Artist Brien Cole

In this episode of Art Storefronts Live, Patrick is thrilled to interview artist Brian Cole, known for his unique niche in wine and bourbon-related art. Brian shares his journey from doodling as a child to becoming a talented artist whose work blurs the lines between painting and photography. Patrick praises Brian's highly defined niche and his ability to target specific wall spaces and high-net-worth buyers. Brian discusses his evolution, challenges, and successes in the art business, including his decision to join Art Storefronts, and how marketing strategies and leveraging print-on-demand have helped grow his business. Tune in for insights into Brian's creative process, marketing tips, and the importance of consistency in achieving success.

Podcast Transcribe

Patrick Shanahan: All right, guys, Patrick from Art Storefronts here with you today, and I'm fired up for this interview. I've already told Brian I was fired up for this interview. He doesn't really know why I'm fired up for this interview, but I can't wait to tell you why I'm fired up for this interview. So we're here today with artist Brian Cole. Brian, what would you describe your niche as? By the way, I mean, your byline says "wine and bourbon art." Is that the most up-to-date explanation?

Brian Cole: Exactly, exactly. Yeah, so I would describe it as wine art, bourbon art. Some people would probably say alcohol art, but it's also just kind of related to art that centers around wine, but also about family, friends getting together, you know, just kind of good times.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, just good times. The reason I'm so fired up for this interview is because I've loved your art for a long time. One, you are crazy talented in the sense that if you look too closely, you won't even know the difference—is it a painting or is it a photograph? Because it's so hard to tell sometimes. I mean, the fact you have that definition with your brush strokes is insane. But ultimately, why I'm fired up for this interview is because I feel like you have a tightly defined niche, and you're also custom-designed for certain areas of wall space that most other people can't get into, right? Like, this is absolutely all-day man cave vibes, right? This is all-day wine bar vibes. This is all-day kitchen area vibes. And, you know, I love starting with the end and working backward. And you have these defined wall spaces you can be in. So I'm excited to get into that today and to sort of tease things out.

For those watching on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X, and LinkedIn, if you have questions, go ahead and leave comments. We'll respond to them as we can. But what I would love to hear, Brian, is how long you've been an artist and then how many years have you been with us at Art Storefronts?

Brian Cole: Sure. So, I've been an artist for probably, well, I started drawing at about age six. So pretty much kind of drew all the way up through high school. I want to try to give a brief synopsis of it. Got out of high school, and at that point, I was like, "Hey, I need to eat." So at that point, I went into the military, college, eventually got married, and during that whole period, I was just basically kind of doodling, but I wasn't really drawing. Then, after I got married, my wife knew that I drew, that I painted, but she wanted me to do something for our house because we had just bought a home. And I was like, "I don't know, it's been so many years, I don't have it anymore, blah, blah, blah." So that went on for probably about a year, me making excuses. So for Christmas one year, she bought me some really nice, expensive paint, paintbrushes, an easel, and said, "Well, here you go." And I never even touched it for about a year. Just let it sit, and she kept bothering me about it. So finally, I decided, "You know what, just to get you to leave me alone, I'm going to go ahead and draw something." So I picked up this huge canvas, decided I would find the hardest thing that I could paint. I decided I would pick the Biltmore Estate. I said, "You know what, I'll do that. It'll flop, and she'll see that I can't do it, and she'll leave me alone." And the reverse just happened. I just fell in love with it. And at that point, she looked at it and said, "Oh, you're pretty good. We could do something off of this." And it just kind of exploded from there. So that was probably in about 2010.

I started with you guys actually in about 2015, I think, when you guys were kind of starting up. 2015, 2016. Yeah, I reached out to you guys, but then I could shoot myself in the foot, but I just elected not to sign on. It just kind of sat there. I was like, "Nah, you know," and it wasn't until probably about 2021, 2022 when I actually decided, "You know what, this is, I can't wait any longer. I need to jump on board."

Patrick Shanahan: Oh, that's awesome. I love, love, love hearing that. And do you remember how you found us all that time ago? I always wonder because I'm a marketer.

Brian Cole: Yeah, it was through an advertisement. It was through an advertisement that you guys were running. And I remember I actually ended up doing a phone call with somebody. I don't remember who, could have been Nick because you guys were really small at that time. And yeah, so I remember I was talking with you guys, and they said, "Hey, we'd love to have you come on board," blah, blah, blah. And I didn't. Yeah, and we eventually got his attention.

Patrick Shanahan: We eventually got his attention. I want to show off just briefly some of your work that I can do via Instagram. If you guys haven't followed him, you gotta give Brian a follow on this. The detail that he gets on this work is just insane. And for anyone that loves wine, he doesn't exactly pick Two Buck Chuck to paint. You'll notice, I mean, these bottles are unbelievable that are on here. And there's just something emotional in all that. That maybe hits alcoholics like me or people that enjoy wine in general. But it's so, so powerful. And I see, yeah, you're adding in the bourbon now. I just love this niche. I feel like, you know, for the people that love the... Let me put it to you this way: How many different travel artists are there out there? Right? And what's the premise of the travel artist? Someone's had this vacation to this place, it's made this emotional connection, and they want to remember it forever. Well, you spend the kind of money that you're going to spend on these bottles of wine, you know, the Silver Oak or any of the rest of them that are in here. That's an emotional experience too. Right? And so now they have the ability to memorialize it and always think about it and take them back to that place. It's just like you've got so many powerful emotional triggers built in that it's sort of crazy.

But I would love to hear the evolution of, since you started, since you came on board, you know, where have you picked up steam? Where did you struggle early on? What do you feel like you're doing a much better job of now?

Brian Cole: Oh, okay. Yeah, one, it's, and this is where I think like the marketing stuff that you guys do has really, really helped me. And my wife also, she's a business owner, so she's an attorney. So I had the privilege of watching her leave her firm and grow from the ground up. From the ground up, from scratch, to the point where she had other attorneys working for her. I saw the marketing piece that she did, trying to figure out how to actually do some good marketing and to work in the hustle that it took her to get to that point. And so I would share stuff with her about what you guys were doing. And she's like, "Brian, that's great." Because it's like a lot of the stuff translates over. It's almost identical. You really have to go through the same process. So the marketing piece was definitely huge. Cause honestly, even though I had her as kind of a template, there was still stuff that I was missing. And I was honestly, I was in galleries, still am, but they weren't moving my pieces. I would sell some, but it wasn't a lot. So I was definitely the classic case where, uh, guess Nick will say sometimes the gallery doesn't always sell the work. Yeah, I mean, that was, that was, I was classic that. So trying to get that, which I still got a lot of work to do, but trying to get that piece down and better understanding about marketing and what I needed to do and the niche piece really, really helped because like you guys were kind of saying, like you can find, like I took the niche course, so then I realized through that that I have niches within the niche. For example, like I have people who love wine, but they may not like any of the Bordeaux wine, but they love the California stuff. So for them, you know, and I've had people tell me this, it's like, "Yeah, well, I love it. But do you do any Napa Valley stuff or this specific California one?" And I was like, "Oh, okay." So that's when I learned, okay, well, I need to kind of break that up a little bit, you know, because my customers are telling me, you know, it's certain stuff that they like that they don't like. Some of them like white, but they don't like red, vice versa. So just trying to navigate that piece, you know, that was a struggle, something that I had to work through.

And actually, just coming across wine period because at first when I started, I wasn't doing this. I was doing like music pieces because I also love music and play music. So I was doing like these abstract pieces, but it wasn't challenging for me, and it just wasn't... I mean, people bought them, but it just wasn't... You know, it just kind of wasn't like what I was as the artist really challenged me. And it was going through a magazine that I actually found, you know, discovered that, and I was like, "Oh man, I really love all the different elements that it is." But, you know, trying to, you know, from the very beginning stages, trying to find out, you know, like shooting in the dark, really, you know, you just kind of trying different things to kind of 100%.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, that's how it's supposed to be. That's how it's supposed to be in the beginning. Like, you're not supposed to... Almost no one figures it out right out of the gates, right? And, you know, I love what you said too about... You read all these stories about like the folks that are mega into Bordeaux and the folks that are mega into Chardonnays, right? And make it into the big, bold California wines. And it's like, you have diehard tribes within the tribes. And let me tell you, the whiskey folks and the bourbon folks and the Scotch folks are just as diehard too, right? You know, it's crazy.

And, you know, I said, there's a guy with a comment on Instagram saying "sober sport." I, this was the exact thing that I was going to get into too, but it's like, what is the question that I hear a thousand times from all artists and photographers? "I just want to target the high-net-worth buyers. How am I going to target the high-net-worth buyers? How am I going to get to those folks?" Right? Well, I'll tell you, when they're paying, you know, 100 plus, 100plus,500 plus, $1,000 plus, right, you are automatically targeting them. Most people don't even know what these bottles of wine look like because they're so expensive. Right? Like, you know, most people have not had them. Right? Like, you've got some of the most famous bottles of wine ever. And so, if by design or not, you've managed... I mean, what, what is a good bottle of Cabernet cost, right? Like, you're automatically targeting the top 1% strata of society with this, and I don't know if you did it by design or not, but it's like, you know, you are targeting a group that would want to put this on their wall. Their checks don't bounce. You have figured out like what a creative way to really hack into those high-net-worth buyers, which I think is awesome.

Brian Cole: Yeah, and the... I'm sorry, go ahead.

Patrick Shanahan: No, no, go ahead.

Brian Cole: Yeah, and the other thing is that there's also people, like I get a lot of commissions from people who want to buy their favorite wine, and they want to commission me, and the wine costs under 20,20,30. But they're like, "You know, Brian, it meant something to them." Like I had one guy, I did a commission for him and his wife. They went somewhere, did some international travel for their wedding anniversary years ago. And he was like, "You know, Brian, this was a cheap bottle, but it just meant something to us because they were on the beach somewhere, and it just, you know, it just caused them to, it was a special moment for them." So they wanted a bottle to commemorate that. And it was like I said, it wasn't an expensive bottle, but it just did something to him.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, it's profound because you have the ability to tap into that, right? Like, you know, how many times on momentous occasions, you know, celebrating the anniversary or celebrating an engagement or, you know, the birth of the first child, like all of those things in there, you know, I would love to see or hear kind of what is your revenue balance in between what the gallery is doing, your commissions work, your originals, your prints. Are you kind of spread across the board, or do you find one of them more lucrative to you overall?

Brian Cole: No, I mean, I would say they're definitely spread out. They're definitely spread out across the board. I would say probably maybe through Art Storefronts, probably more. I mean, like with the galleries, because I have a lot of originals in there, mostly originals. So when I get paid through there, of course, it's a decent size check, but you only sell so many of those, right? Then, but through Art Storefronts, you know, through you guys, I sold like two or three prints just this week. And for me, the merch, believe it or not, it's a big thing because I have a lot of customers who have said, "You know, Brian, I love your work, but I can't afford an original. What do you have?" So that's when, for me, the calendars come in, puzzles come in, those for me are like big items that I have, the puzzles, the prints, and the calendars.

Patrick Shanahan: You have got to get into the cell phone cases, by the way, and the reason I say that is a couple of reasons, and you haven't heard my rant on cell phones, but I'll do this quickly, and then I want to tell you why you're the perfect fit for it. iPhone has an application in it called Screen Time, buried in the Screen Time report is the number of times a person picks up a cell phone in a day. Average people our age, I assume you and I are about the same age, we average like 100 to 110 pickups a day. The millennials, they average like 200 pickups a day. So that means if you can get your art on the back of one of these guys, it's gonna be seen 200 times a day, okay? Which is one of the most staggering revelations that I could possibly imagine because no one has someone looking at their art 200 times a day every day, day in, day out, where it gets difficult for all others and where it's a win for you is that there are very few people creating their art, Brian, in portrait orientation, right? Your wine bottles automatically... You know what I mean? Everyone else is having to crop their images or create different images that fit onto this, but you got it in spades. I mean, every one of your pieces is like a cell phone case for the most part. I mean, that's a cell phone case right there, right? How many individual bottles could you have on a case? I am not kidding, Brian. I think properly marketed, you could start selling sets of California wines. You could start selling sets of Burgundy. You could probably start selling sets of the whiskeys. And be like, look, get on a subscription. I'll send you a new cell phone case every single solitary month. And let's get that return recurring revenue play going on. I just, I'm really excited about where that could potentially go. And I, to be honest with you, all of our customers thus far, aside from the ones that do abstracts that are like really hard, easy to be cropped, like your work is in that orientation. It's unbelievable.

Brian Cole: Thanks. I'm writing that down. Yep. I'm writing it down. It's too good.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, it's too good. It's just too good. There's no question. I want to ask you too, because you've been with us for so many years, but you still have a day job, right? You're still having a job to pay the bills. Give us a sense of the trajectory of the business over the years. Now, I know it's not, it is never, everyone thinks it's just like hockey stick growth, you know, year three or whatever. It's always a little bit of a squiggly and roundabout line. But would you say has the business been growing year after year after year, every year, bit by bit?

Brian Cole: I would say so, definitely. Yeah, and definitely like last year. I mean, it definitely particularly like with the one client that I had who I didn't even know was on my email list. He had a huge, huge purchase, and that really kind of set me over the top.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, and what was it? If you don't mind me asking, was it a big original?

Brian Cole: Yeah, it was a big original. The price point that he purchased it, he paid about $15,000.

Patrick Shanahan: Wow. Wow. Yeah. How'd he find you? Did you ask?

Brian Cole: I did. I learned from you guys. Yeah, so how he found out about me was he actually went into one of the galleries that had my work. He loved it, but he didn't like the particular piece because it was a Bordeaux piece, so he didn't purchase it. But what he did was he looked me up and got on my email list and kind of sat there from what he told me for about a year, never responded to any emails or nothing. And then one day I sent out an email that showed, I was like, "You know what, let me send out an email about upcoming work because I'm always sending out emails about what I existing have, but I never sent out anything to tell people this is what's coming down the pipe." So I did that. And I said, "You know what, I'm going to do a California wine this time." And just sent it out, and it wasn't finished or anything like that. It was a sketch actually because I was still working on it. He saw it, loved it, and he said, "Hey, you know, this reminds me of the Sunday dinners that he had with his family. How much is it?" So I said, "Okay, so lesson learned, get them on the phone." So I sent out an appointment, said, "Hey, you know, this is Brian, blah, blah, blah." And I learned at that point from you guys, don't give them the price in an email or anything like that. Don't respond with the cost, just get them on the phone and then go from there. And so that's what we did. Scheduled an appointment. And he was pretty much like, "Okay, you know, I love your work." And at that point, what I realized is when you have a buyer like that, at that point, they're already, you don't have to convince them to buy the work, they've already kind of made up their mind at that point. It's just negotiating. We're just negotiating the price at that point. So we went kind of back and forth a little bit, which I expected, and settled on the price. And I said, "Okay, I'll finish it. This is how long it'll take." And he was happy.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, you better believe you were happy. You got to raise all of your prices now is what needs to happen.

Brian Cole: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: Um, do you, this is an interesting question. Ellen here is like, "Please tell me you travel to Italy, Napa, and the Pacific Northwest and write off all those trips." I want to hear that he does that to Ellen. I'm hoping he does that.

Brian Cole: Right, better still, he should be paid to go to these wineries directly and stay for a week with his wife, you know, and get some good angles.

Patrick Shanahan: It does bring up a good question. Like, there's so many boutique wine bars in the United States. It's sort of staggering. You know, I'm where I am, or one of my good buddies had one for years. He's got one down on Laguna Beach now, and it's awesome. And I do wonder, you know, what would happen if you started doing outbound reach outs to these folks, right? Or even like sending them a postcard or calling them or sending them some material and then calling them because there's just no way that, you know, any wine store or even fine dining place, like there's, you have such a market there that I feel like you need to tap into.

Brian Cole: Yeah, I mean, that's something that, you know, actually my wife has gotten on me about several times about, you know, she's like, "You know, and also I had a client this week call me who purchased a print. They were like, 'Brian, you know, I love your work, but she said, you know, a lot of people I know, they don't know about you, or at least they don't know that this is what you do.'" So that told me like, okay, you know, I really need to do a much better job of marketing and letting people know, "Hey, this is what I do. This is the work that I have." And like you said, you know, trying to divide it up between time because like I said, I still have a full-time job, two kids, eight and ten-year-old. So, you know, it can be challenging. So pretty much my day is, you know, I work during the day, and in the evenings, when I'm not at a lacrosse game or doing something for the kids, I'm in my studio trying to work it out. And again, I give a lot of credit to my wife because she lets me have the time, but then she's also throwing out different ideas where she'll say, "Look, you know, I don't know, she says your realm, your area, but these are some of the things that I see that you could do that maybe would help." Because as a business owner, like one of the things that she said, one of my biggest challenges is producing the work faster because it's so detailed, it can take a while. And so she has different ideas of like, instead of doing maybe all in oil, just do it in maybe pencil or do something in acrylic paint because she said, "You know, it seems like you can produce a lot more work faster that way, as opposed to the oil, which is just so insanely detailed."

Patrick Shanahan: I totally get that. I mean, you're on the path and the journey that so many of us are on, which is like, it's a side hustle. You have life, you have a finite amount of time to put into it. You've been doing it consistently, which is the only thing that matters. Like, you know, the consistency is a hundred percent the path to how you get there. And like, look, it's not a race. No one's saying you're going to have to quit your day job today and go full-time. But you know, life's got seasons. You keep it going. I do have to say, well, while I'm on it is like, you got to be doing the coasters too, right? Have to be doing the coasters. If you're not doing the coasters yet, you need to put that order in tonight after you get off work tonight.

Brian Cole: All right, I'm on it.

Patrick Shanahan: It's a set of coasters of these. I mean, you've got it. You have got to be kidding me. I mean, these are so, so good. You know, we got a question on Instagram. So we're sport. Have you tried charcoal? I have seen you've done some pencil ones if I'm not correct.

Brian Cole: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is, uh, find it easily on Instagram, but yeah, there is matter of fact, there's several pieces. There was one where I did, uh, did it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, the one that just passed. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I did it in oil, but I also did it in pencil and charcoal.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. Yeah. So this, that, that is just basically kind of taking you through the evolution of kind of what, you know, from start to finish your power. Of how I do it. So how do you do this in the same detail?

Brian Cole: Yeah. Yeah. So when I, what I tell people is, is that you are truly getting a custom piece from me because it's, when you get an original, it's truly custom because it's hand-drawn out. And then from that point painted till it, you know, till the end. So it's truly, it's truly custom. I compare it to what I tell people. It would be like going to Louis Vuitton and saying, "Well, I want a custom bag, and these are some of the specific requirements that I want," and they produce it by hand. I said, that's to me, that's kind of the equivalent.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. I mean, like how many hours did you have into that piece?

Brian Cole: That was a lot. Yeah. My... It's interesting you said that because that's what caused me to raise the price and why I got that sale. My wife, she calculated that I spent probably about 250 hours plus on that piece.

Patrick Shanahan: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. So that's why she was like, "No, you need to raise your prices big time."

Brian Cole: Yeah. Yeah. You definitely, definitely do. And you know, you're kind of one of those ones where you can shut the lights off for 24 hours, put everything up to 30 or 40 grand, and then turn the lights back on and just see if anybody notices or even blinks an eye because the clientele is going to end up being so high-end for what you do. I feel like you probably need to add in limited editions so that you have that pushing the original price up higher, you know, and figure out how you would do the limited edition and what media type you want to do them and make them like one of a hundred and then call it a day on that. Don't do that again. And then that'll drive the original prices up too. But, you know, you have the range covered, right? Like one of these two things that you said that like I immediately glommed onto is like, you know, you have these people saying like, "Brian, I love your work, but I can't afford an original. What do you have for me?" Right? Which is why the range of pricing is so important. Otherwise, that person's gone. They're out the door. They're looking at cat videos, and they've forgotten about you. Right? That's what the mass say. Right?

Brian Cole: And I ran into that, which is why I started producing some of the stuff that I did. So I actually do have limited editions that I do. Interesting story: Years ago, I was at an art festival, and the lady, what I've learned through my wife and through my own experience, if you listen to your customers, they will tell you what they want. And so I was doing this festival, and the lady was coming in, and my prices, I had some originals, but they weren't anywhere near what they are now. And she came in, she looked around, she said, "Originals, I can't do. But prints, I can." And then she left my tent, and I was like, "Oh, I just lost a sale." But I was like, learn from that because she just told you, if you had something in her price point or print, she would have bought it. And so that's when I was like, "Okay, I need to start having some prints available." And that's where, you know, where you guys really came in because one of the reasons that was the clincher for me was the print-on-demand because I was with another website, and I would have to keep stuff in stock, and then you have stuff that wouldn't sell. So now it was sitting there in the closet, and it was frustrating. So the print-on-demand allows me to be able to tell customers, "Go here. You can print it out, and you have the different options that you want." And it just frees me up so I don't have to worry about that. I don't have to worry about trying to keep an inventory or something.

Patrick Shanahan: Oh, it's such a game-changer. Right? And like, you know, you exemplify the part-time dad, hustle side hustle, right? Like you do not have the time to be messing around with holding inventory, driving to the printer, sending tracking information, worrying about any of that. Like one of the things that affects artists from making it more than anything else is when you're wearing all of the hats, you don't have any damn time to create. So you've got to get that one off the plate. It's just not worth it. So I love that you're saying that. What's been your biggest struggle this year so far in 2024?

Brian Cole: My biggest struggle is time. Definitely, for sure. Definitely time. Because as my kids are like, one is transitioning to middle school, and they're getting older. So now they're involved in sports and so forth, which means I have even less time. So the time to devote more time to my business, that's been more of a challenge. And I'll be honest, some of it is, you know, I haven't been on top of it like I should.

Patrick Shanahan: Oh, yeah, yeah. That's all of us. Yep. But I'll say this, Copilot has really helped in that. So it's really helped, like it's nice to see like, "Oh, okay, there's an email campaign coming up," and I don't have to worry about them, which is how that print got sold this week because the email went out, and they saw it, and they were like, "Oh, well, Brian, you know, says here, he went to the website." And so I said, "Oh, okay, well, there's a 20% discount. Am I still good for that?" Yep. Go ahead. You know, so stuff like that just helps. And even if it wasn't a large sale, was it a big print? You know? No, but it was a sale. You know, and it was acquiring a new customer too.

Brian Cole: Exactly. Exactly. And you know, I'm in the same boat that you are. My kids are six and eight, and it's like, there's no time for anything, almost nothing. And you, it sounds like you have the extremely supportive and epic wife that gives you as much time as you have. But it's like, the number one thing that suffers in an artist business, a part-timer, especially is the marketing when times get tough, right? Like it doesn't get done. So at least with Copilot, you know, it's going one way or another, you can edit some of the language or not, but it's going, you are going to stay consistent. And at the end of the day, like, you know, I realized more than anything else, what is the difference between successful photographers or successful artists, successful photographers, successful creatives, and the ones that aren't? It's just consistency. That's it. Because everyone else, it gets tough, and you quit, and you stop, and you come off the gas, and you lose all that momentum.

I'm getting some questions about your, you know, like what you use as reference photography on these pieces. Like, are you working off of photos when you do this? How does that work?

Brian Cole: Yeah, I'm working off of photos. So in the pictures that I take, right, you know, like all the bottles and stuff that you see, bottles that I have purchased, and so I'll set up a still life. I'll set it up, go through it, probably take a number of pictures of different angles and so forth. And then once I'm happy with that, I will recreate it once I'm ready to say, "Okay, put it on canvas," I'll recreate it because there's things that the human eye catches that a camera can't catch. And I've been doing it for a while now that I kind of know, like, "Okay, well, this is actually probably supposed to be here, even though it may not necessarily be in the photo." Yeah. So I'm working from at least five or six different photos to create a piece plus my own level of creativity.

Patrick Shanahan: Amazing. Amazing. And once that bottle is open, I mean, I'm sure the logical thing that you're going to have to do with that juncture...

Brian Cole: Everybody asks me that. Everybody asks me that. And I'll be honest, some of the bottles I have never tasted. Most of them, actually. Some of them, a lot of them, I'll get right off of eBay. Right, you know, and they'll have an empty bottle, and it's like, "Okay, like that, you know, like that Romani Conti, I mean, that's like $16,000 or something like that, you know, but I can go on eBay and get an empty bottle all day long."

Patrick Shanahan: I love it. I love it. Well, I want to be sensitive to your time. I know you're at work. I want to hit you with two parting questions. The first, because again, I'm the marketing guy, if there's one thing that we can improve at Art Storefronts and only one thing, what is the one thing?

Brian Cole: Oh, wow. I have to, I gotta ambush. The one thing that you guys could improve, I would say probably maybe a little bit more flexibility in the social media posting through Copilot. Like right now, I think you guys just added the feature where you can actually upload photos outside of our storefronts. So for me, that was very, very helpful. So I would think, you know, for me, you know, that sort of thing.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, the good news is that's where that product is headed 100%. I mean, it's going to be just a hub. Right? You can put whatever you want up there, including the videos, including the photos. You're going to have all of that archive too. So you can go back in time, grab anything, grab something you posted three years ago, post it again. So we're making huge strides on that. It'll be coming soon. And then just as a final, almost nine years now, you've been with us. If you could go back and give yourself some advice, year one, what would it be?

Brian Cole: Uh, first of all, we're going to jump on the opportunity when I first had it. That would have been, that would be the first one. Um, but the other piece of advice that I would say is just try not to get discouraged. That it is, you know, it is a process. What really helped me was having my wife, you know, seeing her go from start her business, you know, her law firm. And then when she ended up leaving it, it was, she was making about $600,000, so to go from that to zero, basically, you know, but it took time. It took her about 12, 13 years to get to that point. And it was a lot of work. And so that's what I would tell myself when I was just starting out, it's like, you know, it's going to take time. It is a grind, but just keep going. The consistency wins out.

Patrick Shanahan: Well, Brian, you are awesome. Thank you so much for the time. For everyone that's watching, you got to go give him a follow. He's Brian I.E.N. dot Cole underscore fine art. You can find him on Instagram. We gotta get this Instagram following count up too. We gotta start working on this. You're not going to start talking some strategy here. Really appreciate you. Love seeing your art. Love talking about it and can't wait to see what you're going to do in the next 10 years.

Brian Cole: All right, great. Thanks, Pat. Thanks, man.

Patrick Shanahan: Okay, buddy.