Do Live Art Shows Work?

In this episode, Patrick and Nick highlight the significance of live art shows as a potent tool for artists to boost sales, particularly in light of the upcoming Q4—the busiest art-selling period. They discuss trends such as high household savings, continued remote work, and the drive people have to enhance their living spaces. Nick shares personal experiences of decorating his home office with original artwork, emphasizing how owning art can be addictive, akin to tattoos. They underscore that securing a single sale can trigger multiple future purchases due to the lifetime value of a customer. Patrick and Nick also talk about various successful case studies of artists using live shows, how the shift to online events has redefined art selling, and strategic marketing approaches, including an upcoming business consulting session. Finally, they mention a summer special discount for joining their storefronts and encourage immediate sign-ups due to high demand.

Podcast Transcribe

Patrick Shanahan: We're talking, do the live art shows work as well as kicking the week off. Okay. Another week. It brings us one week closer to the biggest art selling time of the entire year. And before we get into the live art shows, let me just say this. Um, I like the economist. Okay. They have a podcast, uh, that like this little, little bits.

And you know what I love about it is it's like constantly giving you like the international news. They're talking about the banks reporting because the banks are like, you know, they have these reporting requirements that are out of control. Right. Reporting that the percentage of household savings is has been the highest it's been in a long time, right?

A long time. And I was like, how many more, how many more indicators do I need that we are about to face down the biggest Q4 in the history of mankind? No one's going back to work. Everyone, everyone, Google came out yesterday and said no one's going back. No one's going back till 2022. No employees going back till 2022.

I think, I think it was a Google headline I read today. So 2021 or 2022, that's a long time. Yeah. 2020. Wow. It's like a Lollapalooza guy. So the, the larger point is household income at a high, the home office continuing to be the norm. Uh, uh, uh, the bear wall is still an issue. And the biggest buying season coming around.

I mean, this is like everything.

Nick Friend: And I, and I would even, I would even add on top of that, this insatiable desire that we all have to make our homes and home offices and just anywhere that we're going to be spending all this time that we know this is no longer a two month thing or a three month thing, right?

This insatiable desire to make your living slash workspace. That is now where you're spending the primary amount of your time as amazing, inspiring, you know, like productive as possible. And I am a perfect case study of that. I am a total case study on this. Like I, I, I, I've lived in my house that I'm in right now for like four or five years.

And like, I am outfitting the walls with original artwork. Okay. And it never was a priority before. I mean, I've got three little kids, right? I've got three, like very, very young kids, three, five, and seven. Right. And so when you're in that mode, like there's, there's things that you have as priorities and not, and like, but in my work area that I have, like my office and stuff like that, it just wasn't that big of a priority because I was never here.

I was always at the office. You know? Yeah. I was never really working in my home office, and so, but, but here you go. Like, I've got four originals like that I have purchased. Right? Four. Four, right. Yep. And I, and I, and I gotta tell you this too, I gotta tell you this too. When you, when you have one Oh, oh, you are, you, you're gonna do that here.

We gotta cheers everybody, right? Cheers everybody.

Patrick Shanahan: I suppose that should be on brand too. We're looking a little black today.

Nick Friend: Oh, there you go. All. So, at least a little better. So, uh. So I first got two originals right from this one artist and it's addicting like you you have to

Patrick Shanahan: Stop it's like tattoos. I'm gonna be

Nick Friend: Oh, dude, it is it is the absolute truth.

I'm just telling you if they if If the artist does the proper marketing consistently, right.

Patrick Shanahan: Merchandising, too.

Nick Friend: All of it. You know, if you do the proper marketing all the time and you do the right thing, there is the truth that the average collector will, will buy eight pieces, eight, that's what the number is.

And in, uh, in Weiland's book on solving this, uh, sorry, don't be a starving artist, right? His average collector buys eight pieces. Eight pieces, right? And, and here I am, I'm halfway there with one artist, four, four, right? It is, it is a real thing. And so there's, there's no question that when you, when you sell one piece to somebody, it is just the beginning of that relationship.

And you've got to be thinking that way. You have to be thinking like lifetime value. It's a, it's a, it's a metric that's common in business. It's called LTV, right? The lifetime value is what a customer might buy from you over the lifetime of your business. Right. And so. You're just getting started when somebody buys one, because if they really like you and they like your work, I'm just going to tell you that every time that you release something, they're going to be looking at it going, I might want one of those.

I might want one of those. There's really something to it, which is amazing. It's so amazing. If you do that correctly, you can do a minute. You can do really well.

Patrick Shanahan: You can kill it, get into the announcements and then we can get into the live art shows. You've got announcements. Yeah.

Nick Friend: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Announcements. Um, summer special. Got to mention this you guys, cause it's Monday and we have a huge discount to join our storefronts that ends on Monday. Friday. It's five days away. If you, if you're interested in joining our storefronts and getting a significant discount, make sure you take advantage of the summer special requested demo.

ASAP do not wait, like do it right now. Do it today. Um, and you can do that. There's a link in our bio on Instagram link on the post on Facebook, YouTube, all of that. You also can just go to art storefronts. com. There's always a button in the upper right hand corner of the screen. It says request a demo. So do that ASAP to take advantage of it.

And as we have said, like, as you just opened with, right, the fourth quarter is around the corner and there's like a tsunami coming, right. With all the, all the data, all the data and metrics that are there, like the savings. People's people are saving a bunch of money and all of the business that has moved online, right?

All of e commerce is essentially online. No one's really going back to work, um, until, until like, you know, maybe next year or whatever it is. And, uh, it's just prime time to take this seriously. And if you're, even if you're just getting your business off the ground for the very first time, like, It's time.

It's a perfect time to like, to like launch that art or photography business that you've been kind of like kicking around, but you've just been on the sidelines. Maybe it's because, uh, you know, you, you, uh, not sure about your niche or your pricing. And if that is you, if that is you in 20 minutes. I am running a session, okay, with Taylor on our marketing team, okay, for non art storefronts members in 20 minutes at the top of the hour, all right.

So that's, uh, 11 a. m. Pacific, 1 p. m. Central to Eastern. Okay, you can get on a live Zoom call with us for free art business consulting. Okay, free art business consulting. Are you going to be on this one, Pat, or are you not?

Patrick Shanahan: No, these things are so fire that unless you meet the minimum requirements of competency in the morning, it is a, it's a simple memory test.

And then you have to run a sub seven minute mile and do a hundred pushups in one sitting. I failed this morning, so I'm out. I'm out. You either have the level of energy or you don't.

Nick Friend: All right. So I'm, I'm on it. I'm going to be going over some very interesting things with you guys. All right. And I think the most important thing is, is that, you know, from all the stuff that we've learned.

You know, in, in 20 years of 20 plus years of entrepreneurship, 20 years in the art industry Right. As entrepreneurs. Um, and you, you and I

Patrick Shanahan: Have like 12.

Nick Friend: I know, I know. It's incredible. You know, and like the quantity, the sheer quantity of individual photographers and artists, businesses that we have consulted for and helped.

The level of information and detail that we have is just, it's, it's. It's unprecedented. Nobody, nobody has this level of information, right? And so we have boiled all of this down to, um, to a couple of different things that we feel if you get these things wrong upfront, you're already done. You might even be running an art business right now, or you might be thinking about launching one.

And if you don't get these things, right, you're already done and you don't even know it. And so we want to make sure that we get this information to the industry. So that everybody that's out there, that's considering launching an art business, or maybe they're about to take it seriously, or maybe they just got crushed by the pandemic, you know, and all because all the galleries have been closed and art shows and they're trying to figure out what to do.

We want to make sure you get on the right track. Okay. It's our mission as a company to solve the starving artist problem. It's a very bold mission. And the way that we do that, the way that we do that, we have one metric. It is, we need to create the maximum number of successful artists that we can. We need to increase that quantity by like a thousand X that it traditionally has been over the last couple of decades or whatever.

And we feel like we're solving a millennium old problem. Like Pat, let me ask you this. Let me ask you this. How many thousand year old problems exist in society these days? There's not many in the business world. There's not many. This is one of them. This is one of them. This is like a thousand multi thousand year old problem.

And that's an incredible thing. But it's crazy to say, but we are on the precipice. of actually upending it, right? And so we shoot for the stars when we say we're going to solve the problem, right? But we hope to end up in the clouds. What does that mean? So very few have created a successful art business, and we're going to turn that into tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of individual photographers and artists, Building these businesses from their home, whether they're just looking for some extra side income or retirement income, or you're taking it full time as seriously as possible.

And you want to be selling hundreds of thousands of dollars a year or more. So anyways, top of the hour guys, top of the hours, it's almost 15 minutes away. Get on the zoom call. All right, get on our email list. Get on our email list, um, and follow us on Facebook. We're going to go live on Facebook, um, at the top of the hour.

And, uh, and then we'll have the, we'll have the link there to get on the zoom call. Won't we?

Patrick Shanahan: Always.

Nick Friend: Yeah. So if you're last minute, get on there and come on. I want to talk to you. I want to hear your thing and bring the number one thing that you think is holding you back. What's the number one thing you think that is holding your business back and let's unplug the drain, so to speak. Unclog it. We're plumbers humble plumbers.

Patrick Shanahan: Here. I, uh, I, um, do the live art shows work. So what a weekend, right? So on Friday I assisted one of our customers, Matthew Laca, who actually happened to get because where he lives in Canada, that he actually had an actual gallery show right at a, at a gallery in Ottawa, and so the whole thing was hung in inside an art gallery, which was really trippy.

It was just like bank and like the 1800s had like the vault and. Florida ceiling, uh, windows and like a hundred year old hardwood floors. It was echo. He's all hell in there, by the way, it was terrible in terms of the audio, but he, we, we went through the entire thing. I got to follow up with him today.

Let's see how many he's sold from the show itself in terms of the 20 pieces of the whole, whole show. I think he sold 16 so far. And by the way. 50 50 split with a gallery. How many of those did he sell on his own? Majority majority, the galleries, the gallery scoops is so cool. And then you've got, you've got another stuff show from the weekend.

Um, but I, I want to underscore and punctuate on this because I'm hearing this a ton and maybe Nick, you haven't picked up on this, but all like the big craft fairs, right? Like, you know, the, the craft shows and the art shows that happen, like, you know, that whole circuit. They're obviously hemorrhaging, right?

And so they keep attempting to sign their customers up and they're calling them. Let's do a virtual art show. We'll give you guys these five minutes and, and, and good on them for at least trying, right? Are you running two coffee cups there? You're doing the double on me anyway. Good on them for trying.

Right. I love them for that. They're falling so flat on their face and I can't help, but like it a little bit because You haven't got the reps and sets in, baby. This is, this is a fluid breathing dynamic scenario and situation. Unless you know what you're doing, you don't know what you're doing, which is not to say they won't get good in time.

But LACAs, another very good success. And then what do you have? What do you have from Stidham's? He ran his on Friday, happy hour. And what do you do? He unveiled, he

Nick Friend: Did it, he did it all on his own this time. He's totally empowered, right? He's been learning. He's not, he's now on his, I think this is his third, right?

So he's getting really good at it. He's getting really good. Um, he even painted, he even painted a, uh, like a happy hour, like painting. Like with a cocktail and all of that to like promote it. I love it. I love it. It's just setting the mood. Right. And so it's really fun. Um, but yeah, he, he had, he, he had, uh, four new pieces, four new originals, okay, that he was releasing.

So this is a new style, right? Because we were, we're, we're advising our customers in our playbooks, right. On. You know, you can, you can have basement old inventory that you can go after, but I think this was significant. This was significant because this was four brand new pieces. And you know, I've been talking about that.

I've been talking about that big, right? I know lock has got it now too, right? Cause cause my philosophy on this is. And I think this is getting completely proven here. So here we are another week, you know, later, and we're proving even more, or sorry, I should say after the second live art show of the whole community, we're proving something else, which is that, that a lot of, you know, uh, photographers and artists are going to be selling their brand new content up front if you do it right, if you do it right, and you will not need the galleries.

Taking that extra commission, right? It's actually like in a case of Bill, four new originals. Guess what? He ran it on Friday. Here we are on Monday, three out of four have sold. Okay. In addition to that, he sold three commissions. Okay. In addition to three commissions. Okay. So this was a significant thing.

So three of the originals that he painted and he painted those in the last seven days. Are gone, right? They're gone sold. Okay. So what's he left with? He's left with the one original that hasn't sold yet And so what can he do with that? He could potentially get that into a gallery And so what our gallery is going to now have be playing second fiddle right with the content that they can't sell You know what?

I mean because he's making a hundred percent on his new stuff and guess what? He's ready to go He's like, okay whether this turns out to be basement inventory or I sell it indirectly or You Or I just put it on my site and maybe it just, maybe it takes six more months to sell. What does it matter? Right?

He's often moving on to new content, new content because his new content is moving out the door. Right? And that is we're in a whole new world, my friend, whole new world. So this is not just about basement sales. This is the fact that you are running a retail international art gallery. Out of your home, you have to wrap your mind around that and all of the facets about it.

So what would, what would an international art gallery be doing? Well, they'd be selling old inventory. They'd be selling new inventory. They'd be showcasing everything. And that's the, that is like the, that's like the, where we're going with all of our coaching and our consulting and all of our playbooks is like mastering every bit of that.

And guess what? Guess what? When we get to Q4, This is just going to be like a crescendo. These skills, these playbooks are going to be paramount throughout the whole fourth quarter. Right? Why? Because your store should be open as much as possible and your store's only open when you're live when it's open, when it's open.

When you're not live and you're not showing that stuff, your store is essentially, it's not closed, but you're forcing people to come to it, drive to the mall, you know, virtually seek it out, have the thought in their mind to go there rather than you having it open at all times. Hey, it's open. It's almost like you're perpetually when they're in their, in their feed and they're scrolling down.

Like it's like, it's like you're giving people a, uh, uh, uh, a way of perpetually walking by your store in real life, that's the equivalent. It's like, you're walking in. It's like, Whoa, Whoa, stuff's happening over there. And I'm seeing all this new content. And it's like the next day you do it again. And it's almost like you changed the window dressing all over again.

Everything in the windows changed. It's like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. Now he's talking about. You know new pieces he just released. Oh, whoa. Whoa. Now he's showing all of his acrylics I didn't even know what he had acrylics. Those look amazing. Oh, whoa Whoa, he's got now he's showing all of his merchandise his coasters and all this different stuff And you're like you have the ability to cheat to open your store change your window dressing every single day So when we get to like right now It may not make sense to do that all the time.

It actually would It actually would, you know, they should be doing all the time, but when we get to Q4, everyone's going to be doing it all the time, all of our members, we're going to be just talking about all the time, it's going to be guns of Laron. You guys, it's going to be so

Patrick Shanahan: hard thinking. Our thinking on this is, you know, not to toot our own horn while I toot my own horn, our thinking is so much.

Yeah. Our thinking is so much further down the road than most people's on this. Again, the only reason I say that is not because they were so gifted, talented, and blessed, or whatever the heck else, we did the work ourselves. This is live number 475 for us, uh, uh, since the fricking pandemic. Why? Because we saw the opportunity.

We need to learn it all and the, and, and the, the, call it the mental model or call it not getting hung up on particular aspects. What ends up happening when I say to you, the word live art show instantaneously in your mind, you go, Oh my God, I've got to prepare. That's going to take weeks of planning. I got to get everything ready to go and all my pieces ready and think through all of this different stuff because that having an art show, that is that baggage is all there already.

Right. In your mind of like, that's what you need to do when you get to where we are. And you hear it here first going live. It's no different than sending an email. It's just an email. It is just an email. It's just sending an email. You send email all the time. I send email all the time. You just send email.

That's it. So when you readjust your mental model to understand, I don't have to be so hung up on it, right? Like, I, you know, I saw Julian on, on Instagram here. He's like, dude, I just got a huge box on graphic. That huge box that shows up from graphic, right. With all of his new pieces, you know, there's the unboxing video part one, because you only show off a couple of them.

And then, and then you pull another one out. That's all wrapped up beautifully from graphic. You're like, that's all the time we have for today, folks. I'll go ahead and get, I'll get that. I'll get to the rest of them later. Right. Like I would get six lives out of the unboxing. I probably unbox one every two hours.

Until I'm through every single solitary piece. And then I would go and show the previous ones again. Right. And then I would talk about it again. And then I would explain to everybody when they order my art, look at the shipping and the packaging that this comes, there's no way this thing's getting damaged, this thing's going to come to you.

So smooth, so clean. So when you think about it in the context, number one of it's just an email, take the baggage out of the way, right? It's no different than going to the store. You just go to the store, you come back, you went to the store, you're gonna go to the store tomorrow again. Anyway, right? Like it's, it's stop associating all the big baggage with it.

It's not, you just get it in the water. Then, then you contemplate. The revs and sets that it takes to get good at this. And then you contemplate the reason to want to get all those revs and sets in. QThor is coming. Ooh. I mean, when I look at it as a marketer, right? In the context of omni channel marketing.

Omni channel marketing for the unfamiliar is where your message gets hammered in a, in a synchronized fashion in all of the channels that you have available to yourself. You send an email, then you make a Facebook post. The Facebook post dovetails with the email, which dovetails with your Instagram post, which dovetails with your Instagram story, which then the email gets sent to the unopens, which then pretends potentially you have a Facebook ad and then it's in your sale.

So it's, it's. It's literally like a bunch of guys hammering in a tent pole at the same time. I got to get my video ready, but that's what it is. And you're banging all of those channels. Or it is actually like someone banging the drum. Most people think like, Ooh, I'm going to send the email. Boom. I'm done.

No, no, that didn't get anyone's attention. You got to bang the drum and then bang it again and then bang it again. And then bang it again. And granted, you need to learn how to do that. And we teach you how to do that. But now. The lives just give you an even bigger drumstick, right? That one's the biggest, that one's like the foot drum, like the boom, boom, you know, like you hammer that thing so hard and all of those working at once, you don't know if you can hear me tap my feet there, tap my feet, but as, as, as I properly flesh out the best way to do that with the live, I could see an individual campaign, i.e. Let's just, for instance, but one of the table Q4, that Q4 run up sale, not only. We'll have multiple emails in it. Not only will have multiple social posts in it. Yes. It'll have an Instagram story every single solitary day, but I could see five to seven lives per sale. Maybe more five to seven lives per sale.

Right. And then, and then the after hours, which I love the after hours. So that's where we're going. That's where it is. Do the, do the live art shows work? You better believe they do. Not only do they be effective. And guess

Nick Friend: What? The fact that they do is the greatest news you ever heard.

Patrick Shanahan: Yes, it is.

Nick Friend: Trust me.

It's the greatest news you ever heard because you are now your own art gallery. And you have all the benefits that the retail art galleries have had and enjoyed for so many years that they've been, you know, that they had to invest in and have all that overhead. And now you can do it on your own without any of that.

And it means that your ceiling In other words, the ceiling, the upper limit of how much revenue you can generate as an artist or photographer from your house has just gone through the roof, through the

Patrick Shanahan: Roof.

Nick Friend: So you

Patrick Shanahan: Guys

Nick Friend: Should be...

Patrick Shanahan: You guys should be. Lincoln Designs TV, I'm based in South Africa. That might've been somewhat of a situation five years ago, maybe even two and a half years ago.

Now you get yourself a printer that can ship in the U S and guess what, Lincoln, you've got access to the biggest art buying market in the world. And all you've got to do is run it and run it, run a live art show. Do you think anyone's going to care if you're in Durban or, uh, Cape town or, or take your pick?

No. It doesn't matter. Consequential, inconsequential.

Nick Friend: And we've got automated fulfillment for all of that in the U S so that's all good. All right. We got to leave it there because in five minutes, what five minutes we're doing, uh, free art business consulting for non art storefronts customers. Okay. So if you need help with your business and you're stuck and you want to take advantage of the fourth quarter and you're hearing everything we're saying and you want to, you know, you want to.

If you want to learn more and capitalize on it, go to that session. You know what, Pat, why don't you drop a link in the comments right now, drop the workshop link right in the comments for anybody who happens to see this. Uh, on Facebook, at least, right? That we can have it right there. Already in the,

Patrick Shanahan: It's already in the Instagram bio.

Nick Friend: Yeah, it's in the Instagram bio if you want to do it. So you can go to that session. It's now four minutes. It's going to start. And, uh, yeah, it's going to be great. And the final reminder, guys, uh, summer special to join our storefronts at a significant discount. Okay. Ending this Friday. Get your demo request in.

Next step is request a demo. Okay. It's ending this Friday. Don't wait. It gets, it's getting really busy. We're already have people, uh, emailing us and telling us like, you guys haven't got back to me. You guys haven't got back to me. We're saying we will, we will. It's just, we're probably running a day behind.

So get it in as quickly as possible. If you're thinking about joining at a discount. All right, guys, other than that, have a great day. And for those of you who are going to the session here in three minutes, I will see you there. See you then. All right. Bye. Thanks guys. Bye.