Artist Tom Putt

Patrick leads an inspiring conversation with Tom and Mary Putt, a dynamic husband-and-wife team behind the Tom Putt Gallery. Discover how they navigated the challenges of running a photography business during the COVID-19 pandemic, leveraging creativity and resilience to thrive. Tom shares his philosophy of continuous improvement, while Mary discusses the importance of customer experience and effective sales strategies. Tune in for valuable insights on building a successful art business and the power of storytelling in connecting with your audience!

Podcast Transcribe

Tom Putt: My attitude towards anything I do in life is that it's not what if I fail, it's just how do I make this succeed. So every day I come into the gallery, not an option. Every day I wake up and I get to choose whatever I want to do in my business, which I absolutely freaking love. I just love working for myself, and I love the choice of being able to work on the website today or work on this or work on that. It's always about how do I make this a better business. At the end of the day, if you improve the business by 1% every week, a year you're going to be a 52% better business by the end of the year. How do I make it better? What can we do to improve? And that's what I enjoy most, that working for myself.

Patrick Shanahan: Coming up on today's edition of the Art Marketing Podcast, back at it with another artist interview, and I'm joined today by Tom and Mary. You can see that Instagram handle down there, Tom Putt Gallery. I need all of you guys to follow that Instagram handle because Tom is currently at 7,700 Instagram followers, and he doesn't know this, but there are a bunch of benefits getting to 10,000 Instagram followers. So we're going to talk about that today. One of the things that I thought I would do is I was browsing your Instagram already, and I thought, what a great intro. I'm going to read this just because I found it and I love it. So this is the pinned post from the Tom Putt Gallery on Instagram, and I think it's great. And I quote, "I love that I chose photography, or perhaps it chose me. I have to pinch myself sometimes. The truth is that I struggled a lot when I was younger to find myself, to know what my purpose was. I was passionate about birds and wildlife, and passionate about birds and wildlife—sorry, I'm still learning how to scroll on the Mac. I love the outdoors, but I resisted photography for a long time as a profession, but the pull was too great, and thankfully I followed my intuition. I've been so fortunate to meet so many wonderful people through photography. My workshop business, that this year celebrates its 20th year anniversary, allows me to share my love of photography with many other keen photographers. It scratches my travel itch. So Aussie of you, by the way. We'll talk about that. How good is it to see something new, to expand your epistemology? Thank you to everyone who's come with me on this journey—all the social followers, the workshop participants, the artwork collectors. I feel humbled and eternally grateful." Great, great intro quote. I love it when those things work out. But Tom, Mary, why don't you guys introduce yourselves?

Tom Putt: Thank you very much. It's funny hearing that back because I wrote that probably in a sort of like sleep-deprived haze while I was down in Antarctica recently, reflecting on how amazing the experience was, but also what we'd achieved so far in the business. And probably half of me knew that you were going to perhaps read that at some stage because you're always hassling everybody else, saying, "You've got to have something about yourself up the top of your Instagram grid." So that was perfect, and I'm so pleased that's landed well. So that's nice. But yeah, I'm Tom, this is Mary, my wife. We're just recently married. We've been dating for many years—12 years, in fact—but we just got married last year, so we're coming up to our one-year anniversary. But we've been working together for 15 years or so. I ran a portrait video photographing kids, families, and dogs for 11 years. Wow. And Mary came to work in the business, and the rest is history. I'll let you connect the dots, so to speak. But I started off photography when I was about 13 years old. I have a love for birds and ornithology. I started bird watching when I was just 9 years old, and then got into wildlife photography through that. And then from there, I graduated into sports photography, believe it or not. I left university—I didn't study photography. I studied a degree in arts, but psychology and sociology, which works quite well for the business these days. And I just had this passion to go and photograph sport. I was involved in triathlon. I was competing in triathlon, not at any sort of level, but I enjoyed it immensely. And the sort of equipment and the lenses that I was using for my wildlife photography obviously suited the triathlon and the sports photography. So I was going to Hawaii Ironman and photographing that. I was traveling around Australia, photographing triathlons, and I built up this portfolio of work and caught the eye of a sports photography agency here in Australia. That was back in 1998. That just happened to be the official photographers to the Australian Olympic Committee, and of course, we had the Sydney Olympics in 2000. So I got to photograph that, photograph the Paralympics, traveled the world for three years in that gig, and then decided that I wanted a new direction. So I started this portrait studio, photographing kids and families when one of my daughters was born, Ella. So we called it Ella and Friends Photography. It still exists to this day, 10 years after we sold it. Wow. That's where Mary came on board to teach me how to do this better because the reason I wanted Mary on the call today is because I'm the creative, I'm the photographer. But as you always allude to, Patrick, it's very difficult for us to have both sides of the brain working in harmony in order to help perhaps promote the business and do the sales. And Mary comes into the equation there because she's so good at sales and marketing. I'll let her speak about herself, but she's not a photographer, but she's got a passion for sales. So Mary manages the gallery while I go and swan around the world and take all the photos.

Mary Putt: Yeah, so that's a little backstory. He spends the money, and I make the money. Something like that. Overworked and underappreciated in the retail gallery, which is not easy. You guys have heard me talk about the gallery, and I should back up and say, like, on paper, you have my favorite photography business, and not for the reasons that you think. I look at all these revenue sources. I look at all these revenue sources. You're teaching workshops, you're coming up on your 20th year, you guys have books—multiple different books that I've seen—you've got the retail gallery, you're selling prints. And I love the more legs you add to the stool, the more stable it becomes, right? And you get to lean on all those different revenue sources, which is amazing. Let's dive right into the gallery just to start. When did you open it? Where in Sydney is it? And how many days a week do you keep it open?

Tom Putt: Okay, we are in Mowbray rather than Sydney. It's a bit further to the south because it says currently in Sydney on your IG. Yeah, you know what the problem is? Sometimes this is currently in India, currently in like Africa. I saw somebody else do that on Instagram, and I thought, "Hey, that's clever." And then the problem is that, of course, you're switching it back. Yeah, I was in Sydney only a few days ago. But we opened it in October 2018, over six years ago now. We rode out two of those years with COVID because, as you may know, Melbourne, in particular, had one of the longest lockdowns in the world. Terrible, terrible. It was terrible. It was really tough. And we only just started the gallery, but we couldn't get any benefits from our landlord for any reduced rent because, by law, you had to, I think, have a 30% downturn in your turnover. And we were a startup business. We were still a growing business, so we were continuing to build our revenue rather than having it. And so we didn't qualify for that. So we had to rely on the government to pay for the rent because the landlord was still demanding the rent from us. It was pretty full-on. But Mary, you talk more about it.

Mary Putt: Yeah, it was. I think what amazed me is through the COVID because, as you said, we hit it so hard here. If the gallery could survive not effectively being open—let's say two years—I think we might have been open three or four months of the two years. So, and again, it was a scary time. So you might have been allowed to open, but was anyone coming in? Probably not. And I remember saying to Tom about a year in, "That's it. The gallery's done. There's absolutely no way we could do online sales." I was like, "I was the—my background is an accountant—so I was like the conservative take on it. Let's wind this up. Let's not waste our money or lose more than we have." Whereas something I heard Tom say earlier—I'm diving a bit—is his mindset is this is his livelihood. Photography is his chosen career. There's no backup. A lot of photographers will go into business because it's been this organic, "Oh, everyone's saying, 'Oh, your photos are amazing,' and 'Oh, you should sell them,' and 'Oh my God, it's amazing.'" And they get all these pump-ups, which is great. But would that person ever say, "Would you buy one?" And I wonder what the answer would be to all those people who said, "I love these. You should sell them." But would you buy one at $3,000, $4,000, $6,000, however much it is? For most of the time, they go, "Oh, you know, it's not for me, but they're great." So they go into business, and then they go out of business. Yeah, whereas because they've got to back up, they were doing something else before photography, doing this part-time, but I'm still working my nine-to-five job, or I'm still an engineer, or whatever. Whereas Tom, this is it. It's always been this. There's no—there's nothing to fall back on. He never thinks, "Yeah, I'll close that, and I'll go back to just running workshops, or I'll just go get a job." So I was ready to close it. I was ready. And he worked every single day of COVID. We went home, and he never got up from that computer. It was 9 to 5, working on the SEO of the website. He was running streamings of, "All right, let's go to Africa," and he'd run like a slideshow like you would run your holiday pics, and the audience just grew. His—people said, "We were happy to pay for that, Tom. That was amazing information. Like, actually learned something from it." So then we started a subscription of a very small amount per year. Didn't really make us much money, but it had people sticking around and watching because they paid for it. Every single day, provided content every day. Something new. "What if we did this? What if we sold that?" Next thing, we're making online art sales that we had never made before. Wow. And we were paying sometimes the monthly rent because we just sold a couple of pieces. And our supplier is in another state. He wasn't closed, so he's printing our work and shipping it directly. Wow. It was interesting times. In reflecting on what I'm saying there is that my attitude towards anything I do in life is that it's not what if I fail, it's just how do I make this succeed. So every day I come into the gallery, and every day I wake up, and I get to choose whatever I want to do in my business, which I absolutely freaking love. I just love working for myself, and I love the choice of being able to work on the website today or work on this or work on that. It's always about how do I make this a better business. And it's not something I always consciously think of. It's just ingrained in me. I think about it every single day. And that plan should be there. What if this book turns into this? Like, it doesn't ever stop. Or, you know, I'm a big believer in the 1%, Patrick. At the end of the day, if you improve the business by 1% every week for a year, you're going to be a 52% better business by the end of the year. So my attitude towards business is always, "How do I make it better? What can we do to improve?" And that's what I enjoy most about working for myself—the opportunity to implement and strategize, implement, and just make those little tweaks that make it better still. And so what happened was, just to cap that story, is that we went through COVID. I've been working in the photography industry for many years—20 years plus—in the portrait space, and that's where I excel. I love working with people. I love designing artwork of their family for their home. It was never about digital prints. I've never been able to sell a digital print. I don't know how to sell a digital print or image. So it's always been, "Let's create this. Where's it going to go? Oh, wow. Let's put that in the lounge room. Imagine having this big family portrait, and what will your kids feel when they walk in the room?" It was all about the emotional attachment. And I was working in another portrait business a little away from the house, and we came back after COVID and added up the year. How many weeks a year are you actually away running workshops because people keep saying, "I came to the gallery, but it was closed." And I thought, "It's not that much, surely." We added it up, and it was 24 weeks of the year Tom was away. So that's probably worked out why we're still together. But, um, love you. We're paying rent for six months of the year that we're not even open. So imagine if we did both businesses 100%. If we put 100% of our time into both businesses, whereas he was putting 50% into one and 50% into another, so therefore, what's the results going to be? The same? It's not less. Yeah. So I jumped on board full-time at the gallery three years ago now, and I said, "If it can stay open during COVID, if it can survive—if we could make money still through COVID enough to open the doors after two years, and you're away six months of the year, and it's still open, imagine the possibility of being here every single day." And that's how I came on board. And because my background, as Tom alluded to, is business, the customer experience for me is the foundation of our entire business. The pretty pictures on the wall are a bonus. I see it as a bonus for our customers if they ended up choosing something. What they walk away with, hopefully, is how amazing the experience was, and that's what they talk about. And we still have people go down and see Mary at the gallery. They're fantastic down there. You'll find something. There's pictures. Don't worry, you'll find something. But the experience is great. And that's what—sorry, we do have verbal diarrhea—that's what Mary is so good at. Like, at the end of the day, we don't look at everybody who walks through the door as a potential sale. We look at anyone who comes in who is friendly to deal with, who we connect with, that we're then happy to sell hard to. And that sounds a little arrogant, but at the end of the day, it's like we want to form connections with people. We want these people to be loving what we're doing for them. They're loving that they're buying our art. We have a great relationship with them. We had a client buy—we have two clients at the moment competing with each other on how many pieces they have. So we've got one that has 10, one that has eight. And how many does she have now? Wow. One came in and purchased artwork and then told their friends that they bought it, and they're quite competitive as friends. Like, they have dinner and stuff. So then the other couple came down and said, "Which ones did they choose? And we'll get that one on top of what they got." But they're just like, "Go down and see them. They're so good." And I'm not pumping my own tires. I'm saying that the feedback we get is that it's, "Go and see these guys because they help you out." And if not, we have a fantastic chat. We just chat about all sorts of things. And if they walk out and they go, "Oh, sorry, nothing," that's okay. Like, it was a great conversation. Who knows who they know? For sure, they would know the next billionaire or the next person who wants to buy artwork. Mary's really good at connecting with people. She's Italian. She can talk underwater with marbles in her mouth, and that's her. That's one of her beautiful traits. But I've watched her do it here in the gallery. People walk in, and Mary comes in and goes, "Are you after something particular today?" That's always her sort of intro line. It's not, "Oh, how can I help you?" That's just useless. "Oh, can I help you with something today?" And they go, "No, I'm just having a look, thanks." And the next thing, they're telling their life story, and then they're telling about how, yes, they have come in to buy art, and then they've got this space of blah. She's extracting that information from people, but not in a manipulative way, just more a conversational style that has people feel very comfortable to talk with her. So there's so much to unpack from all this. This is going to be the easiest interview you do. You can sit there for the next 40 minutes and not talk, and we'll just fill the airspace.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, I'm gonna go tell my wife to get me a beer. Let's do this. But the other thing is for you to think about is, and why we're here on the call today, and what's drawn us to you, is how do we—we have these conversations if that's how it works here in the gallery. My headspace is, how do you then convey that digitally? Because as I said earlier, I've never been able to sell a digital image. I don't understand the value of it. I don't—to me, I don't see it. If it's not printed, it's not real. That's how I've been trained. So when we are doing online sales, I'm very conscious that they haven't interacted with us, and yet they have. We had a sale literally two days ago online. Nowhere. We're having dinner, the phone goes "ching" because it goes "ching" every time we make a sale—makes a fire sound—and we're like, "Oh, wait a minute. Who's that?" So I go on, "Oh, there's someone from West Australia who's just ordered a piece online. No consultation. $3,000." And like, the minute I get into the gallery, if I could call them right then, I would, in business hours, and I say, "Thank you so much for your purchase. What drew you to the gallery? And how—like, how have you not called us to make sure we're real?" Like, on my mind, I know. But then you start going up the chain, and it's—we always talk about this in digital commerce in general, but people buy Teslas online without ever even going to a dealership or talking to anyone, and they spend $60, $70, $80, $90,000—US, Aussie dollars, whatever. It's crazy. So you have to get rid of the self-limiting beliefs.

Tom Putt: Yes. As I unpacked all of that, it's so clear why you guys have got the level of success that you have already. And I'll lay it on the table. One, the burn-the-boats mentality is so smart. There's no going back. Everyone else—no one burns the boats like big picture. One of the things that we see as a business at Art Storefronts is all artists and photographers get started. They have the passion. They want to have the dream. They realize how hard the marketing is. The rubber hits the road, and they quit. Right? And they quit for some period of time, and then they come back, which is—I call it the Hotel California problem. You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave. Right? Yeah, because we charge more than anyone else does, and we provide the value obviously, but it equates to like a higher level of commitment. And I notice it's like where you aim your wallet, you aim your heart. Right? So I love the burning-the-boats mentality. Like, I've interviewed 100,000 photographers and artists, and it feels like I have. What percentage would you guess you can have one team member, one employee? Very, very less than a percent. It's less than a percent. Exactly. And then it's even less than one-tenth of 1%. And so I'm gonna—I'm going somewhere with this, but the fact that you have that already is stunning. If anyone has any doubt left why you are successful, all you have to do is listen to Mary. And she's gotten me twice on this call already, just sitting back here listening. Number one, when you were saying, "Oh, your artwork's so beautiful," and what does she immediately come back with? "Would you like to buy it? It's for sale." Right? If creatives could just learn that little loop, the whole world would be a different place. I'm telling you guys, no one can do that. It is turning a buying question—okay, this is beautiful work, it's amazing—into a selling conversation. Right? Which is phenomenal. And then I loved your opener. What was it? How did it go exactly? "What were you interested in? What piece of work?" Yeah, as soon as somebody walks in, I say, "Oh, is there something in particular you're after today for your home?" That's my—you guys, write that down. You guys, write that down. That should be on the refrigerator. But what you really teed me up on, Tom, is something that I've been grappling with a ton, and you're one-percent-better-per-day mentality. And I would love to know where you two come down with AI because I've been grappling with this for the last year and a half. And yes, we have an AI product at Art Storefronts, but I'm a huge nerd. So my weekends, I spend going down the rabbit hole. And what I've come to realize is that—like, how it all ties together—no creatives have a team member, have an employee. You're blessed out of a situation that you have a stunning salesperson that you're also married to, so they're not going anywhere. Right? So you've got it right. Exactly. Yeah. But I believe AI is going to fundamentally change everything for creatives because forever, creatives are on their own, and no one can be good at everything. Right? Just—it just doesn't work that way. I'm curious if you've started playing around with that, what your guys' approach to that has been.

Mary Putt: Have I tried ChatGPT once and then never gone back? Go here we go. Patrick, whatever Tom's about to say because he has a lot to say. This with the—when Tom proposed to me, it was written. The proposal was written by ChatGPT. Tom, scroll down to the—it's all—not only that, it got videoed. He announced that it was written by—yes, yes. I love it. Was it good, though? Was it good? It was good, right? It was brilliant. And of course, it's tweaked here and there, but very small amount. And what that tells you—and yet all the comments when people watched the video was, "I'm crying. You know, I'm not crying, you're crying." Yeah. And so what does that tell you? It was still so emotional. The way it was delivered, the reactions on our faces—that when people come to me and say, "Oh, business is over because of AI," and I won't swear, but I just laugh and think, "There goes another photographer that allows more space for people to come to me because they're just popping off because they're finding the next excuse as to why their business won't work." Whereas it can only elevate it. What happened when we went from film days—and yes, I don't mind—I'm old. We were shooting in film days, and we went to digital. If you didn't pivot and embrace that, you went—so the biggest quick portrait studio that was here in Melbourne, Pixie Photos, went out of business straight away. Then where did all those clients have to come to? Me. I was the only one left in the shopping center. So—and we had a big portrait studio in the shopping center because you have to pivot. And did we make mistakes? 100%. We made hundreds of mistakes, but we kept at it because we used it not as an excuse to fail. We went, "How can we use it to make us better?" And it's this game. I've just completely taken over. Good. He loves it. He loves it.

Tom Putt: So I love AI. When Mary was referring to the ChatGPT proposal, that was May 2023. So I think it had only been out less than six months. I didn't even know how to pronounce the thing. I—ChatGPT—it rolls off the tongue for everybody now, but back then, it was just new. And for sure, I tweaked in the prompts, and it came up with this beautiful speech, and I was like, "I'm not going to rewrite this. This is better than what I could have." As Mary alluded to, I read it out, but we—so for example, and I know what you're alluding to here—when you released Art Helper AI, I was like on a seat to a chair, right? And we signed up straight away, the biggest plan. Give it all to us. And for example, just recently, we're probably not using it to its full capability. I know that for sure. Same with everything you offer at Art Storefronts. So we could do—I just was in Antarctica, had 100 photographs that I wanted to put up onto my website. I reckon within four hours, I had titles, I had descriptions, I had all the room views I wanted, and it was all up on the website. And Mary's saying to people, "Oh, if you want to see our stuff from Antarctica, just go to the website. It's all there now." And people are like, "But you only got back a few days ago." Our kids said, "How is that possible?" Literally, our child said a couple of days ago, "What do you mean? You just got back." Yep, it was up while we were away. So happy. This is where I'm going with it. It's like I run a marketing department here, and so I've got an entire team, and I get a nerd out on all the different apps and try it. And it's like when you're—it's funny because I'm super active on X as a social network, okay? And I feel like the party that's going on on X are all these tech people going, "Holy shit, when the rest of the world figures this out, did they not understand? You not do—do you see what's possible?" And I'm stuck on this analogy. Take the fact you guys are not going to get emotional about the factory, but somewhere just get emotional about the factory analogy. But like, the sum total of your guys' business is just a factory. It's a widget factory, right? And what are the widgets? Yes, it's the artwork. Yes, it's the workshops. Yes, it's every phone conversation that Mary has. Yes, it's every text message, every email, every social media update, everything that goes up on the website. And the factory runs at a certain speed, and it's directly proportional—its output—to how much you as two human beings can do, right? And then you realize that there's this guy on the line, and it's Steve, and he can do this one thing really good, and he doesn't sleep, and he doesn't need anything, and put him to work, and then put another one to work, and then put another one to work. And the creatives that figure this out and embrace this into their business right now, everything is fundamentally going to change. Some of the things that I could show you that you need to be doing on Instagram with this right now, right out of the gates, staggering. Because if you just zoom out, they don't give a shit—AI, whatever you want to call it, a buzzword—for me, it is, what is the output of my widget factory? Right? How much more stuff is my team cranking out? And the quality of that stuff, with some tweaking, what does that look like? And if I'm 5x-ing, 10x-ing, 15x-ing, 20x-ing my output, everything's going to change. Everything's going to change in the business. It's not your 1%, Tom. You're now doing 1% in a quarter, and then you're now doing 3%, and you weren't able to do that before. And I feel like we're on the precipice of this just—I'm glass half-full on it.

Mary Putt: Let me just say that I'm not all—I—us—coach. After we ran a portrait studio, I ended up getting inquiries of people asking me, "How did you sell your portrait studio?" Was Tom's studio that I was managing at—how did you sell it? What do you mean? They said, "No one really has enough in their business solely run to sell it." How? And we sold it for six figures. And I said, "Oh, because it's just—of course, you just do this and this." To me, it was normal. And they said, "Can you tell me more about that?" So it turned into me coaching for the next six, seven years, and I was going across Australia, teaching people how to run their portrait business. And one of the things—there was a number of things, but one that—oh, no, it was doing what you were saying with AI, but I think it was just more yourself. Yeah. And I used—that's what I was saying. They used to say, "Oh, so you got a post on Facebook every day." This was 10 years ago. Sometimes twice a day at that point. That's how the algorithm was working, right? Yeah. "Oh, I'm going to write—I'm undiagnosed dyslexic. I hate writing stuff that I got to read over and make sure the spelling is right because I know I've read it wrong. It's wrong, but I'm reading it a different way." This has changed my life, right? So they would come up with these excuses, but then now I say, "Just go into AI and type in what you want to say, and it's up like that." You know? And you can even attach the photo. "Write an emotional title for this photo." Like, we had—I was so gutted. The photos Tom was putting up, and he would call it "Africa number one," "Africa number two." I'm like, "Who's gonna buy Africa number three?" Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. Yeah, that's not—there's no emotional connection. There's one thing selling portrait photos. There's another selling a photo that person's never even stood there to get the photo. It's hard to say, "No, I don't want that photo of my baby. Delete that one." But it's not hard to say, "No, I don't like that one." They're not experiencing where this was taken. They didn't feel the wind in their hair. They weren't standing on the beach with the sand in their toes. They didn't understand that the storm was so strong that day that he took a thousand photos to get one published. I've got to sell that emotion on Facebook, let's say, online, in words, before they come in. I've got to create a story there that I know—I love—I love what you're saying. It's literally to the point too, especially with wildlife. The talkers—okay, it was one thing back in the film days. Okay, it was expensive. The equipment was expensive. The processing was expensive. Now, the whole world has a camera in their pocket, and it's a decent one, right? And you know, so much about wildlife is about being in the right place at the right time. But I love the story. It's to the point where I think you should probably start taking a voice recorder on the tripod, and when you're trudging through things and skinning up your knees and getting saltwater in your face and getting shat on by a bird, record what you were doing to get that shot on photo or how cold it is, and don't worry about what it is, just record it all. Come back, transcribe it, map it to the images, and then say, "Write me a story on how incredible this is." And one of the things that—like, I've grappled with as a marketing team at Art Storefronts that I think applies directly to what you guys are doing is nobody wants to be lectured to on social media. No one wants to be—greatest marketing technique by a fast-talking nitwit like myself or my colleagues saying, "Do this, do that. This is how you're—" nobody wants that on Instagram. Some people do, but most people just want to be entertained. One of the things that we've been doing recently on our profile—and no joke, I think two and a half weeks ago, we had 100,000 followers on Instagram. Right now, we have 110,000 followers. So we picked up 10,000 followers in the last week and a half. And do you know what it is? It's the shift to providing more entertaining content on Instagram because they're there to be entertained. They don't want to be lectured to. Now, you know why people sign up for Art Storefronts? Because those lectures can be very good, and those are real problems they have, but it doesn't mean they want to consume it all the time. Okay, how are we going to go back to the wildlife stuff? I immediately think about the wildlife stuff, okay? And it's just a photo. No one understands how hard it was to get. No one understands how patient you have to be, how many crappy photos you have—you were out of focus, the lens cap was on, there was a smudge, you were at the wrong shutter, the framing was off. So there's no appreciation, right? And we have so many wildlife photographers that have like stunning photography that barely sell anything, and it's a really hard thing to do. You start incorporating the story, and you win. But one of the things that I'm cognizant about is entertain me, entertain me. So how would you guys entertain, knowing everything that you have? Start having some fun with it. Go back to America's Funniest Home Videos, right? Do you remember that stupid show? You probably—those stupid viral videos of the pets doing crazy stuff, this and that. That's the equivalent of going viral in today's day and age, right? Like, a hundred million views. Grab some of these animal photos, okay? And I don't know if you've seen me do this, but the results are already insane. Pick your favorite comedian. It has to be big enough, okay? It has to be big enough that the GPT or whoever you're using knows who the comedian is. I can't be some small guy. Making me think of Jim Jefferies—like, guy filthy, but he is funny. Anyway, he has a piece of work—the Oscar Pistorius bit that he does. Oh my gosh. Anyway, use a comedian, yeah, okay. Get a series of photos where the animal has a funny expression, and then ask the GPT to write a story in the voice of the animal complaining about something, okay? Take your tiger series. Take your tiger series that you just did, and you got some insane photos in here. And I know you probably have some outtakes, and you probably have one going to the bathroom or some of these other funny shots that happen, and string 10 of them together with stories. And oh my god, when you can come up with—I almost feel like we—you run like a side-tangent workshop. Maybe we as a piece of content, and I'll show you how it is, but like, if the text is—if the text and the hook on some of these—like, tiger thongs. So I went to India—presumably, this is India. I went to India to photograph the regal Bengal tiger of India. What is this Bengal tiger? I'm terrified. And do a hook that you wouldn't believe what so-and-so did. You can't imagine what this guy said. And then just start doing the comedy, okay? Via carousel, three to five different posts. And I can show you there's an application that generates carousels. It's such an alarming clip. It is spellbinding how quickly it builds it. And you throw that in there, all of a sudden, you're going to go from a post that gets some likes and gets some comments to something that actually entertains people, right? They think it's funny. Like, Tim Layman—the—you've seen him. He's a big wildlife guy, and he had these two parrots in mid-flight, and I was like—and I was doing this in a live display, and I was like, "Use the comedic voice of—" is it Hell? Have a conversation between these two parrots where the wife is yelling at the husband for such-and-such, and what came out was so funny, I can't even begin to tell you. And all of a sudden, you're anthropomorphizing the animals with this hilarious thing, and people share that, they like that, they comment on that, and they go crazy on that, right? And it's like a perfect example of how you leverage AI. We couldn't write something that funny, and you just—you give it another iteration, and you give it another iteration. You're like, "Oh my God, that's so funny." Build the carousel, let's go. And it happens so fast. I'm gonna—I don't want to show it on this, but as soon as we wrap, I'm gonna show you how quickly this happens, and you guys are gonna go, "There's no way. There's no way." And guess what? You bolt that in, and all of a sudden, instead of 50 widgets that week, 75 went down the line. Where do we go from there? Where do we go from there? Challenge for you, Mary. As talented as you are, beautiful as you are, my dear, have you done any live broadcasts inside that gallery?

Mary Putt: Okay, I'll answer this in a couple of ways because yes, I—I need to CBM about this. When I—in the past, when I was in portrait studio, which was my—that was my like core knowledge and having how to run it, yes, I did them all the time. And I would teach people, "You need to be—" I was like the earlier adopter. I was a Periscope girl, a Facebook Live girl. Like, I was all over before it was anybody. So I was on it all the time. And then I got to the gallery, and I was paralyzed on how do I do it here with—until I've become now a bit more understanding of the stories, even though I knew them from Tom. What do I say? There's this—again, it's not somebody's family. "Oh, today I used to say, 'The portrait today, here we go. Here's our studio setup. We've got a dog coming in, three schnauzers, and we've got this up, and this is why we're doing this smash cake with these dogs, and I'll show you the sneak peeks.'" Whereas I was paralyzed on how do I do that for a still photo. And the more I didn't do it, the more you don't do it. Yeah. So Tom keeps—Patrick, I said this to him every day. "Babe, don't forget to do a video in the gallery today." My goal is I needed to hear that again today because I start every time she comes into the gallery, "Do at least one video." I don't even say live videos. Patrick, years ago, let me just—I would never—I was online every day. I had a cooking show called English Mary where I changed my accent to an English woman, and I had a cooking show through COVID that we had on YouTube called This English Mary. What was it? Something about English Mary. We had a radio show called There's Something Else About Mary. Like, we've been having this thing, and yet I walk in here, and I'm like, "What do I talk about?" So what you're saying is you need an alter ego for this game. So I'm not afraid of it as much, but at the same time, I've been stalled with—you're stuck with what to say and how to make it fun and exciting. How do I—will people be bored with me doing an opening of the gallery every day? "This is my setup. This is—" I don't know. Yeah, I'm stalled. I need to put to ChatGPT 10 ideas on a live video idea. What I can do. One thing, Patrick, that I want to tell Mary about backing away is that years ago, I first joined—not Art Storefronts, which I think was about four years ago—and I found you. I was racking my brains. How did I find out about these guys? I know I signed up during COVID, but I had no idea how I found you. But I remember early days, you were going, "Go live on Instagram. Go live on Instagram." And I'm like, "Oh, I don't want to do that. Blah, blah, blah." So I went live on Instagram. It's one of the few times that I have, by the way. And my hairdresser messages me, says, "True, I love that. I love that photo of the horses that you put up. Is it still available?" And I'm like, "What are you talking about? You—you know who I am. You've never shown any interest in my art. I'm there every month. I'm there all the time." I'm like, "I had in my head, 'You probably can't afford it.'" All these stupid things. And I just told him the price, and he goes, "Yeah, no problems." And then I'm like, "I'm delivering this artwork to my hairdresser." And I'm like, "Bloody hell, Patrick was right." Yeah, yeah. You—the takeaway, and it's so profound, right? And like, during COVID was a different deal, okay? During COVID was fish in a barrel. Yeah, we were all—we were all locked down, had nothing to do. So I would turn the thing on, and I'd be like, "Oh my God." Like, even now, 10 times the audience that's watching this would be watching that back then—20, 30, 40. Insane. Yeah. The analogy that I love—and I should say as a precursor, closer to you, historically, I don't know what it is about Asians and shopping, but Asians just love their shopping experience. They love malls. I've been to Hong Kong, I've been to China, I've seen it. I get it. Let alone here where I am, the malls and the shopping centers are going out of business. And what are all the smart ones doing now? They're portioning off a piece of the store and just selling everything they can online with live broadcast on this other site called—I think it's called Whatnot. Anyway, in China, this has been the thing forever. It's finally starting to come here, right? But the analogy is that you go to that gallery every day, and you open the door, and you don't know who's going to come walk into the gallery that day, but the door's open, right? The door's open, and you're waiting for the serendipity of who's going to come in, right? And the reason that you pay the rent, you do that gallery because it's in a place that has foot traffic, a good part of town, lit that all those things, right? That people might just come in. It's the same thing with a live broadcast. You're opening the doors to the entire online world, and you never know who's going to come in. Think about it like that. You never know who's going to come in. And so it literally comes down to, are you open? Yeah, look, we've sold—as Tom's just said—to the most unsuspecting people. Sold to my postie. I always used to say to people, "It doesn't matter who walks in. If they're trying to sell you something, then if you try and sell me something, trust me, you're going to be buying a print." There's a hawker that comes in, and they're like, "Oh, have you thought about artificial—" remember this happened. Walked into our studio. "You should have artificial flowers on your—" because they've walked in, right? And next thing, I'm bidding in for a dog portrait because that's what I do. And I don't think I ended up buying the artificial flowers, but she spent a few thousand on her dog's portrait because the door was open. And everybody is everybody's a client, but nobody's a client. Everyone's—and I have to—you've really given me—you inspired me today to go, "Yeah, that's the same thing online." Because I have struggled, as I said at the beginning, with how do I emotionally connect because I'm such an in-person person. How do I do that? Is it not? Yeah, I've got to—I'm gonna start—I'm starting today, but tomorrow morning because I'm not saying I'm putting it off to tomorrow. I will absolutely start every day doing a live video or whatever it is. Yeah, and it doesn't matter. It's like you can do okay with it. If you flubbed it up, you just don't save it, and it's gone in the ether. No one knows. Right? There's this—I told this story recently, but where I live in—so I live in Southern California, halfway between San Diego and LA. Place called Orange County. There's this Swedish gal, super fabulous. Husband with just perfectly coiffed hair and the Rolex and the whole thing. He's like a character out of a comic book. They have a purse shop, and it's high-end bags that have had a couple of wears, and then they go in there, and she's doing a live stream. And the sheer volume of Birkin bags and Gucci—I don't—I'm not good with the brands—I see all these things that she's selling is like staggering. And it's the perfect example. So these—I do scroll all of these. I—I even know subconsciously what I should be doing. I watch—get up in the morning, you do scrolling. Get off that. I'm like, "No, this is the stuff." She doesn't get out of bed until she's spent about two hours on Facebook, Patrick. That's my wife too. Drives me nuts. I'm like, "Stop wasting your time. Let's go professional development." It's the failure to implement that often, you know, the undoing. And I used to teach that as well. So I have to take it 100%. You do. And look, it's ROI in thinking creatively, right? Like, we started this conversation. I was explaining to him, "I'm going to stream this whole thing. This is a podcast. The whole point of a podcast is it goes live on an audio feed after the fact. Why do we do it live? Because I'm going to capture another two to 500 people that we—I'm opening the doors." Right? And where I want to encourage you is most people have to do this in their living room, okay? They don't have a professional backdrop like you have. My God, it's beautiful in there. And so what I—when I say ROI, get the damn ROI out of the rent. And if you did it during business hours when you know it's slow, even better. And then look, somebody in—say, "Hey, have the conversation with them right on the thing." We've always said before we even opened this gallery, when we were talking to other retailers about their businesses—totally unrelated to artwork—we always found that they had the businesses—the front end, this is the showroom, yes. All their business was being done out the back. Do you know what I mean? It's all sales. It's the collaborations. It's the commercial sales. Things like that. And we've failed to do that. We really have. And I really want Mary and I to focus in the future on broadcasting live on—that's our audience. That's our next sale. You know what I mean? Not the person who walks through the door here necessarily. That's just cream on top. Whereas having—I think what we don't do well in this business is—and I know this is why we don't get the online sales that we want—is because we're not showing our personalities enough online. Yeah, we do want our personal pages all the time, and people come in in the gallery, and they go home. "You don't know me, but I know you." And I saw this morning's video of Tom videoing me half-naked in bed, like, saying with my makeup running down. They're like, "Yeah, because it's real." Right? And he does it all the time. Catches me off guard and then posts it. And they come in, they go, "I know you. You don't know me." You've seen me, but I haven't done that for the business. No, you haven't. And that's—and everyone thinks that there should be this line of demarcation between the two, and it's the biggest in the history. They're all just pieces of content, okay? Okay. And the piece of content goes into the almighty algorithm, and the almighty algorithm scans it and has a good idea who it is, and then it says, "Who is going to be the audience that is going to keep people on my platform the longest for this piece of content?" And it knows ahead of time, and it goes and finds that person. Okay? So even an even better analogy than that is if I sat down next to you at a bar, okay? And we're having a conversation, and I'm just getting to know you, and you go, "I'm a gallerist. My husband's a photographer." Cool, that's amazing. So what are you into? "Yeah, I sell art. Are you interested in anything? I sell art. My husband's a photographer." And what if everything in the conversation was just that? And that's the way that everyone treats their social profile. And it's no, actually, Mary, I'd like to know where you're from. I'd like to know where you grew up. What are your other hobbies? We're having a conversation. I go to your social profile, and I can't see any of that. How the hell am I supposed to form a valuable relationship? Where are the kids on there? Where are the hard times on there? Where's the funny on there? Get more of it on there because you are the brand. It's not just a gallery. No one gives a shit about a gallery. They just—time. We know this information. Why haven't we done it? So we have two people that I follow, and I think do very well. One is Mitch Albom, and who sells himself more than he sells his art on. And Jonah—Jonah Allan. You had to come up in the conversation. He's such a dude. What a nice guy. And freaking hell, how well does he do that? How well does he sell himself as the artist as opposed to—he's my 80% is him, and then 20% is his art. And that's what we're not doing. We're the other way around. I'm already making my list of what I'm gonna do last. So we're done. All right, I get it. I get it. Yeah, 100%. As the brand, we've got to sell us as the brand. You've got to sell. Yeah, you guys are the brand. That's it. The whole bundle—the kids, the all of it. Like, all those stories, all those things. Yeah, I feel like this is a can think. Yeah, but I think what I've perhaps had a limiting belief or whatever you want to call it—just the gallery manager, whereas it's Tom's business. And so I'm always saying, "When Tom does this," and Tom—I don't really put myself out there unless somebody's purchased a book. And I always handwrite a note in every single book sale that I post, and I write, "Thank you for your purchase of—" and I hope you love it as much as we loved creating it. I've been writing this ongoing. I just had this like little branded note paper, and I just handwrite it on, and I put it in with the book. And it's been interesting over the last month. I've been doing that. "I hope we've loved creating this. I hope you love it as much as we—" and the more I've written "we," I'm like, "Yeah, it is us. It is us." I think I'm just talking to myself at the moment, but that's going to help me to start making these lives about that. It's our gallery, not that I'm an employee working for Tom. Yes, 100%. And you're a human being, and there's stories, and there's everything else. Everyone always just takes it to extremes. It's no one's saying you have to be a Kardashian, okay? Follow you around 24/7. But just give us a little window into the world now and again. What else is going on there? Coming up on an hour, we should—I've been playing around with this idea of doing working sessions as podcast episodes where we actually dive into the things and actually talk about the software and the processes and everything else. There's so many tactics that we haven't talked about today, and I'd love to be able to do that in another time to help other Art Storefronts people but also learn from other people who are doing it very well too—stuff that we're not doing. So go on. Yeah, 100%. So I feel like we need to get one of those sessions. But I want to—before we wrap today, I want to get a sense of where the revenue balance is on the businesses. Good idea. I knew you'd ask. I thought I had all my stats set up—like, how many emails do you send? What's your open rate? I was afraid that if you ask a question, I wouldn't know the answer. But roughly, we've set the businesses up—question, Patrick, is that what you want? Yeah, yeah. I'm curious between the various different revenue sources, right? You got the workshops, you got the gallery, you got the online sales, whatever else you've got cooking in the business—the books. Online sales are next to nothing, and that is something we want to tap into because we just see so much potential upside—unlimited upside with that. So we really need a handle on that. The workshops—we've set the businesses up so they're two separate entities, basically. They run out of two separate bank accounts. So the workshop—I drive most of the time, as in, you know, I work on that most of the time, and that's where I get paid. And then we have a separate bank account for the gallery where the rent gets paid, and Mary gets paid. And so we run them as two separate businesses. They both generate around the same revenue. Yeah, yeah, which is about 50-50. And then we have a beautiful book. And one of the things that we try and do—can you just grab that book? Is that one of the things I wanted to share with the Art Storefronts customers today is that I love publishing books. And in fact—which one? Which one? I've done 18. I'm on my 18th book now in the last 18 years. So I've averaged one a year. And this book that we sold out of just recently, we used to use as rent rack. So we knew that if we sold two of these a day, it would pay the rent here in the gallery. Of course, sold out of that. We haven't got another one to replace it just yet, but not of that time. One week earlier—we earlier—here's another that after—after COVID, when things opened back up again, I literally had three books ready to go, and within 12 months, I published—self-published—those three books. I think I was probably one of the only artists or photographers in the world that self-published three books in the one year. But this is my passion. This—the only one in Australia—well, that's established 17 hardcover coffee table books in 20 years. The revenue on—and the upside on these—I know sells a whole heap of these books too. It's just for us fortunate we've got this marketing channel—the gallery—in order to be able to sell this book. So we've got that revenue—or that channel—in order to distribute the book. Obviously, it's online as well, and we wholesale them, Patrick. So the other—yes, it's the book stream, but off that, we have—okay, we sell them in the gallery, but that wouldn't be enough. So we have three areas. We sell the books in the gallery, wholesale to other retailers who on-sell them, and online. So even within the one revenue stream, there are often sub-areas that—okay, let's not just say we've got books. We—how—what are all the ways we can sell the book? And then we've got the artwork—wall art. Okay, then you've got wall art, then you've got prints, and like, there's other ways—there's online, there's in the gallery, there's collaborations with—which we need to do better at—interior designers. So within one, we're trying and look at what other—the ways that we could sell. So the answer is—these are the revenue streams, but within them, I think the key, in my opinion, is unlocking how—what are all the platforms, whether it's in-person or online, to sell them. Got it. I love it. I love it. Yeah, and—and things like that. You know, at the end of the day, you guys hear me talk about this in the podcast all the time—number of new customers acquired per year. You're going to be in this—you've already burned the boats. You're going to be in it for life. And the books offer such a fantastic way to acquire a customer and acquire an email address, and it's a lower commitment. It's lower commitment. Yeah. And I learned from someone else. I did this business course a number of years ago, and they used to call this the "thud factor" business card. So I always see these books as a giant business card. This is our website on wheels. 100%. So when someone buys a book, they also get this. They get a couple of things, but I just—this is just something really basic. It's not like it's not my best work, but it's just a triple brochure on the types of finishes you can buy. And then they get this in there with the note to say that anything in here that you just bought is also available to be put on your walls. I say to people when I have the opportunity to face-to-face, "Thank you for purchasing that book." And just a lot of people purchase their book specifically to be able to sit with the physical artwork and choose, therefore, which one you want for your wall. That's not what they all do, but I tell people that's what they do. Those seeds, Mary. I love it. I love it because always close and Mary. So it's just giving them the idea because some people like to—there's all those hot-button marketing—so I want to—I want to do what other people are not doing, or the opposite. I want to be what everybody's being. Some people are like that. "Oh, other people buy because they got the book, and then they come back, and they go, 'Yep, Mary, I've been looking at the book, and that's the one I want on my wall in this finish.'" Yeah, that's—of course, that's happened. I just used that one time or two times that's happened to tell everybody that's what happens. It's amazing too, like, the one drives the other. And when it's on the coffee table, they want to see it on the wall. When it's on the wall, they want to see it also in a book. And so they complement each other so well. Yeah, we've got to get a follow-up session. I'll have Juan put something together and schedule it so we can do that. Either set a hard goal to increase the publishing frequency on Instagram and get to the 10,000—it's going to be important. There's some things that I can show you that unlock when you hit 10,000, which is very important. The minute that you start posting some more personal stuff—everybody, you guys follow them on Instagram so that we can keep the Putts accountable here, okay, for sharing a little bit of a window into their world that is just not art-related. Mary is going to be running some live broadcasts. There's a lot to learn from her technique. I would say that for sure. And I will schedule the follow-up. You guys, thank you so much for taking the time on a Saturday. Really appreciate you guys. And thanks, everybody, for watching. This will be live on the podcast feed. And Mary, watch this. I'm gonna end the video, and depending on how I feel, I can save it to the live stream. My day, but all of those people that I caught and I talked and we—it's an amazing thing. If it's not saved, I won't take off. Exactly, exactly.