Discounting Your Art or Photography. Should you?

In this episode of the Art Business Morning Show, hosts Patrick and Nick tackle the controversial topic of discounting art and photography. They discuss whether artists should offer discounts, debunk common myths about discounting, and share strategic insights and personal experiences to highlight the importance of pricing and incentivizing sales. The lively conversation includes examples of successful brands, the psychology of buyers, and practical advice for artists looking to grow their business. Ultimately, they emphasize the necessity of strategic discounting to achieve success in the art business.

Podcast Transcribe

Patrick Shanahan: All right, coming up on today's edition of the Art Business Morning Show, we're talking about discounting your art or photography and should you? Okay, specifically, we're gonna cover whether or not you discount your art and we're gonna put this one to bed once and for all.

Nick Friend: All right.

Patrick Shanahan: Do you have your cheers glass or not?

Nick Friend: Water.

Patrick Shanahan: Oh, come on, you don't have your (indistinct) glass. I'm already well and properly caffeinated. But welcome.

Nick Friend: You too.

Patrick Shanahan: To another edition of the Art Business Mornings, the show that will put you on the path to a six-figure a year plus art business. So, come get on the path. Let's get on the path. And one thing that we don't do on this show is play it safe. A little bit of a hot button one today here, Box, little bit of a hot button one.

Nick Friend: Absolutely, has to be discussed.

Patrick Shanahan: I know, I know. Let me start at the top with an acronym, and this one is L-M-G-T-F-Y. Do you know what that one stands for, Nick?

Nick Friend: No.

Patrick Shanahan: Let me just Google that for you. Or let me go Google that for you, okay? If you've not seen this, it's really hilarious. You know when you get people asking you questions all the time?

Nick Friend: Yeah, they ask, like, a dumb question that you could just Google.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, that you could just Google in two seconds. You owe it to that person, I owe it to my mother, to teach her, to empower her, okay, on how to get the answer to this question on her own. And so you go to this website and it's literally, all you have to do is let me Google that for you, okay? It's literally lmgtfy.com and you can type in whatever the search term is. Like, hey Patrick, how do I restart the computer? And you can go to the site and type in, how to restart an Apple computer, and what the site does is it records you typing the thing into Google and then it records the results, right, and you just send them that video, with the take away that let me just Google that for you.

So, as we were talking about the topic of discounting, okay, I had to do some Googling for my show prep, right? And, I've said on this show many times, the only brand that I'm aware of, okay, that does not discount, that's never discounted, that you will never find in an outlet store, is Louis Vuitton. Okay, Louis Vuitton, LV. I found out about another one today in my quick Google search which was Tiffany's, never discounts, never has a sale period. And then apparently, a third one, although it's sort of a little loosey-goosey is Tesla. There's no negotiating. You just have a set price. Like, they'll lower the price on a car, they'll lower the price on a car but it's not in a sales function or a discounted function, it's because they're lowering the price on the car and then that's it. There's no discounting, there's no deals. So, if that's the case, on a quick Google search, those are the only three brands that come up. Let me just ask you, is your art, is your photography, is your brand that good? Is our software, our brand, what we're working on, that good? That's a pretty crazy company to be in.

Nick Friend: It is, but you know what? Some people, hoity-toity, might say yes it is. You know, I'm the equivalent of that in the art world. They may say that, you know? Or that's where they wanna be, you know? And that's where the folly is, right? And so, this is a really big topic guys, and we have to talk about it because we have very, very few, I would say, like, point one percent of Art Storefront members that come in, and then of course, we get a lot of questions from non-members about this topic, and some people who are, kind of, legitimately concerned with it, right? Let's talk about why, right? Like, I wanna-

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, I have one additional rant. I have one additional rant that I typed up that you're gonna have to let me run on.

Nick Friend: You wanna do it?

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, I wanna do it now and then I wanna go on.

Nick Friend: But I wanna say real quick before you say that though, because I wanna set the stage. I wanna give, like, I wanna give some credence and some understanding, some empathy, to the people who fear discounting, right? Like, they think that it could devalue their work. They think, you know, their customers are going to get upset by it who bought from them in the past. There's all sorts of things there that are valid thoughts. But we're gonna address them in this session. Go.

Patrick Shanahan: We talk about the inputs, okay? If you've listened to this show. If you've been on any of the Art Business workshops, which, by the way, thrice weekly, Zoom calls that you can join, 11:00 a.m. Pacific. Link all the descriptions everywhere. Come ask either Nick or I or our marketing team questions and get on the path. Independent of that, inputs. This one, okay, for whatever reason seems to be endemic to the art world, okay? I was talking to so-and-so, who's either an art or a photography expert, or an art publisher, or an experienced art seller, and they told me I should never discount as it cheapens and devalues my work, okay? It comes to us all the time on the Art Business workshops, just talked about those, on the customer calls, Facebook comments, Instagram comments, people send me them in Messenger, I get emails about it, and week in, week out, it just keeps coming and coming and coming, okay? So, I've gotta take a deep breath on this, it's gonna get a little controversial, let me just finish it, okay, and then you can judge me later. I wanna talk about then and I wanna talk about now, okay? Then, and I'll be perfectly honest with you, earlier in my years at ASF, when I got this quip from somebody, I answered it differently, okay? Why? Number one, I wanted to be gracious. Number two, I lacked the courage, quite frankly, on my own convictions, to say what I really meant on this. I had not recorded and put in the can the requisite number of refs and sets talking to artists, photographers, or looking at the data and closely studying those that are actually selling well into the six-figure range a year, okay? That's changed since. So, before I would have said, you don't wanna discount, and you said this too, Nick, that's fine, but understand to get us humans to take action, you need an incentive, okay? The sale or the discount is that incentive. It's powerful and it works. You add to it scarcity, IE the deal is ending, and you go, of the Art Business Mornings where we address the nuts and bolts of an arts sale. It's important to understand these things. It's critically important. So, that's how I would have responded then. With something like you don't have to discount if you don't want to, that's fine, just make sure you have some sort of incentive, okay? Free shipping or a bonus gift, perhaps. But, you know, you need the incentive to get humans to take action, that's just how we work, that's how we're wired. And technically, we were correct back then when we would say that. A sale needs incentive, it doesn't have to be a discount if you don't want it, but without it, you're running uphill against the wind in the middle of winter, it's snowing on you. Let's talk about now. Sadly, the controversial part, okay? My job, Nick's job, as we have alluded to many, many times, is ultimately to make our customers successful. That's it, full stop, okay? And part of that is unclogging their drains, getting the nonsense out so the good stuff can flow through. This is a huge one, okay? Thinking you or your brand or your art is so damn sweet that you are a Louis Vuitton levels, is just plain arrogant, in my opinion, again this is my opinion. But worse, it is a fatal form of naivety, okay? That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it. I'm not a dictator here though. You're certainly entitled to your opinion, right? But if your opinion is you don't discount, I can't help you. Not only can I not help you, I want you out of my ecosystem. I don't want your opinion taking root in my community. I find it to be a cancer, okay? It is a tumor. What do you do when you have cancer or a tumor? You bombard it with radiation, you get it out of there, right? Like, our job is to create successful customers, we just can't be in a situation where that type of poison is creeping into people's minds, right? We wanna put you on the path to having a healthy business, and not understanding discounting and the role it plays in sales, I'm just done with it. I can't say how conclusively, how confident I feel in doing so.

Nick Friend: Okay, so you've gone from start to finish there, all right? I'm gonna add some information in the middle here that I think needs to be discussed. We've gotta back up a little bit. Number one is a discount, you guys, all it is is a strategic incentive,

that's what it is, okay? Now, Pat just mentioned that, right? Like, it's a strategic incentive in business. There's a reason why companies have this, right? Why, almost all of them. You could just go down the list, okay? I won't go into all of the different things, right, but it's a strategic incentive because it gets people to act, to get out of their chair, to pull their wallets out, and it's a trick. It's a game, you guys. It's a game, okay? So, you're either getting played by the game, or you are playing the game. Let me just tell you that, okay? The people who are smart, okay, think about, like, Lexus, December to Remember, it's just on the top of my head, they run it every single December. Do you think you're really getting a deal? I hate to tell you, you're not. You're not getting any better of a deal than you get all year 'round, they just phrase it that way and what do you think happens? Everybody comes in and they get the same deal that if you negotiated you would've got all year 'round. But they get all these people to come and they create this whole frenzy, and they have insane sales levels, right? And then, you know what's happening behind the scenes because they're playing the game? They're all high-fiving each other going, "I can't believe this worked. I can't believe it worked. All we had to do was call it this, we're running this big sale to get your car before the end of the year." You're getting the same deal that you're getting all year 'round, doesn't matter, right? And so, the people who are smart in business understand that that's the game that you're playing, right? And so, you price your item up. Okay, so let's talk about profit margins. If you're worried that you're not gonna make us much money on your art, you should have already priced your art up so that you can discount it and be happy with the profit margin that you get after the discount, okay? So, you should never be worried about it from a financial perspective, okay? Now, here's the next part. And this ties into why--

Patrick Shanahan: Look at the comment though, right? This is exactly it, right? So, Jason Morningstar on Facebook says, "I feel like it's really rhetorical to say do you discount your art more because artists have to undersell themselves their whole lives to make money." And this is just another side of the coin of the same problem, right? Like, to what you were just saying about pricing, you have to understand how to price yourself to be able to do this.

Nick Friend: Exactly, yeah, exactly, right? The next point that I'll make though is that, this is a really, really big one, probably the biggest. And this ties into why Patrick was just so, you know, going crazy about having anybody in the ecosystem, okay? And it's because what we have learned in the last 20 years in the art industry is that if you wanna look at anybody that's making $100,000 or more from their art business, Pat, how many of them do not discount? How many of them do not discount?

Patrick Shanahan: Zero.

Nick Friend: Zero. Zero, okay? None, none, I do not know in my 20-years any artist or photograph that is selling a ton, that is not discounting, okay? Let me further say, that I have never heard them utter the words that they are resistant to discount, they have never said, "This is going to devalue my work. " And we're talking about people selling hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, okay? Some, millions. The biggest in the world, they're discounting. And so, this goes back to the inputs. If you think that you can build a great business by not discounting, I challenge you to go find five people, five artists or photographers, that have done that. That's a huge problem right there because I could supply you with over a thousand that have. Over a thousand. Like, that have, okay? But I cannot give you anyone, anyone, that actually has. Of course, there's gotta be one out there, right? Like, the one guy. I mean, they're out there, right? But it's like the unicorn, right? It's the unicorn story of the person who was, like, selling to actors and actresses in New York and LA, right? We know that those exist. But for the regular, like, for 99% of the industry, or more, this rule is true. You cannot find a bunch of successful people. So, I always question, like, when somebody says to me, "I don't wanna do it because I've heard that I shouldn't do it 'cause it'll devalue my work" or blah blah blah blah. I say, "Who told you that?" Who told you that and how much are they selling? I wanna know right now. I wanna know, who is it? Because every time that I do it, I cannot find one. I cannot find one, right? That's actually successful, okay? So, that's the most important piece of information from you, for you.

And so, where does this lead? Where does this lead? I wanna tell anyone, anyone that is actually like, "I'm still gonna do it, I still believe that I shouldn't do any discounts and I should just have a fixed price for everything. And then maybe I'll just do free shipping or whatever as an incentive. " Here's what I'm gonna tell you, you're going to sell in the bottom 1% of the industry. It's gonna go very slow. Your business growth is going to be the slowest. It's going to be like a snail. It's gonna be molasses, okay? I've seen it happen, all right? Why? Because every time the biggest art selling times happen, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Summer Sale, Black Friday, December Monday and the Fourth Quarter, like the biggest art selling time in the year is the Fourth Quarter, we've been talking about that a lot, everybody else is gonna be selling, selling, selling, right, and you're gonna be sitting there with crickets because you have no reason for people to get up out of their chair and buy, right? There's no incentive there, okay? And I hate to tell you, free shipping is not an incentive anymore. I'm sorry. That ship's sailed. Amazon ruined it.

Patrick Shanahan: Expectation, expectation.

Nick Friend: If you say that, it's expected and there's no value number to it, right? So, like, if I'm gonna buy a $1,000 piece from you and you send out a 20% off email or on social media, I'm like whoa, I can get that thing for $800 right now. You know what I mean? Like, 200 bucks. But if you tell me free shipping, I'm like, what did I save? $24? It's meaningless. It's not gonna do anything to get more people to click and to people to take action, right? But that financial incentive is a huge one. So, what happens is the biggest art selling times of the year happen, right, and then everybody that is playing the game is winning like crazy. We're reporting crazy numbers from all of these people, right? Like the Summer Sale just ended, people were selling like crazy. Black Friday, I mean, and the Fourth Quarter whenever that ends, we're publishing data constantly about all of the success that's happening, and you're sitting on the sidelines while all this demand is getting sucked out of the market, all the wall space that you were hoping to compete for is gone, and there you are like, "Yep, I'm just so happy I didn't discount." And you're literally last in line. You are running a business where you will constantly be last in line because the people that are playing the game are just winning. They're just winning. And they're laughing 'cause they're like, "Look at all the people, you won't discount your work? Like, I'm selling my originals for 20,000 with the expectation that I'm gonna get an offer for 15 and I'm gonna take it, right?" And that happens all the time with our members, Pat. We've talked about this. Like, you've done it with them, right? We've coached our members to price their originals higher, to price everything higher, just because people, high net-worth individuals, you guys, we negotiate everything. Everything, okay? That's how you get to become a high net-worth individual.

Patrick Shanahan: Let me tell you who the high net-worth individuals are.

Nick Friend: Not paying retail.

Patrick Shanahan: You know who doesn't negotiate as a high net-worth individual? The people that are in the inheritance business, okay? The ones who inherited money and never earned anything, they're the ones who are the suckers who go and pay the retail price for every car, house, art or anything else. Everybody else is going to negotiate and is going to get a deal, okay? And if you know anything about negotiating, if you read negotiating books, you guys, or if you read books on how to sell a lot, people wanna win. The customer wants to win and feel like they won in a negotiation, and if you help them feel like they won, it's over, like, they're gonna buy it. And it's so funny the way that it works.

Nick Friend: You just centered on something that's just so not intuitive for most people, but I'll say it and then I'll say how I learned it early in my career 'cause I think it's an interesting story. When you properly set this whole thing up, and I'm gonna give you an example in just a second, not only do you sell better, but here's the thing that no one knows, the buyer is actually happier than they were. The buyer is happier and that takes a little while to wrap your noodle around. So, let me give you a story I learned early in my career. I had a stint, a very short stint, as a property manager. And so, I worked with this guy that just had one house, lots I was doing 50 of them, and I would have to rent it from time to time, right? And so, we'd agree on what he would want to get for rent. I would promptly price the thing $1,000 a month over what it was, take really good photography, get them into the house, and when they got into the house, I did this six or seven times over the years. They'd come in, they'd look at it all, they'd be like, "I really like this place. This place is awesome. But I'd like to negotiate a few things in." And I'd go, "Okay, well what do you wanna negotiate in?" Remember, I have a thousand dollar pad, right, I have a thousand dollar pad. And they'd say, "I wanna have this done. I wanna have that done. Or I need a couple of dollars off. And I would say, "Okay." Let's say I had the thing priced at 4,500, and really I wanted 3,500. "I'll tell you what, I'll redo that bathroom area, and I'll also drop the price to $3,500," or maybe I'd even go higher to $3,700, "But if I do that, you've gotta sign the lease today, and you've gotta be willing to move in in 30 days. Or whatever conditions I wanted. It got the deal done every single, solitary time.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, that's a classic closing tactic.

Nick Friend: Not only that, I learned they were happier. They were happier. They were so much happier that they got it. THey're like, "yes, I got this incredible deal."

Patrick Shanahan: Yes, absolutely.

Nick Friend: And if you didn't price yourself appropriately to start out with, you're done. You've lost the game before the game even started. You've already lost.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, and here's the thing too. Like, if I buy a piece of art, if you have a piece of art priced at $10,000 and I negotiate with you and I get it for eight grand, I don't believe. The reason I'm so happy is because I just bought a $10,000 asset that I got for eight grand. I just made 20% on it. That's the way that I'm thinking about it, right? I'm not sitting here going, "Oh, that art got devalued because I just negotiated or I got a discount." I'm like, "Dude, I just won because I just got the asset for cheaper than the market value is. And the market value is set by the artist. It's like if you're gonna buy a house, and you get a 20%, you're able to negotiate a 20% down, but in your mind you, kind of, think that the market value might be the way that they priced it because it was in line with the costs. You know what I mean? So, like, whenever a buyer is buying it, that's how they think. That's how high net-worth individuals think, okay? And so, the other thing too is that a lot of people, like, I hear this a lot. People are like, "My customers who hear about it are gonna be, like, so upset because they bought something before and they might see these discounts and all this stuff. And there's such an important point here, okay? Nobody cares about what you're doing. I'm just gonna tell you that. You think, and I'm saying, nobody cares about what Art Storefronts is doing. Nobody cares. When you're a small business, you think that, you wanna think that everyone is hanging off your work, every post, every email that you send out. Nobody cares, okay? You don't care about the brand. Think about it. Everybody that's listening right now. Take your top five brands that you think you care about the most, you have no idea how they're discounting or what's going on with them, and you don't care, right? Right? You don't care that they just had a discount last week and you didn't even know about it. And you don't care if you did know about it. You know what I mean? You think that people care and they're hanging off on every word, okay? I just wanna tell everybody, first of all, they're not. Nobody cares. Like, check your ego at the door, all right? Like, you're totally wrong on that. Like, flip it around. You think that 95% of people care about what you do. There's probably 1% of people that care about what you do. It's like the most vocal person, right? And it's probably your Mom or Dad or your spouse or your best friend. That's it. Nobody else cares. It's a real big. It's really liberating to understand that, you know? And you learn that with experience in business, but like, you guys, every time you send out an email, yeah, when you send out an email, remember, you only get 20% of the people that open it, maybe 30 on a great one, right? And it's different people every single time. So, maybe one out of every five people are seeing. Like, I'm sorry. A person sees an email, they're probably seeing one out of your five emails. They might see one out of every three subject lines. It could be less. It could be less. When you do social media posts, okay? When you're posting about your sale, if you are not buying ads for that post, for that specific post, to your warm audience, which is a whole different topic, realize that Facebook and Instagram are pay-to-play platforms, okay? So, less than four or three percent of your audience is even gonna see any given post that you make. You have to pay to make anybody else see it. To make a higher percentage see it, okay? So nobody, hardly anyone is even seeing your messages, and they're busy as heck anyway, right? And so, you think that your not, that you don't wanna play the game for all these people that don't even care. They're not even paying attention to you 'cause they don't care.

Patrick Shanahan: They don't know you discounted. They have no idea.

Nick Friend: They don't know.

Patrick Shanahan: They did not see it.

Nick Friend: They don't care anyway. When is the last time somebody who bought a piece of art got mad at an artist for discounting? Honestly, I have literally, in 20 years, never heard that story happen. I haven't heard it.

Patrick Shanahan: I've never heard it, right? So, our advice, right, so at the end of this, the most important point here is when you look at all of the data, all of this information, and you just look at this stack of pros and cons, our stack of pros is up here. The stack of cons, like the other side, I mean, the pros and cons on the other side, is so low, the pros are so low, and who's gonna? Nobody gets successful that has major success--

Nick Friend: I'm done with it.

Patrick Shanahan: It's not discounting, right? And nobody's doing that. It doesn't devalue your work. All of the people that are selling 100k or more are all doing it. Do you wanna build your business as fast as you can? You know what I mean? Or do you wanna be like a snail slow pace? Hey, it's your call. You can do it. You can play that game. But when everybody else is selling a lot, and you're hearing about it, and they're reporting their sales, you know? You better be ready to be unhappy. You better be ready to be like, you know what? I'm not happy with my sales. My sales are terrible. But, you know what? I don't wanna discount. So, that's why. I just want you to know when your sales are terrible, and you're not playing this game, you're getting played by the game, and you are on the slow molasses snails path, and you'd better be ready to accept that because that's how it's going to be and it's never going to change. And that's it.

Nick Friend: You're way more diplomatic about it than I am. I'm just done with it because I think it's so counter-intuitive.

Patrick Shanahan: I know.

Nick Friend: Again--

Patrick Shanahan: It's infuriating when you see people, it's infuriating when you people who wanna go down that path because you know all of this information, you know the facts and you know that they're going on the slow path, but in their mind, they're going, "No, I think this is the fast path. And you're like, based on what? What information? Pull it out, I wanna see it, right? Go show me five people who have done this, okay? That are people--

Nick Friend: Who have actually sold art or photography, who have actually sold something.

Patrick Shanahan: Right, and don't name, like, Banksy or somebody who's, like, world-famous who is one our of five people. There's five of those in the world, right? Show me the people that are making $100,000 to $500,000 'cause there's a lot of them. There's a lot of them. Out of all of those people, right, like out of all those people, how many have done it? I don't know any.

Nick Friend: Yeah, and you know, one of the things that I love about this job is what we call dog fooding, right? I used his background, Instagram, you won't be able to see this, but the rest of you guys will, I used this image as a background because this taught me the lesson, like, full stop, to my face, I couldn't believe it. So, just to quickly tell the story. The artist behind me is Matthew Locker, he's a long-time customer of Art Storefronts, he's become a really good friend. We've run a number of marketing initiatives with him. So, he and I have a great relationship and trust. So, pre-covid he had this big show, okay? He's a very well and established artist, so he sold, I think, over 100,000 Canadian at this particular show, right, pre-covid. And I got to be involved in everything. I got to be involved in the pre-marketing, in the discussions on pricing, in the stats, the analytics, on what sold to who, and what venue and everything else. And the piece behind me was the main piece of the show. And we had this discussion early on because he priced the works based on the sizes that they are, okay? But this was, like, the banner of the show back here. This was on all the marketing material and everything else. I was like, "You guys, we cannot price this thing. And I think it was priced at, like, $18,000. I was like, "You guys, we cannot price this thing at $18,000. It's the banner of the show. It's the headline image. We've gotta bump it up." And so, we sort of got into this argument and it was--

Nick Friend: I love this.

Patrick Shanahan: Myself, Matthew and the gallery owner all on the phone talking about this. And I was like, "Guys, full stop, there is no way we are pricing this at $18,000. I need the price on this to be $26,000. We have to have at least a significant bump on this one because it's the headline of the show." Show goes down, okay, the piece doesn't sell. Piece doesn't sell. He had the whole pomp, circumstance, performance art, the bartender, the music, it was a big show, he sold a lot of art. Three days after the show, comes over, one of the gallery owners collectors comes in. He comes in and sits down with the gallery, and he goes, "I need to have this piece. I need to have this (indistinct). I need to have this piece. There's a problem though, I ain't paying retail. I'll tell you what I'll give you, I'll give you 19 grand right now and we've got a deal." So it sold for $19,000, okay? $1,000 over what I originally priced it, and out he went.

Nick Friend: So, there's your high net-worth individual. Is he worried about timing? No, he's not. He let that thing cook, that main banner image didn't sell, comes back four days later and what does he do? He does not pay retail. The discounting only gets more significant, the higher up the chain you go, right? What we're talking about now is, like a five or 10 grand off, when you start getting even higher into the six figures, it's like 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 150, half a million off. It only goes higher as you get up and more established. It is across the board in the stack. That piece would have sold for 12 grand, 13 grand, 14 grand if he didn't bump it up. Instead, he got $1,000 extra. And I got to see it first-hand. So, it's like, when I'm making a statement on my end, where I'm just done with it, I don't even wanna entertain it or hear it. If that's the way that you wanna do it, you're entitled to your opinion, cool. I'll see you later. Get out, get out. I don't want it going into other people's heads. It's the wrong thing. It's not gonna put you on the path to success. It's just not gonna do it.

Nick Friend: Well, the thing I love about that story, you know, the thing I love about it is that, like, think about it. Who played the game and who got played? Matthew Locker and the strategy that you helped him with on that, right, you played the game. You guys were smart, savvy, business men, business people, and that's what happened there, right? And so, what was the outcome? The outcome was Matthew got $1,000 more than he was originally going to ask, right? He got the amount that he wanted at the end of the day, okay? And then, he managed to make a very happy customer because that person won, right? That person feels like they won 'cause they got, they negotiated and he's bragging to his wife about the purchase that he just made. "Oh, you wouldn't believe the deal I just got. This thing was 26-grand, I just got it for 19." Feels amazing. Feels amazing, right? And so Matthew just created this totally happy customer, right? And everyone won. Everyone won. You guys, that's good business. Understand that that is really, really good business, and that's what happened, okay? So Matthew Locker played the game and played it well, created a happy customer, and everyone won. Little does that customer know they actually got played a little bit. But the artist did not get played, it's a perfect situation.

Patrick Shanahan: It goes even a layer deeper, right? And this is just, sort of, intuitive and reading case studies and everything, and I can't say conclusively in this situation. But the person that bought that piece behind me is a high net-worth individual. That's a lot to spend on some artwork. Do you think they even gave a damn about the extra thousand or two thousand or three thousand or four thousand? It means nothing to them. It means absolutely nothing.

Nick Friend: It was more sport.

Patrick Shanahan: It was more sport, that's it. And when you understand that, when you can, sort of, like, decouple yourself from this particular scenario, and you realize that, and you refocus yourself through that lens, you end up winning. And let me just tell you, I go back to what I said originally, and I think I've counted this week, by the way, so far this week, I think I've got a 176 questions that I've asked, that I've answered for artists and photographers between our weekly shows and the networks, it might be 250. Do that for enough weeks. This is death, public speaking and pricing your artwork. Pricing your artwork for an artist is in the three most stressful things that they will ever do in their entire lives, okay? I have heard, this is a fear the likes of which I have never seen. It is paralyzing. I mean paralysis, okay? Paralysis. So, you just need to be able to zoom back, you're worth it. It's not even about what you're worth though. It's just a game. It's just a game within the game. That's it. It's just psychology. The numbers are immaterial. They don't even mean anything. It's just the game within the game. You go up high, you drop down low, that's it.

Nick Friend: That's right, be smart because yeah, and you can create happy customers who are winning, right? So, I got another question that's about artists who, obviously in non-covid times, are doing art shows and they don't discount when they do like an art fair, like a festival or something like that. They just have their price right there, okay? So, here's the thing. And so, they're worried that if they're offering discounts online through their website and the email list and stuff, then somebody will come to the show and be upset that the pricing is not the same, or maybe they bought something in person in the past and saw that they're discounted online. It's the same thing, guys. It doesn't matter, right. There's two ways you can go about that. When you do another art show, you can price your stuff up 20% and then just have it on sale at the art show. That's a smart strategy anyway, okay? Like, make people feel that there's urgency there. Let every other booth not have a sale, and you have the sale. 'Cause all it is allowing, hey, anybody that walks into my booth today is gonna win. Is gonna win. Where 90% of the booths, that's not happening. That's a smart strategy, right? But the other thing is that if somebody comes to your art show and says, "Hey, I saw it was discounted online, but it's not discounted here. And that person wants to just buy from you online, you know, on a regular basis, you just won. You just won. Do you realize that? The whole point is to not be having to doing art shows anymore, right? And to building your online business. It's the same reason why, you know, when you buy, if you buy an airplane ticket and you try to call in and buy it, they charge you for it. But if you buy it online, it's cheaper. The transaction is simpler, it's easier, and you're setting up the right habits. The right habit of a person who buys from you in person, okay, is to get them to continually go to your online art gallery from then on, which is open 24-7 and to be on your email list and following you on social media so that your continual marketing is going to get in front of them, okay? There's no guarantee they're gonna ever go to those art shows again. I don't go to the same art shows every year. Not even close. Not even close. And so, the only way you're gonna win long-term and turn that person into a collector is to have an ongoing relationship with them, and the ongoing relationship must be with your art gallery

. Your art gallery is your art gallery website. It just happens to be online, right? So, it's no different to a retail art gallery. So, that's where everybody needs to go anyway, okay? So, that's the way you wanna think about it.

Patrick Shanahan: It feels like we've put it to bed. I feel very good about it. I do have a little bit of--

Nick Friend: This is so helpful. It's so helpful, right? Like, for so many people that have been... You know, I think what gets us so fired up about it too is all the nonsense and BS that has been told to people. Like, unsuccessful people. It's like unclogging a drain. These ideas spread like a virus in the art industry. It's like all of a sudden, a lot of people who have never sold anything are like, "I shouldn't be discounting. I've heard I shouldn't be discounting. I've heard I shouldn't be discounting." And it's like, "Where is this coming from?" And you and I are just literally crushing the problem with truth and facts and data, and with an open mind waiting for contrary data to come back that shows us that it actually beats the model that we know that works.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, and we're getting... I'm not saying we're not good at what we do, right? We're good at what we do. I can say that without any ego, we're pretty good at what we do. We've had long careers already so you get to a point in life where you actually have some age and some experience and some wisdom and you've lived through enough things you can speak intelligently about things. But ultimately, you know, this show has been blowing up in the downloads and the feedback and the comments we've been getting are so crazy, we've never experienced anything like this in the history of the company. And as much as I'd love to pump up my ego, and your ego, that's not what it is. It's not our age or experience, or we're good at what we do, it's the conversations that we're having with you guys. There are so many of them. Like, when you are talking, face to face on video, I mean, what a blessing out of this whole covid thing. Instead of thinking we would know what your problems are, we're hearing them again and again and again and again, week in, week out, every stripe, every flavor, every different media type imaginable. And to your point about the passion, when you see it that many times in a row, all of these people that are in there own way, okay, the reason they are not successful is the mirror. Look at it, it's you. You are the one that is preventing you from doing that. And we're not blaming you, okay? I'm looking at who is in your ear telling you this nonsense. That is why we get pissed off, okay? And that is why we get pumped up. Where is this nonsense coming from? And how can I go and slap that person? I would never hit anybody. Slap that person and say, "What? Stop it. Why are you doing this? Why are you holding these people back? Like, get out of the way. Anyway.

Nick Friend: The way that I see, and we have to clean up a lot of this even with Art Storefront's members, I see--

Patrick Shanahan: Always, ongoing progress.

Nick Friend: I see a post in a private member's group, or somebody says something, right? Or somebody puts a comment, you know, who's not a member on one of our Facebook posts, right? Or Instagram posts. And what happens is, you know, all these people, all of a sudden, it's like a shiny object, like, "Oh, I've gotta listen to that person." There's immediate trust there. Like, they should actually listen to that person. And I'm like, "What are you guys doing? Like, stop it. The first question out of your mouth should be, who are you? And what have you done? Before I even give credence to a single thing you say, I wanna know who you are, and what you have accomplished in your life and in business, as an artist or a photographer or as a consult or somebody who's worked with these people. Tell me now because otherwise, I am literally shutting this out, I don't want the poison, I don't want it to infect me, get it out. That's the way, you've gotta be savage about your inputs, you guys, like, this goes for everything in your personal life too, negative people with bad information or bad advice or bringing you down, you've gotta be savagely controlling your inputs. It's an art form. It's something that you've gotta watch out for every day because there are bloggers, podcasters, other artists and photographers, other people, dropping posts or comments. Like, your immediate first thing should be, I'm not listening to you. That's what it should be. It's no different than listening to the news today, right? Everybody's first thought should be, I'm not believing that. No matter what source you're getting it from. And go and really get your own facts, okay? It applies to everything. There's too much information, it's too easy to publish things, it's too easy to go create a personal brand and say that you're like a consultant for artists or photographers or whatever, when you've never even ran a business, you've never even, like, sold a million dollars of your own products or anything like that. Like, who are you? And so, you've gotta watch out for that, and that's where we see the biggest problems where people are getting this information, it's spreading like a virus, from people who do not have the credibility or the data or information, and so it's just all BS. It's all BS that's spreading around. That's all it is. And it's been spreading around for decades. Decades if not longer. It's unbelievable.

Patrick Shanahan: It's even worse than that because, you know, we constantly get, like, you guys are so fired up and passionate, well, go ahead and run Facebook ads for five years, okay, and Instagram, in which you have to clean up the comments, okay? And look, everyone understands that there are trolls online, right? That's just a part of the internet world that we live in, and everyone, if they don't understand the level of trolls is directly proportional to the platform that they're on such that it's not their real first name and last name. So there are trolls on Facebook. It's usually their real first name and last name. Instagram ten-X that size 'cause it can be myart227513, you don't know who the hell that person is. They're not accountable to anyone. They can leave these trolly comments. I don't care about the trolly comments. All troll comments are is a window into somebody's soul that is not having a good time, not living a good life, and is down in the dumps and you feel bad for them. I don't care about that part. What I care about is all it takes is one troll to leave one of these comments that has the wrong input and it ends up becoming a magnet for everybody in that post. And we've seen this time and time and time and time again. Like, somebody will say, "I will never discount my work, it cheapens my work. And then it'll get, like, 15 different replies because it confirms the same bias that this particular person has, and that's another reason why we get so fired up about it. It's like, no, this is terrible, terrible, terrible information. Anyway, I've got one more tangent, and this is just a perspective piece, okay? I saw this headline, okay? I'm browsing Reddit this morning, right, and this thing just jumped off the page at me. And I had to mention it, it's too good. It's a little off topic, but it'll tie in. We talk on this show about perspective, okay? Both on how long it takes to build a viable art-photography business, but also why we believe the opportunity is so incredible, right? And two of the somethings that emerge from that statement are the fact that you are an artist or a photographer, it's never gonna change, okay? It's not like you're gonna have a mid-life crisis and leave a good sales job to go become a chef or something. No one ever changes. Once an artist, always an artist. Once a photographer, always an artist. Number two, okay, that's number one, number two, the fact that you can be selling your work into your 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, even 90s, right? You gain that perspective. Okay, you agree with it and then you use that as a lens to which you view your career and what you can achieve. Oh, are you in a good place? Are you in a good place to understand what's possible? So, what's the headline? Okay, are you ready for this? Awesome. "TIL" which on Reddit means today I learned another acronym, "When Picasso died at the age of 91, he left more than 45,000 works. In 1980, the Picasso estate was appraised at $250 million. He should have run a basement sale, by the way, could have cleaned out some of that inventory. (Nick laughs) "Experts have said the true value is actually in the billions. He did not leave a will so the division of his holdings took six years among his seven heirs." And so, I read that and it's like one, 45,000 pieces of art that he had when he died that he didn't even sell. Just contemplate that. That's insane, right?

Nick Friend: So much work, wow.

Patrick Shanahan: Now, in the 250 million, amazing, working into his 90s or whenever he actually quit, maybe it was his 80s, but still, a viable business at the end of the 90s. Yes, I realize that Mr Picasso is one of the greatest ever, but do you know what is missing from the headline there?

Nick Friend: What's that?

Patrick Shanahan: Let me just scan it again. I don't see at the bottom of it, "And he never discounted any of his works his entire life." I don't see it. I can't believe it. Surprising, surprising that. So, anyway, I thought I would read that. I thought it was interesting.

Nick Friend: I like it. All right, let's leave it there.

Patrick Shanahan: Get out of here, yeah.

Nick Friend: You guys, anybody who is not an Art Storefront's member, and you're starting your art business, or you've been doing it for a while, or your photography business, and you're struggling, or you're trying to figure out how to get to the next level, all right, come to our free Art Business consulting workshop tomorrow, okay? Tomorrow, Friday, all right? It is at 11:00 a.m. Pacific, one central, two eastern. Get on our email list and we will send you the Zoom link, okay? Go to artstorefronts.com and get on our email list and then we will send you the Zoom link and you can come, and you can talk to us, you know, face to face, and we will answer your questions live, okay? And try to bring your number one problem. What's the number one problem holding you back? That's what we love to go so we can unclog your drains, so to speak, all right? We want you to move your businesses forward, so come to that, you get some free consulting, tell a friend. Also, you know, if you like the session, like these Art Business Mornings, we're doing them every Tuesday and Thursday, same time.

Patrick Shanahan: Morning-ish, morning-ish (laughs).

Nick Friend: Morning-ish, yeah, roughly around that time. And then, we're also doing them, you know, odd ball. We did one last night, we might do one on a Saturday here and there, on a Friday.

Patrick Shanahan: That's not technically Art Business Mornings.

Nick Friend: The Art Business Mornings is Tuesday, Thursdays, the mechanics are one, if you miss it, it's going into the podcast, okay, you can search anywhere you find podcasts. The Art Marketing podcast. And by the way, just to take a step back, customers, what are we doing right now? Moving the attention around. Moving the attention around. What do good marketers do all the time, Nick? Move the attention around.

Nick Friend: Move the attention around.

Patrick Shanahan: So, anyway, you can get it on the podcast, YouTube, they're all on a playlist. You can binge all of them. Literally, you can go in, start the Art Business Mornings playlist, and just go through all of them. You're in your studio working, you want some motivation in the background, easy to do. Subscribe to YouTube when you're on there. They're organized in series on both IGTV, all you have to do is hit the profile, you can go through all of them, IGTV is a great way to binge watch, by the way. You go into it, hit the series, it plays all of them. There's no commercials, there's no fluff, real nice, real nice. Same thing on Facebook. All organized into a series. So, you can get them any which way you like. We are in a massive coordinated laser-focused march to get you guys ready for Q4. We think it's gonna be the biggest Q4 in the history of mankind. The history of selling art and photography online period, full stop, and we want you to win. Come get on the path. Come get on the path.

Nick Friend: Yeah, exactly. And on that note, with the biggest art selling time of the year right around the corner, the marketing begins, the marketing you're supposed to be doing if you wanna sell a lot and execute well, begins at the beginning of October, okay? So, in lieu of that, we have extended our summer sale at Art Storefronts, okay, for those of you who wanna join Art Storefronts, at a significant discount, your next step is to request a demo. If you're looking to learn more about what we do, you know, get the details and the pricing and all that stuff, you just wanna request a demo, that's the next step for everybody, okay? Just be sure to ask about the summer sale so you can take advantage of it potentially. And, to request a demo, there should be a description in this post, in this live post on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, on Instagram there's a link in the bio. You can always go to the website. There's always a request for a demo button in the upper right-hand corner. Fill that out, one of the people from our outreach team will reach out to you shortly and take a look at your art, talk to you, learn what your goals are, and then show you everything that you wanna see about Art Storefronts. Other than that though, are we good to go?

Patrick Shanahan: Good to go. As always, thanks for listening.

Nick Friend: I think we covered it, all right.

Patrick Shanahan: Have a great day.

Nick Friend: Thank you, guys.