Artist Ken Wiele

Join us in this inspiring episode of the Art Marketing Podcast as host Patrick interviews photographer Ken Wiele, who shares his remarkable journey from a retired band teacher to a successful artist. Discover how Ken leveraged personal connections and storytelling to sell over $50,000 in art within just three years, all while building a loyal customer base. Learn about the power of emotional engagement in art sales, the importance of niche marketing, and Ken's unique approach to combining photography with his late mother's poetry in a bestselling book. Tune in for valuable insights and motivation for artists and photographers alike!

Podcast Transcribe

Ken Wiele: I knew that if I reached out and made that personal connection, I knew that would be the tipping point. There were 115, 116 people and I sold 10 pieces. My books were there, of course, and I sold over 40 books. My wife and I just looked at each other and we're over the moon. We just couldn't believe it. I used all the tactics you guys talk about all the time.

So 800 person email list, 1400 followers and roughly like 40 to 50, 000 in sales. It's like you don't need. This giant Instagram following and this giant email list to generate significant revenue as an artist. And that is exciting. The challenge for me is to stay positive and realize that it's the long game.

And honestly, when I feel like things are not going the way they should, I'm getting a little bit of despair. I jump on Office Hours. I listen to you talk. You get me going again, because I told you, it's like, you're my coach. I've come to realize that based on the fact that all of you guys, for the most part, are solopreneurs.

You don't have a team. It's not like you're a part of a company. It's you against the world, the emotional support, the call it, the coaching, call it the encouragement, call it the accountability, I think is honestly the most important part of the service.

Patrick Shanahan: All right, guys, Patrick from Art Storefronts back with another artist interview. In this case, we've got photographer Ken Wiele, who I've just met, and I'm really excited to get into his story. So, Ken, welcome to the Art Marketing Podcast.

Ken Wiele: Hey Patrick, great to be here, man.

Patrick Shanahan: Amazing. Let's start with your origin story. Where are you from? How long you've been doing the photography thing and kind of just give us a little background on you.

Ken Wiele: Sure, I just it's really fun for me to talk about because for the longest time I had this dream about being a photographer. I was a teacher for 35 years and always in the back of my mind, this other dream that was going on. Just when I retired, I threw myself into fun stuff. So I was that high school band director, teacher. I waved my arms around and the kids were in the band and had so much fun with that, connecting with the kids and the parents. But it was time to be done. When I retired, I was talking to my wife and I said, I really got to find something that I can stay creative, something that I can do that keeps my energy going. I just had to find that creative outlet. And I was happy to watch the YouTube video and there you popped up on YouTube and you're doing your Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And there were so many things about what you said resonated with me. Maybe the biggest thing was you reminded me a little bit of one of my coaches in high school, a guy who would just kick me in the butt and say, hey, you got, are you going to be a hobbyist? Really going to throw yourself all in? Are you ready to go after this? And it was the tipping point for me. Signed up the next day and I went outside in the backyard. I'll never forget. I told my wife, she was out tending her garden. I said, honey, guess what? I just took a plunge here, took a leap of faith. And I joined this company, which I think is going to be just what I need. And everything after that, joining Art Storefronts was like the tipping point for me. When I got in all these, I know it sounds crazy, but all these wonderful things started happening after I joined. I got into a gallery. I created this book. The book sales were phenomenal. The whole thing took off, and I know people are skeptical hearing this. Oh, come on, but it's true. Everything, all these wonderful things started happening to me after I placed a bet on myself. I bet on myself. I said, you're going to go after this. And the other thing I did was I opted in for three years. I didn't want to give myself a chance to bail.

Patrick Shanahan: You burned the boats. You burned the boats.

Ken Wiele: I did. It's so important.

Patrick Shanahan: So how long have you been on board so far?

Ken Wiele: It'll be three years. It'll be three years in July.

Patrick Shanahan: Wow. Three years in July. Take me back to that first year. So when you signed up, you hadn't even sold a piece of art yet.

Ken Wiele: Never sold a piece of art. No, I just really. And I didn't believe in myself much at all, thinking, okay, I'm just another retired guy with a camera. I was taking pictures of wildlife and nature. I'm one of the guys like me out there doing this. But what I discovered was I had sales in the wind behind my sales with Art Storefronts. I had this tactical advice about how to market my stuff in a way that was really powerful. And I decided that I would go and look at all the resources and take advantage of all of that. It was there. It's just this huge vault of stuff that I just learned every day. Brick by brick started building that confidence and thinking my work could sell.

Patrick Shanahan: Amazing. Can you give us some sort of notion of sales? So you started from scratch. You didn't have a Facebook page. You didn't have an Instagram account. You had never tried to sell. You had a body of work that you were continuing to clean up. And what does sales trajectory look like over the three years?

Ken Wiele: So the first year was around five or six K, second year was around 12 or 13. Last year I did 22.

Patrick Shanahan: Amazing. I love hearing numbers like that because everybody always loves glomming on to the artists that are selling incredible amounts and no one ever talks about what it actually looks like to be in the trenches and growing this thing bit by bit year over year, but it's amazing that you were able to generate those sales that quickly. Year one, you have the. We have such a large body of artists and photographers that are struggling to figure out what their niches, what's their subject matter material, what's resonating, what's going to work, how am I going to get some demand, right? So I'd be curious going back to that first year and you should mention you're from Wisconsin, right? And you, the majority of your work, would you say is local Wisconsin flora, fauna, and nature kind of shots?

Ken Wiele: Yeah. Yeah. I have roots up in Northern Michigan and near Lake Superior. So my niche, I had to define my niche. It really would be about nature stuff from that part of the country, Northern Wisconsin, upper Michigan, Lake Superior, the whole thing.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, and I'm showing kind of some of the flora and fauna in your Instagram account currently, and I would be very curious to ask you because I think one of the things that nature photographers struggle with in particular is like, how the hell do you differentiate yourself? There's so many nature photographers out there. There's so many people that have beautiful images that have been to all the same places, but you figured out a way to make it work, make it stick. And start getting traction. What do you think was responsible for that growth there?

Ken Wiele: For me, it was all about making a personal connection. I took, really spent a lot of time and reaching out personally to why, when I just did this show down here is an example of that. I really contacted, you messaged individually, wrote greeting cards, invitations. Reached out to people on a one on one basis. And I really took a lot of time to do that. Knowing, first of all, just terrified that no one was going to show up at the show. But, you know, I knew that if I reached out and made that personal connection, I knew that would be the tipping point. And it really did at the show Sunday night, Patrick, you were 115, 116 people. And I sold 10 pieces. My books were there, of course. And I sold over 40 books and my wife and I just looked at each other and we're over the moon. We just couldn't believe it. And I just kept, I used all the tactics you guys talk about all the time. It felt like that was the, I don't know, another mountaintop, another breakthrough for me just reaching that point with validated my work. But it's all about the connection in my mind. I have to be honest. I have this connection already baked into. Being a teacher, I have these connections of people from 35 years worth of working. So that's part of it.

Patrick Shanahan: And so you've leveraged those folks and leaned into those folks and said, hey, I'm doing this now. You know, do you want to check this out? You found that's been really helpful for the group.

Ken Wiele: Yeah, just that personal touch. And that's been huge. And then taking time going into the weeds on Instagram and Facebook and just really wanting to always respond in a real timely way to people who are making comments about my work. I have a tactic that I learned after somebody buys a piece from me. I'm sending a thank you card, but then giving them four or five greeting cards along with that of the piece that they bought. And then I personalized the back of the card and I say from the collection of, and then it's whoever bought the piece that aim. And that has been something I think that's a little, another tactic that's worked really well.

Patrick Shanahan: Amazing. Do you have one of the, you happen to have one of those cards or no? I'd love to see it.

Ken Wiele: So this is one of my all-time bestsellers. For the people who love Northern Michigan in that area, there's this bird called a loon and the loons are like really popular up here. People absolutely love them. And I was able to capture this shot. It got a lot of awards. And so I use this in a show that I do, and it's been a really great seller. This piece is sold in my gallery that I'm in up North. I sold probably 15 or 16 prints of this last summer. Anyway, so this is the back and then this part here, it's not on this card. Cause this is the generic version. But underneath the title I have from the collection of Smith, whatever, whatever about the brand. So when they get that, that's the first thing they do right away. They get back to me, wow, I have, and for some reason seeing it's, I'm talking to them or reminding them about the fact that, yeah, you're a collector of my stuff now, right?

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. You collect my stuff. You are a collector. I just labeled it. You're a collector. Yes. Yeah. And I always highlight this book. Have you bought this book yet? Or have you read this book?

Ken Wiele: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Key goes into depth about and it's, you guys, it's "Don't Be a Starving Artist" by Weiland for those that are just listening, not watching this. He goes into depth about, he comments on his collector's Instagram posts. He has, I'm like, I, I not just sending the personalized Christmas card, commenting on their posts, sending text messages, like your collectors need to be treated like gold and they'll come back again and again. So I love that personal reach out. I also love just on a side tangent, I think you and I are old school, right? So we've watched the death of a great many marketing mediums, the emergence of new marketing mediums, and we're old enough now to know trends that were big trends in the past. Have come have started to come back. My belief, my firm belief is that direct mail and or physical postcards dropped on a porch are back in thug. There was a point in time in our younger years where mail was out of control. There was so much junk mail in there. You would throw away 90 percent of it in the trash bin and you would keep your like three or four bills and that was mail and it just got so crowded. Social media came in. And stole a bunch of attention, all the marketing dollars, all the energy, and all the effort has continued to flow there. And it's no, one's been talking about mail, mail. Now, I believe to be like one of the most effective marketing channels that can exist. And it doesn't matter if you do it directly to the mailbox, or if you pay a kid on rollerblades to go through the neighborhood. I actually want to see all of our customers start leveraging it more. I literally, I just released a podcast episode on this yesterday. I love that you're on the direct mail and I, and I even think you should go as far as like sending one a month, send one a month to everyone that you have an address on and just say, newest work, have a little promo in there, maybe a QR code for the gift card, because the direct mail that does come and gets dropped on the porch. I don't know if this is the case for you, but I get landscape because I should make a differentiation. You're not allowed to put something in a mailbox without postage on it. Technically, that's illegal. I had a post person tell me this. Someone that worked at the post office, a customer dropping stuff on the porch. You are allowed to do. And what do I get on there? I get landscaping services. Mulch guys, maids, occasionally realtors, or the guy that constantly trying to sell solar, but you dropped a beautiful piece of art on someone's front doorstep. Like it doesn't get thrown away right away. It ends up on the kitchen counter or something, and then your wife sees it, and then you talk about it for a second, and then it might go back to your office. So I think you're on the right target with that. And I highly encourage you to keep doing that because I think that's a, just a great way to go about it. I also think what's really interesting with what you have going on, and I see this as an emerging trend, and I think it can, I've seen it work both as an artist side of things, but also on the photographer side of things, which is own your backyard and be the northern Michigan, Wisconsin nature guy. Right. And you have that going on in it. Like it's so tightly defined your niche. And yet gives you the width and breadth, anything that's flora, that's fauna, that's in the zeitgeist of your town. If you brand yourself as that guy, you have such a width and breadth of everyone that loves that town, visits that town, visits that geographical area. I feel like that's the trajectory you're on. Are you doing that intentionally or do you feel like you've just fallen into it?

Ken Wiele: A little bit of both. I think one of the things I think I'm really good at after teaching for so long is I'm really, I could tell stories. As much as possible, I try to surround my work with stories any, any way I can, whether it's through Instagram or Facebook. And in the gallery I've got a little QR code next to the piece. The QR code is just right under, underneath, two or three sentences of the story. And then the story about the piece starts out with a couple sentences. And then the next thing is if you want to read the full story. Jump on the QR code, go to my website. You can read the whole story about the piece. And I found that people are curious, always curious about, okay, what's the rest of the story. And I, and I think I'm convinced that after, of course, after listening to you guys talk and drill this into us, it's about the artist as much as it is about the piece. I have great landscape. Well, guess what? I'm one of the million guys that have great landscapes out there. But if they hear me talk about how I connect with the landscape, what it means to me personally, and, and actually even sometimes get vulnerable about, okay, I was with my mom. This is the last time I was with my mom on this part of Lake Superior. And this piece means so much to me because it was the last time I was with her on a hike near Lake Superior. And I thought that vulnerability also connects.

Patrick Shanahan: Oh, 100%. I've come at this so hard and remind me I've got to send you. We have this customer on the platform Tim Layman. He's like a huge Planet Earth BBC guy so working with him over the years, I'm keep pounding into him to get more story into his work. And then he sends me, I go out, I live in Southern California. So I go out to the desert all the time. That's where most people, if you don't know the desert, it's a generic term, right? We just call it the desert, but it's like Palm Springs, Palm Desert, La Quinta, where they have Coachella, all of that. Okay. He got hired to go shoot this like Annenberg golf course, bird sanctuary place. It's out here. Okay. And the shots are awesome. They're great, but they're just bird shots. To me. Okay. I, I like birds. I love birds, but it's, I'm not dying to have a bird on my wall, but he's, but the foundation had him come in to talk about the photos that he got. Okay. And so it's a big hall. It's a presentation and he's giving it. I'm literally going to send this to you afterwards because I want you to watch it. And he's talking about, okay. How hard he had to work to get the shots, he had to get out there at 5:30 and the fact that he knew that this particular bird that was nesting in this area was out feeding and was likely to come back and then the sprinklers came on and he had to have his head and his camera down. So the sprinkler was shooting over his head and I found myself going, Oh my gosh, these photographs, which I was into already, Because they were in this desert, this place that I liked, all of a sudden it just come to life. They all of a sudden taken on a whole new meaning because now we understood. And, and, and I, I go as far to say that I honestly think the biggest struggle that landscape flora and fauna guys like you have. Is in competing is not having the story. It's the differentiating factor. It is literally the differentiating factor into whether or not those photographs are going to sell. So I think the fact that you landed there natively is really impressive and I cannot encourage you enough. The process portion of the stories, the image, the vulnerability and the connection. Like that's the differentiator and put it in every caption on an Instagram post. I want to talk, I want to talk about your Instagram briefly, by the way. So this is his best-selling photo, by the way, cause I had it pulled up. And what type of birds are these again?

Ken Wiele: Those are loons.

Patrick Shanahan: Loons. So it's presumably a mom and a daughter loon, but what I wanted to attack you and we have a ton of work to do on your Instagram. Let me ask this question first. So you talked about your total sales, five to 12 to 22, 000 or whatever it is. So let's just call it. You sold 40, something like that. You sold 50, 000 worth of art with 1, 400 followers on Instagram with 1, 400 followers on Instagram. And what's, what size is your, yeah, my email list is body 800.

Patrick Shanahan: So 800 person email list, 1, 400 followers and roughly like 40 to 50, 000 in sales. It's like you don't need. This giant Instagram following and this giant email list to generate significant revenue as an artist. And that is exciting. What's even more exciting is what are you going to be able to generate when this 1400 is 14, 000? And then what are you going to be able to generate when this 14, 000 is 100, 000, right? And so I get so excited. When we get customers that are past the, I have a product, the market wants question, right? You've already answered that you've got a product the market wants. And so it's now when we start hitting your Instagram marketing more intentionally and harder, it's going to be a big deal. So you didn't ask for this, but I'm just going to audit your Instagram account here briefly. Okay. Award-winning nature photographer. At his tree gallery, Lake Superior magazine, Michigan Audubon magazine shot my new book. Okay. What I want in here is I want the main cities. Okay. That likely get the most search traffic. You can say award-winning nature photography based in boom. Okay. And the reason is that a lot of people go in and search and they'll search nature of photography, Northern Michigan, nature of photography, Kenosha nature of photography, Wisconsin. And if you don't have that in your bio, then you're not opening yourself up to appearing in those searches. Okay. I would also include. Former band teacher in here because it gives you personality, right? It gives you like a little personality and differentiate you a little bit. I love shot my new book because you've got that. That's great. The other thing that jumped out on me is, okay, so you just got some great social proof here, right? Honored to see my work in the Michigan Audubon magazine. Anytime that you get social proof. It really makes a huge impact on communicating to people that this is an artist that's on the up and up. This is an artist that's going places. So I want to see a story highlight up here that says press. Okay. And anytime you get a mention like that, you instantaneously create a story and you just add it. To the story highlights. Okay. Just boom, add it right into the story highlights and make sure that you have that there. I love that you have some stuff that is not about your photography, right? Always ask yourself, what can I post or what have I posted lately that has absolutely nothing to do with my work as a photographer? Nothing, right? And if you use that as a rubric to craft the post, I think you will always do great. I love the fact that you're in the gallery already. And that brings up an interesting question too. Let's talk about that for a second. So what is the nature of the gallery? Is it a 50 50 split and you don't get to know, get to know who purchases the work, or do you have a different arrangement?

Ken Wiele: It's 80, 20, 20.

Patrick Shanahan: Oh my gosh. Everybody moved to the Midwest. That's amazing.

Ken Wiele: And Patrick, it's this unbelievable collection of amazing humans. They're all wonderful. And we all work a little certain percentage of days in the gallery throughout the summer and do our part. And that's part of the deal. Because I'm working, I get a better cut.

Patrick Shanahan: That's amazing. So as a result of working in it, do you get to know who purchases your work?

Ken Wiele: That's the problem. You've talked about this on all the podcasts and everything for, and I actually just joined them. They asked me to be on the board, the board of the gallery, and I'm now in charge of marketing for the gallery. I'm loving it. I'm loving it. Cause I'm blowing all your, all the Art Storefronts tactics and the biggest thing now, my biggest goal is to get, first of all, the email list is they don't have one. And the gallery does huge business really for up there. They're in this really great area and there's all kinds of affluent cabin resort owners, and they're coming in and buying work all the time. But their marketing is way behind. And I realized that now after spending time the last three years with Art Storefronts, but. So I'm really going to go after them, the email thing up there so that I know exactly what some detected work I was able mostly to find out who exactly was buying my stuff and then following up with them, of course, but it took extra steps that more steps than it shouldn't.

Patrick Shanahan: Got it. Yeah. I was curious how the gallery felt about you having your own site and your own marketing, but you answered that you've got a, you've got a special arrangement with this gallery. It's been a, it's been a trend recently. And by the way, I've discovered through the process of doing these customer interviews, primarily that there's quite a lot of you guys that either own a gallery or have special circumstances for the gallery. So I'm putting a group together of all of you guys that have a brick and mortar gallery, because I think we can start working on some tactical there. And the fact that you're doing the marketing for him even more, and I love the thought of the owning one. I think everything moves a little bit slower in the art world, social media, and this notion of not having to deal with gatekeepers anymore, right? Hey, I've got an idea for a video show that I want to put out. I used to have to go pitch networks, now you just go direct to consumer, right? Over the air, they call it. In the art gallery world, it's taken much longer. The paradigm forever has been, if you want to be a successful selling artist or photographer, you have to be in a gallery. You got to get into a gallery no matter what. And that's the way to do it. Let them handle all your marketing go. And COVID I feel was what tipped it. So many of the galleries went out of business, so many artists that had regular and consistent income coming from the gallery, all of a sudden the spigot was shut off and their expenses didn't go away, and it was terrifying, right? Now, I feel like we're in this next moment in time where, as a result of all those galleries going out of business, as a result of retail businesses getting hammered in this country, period, there are now more spaces available in more towns across this country than there ever have been before, and the rents are lower than they've ever been before, and this opportunity, as the artist, To open up a gallery in their hometown is incredible. It's tremendous. And you're already halfway there. Now you've got one in a great location, but I want you to keep in the back of your head, another location you could have for yourself, because I just think it's a, it's just such a fantastic additional way to generate revenue and have a storefront presence. But what are your thoughts on that? Has that crossed your mind or you're just happy with status quo currently?

Ken Wiele: Oh, man, if you only knew how often I dream about that. And I've got some connections down here now that I'm just trying to figure out. Some warm opportunities to try to get the gallery to happen down here in my own gallery. I had, when I did the show, one of the people who could make the gallery dream come true for me, I arranged for a private showing for her to go through the show before anybody else came in. And so I'm starting to keep the planting the seeds on all that. And the other, the thing I noticed when I worked in the gallery that is a cooperative with up north in northern Wisconsin, every day that I'm working there, Patrick, I'm able to go out and talk about my work with the customers that walk in my sales, of course, are through the roof better when I'm working and when someone else is working.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, yeah. Big surprise that right.

Ken Wiele: Yeah. And I also, so all of us that are, that are watching this, that are listening to this, all artists for the most part, all want the dream of online, right. In the dream of online to just. Work, passive income. The site's just up there. People see your work. You don't have to talk to 'em, and they just go onto the site and they buy, and you get this magical little email cha-ching, you got a new order. Right. I don't like that. I don't like that thought. Right. I don't like the thought of thinking that is the way every transaction should be, and especially when you're at low volume, the way the transaction should be okay until you're getting so many of them that you physically cannot do it anymore is you should talk. You should get on a zoom, get on a phone call with every single solitary person that wants to purchase something from you. And I think Jonah, have you seen the interviews with Jonah? Yeah. Yeah. So Jonah doesn't, he doesn't even make a sale on his website or otherwise, unless it's a lower ticket item that they don't get on a zoom call with him. He gets on the zoom call with him. And I think knowing how good you are at in-person sales, I almost feel like we need that button all over your website, schedule a zoom with me and jump into a zoom, send them a link, talk to them, tell them the stories. It's my position that there is not a aside from creating the work. Okay. And yes, marketing, but aside from creating the work, the single solitary. Number one thing every artist and photographer should be focused on is how can I get on a zoom with a customer if I can't meet him in person, that should be how it is, that should be how it is, and watch what happens to your AOV average order value when you do that. Have you done that at all? Do you offer that? I'm curious.

Ken Wiele: No, thinking about it now, you're exactly right. That would be the next best thing that talking with people in the gallery.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, we've got to get more intentional at Art Storefronts and get some better playbooks in the water. Let me ask you this, three years into your journey, and I've been ambushing everybody with this question, if there's one thing, and only one thing, you can just pick one, one way that we could improve the Art Storefronts experience for you, what would it be for you?

Ken Wiele: It's hard to come up with something Because there are so many amazing things that are happening. Preface my one thing with all the 55 things that I love. Our Storefronts team. You've put together a team. Patrick, you surrounded yourself with all these amazing, caring people that are genuine, they're sincere, they really I had a saying in teaching, and I would say to my other teachers that were just starting out, I'd say, Kids don't care how much until they know how much you care. And it's a cliche, and I love that, but it's so true. It's so true because that's exactly what Art Storefronts has been for me. It's, I know I can get on a call with Ron or Indra or anybody on the chat and they're in my corner and they're not only just going to doing their job, but they're doing it in a way that makes you feel like you're the most important person in their life right at that moment. It's just, it's remarkable. The team that that's there and it's really been something else. And so every step of the way, starting out, that was a wonderful feeling. The thing, the thing that I had, and I think it was part of the thing that was just three years ago, you didn't have nearly the clients, but you were just figuring out. I didn't hear back right away, immediately. Like when I joined, I didn't expect fear and bells and whistles or anything like that, but it was a little bit quiet from the Art Storefronts side initially, once I got on board and I kept waiting to hear, okay, is there a follow up? And I think. It might've been as simple as just somebody just didn't, there were so many things happening, but that was the only thing. I just didn't feel right away. Okay. Touch base with me. Let me know. I'm part of the family now. Then, and then once things started rolling, Woo, that more than made up for it once I got in the loop.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. Yeah. And we've gotten a lot better about all of that. So your one thing then is just even more responsive customer service than we have currently.

Ken Wiele: No, I would qualify that by saying just initially. Because I think artists, when they make that leap, many times it's a, a real courageous act on their part to, to financially get involved.

Patrick Shanahan: Oh, for sure. Just that reassurance initially, hey, you made the right decision. Look, we're really happy for you. I think that it would be like somebody that had just joined a band in high school and I would let them know, we're so glad to have you and blah, blah, blah, that kind of reassurance.

Ken Wiele: Got it. Got it. That's great feedback. I love that. What, you're in retirement, right? And I'm sure you've got a great pension and everything else because you were a teacher and those benefits are awesome. What is the goal for the business financially and where are you trying to take it to? Do you have an aspirational goal to where it goes or is it just keeping you busy? I'd be curious to hear that.

Ken Wiele: No, I wanted my son and I talk about this all the time. He works for Dale Carnegie and he's always talking to me about what's your long-range goal, dad? What are you doing? And I really want to try to get close to 50 K. A year, that's my goal going up in the next couple of years. I'd like to reach 50K in annual sales, and then I'd like to get to the point and reach that 100K for the year. That's what I'm shooting for. And I, I tell you, it's fun to try to solve that every day, incrementally, thinking about that.

Patrick Shanahan: A hundred percent of this and the other amazing thing, and no one's ever up front about it. Okay. I am always up front about it. Okay. Cause I don't like blowing smoke in the slightest. And there are certain members of my team that will remain nameless that get angry when I say it, but it doesn't matter what the business is. You guys. Okay. It takes three to five years to really get things humming. It just does. And if it takes three to five years in the normal business world. It takes even longer in, in, in the art and the photography niches at a macro, right? The fact that you had 22, 24, 000 last year, you're five to seven is when you're going to get this thing. Absolutely. Humming. So I completely see the trajectory you're on getting to six figures. You'll probably get there year five. You'll probably get there year six. But the beautiful thing is that momentum is so real. It's so real. Like it's so true. And everyone thinks it's like, Ooh, hockey stick growth. No, it's just that slow incremental grind up. If you could go back in time, Ken to Ken year one, just starting this business, knowing what you know now. What would be your advice?

Ken Wiele: I would say be prepared for those slow stretches over the course of a year when there's really nothing happening and you seem like it's hopeless. You seem there's no traction at all. Like you feel whatever it is. You feel like things are slowing down and just understand that those little brick building up the fire will catch again, especially Q4. That's but there are other little bursts of excitement that happened and it's In my mind, it was sometimes not happening as steadily and there would be these periods of quiet and you just all of a sudden you start to get paranoid and oh my gosh, you know what's happening and people have forgotten about me and resonating with my work or whatever and I've always felt like the challenge for me is to stay positive and realize that it's the long game and you guys, the thing I know, I know it sounds it. Just like I'm a fanboy here, but honestly, when I feel like things are not going the way they should, I'm getting a little bit of despair. I jump on office hours, I listen to you talk, you get me going again, because I told you, it's like you're my coach for basketball when I played basketball in high school. And you get me going and you kick me in the butt, let's get this, stop crying, stop whining, work hard. Yeah, it's so. I think this is your 10 for me coming up and we've had such an interesting evolution at our storefronts where it started out with the software and just having the best website platform. We're like, okay, this is great. We're going to have a huge business and then. All kinds of people are canceling and we're like, what's going on? Ah, I'll tell you what's going on. They're not seeing any success because they don't have any education in terms of the marketing. And then we started diving into the education, into the marketing, and then we realized how important the support piece now, 10 years on, I've come to realize that based on the fact that all of you guys, for the most part, are solo prenuers. You don't have a team. It's not like you're a part of a company. It's you against the world. You're trying to post on social and get traction. It feels like you're shouting into the void. You've been doing it for a year and you get two likes on a post and you're like, what am I doing? I should have listened to my mother and never be an artist. The emotional support, the call it, the coaching, call it the encouragement, call it the accountability. I think is honestly the most important part of the service because I have this line. Have you maybe heard you say it like it's my hotel, California line. Have you heard this from me?

Ken Wiele: I love it. Yeah, it's so true. Like your guys desire to continue creating and ultimately get the validation that comes from selling it never leaves you. It's there. It's not going away as creatives, as artists, as photographers. And so if you don't stay on the gas. You might quit for a little while you might get into one of those lulls into one of those dead spots and nothing's working. You're like, I just, I'm done. But guess what? The muse is going to be right back on your shoulder and it's going to be like, okay. And then after some period of lost time, six months, nine months, 12 months, whatever, you're going to be back at it trying to market again. And I believe that our role as a business is to come kick you in the ass right when you're about to quit. That's it. I like, I honestly think it is like the number one differentiating factor about whether or not an artist or a photographer is going to be successful. Can they crash through the quitting point of life? Can they crash through that point where you're like, I'm going to hang the hat up, this doesn't work. If you can do that and you can somehow go through that torturous regime of suffering and misery for a long enough period of time, that's what's going to differentiate whether or not you make it not the meritocracy of just how good the work is. I believe that's it. I believe that's it. So it's, it's, yeah, it's amazing to hear you say it because you had to go through it multiple times. And yeah, if it's the muse on one shoulder, it's the devil on the other shoulder saying this isn't working. You're not getting any traction. Your art's not good. No one likes it. Art doesn't sell. Just quit. Walk away. Absolutely. And you know what, what I always, I'm lucky. I drew upon the paradigm that I had as a teacher because I was in that role as a teacher. I was saying to these kids who wanted to quit music, didn't want to work that hard. Didn't see. Feel like they were getting success. My job to really make them understand the disciplined effort over time is the only way you're going to get where you need to be, but by the way, you're doing fine right now, just remember that and reinforce that, and that's what your team does all the time for all of us.

Patrick Shanahan: Amazing inspirational story. You guys got to follow Ken in his journey because we need to turn his 1400 Instagram followers into 14, 000 and then 140, 000 in addition to following you on Instagram. You know what we didn't talk about? That I do want to talk about before we wrap this thing up is when did you come out with a book? Who's printing the book? Oh, what's the per unit cost on the book? And while you're doing that I'll try to find it because I know you've got it somewhere here on your Instagram profile.

Ken Wiele: Yeah, first of all, I know how you are. I get tired of you saying over and over merch merch Everything else it's good advice. But for me I feel like, yeah, that's one of my, actually, that's one of my former students in that band that's playing right now. Pat Punction, they're like an incredible group out of Madison, Wisconsin. But anyway, the book, Patrick, has been my merch. And it's, the secret sauce of the book is my mom, who five years ago wrote this beautiful poetry, or her whole life. And if she just left it on scraps of paper all over the house, my dad compiled it at the end and he just typed it all up into a little self-published book. I came upon this poetry as after I retired and realized staring in my face was this beautiful source of inspiration, this set of poems that I could look at and then use as inspiration to go out and take a picture of. So she's writing about a Lake Superior sunset. There it is. I'm going to go out and get that shot that amplifies that amazing. So you paired the poetry with the imagery?

Ken Wiele: Yeah. And so my wife looked at me and she said, you know what? Nobody's going to buy a book on poetry. And I looked at her. I said, actually, honey, I think nobody's going to buy a book. Just photography. I think it's gotta have the secret sauce and that's, that was it. So many people resonated with the poetry, talked to me about it, and for me, selfishly is a way for me to keep my mom and my heart and keep help. She was part of the journey of me doing, discovering and finding this love of photography and sharing it with others. So there was that soulfulness right about the book that I sold out. Two printings of it. It's uh, self-published. It's, uh, printed on a beautiful company up in Merrill Wisconsin called RDA Publishing and they just killed it. So I'm selling it for 40 a pop, 40 a pop. And so my margin is, is 50 percent on every book.

Patrick Shanahan: And how many books total have you sold so far?

Ken Wiele: The first printing was 400. I'm now the second book. I'm still on the first printing. So it's, I'm getting close to the full, so grand total books. It's around 600 books, 600 books.

Patrick Shanahan: And everyone asked me why I say, why merch? That is 600 new customers you've acquired that are now technically on their way to being collectors or have the possibility of on their way into being collectors. And it's, you go through a normal year, just trying to sell the wall art, right? And let's say you have a great year and you sell 35 prints at the end of the year, you have 35 customers that you get a market to at the end of your year, you're going to have 635 customers to market to, and it's, we cannot forget. It is firmly ensconced in business law. The easiest customer to get is the one that you already have. Okay. And how many of those guys that bought books weren't in the market for wall art when they found you, they didn't want to have the discussion with their wife that was going through a remodel was downsizing was about to move, whatever it is, if you didn't have the book, that is just a customer you didn't acquire. That's it. It's that's it. Why have merge low commitment, low, low friction sale. And you have 600 people that are on your list now that this Q Thor, when you have your big sale, how many of those guys are going to come back? And the mass say a significantly high number it's that's the game. That's it.

Ken Wiele: Yeah, I'm lucky. I think, and you hear me rant on it all the time, but I, people always ask me and you're interesting in that. Okay. 800 people on an email list primarily because of that damn book. Now that I see it, 1400 people on Instagram and you're coming up on the 50, 000 in sales mark. Okay, great. If you did not have those customers, okay, your business would be on life support growing. You would not be at 50, 000 in revenue. You'd be at like 2, 000 or 4, 000 in revenue. So, I find that the number of new customers acquired per year, Is the most revenue, revenue, predictive metric that an art or a photography business can have. And someone was asking you how to approach a publisher. You self-published. You didn't use a publisher, right? Just someone to print it.

Ken Wiele: I hired a graphic designer and she designed, she's wonderful. She designed the whole, yeah, just self-published. And then the printing costs were pretty reasonable. And so I was, I think the margins are really good.

Patrick Shanahan: And now it opens you up for another book and another book. And I also like, I've seen this firsthand. In my own life. And it's that Jonah did a really impressive coffee table. Look, okay. And he sent me one, wrote a nice note in it, and now it sits behind where my wife works and I've watched a book work on her and now she wants to buy one of his originals. And it's like the books drive the demand for the original, you're looking at it, you get more comfortable with it. You're seeing it all the time. You're flipping through the pages, guests come over, Oh, this is amazing. It's a conversation starter. And guess what? It just drives the wall art sale in the same is true in reverse to if you have an original on the wall, why wouldn't you want the book on the coffee table, especially when you know the art, absolutely amazing. Cannot wait. So true.

Ken Wiele: The cyclical nature of that back and forth that, uh, one, and that's so true because I had people at the show on Sunday night talking about, well, I saw this piece and I see it in your book. And then I know I've read the story behind the piece and I just love it. And my husband's recovering from cancer and this means so much to him and there, and it's tied into the emotional thing.

Patrick Shanahan: Patrick, I don't think you can ever underestimate the emotional. The punch that a story will give you. So when they, that I sold my biggest piece ever on Sunday night, and it was a direct result of the book and the story and all of that. And you're exactly right, man. I, and I, I've got to come up with an idea for a new book. I'm already trying to figure out what the next thing is going to be. And also continue rounding out the merchandise lineup. I did, I did one of these customer interviews, like it's probably about a month ago now with John Lowry. He owns this gallery called Humble Donkey Studios. Did you see that one?

Ken Wiele: Yeah. Like you, you look at how many items he has in that shop and the sheer volume of customers he's acquiring as a result. And it's just, it's a staggering thing to contemplate. I don't want to take any more of your time. This was awesome. You guys follow Ken on Instagram on his journey to a six-figure a year business. Where else can they find you if they want information about you?

Ken Wiele: Just get Ken Wiele Photography. com is my website and just grateful to have a chance to spend time with you and talk with you and get perspective on what I'm doing and to give you a personal thanks, man, for all that you've done to inspire me these last three years. It's been amazing.

Patrick Shanahan: Love it. Can't wait to see where you go. Year four, year five, brother. Thanks everybody for listening, watching, tuning in. Really appreciate you guys. And we'll see you on an upcoming interview soon.