Artist Xcvi

Patrick is chatting with mixed media acrylic artist Xcvi, also known as X, who shares his inspiring journey of resilience following the devastation of Hurricane Helene. Discover how he transformed loss into beauty through his art and the importance of valuing one's creative work. X discusses his unique approach to connecting with audiences, the challenges of selling art, and the role of community in rebuilding after disaster. Join us as we explore the intersection of art, personal growth, and the power of storytelling.

Podcast Transcribe

Xcvi:I'll scale up from Originals being only a few hundred to this one behind me is a trip ditch and I'm asking 6,000 for that and the reason for this is it's worth it and I will find the person who sees that value in there and we will have that connection and they will become a part of my story and I think that's huge for artists to be able to get comfortable saying I hold value like this is my heart and my soul poured into this and I'm determined to find the person that connects with that.

Patrick Shanahan: Let me tell you, most people are terrified to sell. The least favorable job in the world that anyone could ever have if they were an artist is door-to-door salesmanship, and what you're talking about is doing just that, right?

Xcvi:I'm excited to first off showcase the art that I was able to recover from Helen and showcase this new collaboration between me and a massive weather front. It is a wild collaboration for sure, but it is beautiful to see that even in destruction we can find beauty. And although things may be different and altered and changed, we can work with that and we can showcase resilience through that.

Patrick Shanahan: All right, all right, all right, you guys, coming back to you with another episode of the Art Marketing Podcast. I've got a really interesting story today, an interesting story of where this whole thing comes from. I am with the artist, not formerly known, currently known as Xcvi, sometimes X, or what the Roman numerals stand for, which is 96, because that's a long one. No one's going to do the math on that one in their head. I'm embarrassed to say I had to throw that into ChatGPT just to make sure that I didn't screw it up. That's what it's there for, right?

Xcvi:Yeah, 100%. Despite the fact I love Roman numerals, we always start out at a high level. Who are you? What do you do? Give us a quick elevator pitch on who you are, what kind of art you do, how you got to where you are, the whole thing.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, so my name is Xcvi. I go by that throughout my community, and I'm a mixed media acrylic artist. I also dabble with photography, videography, and woodworking, which is how I make all of my canvases that you see behind me. This is all made in my shop, and that helps me really connect with my work. With my work, I use this as a medium to explore the human experience and to connect with people. This is my truest way to express myself and to connect with people on a realm that allows me to really feel like I'm giving them my true self and then honestly connecting with people on deeper levels. So, this is me. This is me.

Patrick Shanahan: I love it. And I should say that we have a mutual friend in common, X and I, which is a guy that works at the art store, Friends team Drew. And I should say for context that Drew, a lifelong Texan, okay, moved to Asheville, North Carolina, at an opportune time, let's say a fortuitous time, when Asheville, North Carolina, decides to have the hundred-year weather event, maybe even more than the hundred-year weather event. And I have one of your Instagram posts up here, and I want to tease it first and then play it, and then I want to get you talking about it. But I'm on Instagram a lot. I know you guys are on Instagram a lot. You see a lot of artists' photos and videos. Let me show you a video you have not likely seen. Okay, I have seen a lot of ways to talk about art. I've seen a lot of ways to detail art. This is just not a video that you would normally see because it's just so... I'm going to share the screen, and then I want to refresh this because X's entire operation, okay, just got absolutely devastated. Of course, yeah, absolutely devastated. Okay, in the hurricane, was it Helen? Is that how you say it?

Xcvi:That's correct. This was Hurricane Helen that hit our district with over a 30-foot surge of water coming through. And so this thing's plain in the background. Like, there's no one that is spraying mud off of canvases. Okay, I see a lot of people do a lot of kitschy tricks on Instagram to try to get some views, but spraying actual mud and muck off of your art is not one of them.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, it's wild to see when you come back to a place that you've spent so much time building, fostering this community, fostering a way to showcase yourself to the world, and one day you come back and a bomb's gone off. And there's no one to blame. There's just where you currently are. Everything's in a new place, and suddenly you realize how connected you were to something that you've been building for so long, and you don't understand how much it meant to you until you see it like this, where it's just... it'll never be the same.

Xcvi:Yeah, so playing in the background, you dude, you had a big space. That thing looked like a legit warehouse. Was this like literally right on the side of the river on one of these picturesque rivers?

Patrick Shanahan: This was 100 yards away from the French Broad River. This was just our district is right next to this beautiful waterfront. If you walked again 100 yards forward, you could be watching people tube down the river, drinking a beer. You could walk 50 yards back and get a great coffee or some barbecue. And we had, I think, over 80 artists in that warehouse space.

Xcvi:Wow. Every single one of us had just put our life's work into the building because we were gearing up for the fall. That's our biggest sales. I just brought my most promising piece to our showroom. I brought all my equipment in. I was ready to show everyone, and five days later, I have nothing. Yeah, but I have myself, and I had every single other artist who showed up to that studio, even though we didn't have cell signal, we didn't have water, we didn't have electricity. That same community showed back up, no one knowing that the other one was going to be there, and we helped each other, and it was incredible.

Patrick Shanahan: So it was like a co-op space that a bunch of you guys were in?

Xcvi:Absolutely. And that was at the Foundation Studios here in Asheville's River Art District.

Patrick Shanahan: Wow. Just wow. And just the feeling of going back, and I'm still like watching the video, like I just... it's just staggering to contemplate that level of devastation. What I will give you massive props for though, and I said this before we were getting going with X, and I was like, dude, your studio background now is super legit. Look at how legit he builds at the serious speed here, which is just amazing. So how long have you been doing the full-time art thing, X? Is it full-time, or is it hustle?

Xcvi:Yes, this is my full-time pursuit. I started about 3 years ago, and I started with supplementation help from working at Home Depot. And on the weekends, I would try and find any space that would allow me to just vend artwork. So I went bar to bar, just being like, hey, do you mind if this weekend I can just throw up some prints and just stay there and talk to patrons? And that got my foot in the door in this community. And after about a year of just whatever I could get my toe into the door and just trying my hardest, I had a really incredible connection happen, and I got a call one morning saying, hey dude, a studio just opened up in the Foundations. This is a rare spot. You've got 30 minutes if you can get here in 30 minutes and sign this lease, you got the spot. And I got there in 25, and that began my true career in my pursuit at was every day I was spending in the studio. And there's no way to explain if those of you are just like now pursuing your artist career and you're in that same position where you're getting your toe in the door and you get that first sale, and that feeling's just incomparable.

Patrick Shanahan: Oh yeah, just wait until you have your first studio spot, and when you have a blank canvas that's a room for you to display yourself in. I can never explain in proper words or terms what it felt like to walk into a space that was going to become mine and that was going to show people who I'd never met before my most vulnerable side. And I'd never felt so nervous and so comfortable in my own skin, and that's where I started building.

Xcvi:Amazing. And it's so surreal too. By the way, you're scrolling his Instagram, and it looks like what an artist Instagram should. There should be a little bit more videos about you, but we can talk about that in the sidebar. Yeah, there's a ton of art in here, and then all of a sudden, the rubber just hits the road. It's floods, it's devastation, it's fire trucks, and then we're back onto art. There's such a resilience arc in this. Can't stop, won't stop. Nothing keeps you down. But let's give the context for the name because I think there's a story here. Yeah, where did the Roman numerals come from?

Xcvi:Yeah, so if you just get like a Scrabble board bag and you just dump it out and you pick four of them, you'll get the best artist name you can choose. Yeah, but actually, with this, I go by Xcvi or X as a sort of reminder of the malleability of this and how through the arts and through this expression, we can be who we want to be. And my career began when COVID hit. I had just started studying the arts in college and was really enjoying it, and all of a sudden, everything shut down. My friend groups dissolved, my social structures ended, I was back living in my parents' basement, and it devastated me. It crushed me to a level that at a time I didn't think I was going to come back from. I thought everything that I built for the 24 years prior was gone. And then I realized, we can do this. We can be whoever we want to be in this world, but you have to take that first step. And I have had incredible fortune throughout my life where I had foreign exchange students from all over the world come stay with me and my family. I've gone to travel and see incredible places in this world, and I realized that although languages may be different, our characters on our keyboards may be different, numerics always stay the same. And I wanted to hit a global audience as quickly as possible because I understand that this is a global language. And with my legal name, I can make my initials that look very similar to a '96. And when I saw that was a numerics something that could brand something I could build on and create a business around, I knew I had to stick with it. So you'll see with my username, it's project 96. If you're anywhere in the world, you can type 96 on your keyboard, and it'll get you closer to finding my art. And using the Roman numerals, Xcvi, gave me this little edge of confidence that I needed to go into this market that all of my friends and family were just like, man, are you sure you want to get into the arts? It's a competitive field. You really have to do this. And at the time, we were all wearing masks. It's hard to not enjoy yourself going by a strange name, wearing a mask, going to galleries, talking to people who are all different backgrounds, and just saying, my name's Xcvi, or call me X. Yeah, that gave me the permission to myself to really enjoy what I was doing and jump into this not half-assed or anything like that, but wholeheartedly. And from there, my life has changed in the most spectacular ways. I've traveled to even more places, I've met the most interesting people, I've fostered a new community and friend group who enjoy me for what I do and for what I bring to the table, and I enjoy them for what they provide for me. They've provided a way for me to express myself in the purest form, unadulterated from the people from my past, from people from high school, people from college. This has all been me in this new community, and I love it. So Xcvi until I die.

Patrick Shanahan: I love it. I love it. It's certainly going to be memorable, right? And you could, yeah, you could formally say it's newsjacking. You could be like, I was X before Elon had his kid X, because that one's in the news just all day every day these days. But independent of that, talk to me about the nature of the business. So I love the gallery hustling you did, knocking on doors, can I get my art on the wall, can I put a couple of pieces in here. And I think Asheville has a rep as an up-and-coming artist community, right? Like a little bit of a...

Xcvi:Absolutely. It's the city of a million murals.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, yeah, which are just like literally everywhere there. And yeah, I take firsthand knowledge from Drew on that. So you, the minute you started, the minute you had pieces to create, you started banging on doors and saying, can I get in here, can I get in here, can I get in here. Give the listeners a sense of what was the acceptance rate versus rejection rate of that whole process because there's a lot of people that don't want to step out of their shell and don't want to go knock on a door, and admittedly, it's much easier when it's your age, longer in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. But talk about your process there because I think that would be helpful.

Xcvi:The best thing I can say to anybody listening right now is get comfortable being uncomfortable, and you will never feel more comfortable in your own skin. It's as simple as that. And it sounds way too easy to be true, but when you get over, and this is going to be hard, when you get over yourself, when you say, I'm okay being told no because I'm willing to say to a thousand people, will you accept me? And I'm willing to be told no 999 times. And when you find that yes, and you get the reward from that yes, you'll realize it's okay. It's okay to be told no because you understand what you're doing. You are in pursuit of something higher than yourself. You're in pursuit of your identity. You're in pursuit of your community. You are in pursuit of showing this world who you are and what you mean to this world, and it's okay to be told no.

Patrick Shanahan: That is an extremely door-to-door salesman mentality. Did you sell solar panels or thug treatment or something? That's a very uncommon characteristic for an artist. And the fact that, and I'm not taking a swipe at you, that's a gift, brother, because let me tell you, most people are terrified to sell. The least favorable job in the world that anyone could ever have if they were an artist is door-to-door salesmanship, and what you're talking about is doing just that, right? So let's qualify and break it down like, how many restaurants, places of business, doctor's offices in Asheville did you knock on doors on?

Xcvi:Oh man, so I reached out to every single real estate company in Asheville, North Carolina, asking them if I could use their unused space for a pop-up gallery. I was told no by every single one but the last one, and there was just a yes on the premise that I would clean up the property for them and allow showings for it. And it is daunting to jump on the phone and call a person like, hey, although you don't know me, and this is an awkward ask, could you let me into your $100,000 building and just let me put some art up on the walls real quick? I promise it'll be good. Man, you do that, and you get way okay with being told no. And when you get that yes, we've earned it.

Patrick Shanahan: Wow. So you did some years of banging on those doors and getting in there like that. Did you find it to be a profitable activity in terms of you saw some return on investment? You got some, can I get a commission, can I buy this piece? Did it lead to further success, and did you feel like you got momentum as a result?

Xcvi:Oh, absolutely. It brought me to where I am today. Without that confidence to be told no and to go ask really anyone, I would have never gotten my first mural gigs in Greensboro, North Carolina. And that took a lot of guts to come to someone who owns a lot of different properties and say, give me a shot. I don't have this portfolio that can showcase that you're going to get your bang for your buck, but if you give me a shot, I will give you everything I have and more. I just need a shot.

Patrick Shanahan: Okay, I think we need to add to your overall lineup all of the pieces. Okay, some various different price points. We got the basketballs. We can talk about the basketballs. Also, selling a course on how to get out of your own way and out of your own skin and be comfortable enough to pitch because it's such a hard thing for most creatives. The way that the creative brain is wired, it is just not wired to be in a proactive, get out of my shell, talk about my work, and sell it modality. That is just not the norm. When you do, you feel like when you moved into the co-op gallery, what was foot traffic like in there? Was it almost like a retail vibe to it, or what was the makeup, kind of sort of?

Xcvi:So the real benefit of being in the Art District, which when I decided to pursue this full-time, I knew that that's where you needed to be because that's where people were already coming to see the arts. They were open-minded. They were looking for it. What I realize is you can have a spot in a prominent area, but if you're not able to open yourself up and to have a dialogue with these people and be okay being told like, hey, I don't like this piece, and just being like, yeah, that's fair, tell me what about it, and having this dialogue with people, it changes the world too because you realize that there are so many people in this world, and everybody has an opinion. That may work with your art, it may not, but you can learn from either side of that spectrum. You can learn how someone functions with your art. You can learn who your clientele is. And even though you might be getting told no, when you get the people that do connect with it, and you get to connect with them on this universal language of expression, yeah, you find your people, and you love it.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, I love that. So talk to me because if I look at your Instagram, you've got a bunch of different stuff going on. Talk to me. I'd love for you to walk me through a little bit of your lineup. What are your price points at currently? Are you offering prints? Are you just doing originals? What portion is the mural aspect of the business? I'd love to get some of the breakdown on that.

Xcvi:Yeah, absolutely. For the majority of my early career, it was all originals and small sculptures, really anything that I could make that I thought I could relate with to people. And that was me handcrafting, setting up the sale, hook, line, and sinker, to the very end. As I finally got my first gallery space, I was able to start making prints of my artwork, and that allowed me to offer a lower point of sale to people who enjoyed my artwork but maybe couldn't jump all the way in. And I totally understand that. That's a way that you can connect with me, and I can connect with you. When I build out my price points, I want to have price points at every level. I have stickers behind me for $6 a pop. Ask me if you want to get more. We'll bundle it, and we'll reduce it. I want my art on your walls, in your home, more than anything else. I scale up from there with prints that allow me to hit the anywhere from $15 to $60 price range. That's where I start seeing more connection with the person buying. I'm allowing them to be a part of my story and share my story with them. Then I scale up to originals, and I'm now learning to get more comfortable putting higher price tags on things. Yeah, these basketballs behind me, they were just featured in Charlotte's McCall Center and at the Charlotte Hornets Stadium during the Jumpman tournament. I'm asking $3,000 per ball on this. It comes with a display case as well as a transport box and everything you're going to need to take care of these balls. With that, I'll scale up from originals being only a few hundred to this one behind me is a trip ditch, and I'm asking $6,000 for that. And the reason for this is it's worth it, and I will find the person who sees that value in there, and we will have that connection, and they will become a part of my story. And I think that's huge for artists to be able to get comfortable saying, like, I hold value. Like, this is my heart and my soul poured into this, and I'm determined to find the person that connects with that.

Patrick Shanahan: And that really came through in my world. I had an incredible opportunity to go to Art Basel in Miami, and if you have never been to Art Basel or if you've never been to a large art market, treat yourself. Do it. Find one. Go to it. And see what people are selling for and see people writing checks for $750,000 and tell yourself that art that just sold for that, you couldn't get close to it because you can do that. You just need to believe in yourself and find the clientele that's willing to support that.

Xcvi:I love it. And have you read my article on pricing? Has Drew sent it to you?

Patrick Shanahan: Yes, I have.

Xcvi:Yeah, good man. Good man. I believe in it. I always think you should have something well above everything else's price point, but to the moon, yeah, because what's the worst that happens? You make a massive sale.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, exactly. And not only that, it's only a high number for you and whatever your frame of reference is. It's not a high number for the person that's going to buy it. For that person that's going to buy it, it could be no different than the change that falls out of your pocket into the sofa. They might be making that on the interest in the money in their bank. Yeah, and this is a way that they can give back to you, and they can enjoy it. Set that price point, enjoy it with them.

Xcvi:Yeah, I love it. So what portion would you say if your overall sales are in person in the real world, let's say, versus online? They discovered you online, and they came through that route.

Patrick Shanahan: Things are rapidly changing, Patrick. I recently had the incredible fortune of being featured in PBS's Helen documentary, which has drastically changed the way my sales and my exposure come in. So originally, I would say I was doing about 65 to 70% of my sales in person, with online sales being typically prints or small items or commission work. And as we're rolling closer with more exposure to people that I've never met before, I'm now figuring out how to navigate the realms of shipping more items, having a non-face-to-face exposure with someone, and meeting their needs. And that's a difficult way to pivot. I become very aware that there's only 24 hours in the day, and I need at least eight of those hours to be sleeping hours, trying to fulfill these shipments. It can get a little daunting sometimes. I respect every bit of it, and I am always excited to see the next order come in, but now I'm trying to figure out a way to get more time back in my own hands for creation and have this sort of outsourced while still keeping and maintaining the quality that I know my clients and myself deserve.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, let me just say one thing. There's only one difficult thing in this business: selling the thing. Everything else becomes much, much easier, including dealing with the shipping. One thing, because Drew told me about this, I haven't seen the clip, but so you got featured by PBS. You need to get that video chopped up and on your Instagram. Why haven't you done that yet?

Xcvi:Absolutely. I am still waiting with the director. They've done an incredible job with this. They had an early release on the digital side of things, and so we're trying to navigate the realms because this will soon be broadcasted across all of their channels. So that will be actually a 30-minute edit with that. It hasn't yet aired. It hasn't officially aired, but is online digitally on digital platforms. So right now, I'm trying to actually build out an event around the release of that, and for that, I'm hoping to build up hype with that. So I'm very much wanting to start chopping up this video and actually about maybe 15 to 20% of the footage in that film is my own personal footage that I took during that experience.

Patrick Shanahan: Wow, that's awesome. That I've been timid to share these. I yeah, I don't want to overwhelm people with the destruction, and I understand that is something that people do want to see and understand, but again, even with this documentary, what I want people to know is that Asheville is recovering. We are blossoming, and we are blooming, and you will see this spring and the summer the most beautiful blossoms Asheville's ever seen. I guarantee you. So I'm trying to figure out the balance between moving on and showing what did happen and explaining my past.

Patrick Shanahan: And I mean, I think you can do both, and you can do all sorts of trivia. It was a 100-year weather event. It's like you, you grew up in Asheville your entire life?

Xcvi:I am from Boone, North Carolina, so I basically rolled down the hill and found my community. But it's not normal to have hurricanes like of this strength hit those areas. That's just not normal.

Patrick Shanahan: No, not at all. No one was prepared for that. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It's staggering. And it's explaining to X that as a result of Drew, who's on our team, living there, it was like I was more emotionally connected to this as a natural disaster than I would be ordinarily. And so I was watching a ton of footage, and he was sending me footage, and watching the helicopter stuff, and watching the guys in the side-by-sides going up rivers and around the decimated roads and everything else. It was nothing short of insane. That's for sure. Let me ask more about the nuts and bolts digitally of the business. What size is the email list? Are we working on growing that all the time? How are we going about capturing emails?

Xcvi:Email is actually my downside currently. A lot of my stuff is face-to-face contact and actually direct SMS messaging amongst clients. I'm working now, especially building out my email list now that I'm back with a public space. I'm able to talk to people. Currently, we're sitting in a couple hundred area of emailing lists. I'm getting more and more comfortable, especially with, I don't know if you've heard of this tool, but the AI art helper, helping me actually figure out how to communicate this because although I am good face-to-face, I will talk to you and meet you at your level on a face-to-face interaction. On a digital realm, that is actually where I get a little bit more uncomfortable because there is so much that I want to tell someone with this art, and there's also I want to respect their private space. And I have to realize there's a beautiful balance between that because people do want to see more of what I'm doing. They want to be updated on what's coming out next, and that it's okay for me to be in your business a little bit and say, hey, here's what's coming next, here's the next product coming, yeah, come to this event. Like, I want to see you.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, I think poor Drew is just taking the piss on you, saying, what was the worst experience for you? Hurricane Helen or becoming a Tottenham fan? That's hysterical to me. Don't even dignify a response to that.

Xcvi:Yeah, oh, I can't. In all seriousness, yeah, like, I wouldn't have been able to document this the way I did if I did not have an incredibly kind, caring neighbor who, although we've only met recently, like, you gave me access to your house when you weren't there. You gave me power to charge my equipment, to charge my phone so I could communicate with my family. And that is, I know you're from Texas, but that's the Appalachian way. You take care of your neighbors. You take care of the person on your left and the person on your right, and you have a community that's unlike any other. And although you're new, he like, you are part of our community. You're a friend, a neighbor, and I have so much thanks for what you provided to me and allowed me to share my experience with this world, to connect with other people, and to tell my family that I was okay. So thank you again, Drew, even though Tottenham just cannot win a game to save their life.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, that is for sure. And by the way, while we're at it, Drew, no one calls themselves Drooby Dore X. Okay, get yourself a serious screen handle. There's only room for one X in this equation. It's me. Yeah, going back to the AI thing, I want to double-click, as the kids say these days, on that. Prior to you trying Art Helper and messing around with that, what exposure did you have with AI just broadly, and do you use it in any other capacity in your life?

Xcvi:Yes, I do. I strongly believe that AI is a modern tool and should be seen as such. It has helped me figure out how to correspond on a more professional level with potential clients and customers. It has allowed me to express other avenues that I can do with my craft. I also think it's an incredible way, if you want to be an incredibly lazy person and to not grow at all, but just like any teacher, if you ask for the answers on the test and you refuse to learn, you gain nothing. But if you have the most proficient teacher in the world who is willing to guide you through this, you can learn exponentially. And what I really enjoy using AI Art Helper with Art Helper is the descriptions and primarily SEOs. I'll be honest, you guys knocked it out of the park with that. That has changed the web traffic I've gotten exponentially. That is a visible change that I've seen. Thank you for doing that, knocked it out of the park. But I've now learned how to describe my artwork even better. And if I don't understand the terminology used, I plug it into ChatGPT and ask for references of different artists. That's expanded my knowledge of the arts itself. It's expanded my ability to communicate with new clients and describe my works in ways that, let's face it, what AI does is it takes a broad spectrum of knowledge and condenses it down into something that's incredibly digestible. And that is what we are doing as creatives. We are taking a lifetime of experiences and breaking it down into something that someone can digest in a picture.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, I think, and you don't know me really aside from watching videos or whatever, but I'm a huge nerd, okay? So I just love technology. I've heard stories. Yeah, I always have. I've been going down the rabbit hole a million different ways to Sunday with all of these various different AI products and every capacity imaginable, and voice stuff, and text stuff, and image, and video, and at the end of the day, it's becoming the buzzword du jour on everything. But in artist business, okay, a city, a state, a country, you use GDP at the country level, right, to measure the gross domestic product. And an easy way to think about it is like you, as the artist, it's just a factory at the end of the day, right? And you get the factory cranking, and a certain amount of things come down the assembly line, and what are those things? Yes, it's the art, but yes, it's the thought on what art you want to do. It's going and scouting the location. It's all the screw-ups you had figuring out how to get there. It's all the social media updates you did. It's all the emails you did. It's all the text messages you sent to clients. Right? It's all of the real estate agency you went and talked to to get into that building. The sum total of all of that is just the GDP of X's business, right? The sum total of it. For me, that is the total of the art, storefront, marketing department, and the takeaway is AI is the widget factory is spitting out more widgets as a result of that software, okay, in a million different ways to Sunday, every single solitary day. We are able, as a market team, and me personally in my own life, I am able to accomplish more in a more timely fashion than I was before. That's it. And where I think like a lot of artists are going wrong on it, and it's not a sales pitch for Art Helper, it's just a sales pitch for AI period, it is literally a glass half empty, glass half full moment. If you look at this as like, this is going to help me, this is going to level me up, not as, I'm going to wait until they get it right, or I don't like that, or do you stick your head in the sand and say it's just not for me? You guys are all solopreneurs. You don't have a team. You don't have employees, okay? I've talked to 100,000 artists. What percentage would you guess have even one employee? I'll tell you, it's less than 1%. Two employees, it's less than one-tenth of 1%, okay? And so now, the AI is just an employee. When you get tired, when you have too much going on, and even when you're in the zone, instead of two people being on the assembly line, there's two, and then there's three, and then there's four. And when you stretch out that much more additional product and all those facets that I referenced, the business is going to continue to grow. You're going to have more conversations. You're going to capture more emails. You're going to get more commissions, and you're going to sell more. Right? And you stretch that over a career, and the ones that embrace it now and start leveraging it and start experimenting with it are going to have a drastically different business than their peers five years from now. And so I'm just so excited by it broadly.

Xcvi:Yeah, and we'll 100% get you a free account on there as a way of saying thank you.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what's next? What's the plan for the rest of 2025?

Xcvi:2025, stay alive. Just keep going day to day. But with this, things are wild, but it's there's never a better time to be alive. There are infinite possibilities for people to become creatives and solve problems with this. I've seen my artwork change drastically since Helen. I now think more intuitively about nature. It's more incorporated into my art. I'm currently working towards projects that will help restore our district while also giving people the opportunity to be a part of that restoration. As I grow, I'm now in the position where I've solidified myself as this is what I will be doing for my career. Now I'm looking for sponsorships. I'm looking for collaborations. I'm looking to figure out how to make this not only just something that I enjoy that allows me to express myself but allows me to live my life to the fullest potential. And there are steps to be taken that will get me there and further. And I'm excited to first off showcase the art that I was able to recover from Helen and showcase this new collaboration between me and a massive weather front. And it is a wild collaboration for sure, but it is beautiful to see that even in destruction, we can find beauty. And although things may be different and altered and changed, we can work with that, and we can showcase resilience through that. As I continue to grow and expose my art to more people across the world, I'm excited to hopefully get a residency. That's one goal of mine is to start using this as a way to travel and navigate this world and to meet new people and try new things. So we're building a lot this year. This is the year, quite literally, of rebuilding. So I've figured out these structures that work for me. I've figured out my community that helps support me, and I'm ready to blast off.

Patrick Shanahan: I love it. Can't end on a better note than that. X, thank you so much for the time. You guys, X, to keep up with his work, it is project96 underscore project. Absolutely. Yeah, you, it all the links to all the things will be in all the deals. We will put a link to, we should link to the PBS thing too because I think people probably, yeah, might as well. I think people would enjoy it. Yeah, I'll get Drew to give me a link to that, and then I'll put your website in there. I'll put your Art Storefront thing in there. But I love the PBS thing. You got to strike while the iron's hot. Look for X's new series, X versus the... what did you call it? X and the versus the weather event. How did you phrase that?

Xcvi:I had a good rank. Yes, versus the massive weather events. There's collaboration, and there's progression when we can restore and rebuild together.

Patrick Shanahan: I love it. I love it. X, thanks so much for the time. You guys, thanks everybody for watching. Have a great rest of your day. And what else? Oh yeah, I'm going to start an email list for the podcast soon. I should mention that. You guys will start seeing that in the show notes. I've never had an email list for the podcast. I'm embarrassed to say that. Got to get going on that. And then also, we started an Instagram account for the podcast. It's artmarketingpodcast, of which X, there's going to be lovely little short clips of this up in short order because that's what we do. So I'll have to follow.

Xcvi:Yes, sir.

Patrick Shanahan: All right, look for those guys. Thanks, everybody, for watching, and we'll speak... I appreciate you all.