Facebook.

Patrick Shanahan: Okay, how can we find you on Facebook? What's the Facebook URL? Do you know, or just the page?

Bob Gherardi: Bob Gherardi Paintings.

Patrick Shanahan: So search Facebook, Bob Gherardi Paintings. If you're watching this or listening to this after the fact or likely listening on the podcast or YouTube or whatever it is, you guys caught the live Art Marketing Podcast of it. I'm going to put Bob's website. I'm going to put his Instagram handle because we need to grow that. His Facebook. Check him out. Year two of his business, very exciting. And yeah, I'm trying to think what else. I'll have some other follow-up pointers for you, and you will. But huge thanks for the time. Get back to that Black Friday, Cyber Monday marketing. And thanks everybody for watching, and everybody have a great rest of your day and weekend. Bye, take care.

Bob Gherardi: Thanks, Patrick.