Artist Matt Kress
Join us for an inspiring episode of the Art Marketing Podcast as we sit down with artist and muralist Matt Kress. Discover Matt's journey from a successful business career to pursuing his passion for art full-time at the age of 43. He shares insights on the importance of building a personal brand, the financial dynamics of mural work, and how to effectively market your art. Tune in to learn how Matt is transforming his artistic vision into a thriving business while navigating the challenges of the art world.
Podcast Transcribe
Patrick Shanahan: All right, coming up on today's edition of the Art Marketing Podcast, back with another artist interview. And I think you guys are going to find this one very, very interesting. I've got artist Matt Crest, uh, what would I say? Artist, muralist, uh, uh, uh, painter of airplanes. This is going to be a super interesting story as we get into it and peel this onion back. But Matt, I always like to start with the high level. Give me the elevator pitch. Who are you, Matt? What do you do? Give us a little bit of the backstory.
Matt Kress: Yeah, my name is Matt Caress. Uh, I studied art at Kent State University in Ohio. Um, I have a pretty interesting story. Uh, you know, I graduated from Kent State and I started out as an architecture student there and fell in love with the arts and started painting, excelled at painting, design, sketch at Kent State. And, uh, came time to graduate and I had no idea how to make money being an artist. So, and that's, I've told a lot of people, that's the one course that colleges don't teach. How do you be a personality? How do you be successful as an artist? How do you sell art to other people? And those are the skills at that age that I just didn't have. So I went into the business world for several years. I worked for a company called Fastenal for 10 years out of college and was very successful in the business world. I went back to school for process engineering and had a successful world but you know it was never fulfilling to me. No matter how much success, I still in the back of my mind felt like I was an artist. And a good friend of mine is a pretty famous musician in a rock band called Amberlin. And when I first moved to Florida—I live in Florida now—he came over to my house. He's like, "Matt, your paintings are incredible." He's like, "I didn't even know you did this." And we've been friends for a year. And he kind of nudged me into a passion because he lives a passionate life too. And I said, "You got to get your work out there. You got to start doing it." And he said, "The first step in that is you have to start introducing yourself as an artist." And that's something I never did until I started to get my work in some local places. I live in St. Petersburg, Florida. And I've done lots of art shows here which has led me to some mural opportunities. And in 2018, finally had enough side business happening. I did double duty up until 2018.
Patrick Shanahan: How old were you in 2018? I'm sorry. How old were you in 2018?
Matt Kress:In 2018, I was 40... I'm getting too old to count here... 43 years old.
Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. Wow. Wow. And so it didn't go full-time till 43.
Matt Kress:Yeah. I did double duty for probably 20 years almost out of college. And in 2018 I saw the opportunity to start doing murals full-time and to do full-time canvas. I've sold hundreds of original canvases all over the country to different clients. And you know the one thing over the past couple years that's been a significant gap for me is I have had a terrible website. I have not a good presence with prints. I often just didn't waste my time with print making because I'm doing well with originals. So, it was time for me and that's where I merged with you guys to help me build something pretty incredible that we're kicking off now. And I'm really excited to be here.
Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. Fired up. And you know, you have no idea secretly. Matt and I were discussing this earlier. I was telling him like how these podcasts normally go and he's never listened to this one and he and I have never met. So you wouldn't know how happy something you said made me because it’s the reason we exist. Art Storefronts exist. But it also infuriates me in the sense that like everybody goes to college and learns art and learns about all the masters and learns about all the movements and all the periods. Not one single sentence on how you might turn this creative freaking talent into a business. Not one. Still knows nothing. It's like it's infuriating to me because it's the only thing that matters.
Matt Kress: Yeah. You know, and to add to what you said there, something really key that I'm grateful for that I learned in the business world working with clients on a completely nonrelated industry to art is that people buy from people. So, and that happens well too. I tell young artists and I mentor a lot of young artists in the Tampa Bay area and I tell them you have to be a personality. You gotta go out and meet people, you know. I look at like Salvador Dali, think of the personality that he was. He was a wonderful artist. People just loved him because he was such an eccentric guy. And that artists often miss that. I know some wonderful artists out there that just need to work on their you-get-out-there outgoing nature and going out and meeting people and letting people know they're an artist. You know, the first step in that is just saying you're an artist, which I know a lot of young artists like, "Oh, you know, I'm in customer service, but I like to paint" or "I do this." You got to decide, are you doing this or are you not doing this? And I think that that's something that's really helped me over the years.
Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. Amazing. And I love hearing you say it because—and again, you've never heard anything, so it's completely new and novel to you, at least coming from me—is everybody always asks like, "Oh, is there some sort of collector list that I can get a hold of and you know, you're just going to send me to the collectors?" And I'm like, "It wouldn't work." Do you want to know why it wouldn't work? Because art sales are 50/50. Art sales are 50% the quality, the meritocracy of the product, and they're 50%: Do I like this artist? Is something interesting about them? Is there something that I resonate with? Because to your point, people do business with people that they like, they respect, they find interesting. It's just as important as the art.
Matt Kress:You know, you can draw a parallel with what you just said to that in the music world. If you look at most of the stuff on the Billboard charts, the top—they're not the best musicians. No, they're not the best singers. You know, they're not any of those things, but they're up there because people like them and people see something that they want in them. And it's no different in music than it is in art. It's the same thing. You gotta be a personality. You gotta say the right things. You don't have to be the most technically skilled artist. You don't have to be the most realistic drawer. You have to be the most you and that's the most important thing.
Patrick Shanahan:Yeah. I want to—because it’s rarer these days—and again I’ve been doing this for like 10 years and so the sheer reps and sets I’ve had talking to various different artists, different stripes. I get the muralists a lot, a lot, right? And they're out there doing that whether they're doing it with cans or whether they're actually painting or what. And you know everyone knows Wyland, right? And everything that Wyland's done in his career. But you started and then got into it, which is sort of wild. And I'm just curious what role all of that's played and everything and then I'd love to get into the financial aspect of it a little bit too because quite frankly I'm naive on that. I'm like how much do you actually get paid to do those giant things? How much do they last?
Matt Kress: Yeah, while you're riffing on the one, one of the marketing managers for them said, “Hey, you know, I love your canvas stuff. You've done a couple local shows.” So by all means, it was pretty crazy. The first mural I did was for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And one thing I didn't know about murals was that they're billboards. They're marketing advertising billboards for you. So, every time you do one, if you do a great job, it's going to lead to another one. And you know that particular job, it was almost a joke. I only made a thousand bucks to spend two weeks of my life painting a mural for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for a festival. So basically, they paid for my supplies and gave me not even enough money to live for those two weeks. But I saw the opportunity and knocked it out of the park for them and did something really good. That led to another one. That led to one of their players calling me and saying, “Hey, I want you to paint my office. I saw what you did for us.” And that kind of led me down the path to start doing murals. And at the time I didn't realize the incredible financial opportunity behind doing murals and now airplanes and things like that. So the commissions there have been great. So I've really created a structure for myself where I try to get a couple murals a year. That's my base income. And when I'm not doing that, I'm painting what I want to paint on canvas in the studio and selling that stuff. And that's lightened up my pressure load of being a starving artist because I'm getting my passion to do the murals and then I can go in the studio and paint a brilliant painting and I don't even care if I sell it. And in return, it's created a snowball effect where I can't keep my original paintings in stock either because I don't even care if I sell them. It's that I'm not really trying to push that stuff into people's homes, but they see that and they see how much I care about what I'm doing and they see that the creative pressure is off for me. So I'm painting whatever I want. You know, if I—you know, Jimi Hendrix painting in the background—that I just had fun with, you know, like I do things like that that resonate with me.
Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. I love that. And you know, it's so interesting to hear you say it because everyone just immediately goes—it's like the way that we're wired as human beings—like, okay, I'm going to go and do this job and I need to get paid. And if I don't get paid a ton of money for it, why am I doing it? There's no business there. Right? Like another way of thinking it is like everyone always gets tripped up on advertising because they think the way that advertising works is that you go and put $100 into this machine and it comes back with $250, right? Otherwise, you quit. Otherwise, you're done with it. Done. You know, the murals, especially the ones that you've done, and especially the size, it's just marketing. It's just marketing at a scale that is so giant, it's unbelievable. And you know, you could almost just break even. They cover your paint and barely even your time. Every single solitary time. It's like you have a giant Facebook ad that is going to be running for the next three to five to ten years, however long it's there that you don't have to pay for on a monthly basis.
Matt Kress: And I have about 30 of those now in the Tampa Bay area.
Patrick Shanahan: Wow.
Matt Kress: It's really grown over the past five, six years for me here in Tampa Bay.
Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. You know, it's—it’s—so I live in Newport Beach in Southern California, right? And if you drive south one city to Laguna Beach, right on the right hand side of PCH, right after Main Beach, is Wyland's giant mural, right? And it's his gallery. And he's got a couple. Luna, I think. But it's been there forever. It's iconic. Everyone sees it. Everyone talks about it all the time. And it's like the sheer ROI of doing that one artwork, the sheer number of eyeballs that are exposed to that—I mean, it's got to be 25 million people a summer that see that every single solitary year. It's like you can't understate how big of a deal that is. Staggering. So you know, you're such the atypical case, too, right? Because you did not have your house in order in terms of your prices, in terms of probably your email marketing, probably your Instagram marketing, and you just—you got there through sheer will and execution.
Matt Kress: Yeah. Wow. And you know, I'd be curious to understand before Art Storefronts—and you're still needing to fill in some of the holes and the gaps and we can talk about those if we want to and all the reasons why—but sort of what was the revenue makeup of your business over the last couple of years? Was the primary revenue driver the originals and then, you know, some of these bigger commission type of pieces or what did that makeup look like? I'm curious.
Patrick Shanahan: Um, for me, it's probably 75% murals, 25% originals—or say 23% originals, 2% prints and merch, you know? So, and I obviously see the opportunity for that, the print making and the merchandise and things like that. It's like I got to get that stuff filled in. Yeah. Um, and uh I'm also stepping up my game on the originals to try to get more. You—I’ve never had in six years more than two or three paintings even available for sale. Uh cuz they sell almost as fast as I do them. So I'm really—I've got more discipline I'd say in the past two years of every time I'm not doing a mural. Even if nothing sold, I'm in there trying to get a couple really nice pieces together to try to get a collection of 10 or so paintings out there.
Matt Kress: So you could do like a show or something.
Patrick Shanahan:
My mo—of my top originals. You can see most of them are sold there. And even the top left one that I just did, I just added it, but it's already sold. Uh just did that one. But I like to do a lot of color and have a lot of fun and just do my thing. Big bold pieces.
Matt Kress: I'm losing you. Can you hear me again?
Patrick Shanahan: Yes. Yeah. I don’t—my damn streaming software like just—anyway, side tangent. So what I was asking is just where you're at pricing-wise in terms of range on originals currently.
Matt Kress: Um, between five and 20,000 depending on size.
Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. Wow.
Matt Kress: It helps. It helps when you have demand.
Patrick Shanahan: So you literally cannot create enough of those right now. I mean, you're completely sold out in your shop.
Matt Kress: Yeah. Wow. So I've got one Einstein for sale right now, which is on my website. I recently added it, but it's the only painting I've got right now that's really available.
Patrick Shanahan: Amazing. So the real question is how the hell are we going to get you more time so you can actually make more of these guys?
Matt Kress: Yeah. You know, and my mural prices have gone up. So recently, you know, for a while there, I wasn’t losing any bid. And I realized that what I'm doing now is now that I'm getting a little more experience and better at murals as my prices go up, which is going to enable me to have some free time to do that. That was kind of the plan from the beginning is that, you know, I want to be a Shepherd Fairey or a Wyland or these—you know, these guys are getting quarter million bucks for a mural in some cases.
Patrick Shanahan: What happened to Shepard Fairey? Has he always just been the mural guy ever since?
Matt Kress: Yeah, he's got a—you know, his brand with Obey is so big now that, you know, he's not even really painting murals anymore. He's got a team that just prints it and puts it up like wallpaper. In a lot of cases, I think he's printing, you know, he's definitely painting some stuff, but he's a genius. What he's done with his brand is great. And you know, I'd love to talk to him sometime, but I'm curious how he's built that brand and built some free time for himself too.
Patrick Shanahan:
Yeah, it's sort of—it’s—I mean, you just kind of threw me in the time machine because I feel like, you know, we were coming up when that Obey stuff started becoming everywhere. It was like—even those like the nature of how those stickers looked.
Matt Kress: Yeah.
Patrick Shanahan: Like right when it started, like they were brand—they were—it was like old school technology brought back. Like the way that they were—they were mopped on everything. That guy was everywhere. Anyway, that was a blast from the past. Talk to me too because I'm curious—like how many in-person shows and thes have you done over the years? Do you use that as a driver?
Matt Kress: Yeah, I've done Art Basel Miami two years in a row. I had some mural conflicts last year with Art Basel, so I made a decision. The same sanctioning body that puts on Red Dot Miami for Art Basel, they also do Art Santa Fe. So last summer I went out to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Uh, you know, I’ve got a pretty good art presence and original sales presence in Florida. So I'm actually trying to do shows in other states in other cities now because, you know, I'm—if I look at my makeup of the originals that I've sold, 75% of them are to clients in Florida. So I did Art Santa Fe last year. I met some great people out there, you know, sold two paintings at that show. I'm thinking about doing a West Coast show soon once I get a couple pieces together. I know we've got Art San Diego and some other ones. But as I mentioned, my presence here in Florida is good and I got to start spreading the spreading the wealth a little bit. And I'm also doing murals out of the state. I did a mural in Denver, Colorado last summer. I also did a mural in Raleigh, North Carolina last year. Done one in Alabama. So I'm kind of trying to pick off states because I've realized those are billboards too.
Patrick Shanahan:
Yeah. I mean, they're just beachheads. They are just beachheads. It's like—it's an amazing, amazing thing to think about. I actually—you know, I would be curious. I'm such a sicko with like the marketing and the sales. Like it's just what I do, right?
Matt Kress: Yeah.
Patrick Shanahan: Like I enjoy it too. I would be so curious to find out like how many times do the looks stop by during the course of you painting the murals.
Matt Kress: It's amazing. I mean, it's a constant stream. I mean, I have people pull over and ask me questions. It almost becomes like a—I have actually grown to enjoy that when I start putting this monster spectacle up. Uh, because I've done some big ones—70, 80 feet tall. I did a sea turtle downtown Tampa. It's right by the hockey arena for the Tampa Bay Lightning. It's 73 feet tall, 50 feet wide. People just get off the highway and come—just wanted to ask me questions. And when I first started doing it, it was a little bit frustrating because I'm such an artist that just wants to put my head down and work. Then I realized I'm growing an incredible fan base by doing this. So I have the music going now. I’ve got a cooler with water out there and a tent. It's a party for me now when the people come up because I want to meet them. Because I know they're out there supporting me too.
Patrick Shanahan: 100%. Like, when is the next one that you have scheduled?
Matt Kress: Uh, getting ready to do a coffee shop downtown St. Pete. Um, it's called Southern Grounds. It's a brand new new construction, Central Avenue, right in the heart of the city. I'm doing two murals in there and they're making it my gallery.
Patrick Shanahan: And it's inside or outside?
Matt Kress: Inside. The inside. So, it's an interior mural. Um, and uh, we could—we could do a practice run on that one, but I want—I need to know—I need to be in the know when the next big outdoor one is scheduled. I swear to God, I think that is such a tremendous opportunity, especially given how many days it is. I mean, yeah, I want to see—this is where I'm going with this. First of all, the boom crane—and Art Storefronts will pay for this, okay—we’re going to get like a three foot by three foot QR code banner dropped from the bucket itself.
Matt Kress: Okay, let's do it.
Patrick Shanahan: We'll have two cameras streaming the entire thing, okay? Livestream 24 hours a day down below. We'll get the booth, an assistant, have all of the prints in there, have all of the merch in there, have the email list deal with a giveaway. It's like, okay, you—there is so much milky—I am willing—I am willing to bet with like a little bit of forethought, you could turn those murals into just pay-to-play opportunities. I mean, hundreds of email addresses minimum, right? Hundreds, probably even thousands depending on the street. Probably up to $1,000 a day in booth sales. You're gonna have to get an assistant to be down there and manage.
Matt Kress: Yeah.
Patrick Shanahan: And then just the pure media spectacle of scan a QR code and get directly into the livestream.
Matt Kress: Yeah.
Patrick Shanahan: I mean, we would need a serious battery pack with you up there. I'm making you nervous already, but I'm telling—it's too good. It's too good of an opportunity.
Matt Kress: You got my wheels turning. Maybe I can send you some pictures, but this coffee shop is a new construction on Central Avenue with a garage door on the front. So, you can literally—it’s like an alley, but I would say garage door in the front, like completely open air—only open air. And I will say it's 500 people an hour walk by this coffee shop location. Like it's in the middle of bustling downtown St. Pete. So, that might be the right—it could be a go to start for sure because you know this—this is exactly like the type of fundamentals where again I will teach this class in freshman art school—how to capture email addresses and what to do after you have them, right?
Patrick Shanahan: Yeah.
Matt Kress: Had you been doing this over the last 25 years of your career, you'd have 50,000 on a list instead of what—how many do you have on your email list? Just tell me. It's going to piss me off but tell me anyway.
Patrick Shanahan: Uh, for my new website?
Matt Kress: Just your email list period.
Patrick Shanahan: It's only like a hundred.
Matt Kress: I know. It was a rhetorical question. I know it’s tiny. You say—this is exactly what we need to fix and we need to shore up, right? And it like—this is a fundamental of the art business. And anyone that listens to this podcast knows like I say this all the time, but you're going to hear it again because it doesn’t matter.
Matt Kress: Yeah.
Patrick Shanahan: The size of your email list, okay, and the size of your customer list is one of the most directionally accurate predictors of revenue potential of the business that exists. Okay? And the reason that I bring that up—and you figured this out already—like a great artist like you, right, that's in demand, could get—let's just say it’s a great year. You did four murals that year and you sold 20 originals. Okay? You know what that tells me? You have 24 customers at the end of the year. 24. That's it. So, when you come out with a new collection at the end of the year and you're letting everybody know, you have 24 collectors, okay? And the second fundamental rule of this whole thing—do you know who the easiest customer to get is?
Matt Kress: The one that you already have.
Patrick Shanahan: The one that you already have. The math is so abundantly clear and it’s even more magnified in art as a result of like the collector phenomenon, right? So, you start adding in the prints, you start adding in the merch, right? And again, like what normal artists do is they run the numbers in their head like, "Not going to sell that cheap tchotchke crap, make $6. Like, what? I'm not rich." It’s got nothing to do with that. It’s an email address that’s purchased something, right? Okay? The merch and the prints are beachheads into these people's world. No different than the mural. It’s just a beachhead. It’s just your art in there in front of their eyeballs all the time—when they’re drinking their coffee, when they’re sending a thank you note, whatever the calendar—whatever it is, it doesn’t matter what it is. Then at the end of the year, instead of 24 customers, you have 204. And the math—the math just snowball from there, right?
Matt Kress: Yeah.
Patrick Shanahan: I think every one of these murals we need like a lockdown playlist. Like, you know, you could do some creative stuff and especially if school dude—they'll let you do a print giveaway, you do a print giveaway every day. They're dropping business cards, they're filling out the clipboard as you’re doing your thing and it's just—it’s entertaining. You know, it’s such like a performance art aspect to it too.
Matt Kress: Yeah.
Patrick Shanahan: God, fired up about this. We—we—we need to—we need to write a playbook on this.
Matt Kress: We do.
Patrick Shanahan: You know—you know interesting statistics that you'll appreciate from my perspective on what you just said—and that’s the reason I knew the answer to that question—is I would say I have 10 families right now that buy half of my original art again and again. A couple of them just say, “Matt, every time you”—these are wealthy families that have multiple homes across the US that I’ve grown relationships with over the years—and they usually just tell me, “Matt, every time you paint something, just send me a picture of it.” And that’s where I need to get my feed better, you know, my email list. I’m doing it the hard way.
Patrick Shanahan: Yes.
Matt Kress: Or I’m sending it to each one of them and saying, “Hey, I just painted this.” Most of the time those guys are buying it.
Patrick Shanahan: Yep.
Matt Kress: And—but you’re right. I need that list instead of being 10, it needs to be 2,000.
Patrick Shanahan: It needs to be hundreds of thousands. And it’s like I could—I could see a scenario like it—you know, it was all just like clicking to me. And you guys, I’ll include links to all of his things in the show notes and you can go and check out some of these things that he’s done. But it’s like—I’m like, “Oh my God.” Like, you know, I so encourage doing in-person shows and thes all the time, right? Because the way most artists and the way most photographers are wired, the photographers love hiding behind the lens. The artist loves hiding behind the f***ing canvas. They don’t want to talk to anyone, right? What does a show make you do? Sit down in a booth and have conversations with 50 people.
Patrick Shanahan: Way easier to do that in the real world than it is to do it in a digital context, let me just tell you. But the mural thing has just got me completely spun. And I guess what I was looking at—let me see if I can get this up on the screen. But what I was looking at is—and he’s got it on the about section. It’s like this—and you know again what was driving me nuts. It wasn’t the about section. Oh yeah, it was in the news. You need to treat—okay, we might as well just go into the teaching moment here. You need to treat your website and Instagram in very, very similar fashion. You’ve got one set of story highlights here. And you’re completely missing on the street credit, which is in the news, right? Read here: Tampa Magazines. Read here: Art Business News. Read here: AOPA. We haven’t even talked about the plane yet. Read here: The Repository. And this was—was this the video? Oh, here’s the video: St. Petersburg creating 70 foot mural.
Right, and I’ll play this. I’m going to mute it while they—yeah—while they do the commercials. But where I was going in my head with this, it’s like, my God. This is spectacle. And this obviously took you like a tremendous amount of time to get this thing—deal. Let me see if I can make it full screen. Is it showing full screen on your end?
Matt Kress: Yes.
Patrick Shanahan: Okay, good. Hopefully it’ll do on the podcast, too. But like this alone—like it’s so performative. Look at how high this thing is. And you know, you’re—you’re on this massive crane. You’re doing your thing. You’re definitely going to have to get your boy—your PR agent, your gal, whoever you got—to like man the ground for you, you know?
Matt Kress: Yeah.
Patrick Shanahan: Man the hand-to-hand combat. And like literally, you do one—you do one print giveaway on one of these places that has like this high foot traffic—dude, goodness. You’re going to—you’re going to be dropping hundreds, hundreds if not thousands to the bottom line every single solitary time. And you know, that’s the whole premise of doing the in-person show, right? Like you’re going to get—you’re going to get 75 email addresses. You’re going to sell two or three pieces. And then you’re going to be able to offer, you know, a discount to everyone that didn’t get a purchase—the stuff. So we—we got—we got a playbook on this. I will—I will help you cook this thing up.
Matt Kress: Awesome.
Patrick Shanahan: I—I got a huge, huge passion for it. Um, I want to pivot to the plane.
Matt Kress: Okay.
Patrick Shanahan: When—the plane’s so insanely fascinating. Let me pull it up and show it. How did—how did this whole thing come about? And um—let me see. Let me find it. How did the whole thing come about? When—when did you do it? And what’s happened as a result of it?
Matt Kress: Uh, well, it’s—it’s been out there for about two years now. And, uh, a local—you know, and it came through my murals. I got pretty well known here in St. Pete as a mural artist. And, uh, a very forward-thinking friend of mine said, “Hey, you know, what do you think about painting an air—my airplane?” He’s like, “I’m getting ready to do it.” He’s like, “I’m thinking about it.”
Patrick Shanahan: That’s the new plane that I’m getting ready to paint, which is a much larger plane.
Matt Kress: Yeah, it’s a big plane. And I—he’s—the owner of that plane has given me full creative freedom on it. And I’m even picking the leather interior that we make on that plane. So, it’s going to be a flying piece of art on the new one.
Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. The—the—the plane is just wild. And—and Matt and I were talking beforehand about like—because I was so curious—because—and this brings up another question. So, you—you’re equally talented with the spray cans as with the brush. Your paintings you’re doing with a brush mostly. Is that correct? And then—and then you just—the spray cans just is by virtue of the fact that you’re great at this to begin with.
Matt Kress: Yeah. I just—I’ve studied art over the years. I want to be a multi-disciplinary artist. I use airbrushes. I use spray paint. I use oil, acrylic, paint guns. And they’re all—they’re all just different tools that you need to learn how to use. And through the murals, I’ve gotten much better at using spray paint. And I think that’s a—that’s a tool that all artists really need to pick up and use.
Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. I mean, I tell—you know, a great—a great thing, you know, while we’re talking about this—I tell a lot of young artists that are painting stuff on canvas, go do a mural for free. Show some business, “Hey, here’s my—here’s my canvas stuff. Could I do an accent wall? I don’t even want to charge you for this mural. I just want people to see it.” And you have to do that. You have to do one like that. And I’ve told a lot of young artists to—seriously—like you just—you know that it’s a billboard.
Matt Kress: Yeah.
Patrick Shanahan: They go in there and do a nice job. That’s their—that’s their QR code right there. Boom. To get the—get the hits. Everybody’s walking by that all day. So that’s such a critical part. But like I said, I tell a lot of young artists, just do it free.
Matt Kress: Yeah.
Patrick Shanahan: Especially in the beginning. Like don’t get—like artists are their own worst enemies. And I—in so many ways it’s like, “Do I need to get a contract together for this one?” and “What should I charge?” and “What should be the terms that they agree to before they do it?” And it’s like the business owner’s like, “Terms? Like dude, go and get some paint and freaking make it look cool. Leave me alone,” right? Like just get—get a foot in the door. Um, on a side tangent, are you a Banksy fan too?
Matt Kress: I am. I—I like what—I like what he’s done. Uh, I like the statements he makes and you know that type of art to me that makes a statement—he’s really hitting on that category. And that’s testament to art. You don’t have to have the—you don’t have to be the best painter. He just has a—he has the most genius ideas on what to say sometimes, which is an inspiration to me. I’m not a fan of the physical art that he’s making, but the mind it takes to create that idea is its own avenue.
Patrick Shanahan: That’s—that’s where I’m at. I mean, I appreciate the art. It’s not like I’m so blown away, but I—I just—I love the creativity on some of the murals. Like the way they incorporate—
Matt Kress: Yeah.
Patrick Shanahan: —it’s just so good. You know, he did—he just did one recently on like, you know, somewhere in middle—middle England and, you know, it was like a four-story apartment block where he like totally used the bushes that were in the foreground. Anyway, I—I think he’s really creative that way. Um, where else—I had other things. I had other things that I wanted to go on. Yeah. So, we—we need to tune up the social media profile, get a little bit more of that street credit on there. You need to get the lineup cemented. Like the whole—the whole deal with the lineup, by the way, is you—you have never heard me say this—non-wall art is a part of it. Don’t care what that is. Pick whatever merch you want, doesn’t matter. Stuff that we provide, stuff you do on your own, doesn’t matter. Non-wall art is a part of the lineup. Not everyone is ready to buy wall art at all times. You need—you need prices in the $0 to $100 range. You need prices $100 to $1,000. Top end of the range you already have covered. The whole point of that: acquire as many customers as possible. Don’t let somebody that’s not in the right socioeconomic frame of mind leave your damn operation without something in hand and without you having a record. That’s it. Okay? You do that. You do that over the course of the long term. It’s how you win on every single solitary thing.
I think—I think you had big gains on Instagram to make without question. Um, there’s—there’s a couple of things. You know, you know what we might do is um—I’m hungry for podcast content. Um, had this podcast forever and over 600,000 downloads actually to my head on that. I just was looking at the stats earlier. Anyway, I do these—these inter—these interviews, artist interviews. I do these like deep diving tacticals. Last week, I started for the first time what I’m calling working sessions. It’s where I just grab an artist and we start on the list and it’s like in per—sign up for this. This is the service. This is what we’re going to do. Tactical stuff A, tactical stuff B. So maybe—maybe we’ll do one of those because there’s—there’s a—there’s a ton of stuff that—that we need you doing right away. Um, I’m very interested in—in your celebrity base and nurturing those relationships.
You know, I was—I was looking at his Instagram earlier and I—I saw one of the planes on here and it’s like, okay, PBD, right? Some of you guys know who this guy is, Patrick Bet-David. Um, we—we’re Swiss neutral on this show in terms of politics. We will get charged up. I am the marketing guy. Okay? Yeah. I know how hard PBD works. I know the size of his audience. I—this—and I’m like, “Okay, Matt, uh, do you have his cell phone number?” I also know that like one of the primary things that this guy gifts—Patrick Bet-David is this guy that just loves giving gifts. He constantly giving away art. Constantly. I mean, you see—did you see that thing he gave to Tom Brady?
Matt Kress: No.
Patrick Shanahan: Oh my God, dude. He—Patrick Bet-David commissioned this thing which is this painting for Tom Brady which I swear to God only Tom Brady could own it because you either have to have a 50,000 square foot house or a warehouse to even hang it.
Matt Kress: Yeah.
Patrick Shanahan: And he commissioned some artist to paint Tom Brady in some like action post for every single solitary season of his NFL career—like all these—all the different teams and college and moments—and then gave it to him. It’s like that guy—that guy appreciates art. Like I can’t believe—which is obviously how you got in there and I’m sure that’s a great story.
Matt Kress: Yeah.
Patrick Shanahan: I—To achieve what you’ve achieved at the—at the celebrity level, you know, the football players, the famous people—is the hardest—is the hardest thing to do, period. You know, this guy looks famous too. It’s like you really—you have to have an intentional plan about how you’re going to cultivate these relationships and make sure you’re checking in on them and watering them. You know who’s one of the masters of this? Wyland. You know what he does? Dedicates time to go and like their social media post to his biggest collectors. Okay? Literally sits down on Instagram, goes and leaves comments. Will send them a message and, you know, he’s one of the bestselling artists in the United States. So—
Matt Kress: Yeah.
Patrick Shanahan: How do you—how do you think that happened, right?
