Artist Kate Cook

Join us for an inspiring episode of the Art Marketing Podcast as we dive into the unique world of automotive art with artist Kate Cook. Discover how Kate blends her passion for cars with her artistic talent, creating stunning pieces that resonate with car enthusiasts. We discuss the challenges and triumphs of creative entrepreneurship, the importance of storytelling in art, and how to leverage social media effectively. Plus, learn about Kate's innovative approach to using automotive paint on canvas and her journey to elevate her work into the fine art realm. Tune in for valuable insights and motivation for artists and entrepreneurs alike!

Podcast Transcribe

Patrick Shanahan: I don't think there's a single solitary artist I know if the output of the factory increased the business would not grow. No one is seeing your work, no one knows you exist. So if you can increase the widget factory, do it. And no one's saying lose your integrity in the process. Do you, be you.

Kate Cook: For me, when I'm painting cars, a lot of the art world is like, "What's the deeper meaning? What is the meaning behind this?" I'm like, "No, it's just a badass car. I just want to paint it." I believe that art can just be a beautiful thing to look at. I truly believe that. But to talk about it and market it on the internet, you do have to have a story behind it as to why you painted it. So I wanted to get these conversations into those spaces to remind people, myself included, hey, you're not alone. We can all build something together. We can all find something greater than ourselves.

When it came to talking about small business and making things work with your creative business, the struggles and the successes were very similar. So I was like, wow, there's definitely a through thread here with creative entrepreneurship. Everybody really kind of struggles with the same thing, no matter if you're painting or taking pictures and trying to make a living from it.

Patrick Shanahan: Alright, we are back with another edition, the Friday edition of the Art Marketing Podcast. I'm really excited to have a fellow podcaster on, an artist that specializes in an incredible niche, and Sarah Di at her timing because she just launched her website. So a ton of fun stuff to get into and unpack today with artist Kate Cook. Kate, welcome!

Kate Cook: Thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure. I've been listening to your show and following you guys for a while, so it was so cool when you reached out.

Patrick Shanahan: That's amazing. I think Kate was actually the victim of one of our random outbound marketing techniques and tactics because that's what I talk about all day long, and you better believe I practice what I preach. So I think she was the victim of a cold Instagram DM. Then I saw her painting on a car, and I was like, "Oh, I want to talk to her. This is awesome." And also terrifying to even contemplate painting on a car. What do you do when you screw up? We've got to get into that because I've been dying to know.

Give us the elevator pitch, Kate. How long have you been an artist? Where are you from? What's the business like? All that good stuff.

Kate Cook: Yes, absolutely. So my business is Asphalt Canvas Custom Art LLC, officially located here in Central Texas in Belton. It's been seven years full-time in business for me, going on eight. I've been an artist my whole life, as everyone says. As far as getting into the automotive field, I work primarily in the automotive industry because when I graduated from college, I actually had an oil painting studio art degree. I had a passion for cars my whole life because of how my family raised me and my brother. So I was around pinstriping, airbrushing, and custom graphics on cars my whole life.

I didn't start really trying to self-teach myself anything until after college. I was taking commissions for pen and ink and oil, but as soon as I started to accept commissions for pinstriping, which was super nerve-wracking, I still am deep friends with the first person that took a chance on letting me paint their car. It wasn't a car; it was a competition pulling tractor that he had completely custom painted. Welcome to Texas, I just moved here.

So I was able to teach myself pinstriping, and then I've taken a couple of workshops since then. Now I've kind of translated that pinstriping knowledge and intermixed it with my traditional art medium knowledge of painting with oil paints and acrylics. Now I'm painting with automotive paint but on canvas, and that's really blossomed and shown me where my true art style that kind of separates me from the crowd is. It's been a long journey to find my art style, and it's still not done, but it's definitely a lot more refined here in the last couple of years.

Patrick Shanahan: Wow, that's just super interesting to unpack in itself. So does the auto paint stick to the canvas fine?

Kate Cook: Yes, so I work with a company. I've always kind of collaborated with different collision shops and custom paint shops here in the area. I found a willing guy who we've become great friends with, his name is Josh with Inline Six Auto Body out in Lampasas. They ended up painting our car that we were building. My husband and I have a '64 Dodge Polara that we were building from the ground up, and I did all the custom paint on there. So I kind of picked his ear and said, "Hey, would you be willing to try this little idea I have?" And he was all in.

So we did maybe two or three small test canvases where he would choose the base coat color to get, and then he would spray the canvas and then sand wet sand it all down. Then he brings it to my studio, I do all of the hand-painted details on there with a brush with pinstriping brushes and sign painting brushes, and then take it back to his paint booth, and he paints it there with a really thick high gloss clear coat. So he clear coats it just like a car.

Patrick Shanahan: So canvas goes into the paint booth, base color that you decide on, hand-painted, is that also with automotive paint?

Kate Cook: Yes, it's with automotive paint. I'm so blessed to have a sponsorship by the paint company I use, their Alpha 6 Automotive Enamels. Alpha 6 Corporation is a company in Detroit, and when they first opened, they were kind of rivaling with the current enamel painting company that's been around for decades called One Shot, which is also a great paint brand. But they've kind of made their place in the industry, and I kind of got in early with them. They saw the uniqueness of my style, and ever since then, they've collaborated on a bunch of projects, and now they sponsor my studio with paint and brushes and all the good things.

Patrick Shanahan: What an amazing story that it actually goes in on the clear coat. I guess that's not so far off, right? Because all the paper manufacturers have been making coatings for their canvas forever, and you're supposed to coat this. This is just way easier because it comes out of a spray booth.

Kate Cook: Yes, definitely. It was kind of a tricky situation because we were worried that with the bounciness of the canvas, you know how all the layers, because there's so much paint on these canvases, it was kind of nerve-wracking. There were a couple of pieces in the beginning that cracked because we didn't have the right chemical mixture, so to speak. I don't want to get into the specifics, but it's crazy when you start working with automotive paint when you're used to working with oil paints. It's all about chemical, making sure that each thing that you're using, whether it's what you're washing your brushes with or what you're spraying with, that all these chemicals line up. It's very scientific, and I don't have all that knowledge. So that's why I collaborate with the paint body shop, and they love that creative outlet too. They build some amazing cars.

But the coolest part is that they were creating or finishing up a Ferrari paint job on a Ferrari there in their shop, and he said, "Hey, I have some extra paint left over, would you like to get a canvas sprayed?" And I was like, "Absolutely." So he sprayed this canvas with a factory Ferrari color, and now I'm painting on it. So you can have factory car colors on these canvases, which eventually I think will lead to some amazing commissions.

Patrick Shanahan: My marketing mind is spinning because where I live is like ridiculous car culture. I'm in Southern California, originally from Newport in Orange County. On a weekend, the Lambos, the Ferraris, everything, and the die-hardness they have for their individual car and how much they love to flex about their individual car is staggering.

Kate Cook: As they should, especially when you spend two or three hundred thousand on one.

Patrick Shanahan: So I do wonder, how would I market on those colors specifically? You got to hit that from a keyword standpoint. We should show off your art too while we're talking.

Kate Cook: There's actually a video of the process on the homepage of my website if you want to click on over to that.

Patrick Shanahan: Hold on, I got so many windows open. We should say you just recently launched your website, right?

Kate Cook: Yes, so it's right there. You can see the spray gun, he's spraying it in the paint booth right there.

Patrick Shanahan: Oh, that's so cool. So that's your friend Josh clearing it, and then you have a really great friend, Eiffel Media, who does all of your videos. He's actually coming to do the Ferrari one here in a week.

Kate Cook: Yeah, that's it sprayed out. The coolest part is in the pink, there's all this metallic flake, and it's just really cool. The thing you see above there, "Art Motive," that's what I just recently got registered trademark in Texas to kind of clarify my process and make it more official.

Patrick Shanahan: Love it. Again, you talk about niches, and do I have the niche? Should I go into a niche? I looked at your work and everything else, but I think the more that you can penetrate the automotive world, the better, just because they spend so much money and they have so much money. Now that you've got this unique thing, I wonder too, like I interviewed a couple of podcasts back, this total anomaly, his name is Craig Black. His approach, I've never heard of an approach like that where he just went directly after the whales. I feel like with this branding and this notion, do you just go right after Lamborghini, right after Ferrari, right after McLaren, and say, "I have got your unique pink color here, do you want to do it?" You should because they have like, it's worth to fire some arrows I think in that direction.

So tell me about the business up till now because you just launched the website. Is the actual art on prints the newest aspect of the business, and before was it primarily service-based?

Kate Cook: Just to clarify, I did have a really wonderful website prior to the one you're showing here on the screen, but about three weeks ago, it actually got hacked and crashed. It was a long process of transferring all of it over, but it was definitely a lemons-into-lemonade situation because I just love this new site and how it represents my work.

My business is primarily commission-based. It's been that way since before I had a website. I've been a commission artist my entire career. That's where I have been able to sustain a full-time studio. But here recently, with this new automotive art that I'm trying to promote, that's going to be more like a fine art collection setup. I have a series I did, "She's Been Everywhere, Man," and I'm trying to reach more into the idea of combining the automotive industry with the fine art industry. It's always been kind of two separate things, and I know a lot of wonderful actual pinstripers that deserve to be in galleries. I think there's been a little bit more of a good transfer between the two formats where you see pinstriping and automotive art in galleries, and I think that's wonderful. I want to continue forward with that concept.

Patrick Shanahan: It's so funny and interesting because a bunch of people are asking, is this a really expensive process? So we should talk about that for a second. I think one of the things I've always obsessed about is creating the product with the end destination in mind. I get so much static from my company because I created this concept of the bathroom art sale. Designed with the end in mind, not here's a product, buy this beautiful product and put it in your home. This is a sale specifically for art that is going to go into your bathroom. What is a bathroom? Small walls, smaller pieces, sometimes series stacked on top. So I had my customers run this over the years a couple of times, and then it got kind of a bad rep from the sales guys that are trying to get new people to sign up. So it kind of disappeared, but it actually was really effective for some customers because you're not just having to buy my stuff, it's hey, your bathroom sucks, you want to dial it up, here's some pieces, they're on sale.

You in the art you create, what's unique about it is you have access to wall space most people don't know what it is: the garage. Absolutely. For anyone turning wrenches that loves their garage and has a man cave, you should really play into that too. There should be a man cave sale, a dial-up garage sale, a grease monkey sale or whatever the case is. I want to see photos of your stuff on garage walls when people are wrenching on whatever. Most artists don't stand a chance of getting into the garage, and a lot of times that's empty wall space.

Kate Cook: It's funny because one of my highest promoted pins or my highest ranking pins on Pinterest was a pin that I did with that pink painting that you just showed, and it said, "Not your husband's man cave art" on the top.

Patrick Shanahan: I love that.

Kate Cook: It was because, as an automotive artist and pinstriper, I have had my artwork hanging in garages almost primarily. Where I found the issue is the sustainability of selling to the lower-end clients for original work like that can only go so far. If you're okay with that, that's okay. But where I'm at now is I'm trying to level up into this next area and get onto gallery walls rather than being in the garage. However, on my Instagram, there's a safe that I just did, and his garage was not like your average garage.

Patrick Shanahan: No, his was not. I love you did gold leaf on this thing, the whole jam.

Kate Cook: He had a very specific vision for this safe. It was actually a custom-built safe, which brought its own amazing opportunity because this safe company is just in Waco, and they build vaults and safes from scratch. So I actually would love to have them on my podcast because it's all about craftsmanship. He had it custom made, and then he showed me around. He had a lounge area, he was very much a collector of fine art and sculpture. So we kind of played into the cars that he had there that he had collected. As far as colors, he had gray marble floors and off-white walls, very industrial leather Western kind of modern. So we just played into all of that. In addition to that, he told me a story of the name of his old previous ranch that he and his wife lived on, and it was called The Dark Horse Ranch. So we played up that story, which is what I love to do. I love to take people's stories and their legacy and translate it into art. That's kind of my thing. I originally wanted to be a storyboard artist, so I feel like my talent is kind of encapsulated in this area where if somebody tells me a story with words, I can visually understand it and create a couple of thumbnail sketches almost immediately. I think that's where success has come as a commission artist and painting on people's cars and things like that.

Patrick Shanahan: I love it. There's no one way to make it as an artist. I've interviewed so many, and we have 12,000 customers, so I've gotten to know a bunch of them really well. It's so fascinating to hear all the various different ways that you make it happen, and it's so hard to make it happen that any way you could make it happen is a great way to make it happen. I did appreciate what you said after going after the high end of the market too because I think there's a ton of wisdom in that, of course, but I don't think it's mutually exclusive. I think you can do both.

One of the things that often gets glossed over, and you probably heard me if you ever listen to this, is I believe that the number of new customers required per year is one of the most directly reflective of the revenue potential of the business metrics that exist. So you could say, "Okay, I'm going to go after the top end of the market," and that's great, and then you can work all year at that and get one good sale for $10,000, or you could focus on both ends and then also acquire 350 customers. I would rather you have the 350 than the one whale because what will end up happening is year after year, you just have more people to email, you have more people to run sales to and run promotions to and all the rest. But just out of curiosity, what size is your email list at?

Kate Cook: Yeah, so my email list is about 450 people right now. It's a good, obtainable size for me to cater to the best. But a lot of those people were with me early, eight years ago. I'm actually in the process of making a new kind of downloadable freebie for my site to kind of collect a little bit more relevant emails for newer customers with this new website, this new vision that I have for where I'm going. So it is kind of a little bit stagnant, but I did send out an email right before I transferred my website, and it was like, "Is anybody there?" and a lot of people replied. So that was a really big encouragement to me because sometimes it just feels like you're just continually posting content, doing all this, and it's like out into the void, and nobody's seeing it.

Patrick Shanahan: 100%. I also saw you ranting about that in the post, and I've got it pulled up. I want to talk about that in a second. We were gonna say something about how expensive it is for you to do that whole process.

Kate Cook: Yeah, for sure. I'll just touch on that really quickly because it definitely is an expense. I am paying Josh, my painter, to clear and prep the canvases. A lot of the times we do a lot of trade work, and I've done that throughout my whole company with videography and photography. We do a lot of trade work. But I have a painting on my easel right now, about four and a half to five feet wide and tall, and just to get the Ferrari coloring on the background of that canvas cost me $250.

Patrick Shanahan: Whoa.

Kate Cook: Yeah, so it's a huge investment. But if my end goal is, if I'm breaking down the goals from the end and moving this way backwards, that makes sense to me. It's a worthwhile investment, and I'm able to do some trade work to have a videographer come out and do a really cool video for us on this when I'm done. So it's still fairly new. I think doing the side jobs where I am still pinstriping cars, I am still doing the jobs that take me one or two days and making eight hundred to a thousand dollars a day or two. So those things are almost like the bread and butter so that I can focus on these higher-end paintings that I'm going to be taking to the higher-end clients, hopefully showroom type stuff.

Patrick Shanahan: What are you painting on the Ferrari one that you have now?

Kate Cook: It's a bunch of roses. I don't know if you can see it, but it's pretty dark. It's a bunch of roses. Can I just stand up and show you?

Patrick Shanahan: 100%, let's go.

Kate Cook: Okay, it's huge. So give me just a minute. Okay, let me see. So this is the one that has the sheen on it already. It's insane. So it has a background with the Ferrari color. There we go, you can kind of see it. It's a black color that has a gold metal flake in it, and then where it's shining is the enamel paint that I've all hand-painted. So it has all these different roses. This is a very sought-after Ferrari that has been known to win a lot of high-end Le Mans racing and stuff like that.

Patrick Shanahan: I have such a... I'm not gonna be able to come off. I'm gonna end up thinking about this all weekend. But here's where my mind is. I just got to get this out. So you have a direct connection on the newest paint colors that come out from these cars, classic and new. You lean all into those. You create the original. The original should probably be priced up $150,000, and then you should do 10 to 15 limited editions per the paint color that are going to have to be hand-embellished. The print should always be limited edition because if it's not a special thing, it's not going to blow the hair back of any of these car owners in the slightest. Limited edition. I'm just trying to think how you would capture because if it's a print, is the car paint technically on there?

Kate Cook: No, that's the whole jam of the whole thing. 15 prints and then embellish on top of it, and then he sprays and limited edition every single solitary time. It just comes down to what's a subject matter material, and I would grab cars and I would get going on that literally immediately. The original probably needs to pull everything down on your website right now and reprice everything because I swear to God, you could go to McLaren, you could go to Lamborghini, you could go to Ferrari, you could go to some of the big shows and say, Here’s the original. I charge $150,000 for this. I’m willing to give the first one away for charity, but the limited edition is $10,000 each, and there are either 12 or 6 of them.

You just have them all right there in the booth—walk in with the entire package. I would go moonshot right out of the gates, and I think you could probably pull it off.

The real question is: what lead do you have? Now, where it gets really interesting is this—let’s say Lamborghini comes out with a new model, and there are only three or four color options. You get the paint immediately. Then you put that car on top of the canvas in whatever cool artistic way you choose.

There’s the original—maybe I’d charge $500,000 or $250,000 for it, something big, maybe even a little less than the car itself. But the people who buy those cars? The fact that they could have the original hanging in their garage, and then downstream there are only 12 of the limited editions, and they’re gone? That scarcity drives the whole thing.

Once it’s done, it’s done. You’ll never paint with that color again. Move on to the next one.

But seriously—I think you’re majorly onto something with this.

Kate Cook: I appreciate that insight. I saw in the comments somebody asked if I was going to fill in the black or if it's done, and actually, the whole reason the black is still like that is because once we get this painting into the paint booth and clear it, that black is going to freaking pop with that Ferrari black metallic and gold color with the flake in there. So it's going to be really sparkly, and that's why it looks funky right now. It looks undone, but once it gets clear on there, man, it just immediately...

Patrick Shanahan: If you go that high-end route, it's high reward, but it's high-dollar production value too.

Kate Cook: Yes, and this is still very new, so I appreciate your insight. That's very confirming some of the thoughts that I had in my head.

Patrick Shanahan: It just all comes together because it's so unique. The colors are so unique. They have the built-in audience. They have the built-in audience that's really small but really high net worth and are fanatics. Here in town, we constantly make fun of, if you're one of these guys, I'm sorry, but look, you bought the Ferrari. I get you driving the Ferrari down PCH, and that's a beautiful thing, but you look like such a head with the Ferrari hat on in the Ferrari. Why are you doing that? They do it all the time too. They do. You own the car. Everyone knows you own the car. It's beautiful. You don't need to wear the hat while you're driving the car. It's like they'll buy anything just to associate with that. God, I really think you're onto something with that. Either way, whether you approach the manufacturers, the dealer, or whatever, and that could be another thing too. Walk into any of those dealerships, and my goodness.

Kate Cook: I would actually jettison everything else and go all in on that until it hit because if you hit that, you realize you got there. It's just a big thing, and that's absolutely the goal. It's just funding that goal and making the work in the midterm. I would be able to knock these out so quickly if I had... I'm also a mom of a two-year-old, so I only have three to four hours a day and love to knock these out and get them into the hands of people as soon as possible.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, but I really think that angle. You would have to go so high-end on the video. Like the paint comes into the shop, the Lamborghini logo is on it, you film that entire thing. Craig Black is just... follow that guy's inspiration.

Kate Cook: Yeah, absolutely. We have another customer who's been on the podcast a couple of times. He does a really good job at branding himself super high-end, Jonah Allen. Have you seen any of his stuff?

Patrick Shanahan: I have not, but I'm learning the importance of branding yourself high-end. It's almost more important than the artwork you're making in certain situations. It has to be good artwork, don't get me wrong, but unless you're presenting it professionally and you can only present it to the clients that are gonna... I've just learned that it's worth spending the money to get the videographer in, it's worth getting the money to spend to get the photographer in that knows what they're doing. They understand from a different perspective, and even it's good to have somebody that's not an artist come in and look at it and be like, "This is a way cool angle on it." It's something that you wouldn't think of otherwise.

Patrick Shanahan: 100%. You need to hire someone that first of all can get access to the car, do some film of the car, and then I want to see the paint coming in. You have such a story. I want to see the actual paint. I want someone like walking with a velvet pillow, and the Lamborghini paint is on it, delivering it to the guy in the booth, and then he's spraying the canvas, and then that gets all wrapped up white-gloved like they would. Such a high-end thing.

Kate Cook: Anyway, thank you for all that. Enough of that tangent. Let's get into the podcast. Tell me, what was the raison d'être of the podcast? How long have you had it going on, all those things?

Patrick Shanahan: Yes, okay. So the podcast stemmed from my business as an artist and talking to people in the industry, mostly in the automotive industry because a lot of those guys that are doing custom paint, they also know how to build cars. They're just natural fixers, natural craftsmen. In addition to that, we really started talking about business, and it just started to make sense to me that no matter who I was talking to at these trade show situations, whether they were doing chain stitching on a jacket or building a car, when it came to talking about small business and making things work with your creative business, our struggles and successes were very similar. So I was like, wow, there's definitely a through thread here with creative entrepreneurship. Everybody really kind of struggles with the same thing, no matter if you're painting or taking pictures and trying to make a living from it.

In addition to that, there was a little bit of me wanting to share more of my faith in my business. I was just noticing that these conversations almost every single time correlated or started moving and winding into talking about faith. For me, I'm a Christian, and we were talking about God, but there were other conversations where people would start talking about what they believe in and how it's helped them through tough situations in their business. I started to think, there has got to be a way to do this, get these conversations out into the world to make all of these people that are working in their garages and their studio spaces, mostly alone, because being a creative entrepreneur is primarily a solo endeavor. So I wanted to get these conversations into those spaces to remind people, myself included, hey, you're not alone. We can all build something together. We can all find something greater than ourselves. For me, it's God to trust in. So this is kind of all of that wrapped in one. The Hands, Head, and Heart is kind of where I lead the conversation. So I'll have a craftsman come on or an artisan come on, and we kind of talk about the hands, head, and heart: the art, the business, and the belief behind said craftsman.

We started with that last year in the very beginning of the year, and we finished 10 episodes, interview-style episodes, very long-form, one to two hours. Long-term goal is to go to them with a videographer and actually film their work in their studio and interview them and have a full YouTube channel based off that. Unfortunately, right now, it's just me learning by the seat of my pants how to create YouTube videos where they've got like the slide of their work, their work is coming through on the YouTube video as they're talking about it. We do videos of the workspace, and then this year, I just launched a small miniseries within that podcast called The Artisan Edge. That's kind of where I've taken this blog that I've had for years talking about art, business, and belief, and I've translated it into podcast format. I'm hoping that's going to help more creative entrepreneurs with basic things like what your website should have or a different perspective on money-making or mastering your craft versus mastering your business. These are like little 15-minute episodes that it's just me on the podcast. These are very new; I only have one up right now, but I'm enjoying it. It's a lot of work, but I think it's going to be worth it because I can record four or five in one sitting and then get them spaced out.

Patrick Shanahan: No, I love it. The production value on this thing's already higher than mine. I gotta get in gear here.

Kate Cook: You're too kind. Thank you.

Patrick Shanahan: I loved what you said about faith too. I was like, can I ask you a personal question, Kate? Do you aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs?

Kate Cook: Yes, with this, I say what you haven't caught it yet, have you? To mind your own affairs and to work with your hands as so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. It's a great verse.

Patrick Shanahan: It's a great verse. So I had to go and look that up on your site after I saw it, which is 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12. Great life thirst there. I love that you're doing the podcast, and you're going to end up learning so much about how these other artists do their things and what they struggle with. The thing that you said that just lit my fires is that you guys are all solopreneurs. I've interviewed like a hundred thousand artists in various different capacities over the years. What percentage out of the hundred thousand would you say has even one employee?

Kate Cook: Oh, hardly any. I would imagine it's less than one percent.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, two employees, less than one-tenth of one percent. It's the nature of the sort of the artistic endeavors. You could probably even expand it out to artists, musicians, and Earth. But you're a solopreneur, and you're always going to be a solopreneur, and that is a really tough road to hoe. Why I'm so bullish on AI, quite frankly, is because for the first time ever, you guys have an employee. It's the closest thing to it. If you can figure out how to start putting that thing to work for you and how it can increase your output, you're going to win. You have multiple rights of the apple like that by the way with the podcast as well. I have to teach you some tricks on that. But give me your quick rundown. I've used AI once. I tried it. I liked it. My husband uses it. We don't use it. What's the use case in the Cook household?

Kate Cook: Yes, so I'll be completely honest. I was so anti-AI everything when it first came out, and I'm still very leery of it. But with full transparency, I'll tell you that I could not have done this website rebrand without it. I have started to fully implement it with all of my podcast outlines, every email that I write, all my blogs. It's become truly an assistant. My husband and I jokingly call it George because we're just like, "Hey, you should ask George about that." It's so stupid, but no, it's great. It's definitely a tool. I took a class early this year, it was a business for artists class, and she really opened my eyes to the idea of ChatGPT being a tool rather than something that just steals everything. It's just a tool.

Patrick Shanahan: Exactly. It is truly just a tool. I still have a lot of negative thoughts around the artwork creation with AI, but for actual descriptions, for words, those like business plans, finding your ideal audience, yeah, I've done a lot of YouTube research about like different things you can plug in to help you prompts, and those prompts have really changed and refined my vision for this company.

Patrick Shanahan: 100%. Yes, yes. Everyone, listen to Kate. The "it's just gonna steal all my stuff" attitude is such a lazy attitude to take, and I hate seeing it because it's just a tool like any other tool. How you use it is just how you use it. Ultimately, I started to understand that okay, this is a tool that has come up just like the internet did, and if I don't start learning how to use it, I'm once again going to be left in the dust. I'm going to have 10,000 other people way ahead of me because now they have an assistant, and I've just been too stubborn to learn how to use it.

Kate Cook: Exactly right. I think if you're going into it with integrity, which is to me like the number one key in using ChatGPT or any form of AI, is knowing that I'm not just going to go in there and type, "Hey, type me a description for this painting." No, I'm going to use a thoughtful prompt or create a description for my work and then plug it into the tool and refine it from there so that it's not a computer creating something for me. Rather, it's like a spell check at that point. Spell check 2.0.

Patrick Shanahan: I'm a huge nerd to begin with. I just always love technology, and I have every one of them open on my computer right now. I could show every one of them. I go back and forth between all of them, and sometimes I use one, sometimes I use the other, and sometimes I use both at the same time. I take probably 50 to 60 screenshots a day. The reason I take the screenshots is I'm stuck on something. I put the screenshot in there, and I say, "Solve it, fix it, help me with this. How do I do this? Where do I find this?" Your Thessalonian verse was embedded deep down on your website, and I couldn't copy the text. A screenshot, I threw it in, and said, "Tell me what this verse is," and it spit it out. It's not just in your business either. Anytime anything breaks, anytime you want to know anything about any model car, people don't understand how good it is on cars. You could say, "I have a '64 Dodge," and my husband has a '64 Dodge, and I have a '66 Jeepster. So let's just say you could say, "On the '66 Jeepster, what is the model number of the distributor cap that I need to order?" And it knows. It knows the timing. It knows how many spark plugs it has. What spark plugs fit? What are the headlight replacements? Like, what years did they make it? It's absolutely insane. When you start using it, you start realizing it just troubleshoots everything. By the way, gotta teach the kids as soon as they're good to go. I've got mine that already.

Kate Cook: Yes, absolutely. That's where I think it gets a little hairy is teaching people that have never had to use their own brains to create things. That's where ...as good as the knowledge behind it. It's just like anything in the garage that you find. You can pick it up and act like a fool and try to use it, but if you don't have the knowledge of how to use it, it's not going to be useful.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, 100%. There are definitely some of those bigger existential questions that we have to answer with it, of course. But as far as a business tool, I'm all in. I'm staying glass-half-full on it for the time being.

Kate Cook: You know what? I really appreciate your perspective on it because it helped me. I was very stubborn, and when I listened to your podcast and you started saying, "Hey, it's a little business companion, just use it as such. It's going to be an employee for you," there are no truer words. If you're not already using it, you should really look into the prompts that we're talking about and do some YouTube research. Get some knowledge behind it.

Patrick Shanahan: Yes, and everyone talks about how to learn it. Do I need to go get education? Do I need to take a class like you did? Do I need to study prompting? No, start prompting. Start prompting like Kate is going to get off of this call, and she's going to go into her use case ChatGPT: "I am attempting to start a high-end original and limited editions business targeted at the auto industry. What I would like to know is, in 2025, all of the high-end supercars that came out, what are the models? What are the mix? Which ones sell the most, and which ones are the most popular this particular year? I also want you to go and grab the Instagram accounts for all of those manufacturers and throw that into a spreadsheet. I need your help in designing my pricing. I want my pricing to be 78% of what the cars themselves cost. Please set up my original price at that, and then drop my..." You just let the thing think, and you let the thing happen, and it says, "This would be a good idea. This is how I would price the limited editions. You should probably keep it to this number." It's like a thinking companion as well as a solve-anything companion. Every single solitary problem I run into, I'm asking that thing how to fix it. My phone problem, my computer problem, my short rib braise sauce is not quite to the level that I like. How can I add some umami? How do I cook this? Cooking, everything. Just go and ask it. You're so much faster.

And why I get so fired up about it, independent of my own personal use cases and how much I like it, every single solitary artisan, photographer, is quite literally the greatest thing for them in the history of mankind. It really is. It's the chicken and the egg. If I could just get an employee, I would be making so much more money, but I can't get an employee because I'm not making enough money to hire one. Here's one. They don't require anything. They're ready to work 24 hours a day. It just comes down to you talking about what you want to do with it and fighting through some of those initial quitting points where you're like, "This answer sucked. It's better if I just write it myself." It's not. Let it start you, and let it get things done. I constantly use the assembly line analogy because I think it's so important. Everything that Kate Cook does, all the work that she creates, all the social media posts that she does, all the emails that she sends, everything she gets up on her website, the phone calls, the text messages, all of that is the assembly line of your business. The factory that is your business. And at the end of the day, however many hours a day you have to work on this and do everything, the podcast you create, whatever comes out is the GDP of Kate Cook Industries.

What do most artists do? They do the best that they can, and there are so many widgets that come off that assembly line in a day. Then you start putting some robots on the assembly line, and instead of 10 units in a day, 15 come out. And then a month later, you're even better, and 25 widgets come out. Maybe they're not all perfect, but you know what? They're out there. And then you learn more things, and then you go back, and you refine the factory, and all of a sudden, I don't think there's a single solitary artist I know if the output of the factory increased, the business would not grow. That's it.

Kate Cook: Oh, yeah. What are we talking about? And for sure, no one is seeing your work. No one knows you exist. So if you can increase the widget factory, do it. And no one's saying lose your integrity in the process. Do you, be you.

Patrick Shanahan: For me, it was like I'm thinking about something that it really helped me with outside of the practical, like email scheduling, writing all the things. For me, when I'm painting cars, a lot of the art world is like, "What's the deeper meaning? What is the meaning behind this?" I'm like, "No, it's just a badass car. I just want to paint it." I believe that art can just be a beautiful thing to look at. I truly believe that. But to talk about it and market it on the internet, you do have to have a story behind it as to why you painted it. Ultimately, there was a story behind this Ferrari one where I saw this Ferrari in person, and it reminded me of a rose. So I found a prompt through someone I follow on YouTube, and I put that in, and then it helped me create a description for it that was in a story brand format, something that would be able to be sold as a story because people buy story. They connect to story. So that has been hugely beneficial to me. Something that I would have been like, "Look at this painting with red roses and cars," has transformed into this beautiful story that I can now write blogs about, I can talk about through email. So it's been very helpful in that format. It's truly been life-changing for me, and I can't wait to really utilize it more.

Patrick Shanahan: Yes, and we'll continue to be. Definitely get started playing with the voice. The voice is everything.

Kate Cook: Oh, gosh. Okay, have you done that yet?

Patrick Shanahan: No, I haven't yet.

Patrick Shanahan: Oh, my gosh. Yeah, you gotta. I don't know if I can get my phone on the screen and show it. Voice has long been promised like one of the most amazing things ever. Alexa came out, then Google had theirs, and Siri had theirs, and those all just fell so flat. But now, for the first time ever, I feel like we're there where you're truly going to be able to control your life, and it's really weird to do it. I'll kind of show it and ambush you. I pulled this up from the post because I thought it was so good. I was like, "We gotta talk about this." Zoom in on this, by the way, using some new art fancy art program thing. Most people are not going to be able to see this, and then I'll show you the voicing. But today, I'm welcoming my eighth year in business as a professional artist, and I'm back on this time suck known as social media. No one, trust me, no one listening to this feels like that about social media, right? After a month of blissful absence, I learned so much from my month unplugged. Key takeaways: Why did this come about? Did you truly not look at it, not post, just complete cold turkey?

Kate Cook: Total cold turkey. Did not post at all. I didn't even announce it. I just needed... The reason this came about is because I was in the midst of creating this. I just had gotten my automotive registered as a trademark, and I do have a lot of friends in this industry that are doing the things that we've spoke about on this podcast, and I am a champion for them. I'm excited about it. But when I think any creative is in a path or trying to be inspired or create something new, I just... it was too much noise for me to see everything that I could be doing in addition to knowing what my plan was for this new work that I had in mind. Honestly, it's more than new work; it's literally like almost a rebrand of my entire company after such a long time. So it really was just cold turkey, and I read a lot of books. I read a lot of books about deceased artists, which was actually a huge blessing. I think everybody who's in the creative realm should be reading books about people that came before you because it makes you feel way less... valid? Makes you feel validated, like some of your concerns are like, "Oh, that happened also in the 1920s. So she was feeling this way in the '20s."

Patrick Shanahan: Love that.

Kate Cook: So it was primarily for that, and comparison. I think we all fall to it. I've considered myself a very confident person, and I'm like I said, a champion for all my friends. Social media, especially depending on whatever season you're in life, I'm not able to get out and go do these shows like I used to because I have my son, and I love him dearly, and I'm glad that I have him, of course. But my life changed a lot, and yeah, I had the fear of missing out. I just started realizing I was trusting Instagram to bring me the clients instead of trusting God to bring me the clients. I'm like, "This is dumb. Why am I feeding and catering to this algorithm, and it's stressing me out? I can't even make any new work." So once I got off of it, I realized that my trust was in the wrong thing, and I was able to focus. Okay, this is in God's hands. He's given me this vision. I'm creating the stuff that he's... I believe that these images are things that they don't just silly fall into my head. They come to me for a reason from somebody. Yeah, I just needed to realign with what I wanted out of my business and not how I wanted it to look in the eyes of somebody else. And I knew that my trust was faltering. My trust was in this AI, Instagram, Facebook, Meta universe instead of just being in myself and in God. I got to trust myself. That's a big one, and comparison will just totally kill that.

Patrick Shanahan: Trust yourself. It's so true. I love some of these bullet points. "Posting on social is not real productivity." "Personal development content isn't always a good thing." Oh, gosh, yes.

Kate Cook: When I took social media off my phone, I actually became social.

Patrick Shanahan: I love that one.

Kate Cook: The comparison is just... it's cancer. It's so bad. It's so hard to avoid, but it's so bad. "Creativity thrives in those in-between moments where most of us would be checking our phones." That one to me is like such... it hits on so many levels. Go outside somewhere where there's a lot of people and specifically do not look at your phone and just sit and observe humans. Everyone is on it all day long.

Patrick Shanahan: Now, part of me becomes opportunistic because I'm a marketer, and that's okay. I know I need to get their attention. I know where exactly I'm... I'm exactly the same way. I'm like constantly thinking of new ways to market my work to people. But even in that time that I sat without my phone, I came up with a full... like three pages worth of ideas for collections. Wow. I was thinking the whole time, if I'm scrolling on Instagram, that is where I was getting inspiration for collections. But no, it was being quiet with my own thoughts and redirecting my focus to myself and who I believe in and who I trust. So it really was life-changing. I'm not going to lie. I truly would not have Instagram if I was not a business owner. It is such a double-edged sword because I absolutely love it too. I love social media, and the way to make money as a mom, I can make money doing this, being a stay-at-home mom because of Instagram and social media. So it's a double-edged sword.

Patrick Shanahan: It's a double-edged sword. The one line that really jumped out at me too is, "There's magic in the mundane if you look for it." I read a ton too. I've got a book for you, and you should read it. It's amazing. I love it. It's called The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter. It just goes along with the phone thing, but he's an incredible writer, period. You'll see the reviews in the book; it's insane. Everyone loves it. It's amazing. But the too-long-didn't-read-it version is life has gotten so comfortable for us as a species that we're missing out on all these things, and it's actually bad for us. We're meant to suffer a little bit. One of the lines that he says is that he went on this reindeer hunt in Alaska where they literally got dropped in the middle of nowhere, him and two other guys hunting. For eight hours a day, he's bored out of his mind, absolutely bored out of his mind. Cell phone, no signal, can't do it. He's talking about how he's reading all the labels and all the ingredients on his granola bars like 27 times. He can recite it by heart. He's for the first time in his life so insanely bored, and then it just kept going further and further. He ended up being one of the most amazing times in his life. He's like, "We're meant to be bored, to have boredom." There are incredible things that come out when we are bored, but now this 24/7 switched on, there's always a screen, you can always get those inputs. Your mind can be racing all the time. Your mind doesn't get a chance to rest. It doesn't get a chance to be creative.

You're not 100% into this zone yet, but let me tell you, the temptation to give that guy a screen or for him to get a screen, your son, and spend too much time on a screen, I look at it all the time. Then your kids are going to come to you, or at least me, especially after reading this book, "Dad, I'm bored." And then part of me, "Okay, I gotta do something as a dad to entertain him." And then part of me, "No, you're supposed to be bored. Go outside and figure something out. You and your brother can fight, you can paint, you can dig holes. I don't care, but get outside and go be bored." It's part of life. But yeah, I'm dying for you to read that book, and then I'm dying to teach you some tricks too.

Kate Cook: Yeah, we'll have to do that offline. But I can... when you see the workflow, oh, my God.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, I would love to transcribe the episode. The AI writes the description, the AI writes all the timestamps, the AI writes all of the hooks, all of it done in seconds. Then I send the video up to get clipped. All those clipped videos come down with subtitles. That's what all your social media is. So I'm going to give you my tech stack and show you all the tricks.

Kate Cook: Love to. This interview, incredible. I cannot wait to see you bragging about the $250,000 original one-of-a-kind Lamborghini Gardo Turbo, whatever. I really think you have something on that, and I cannot wait to see where it goes. In the show notes, I will include your website, a link to the podcast, a link to your Instagram. What else?

Kate Cook: That's all we need. Just asphaltcanvascustomart.com is where everything is.

Patrick Shanahan: And say, because we have a pretty wide audience on this of artists, what is your ideal avatar for podcast guests for you?

Kate Cook: Oh, man. Good question. Creative entrepreneurs. They do not have to... you do not have to be a Christian to listen to the podcast. We only touch on that very briefly, but if that's you as well, then that's wonderful. But creative entrepreneurs in any medium or craft. We've interviewed people from metalworkers, fabricators, to jewelers, to painters, to photographers. The goal is to continue forward with that. I have a very exciting interview next month, and yeah, just creative entrepreneurship is what we really touch on. Like, we're not the Instagram ad that you see where it says, "Make a $7,000 income overnight while you sleep." It's the real pitfalls and the real high mountain tops of what it really is like to do this for a living.

Patrick Shanahan: What she's saying is, "No NHL secret Facebook ads formula to have you working three hours a week." Not Kate. Not Kate. The bloody fingernails, eight-hour days, underappreciated, overworked, barely making it, but getting some progress. That's sold.

Kate Cook: Love it. Love it.

Patrick Shanahan: One thing you should give me is that there was one show and only one show only of what you put out so far that we could show to people. Give me that link, and then we'll put that in the show notes.

Kate Cook: It's always a good... okay, as far as the episode goes, whatever one you like, you think applies to most people because we'll just throw it in there. People click... yeah, my... let's just do... we can just do my recent one, Laura Alasco, silversmithing. She's an Alaskan silversmith. It's Episode 13, and that is actually the first episode that I used AI to get the show note stamps and kind of refine my intro for the podcast in the show notes. So it's a good example of a great video, great audio, and great show notes that you can really get a good taste of how the rest of the season's going to go.

Patrick Shanahan: Amazing. Love it. Thank you so much for the time today, and everybody, thanks for watching. Go and give Kate a follow.

Kate Cook: Yes, please. Everything, all the things will be in the show notes.

Patrick Shanahan: And everybody, happy Friday. Thanks for listening. Have a great, happy Friday. We made it, which is an important thing.

Kate Cook: Yes.

Patrick Shanahan: Alright, I gotta... I've got to end all these things.