Looking to sell your art in 2021? You need to follow this list

In this engaging episode of the 'Art Business Morning' show, hosts Patrick and Nick dive into essential strategies for growing your art business in 2021. They emphasize the importance of direct-to-consumer sales, building and maintaining a list of followers and customers, and consistent year-long marketing. The discussion covers three main ways to grow a business: acquiring new customers, increasing the average order value, and driving repeat purchases. They also stress the significance of diversifying revenue streams, having varying price points, employing video for marketing, and ongoing prototyping and pivoting of artistic content. Additionally, they highlight the current 'perfect storm' for art sales due to the pandemic-driven shift to online purchases and offer insights on sustaining motivation amidst the entrepreneurial grind.

Podcast Transcribe

Patrick Shanahan: Coming up on today's edition of the "Art Business Morning" show. That's right. We're back. We're gonna be talking about how you can grow your business in 2021, some high-level business discussion and fundamentals and the things you simply can't ignore if you wanna thrive in 2021.

Nick Friend: You needed a list to grow your business in 2021. This is it.

Patrick Shanahan: Lists are good. Lists are good. Hold on, talking over our intro music. It's been a while. So welcome to another edition of "Art Business Mornings." Nick, how you doing? It's been a while.

Nick Friend: I'm doing awesome. How are you?

Patrick Shanahan: Good. This is the show that will put you on the path to a six-figure-a-year plus art business. And this is a big episode. I just usually say that about every episode, but we are giving them the list based on what we learned from 2020 and what you need to be focusing on in '21. And Nick, if you're keen, we'll start on some high-level business stuff and then we'll get into the tactical.

Nick Friend: Yeah, and I just wanna say that it's like, what better a time is there for this? It's the new year, right? Calibrate, 2020 is over—

Patrick Shanahan: I got back from Essex!

Nick Friend: Yeah, whatever happened to your art business in 2020, whether it was good, whether it was bad, right now is the time to reflect, get the best information, data, everything that you can to set yourself up to do significantly better this year.

Patrick Shanahan: So let's get into it.

Nick Friend: Yep, and while I'm ranting a bit, will you get a banner going and let people know if they wanna leave comments, they can? We'll answer them live. We like making these things interactive. If you're listening on the podcast after the fact that won't make sense, but we get it.

Patrick Shanahan: We can add some comments. We spice things up. So I wanna start at the top with a business model. And I love this saying, there's not a whole lot you have to get right, as long as you don't get this one wrong, right? It's an old investment line of sorts. It's like for the last 20 years if you put some percentage of your money away in a mutual fund to the S&P 500, guess what? You're gonna go up a whole bunch.

Patrick Shanahan: You don't have to get a whole lot right. You're not picking stocks. Your business is growing. Your business is growing. And the business model defined. And we've been a broken record on this for a great many years. It's not gonna change. It's selling direct to your customers, building and consistently growing a list of fans, followers, emails, and potential customers and marketing consistently all year long.

Patrick Shanahan: That's really it. That's the business model and it is critically important. And look, if you have other revenue sources, that is great. That is great. What do you call them, Nick?

Nick Friend: The gravy.

Patrick Shanahan: The gravy. If you've got those other revenue sources, that's fantastic. Continue to work on growing those, but not in lieu of, okay. In addition to the right business model. The business model where you actually have something. And on the art business workshops, three times weekly zoom calls, you can join directly. Talk to me and members of my team, get some free consulting. Link in the bio, if you wanna join those. People are still not even grasping this concept.

Nick Friend: Now, on a week-in and week-out basis, I'm talking to people that are still not getting this concept. And so I feel like we need to be a broken record on it, right?

Patrick Shanahan: Have to. Have to.

Nick Friend: Yeah, we have to. I mean, I saw one yesterday and the wisdom of this business model is hyper pronounced at the moment, yes.

Patrick Shanahan: When revenue sources, but it's not any less important once we get out of this dumpster fire pandemic.

Nick Friend: It was important before the pandemic.

Patrick Shanahan: Yes.

Nick Friend: It was critical before.

Patrick Shanahan: Yes.

Nick Friend: But there's so many layers of BS in this industry in the art and photography and selling art and photography. You're decades...

Patrick Shanahan: Even, I call it a millennia-old problem right. A thousand-year-old problem, starting on a problem. And it's like, I mean, you and I are faced with it every single day. And it's like every day you're like, "really? Like people are still thinking this way." And you realize how entrenched it is.

Nick Friend: Yes. Massively so. And look, we talk about the other models relying solely on the galleries, right? Retail ones or the online ones, Fine Art America, Etsy, Redbubble, Saatchi or relying solely on the offline fair and show circuit. You don't set the rules in any of those venues. The rules in any of those other venues can change anytime.

Nick Friend: You can get the rug ripped right out from underneath you. And there's not a doggone thing you can do about it. And why would you put all your eggs in this type of a basket? You would never put your entire retirement account into one stock. You don't wanna put your entire business future, your entire business model in something that you do not control.

Patrick Shanahan: So no matter where you sit, okay, you can fix this. Understand it is the most important thing you can get right in '21. And really the coming decade for the rest of your career it is just, you have to get this right, okay. You get the right model and you're on the path. You're on the path. That's the model.

Nick Friend: Next, how to grow a business, okay. We've mentioned this before but it bears repeating. And it, as you see, as we unfold, this thing it'll be critically important. There's only three ways to grow a business, okay. And how do we measure them? One, you get new customers, measure that by new sales.

Patrick Shanahan: Two, you get additional revenue out of the new customer. We measure that by something we call AOV, Average Order Value. You always wanna be increasing that number. Three, you get repeat business from existing customers. Okay. There's only three ways. And what does everyone always spend the most time on, Nick? - Which one?

Nick Friend: Number one, you know that.

Patrick Shanahan: Number one getting new customers, right? And rightfully so, getting new customers is the single solitary, most important one, especially early on, especially when you're just getting started especially when you're trying to get traction, even more so, equally so when you're ramping and then when you get up into the rarefied air, number two and number three become even more important.

Nick Friend: But no one focuses on two and three. No one focuses on two and three. We do. We focus a tremendous amount on two and three. And we know that all three are hugely important potential levers to help our customers grow their businesses and to grow your business too, right. And, the AOV one is particularly interesting.

Patrick Shanahan: And we'll just rant on this for a second one. One, you can raise your prices. AOV up right away. Two, a particular pet peeve of ours. If you're only selling one thing you can start selling more things. If you're only selling originals, start selling commissions. If you don't like prints, start selling prints.

Nick Friend: If you only sell prints on canvas 'cause you don't like metal, get over yourself and start selling the metal, right. It's why we just added merch and we're continuing to add merch. I mean, how many more merch products do we have in the pipeline by the way?

Patrick Shanahan: Oh man. - They're already out there.

Nick Friend: There's so many have come over the last month that we haven't even updated everybody yet.

Patrick Shanahan: Yep, so don't start, don't tell 'em, we're not ready. But anyway, AOV, okay. So we're gonna be talking a bunch about this in the coming year. And then the last one, which is the most interesting, which Nick and I have had a chance to observe over the last like five to seven years but well, I mean...

Nick Friend: And hat tip to Wyland, who we read it in his book, right? He said, he had a line, Wyland's got this book "Don't Be A Starving Artist" or whatever it is. And he talks about collectors and he talks about how he has this definition of collectors that buy, I think, what does he say? Like seven to 10 pieces from him over the course of—

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, an average of eight.

Nick Friend: Yeah, so an average of eight. And he's talking about how important it is to cultivate these types. And we're starting to see this now because we see customers that have been with us for like four and five and six years. And they had people that just buy, no matter what. Sometimes the numbers are like 15, 20, 25 pieces.

Patrick Shanahan: And guess what happens? You cultivate a list of these collectors and the years go by and your prices keep going up and guess what? They just stick with you, and they just buy and they get a new house and they buy again. And then they get a vacation house and they buy again. So like the third level that gets repeat business from existing customers critically important on the collector thing which is just, a crazy nuance or a unique feature of the art selling business.

Nick Friend: But also who is the easiest customer to get?

Patrick Shanahan: The one you already have.

Nick Friend: The one you already have. The one you already have. And what everyone takes for granted is like, "Oh my gosh, selling all my prints for 30 bucks, 40 bucks or selling them on something merchandised for 10 or 15 or 20 or 30?" Do you realize, that those people now that you've created a customer, okay, now that you sold them, yes, maybe your profit margin wasn't so wild on the lower end.

Patrick Shanahan: Mathematically speaking makes it considerably easier to get a second sale. Four years from now, they're gonna buy a new house and whose door are they gonna come knocking on for that art? So those are the three ways to grow a business. We're gonna be talking about those all year long. We sorta just teased the next one, which is revenue, right? And the purpose of your business, of any business is to generate it.

Nick Friend: And a great way to do that? Multiple, different revenue sources. Multiple, different revenue sources. And you can't tell me, Nick, you have not been surprised at the width and breadth of various different revenue sources we've seen throughout our customer base this last year. I mean, it's staggering.

Patrick Shanahan: Oh, absolutely. I mean, look, it's a really big deal. And we should also say, when you say all of that, right. That if you're like an originals-only painter and you've been doing really well that way and you're really happy with your business you keep doing it. You keep doing it. And if you don't wanna offer like merchandise or anything like that, that's fine.

Nick Friend: But it's our job to talk about, what the most successful people that we know are doing, right. And they're not just originals only, they're not like... And I should say that there are people out there that are originals only like there's famous names that are just selling them.

Patrick Shanahan: They're doing really well. But do you know what that is? It's like the odds of success, of creating a very successful business with just that alone, it's a very, very, very small percentage. And it doesn't matter, it's not a debate point, it's just the truth. I mean, do whatever you want with that information.

Nick Friend: Yep. Yeah, do whatever you want. But understand—

Patrick Shanahan: Do whatever you want. - how hard it is to get an individual revenue source working. And when you do, squeeze it as hard as you can. And then also, the challenge, one of the most important things that you can look at in 2021 is creatively thinking about how you can add additional revenue sources to your business.

Nick Friend: And we sort of went through the rant earlier. If you're just doing originals, contemplate doing originals and commissions. If you're just doing originals and commissions, start doing prints. If you're doing prints—

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. Limited edition.

Nick Friend: Right? Yeah, limited editions.

Patrick Shanahan: You could do expensive limited editions, right?

Nick Friend: Merch.

Patrick Shanahan: Teach classes, rent your children out to walk dogs. I don't care. Add revenue sources. I keep trying to get the girl across the street to walk the dog. I'm up from $5 to 10, and she's not buying. Which is killing me. Somebody walk the dog? So you can just highlight that comment when you want and get to get some people doing it.

Nick Friend: Okay. So adding additional revenue sources. I should also mention too, that this has become critically important for us, right. And what do we do? We are a do-as-we-say-not-as-we-do organization, we're the opposite of that, whereas we do it and we say it and follow it, right. Our job is to make it as easy as possible to add as many additional revenue sources for our customers as possible.

Patrick Shanahan: That's it.

Nick Friend: Yep.

Patrick Shanahan: That's it. And it's never gonna stop. The more revenue sources they have, the more channels they have to market in, the more products they have to sell, the higher level of success they have to grow their business. And the higher the return on their time marketing themselves.

Nick Friend: Yes.

Patrick Shanahan: Right?

Nick Friend: Yes.

Patrick Shanahan: It's huge.

Nick Friend: You'll have a Walmart or you'll have a super Walmart. Which one do you wanna have?

Patrick Shanahan: Yup. And that goes back to Average Order Value, right? It's like, why does AOV matter? Because if you want the highest return on your time, invest it in marketing and bringing people to your site and to your business, right? Like you wanna have the greatest opportunity to sell them more of what you provide.

Nick Friend: Yep. Don't have the normal Walmart, have the super.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, and you know what I wanna say too? I really wanna say this. Like, this has been on my mind. When it comes to merchandise, the first thing people think of right, are cheap mugs and iPhones. And one of the products that we had, I'm gonna have to talk about this one, even though we haven't announced it, we added puzzles.

Nick Friend: Puzzles, right. Puzzles. These are nice. This is not like just a cheesy cheap item like a mug. And there are items that are like they're not like merch. They're actually like useful items for the kids, the families of high-net-worth individuals. It's not useless. And these things could sell. You can sell them for a hundred, 200, $300 whatever you want.

Patrick Shanahan: There's all sorts of... Can you imagine you could even sign the box of these things. You can turn these things into collector's items, Pat. Have a limited edition of 10 puzzles. You sell them each for a thousand bucks. A thousand bucks each. Look, we could go on forever on this. You could do limited edition merch if you wanted to, right?

Nick Friend: Yep.

Patrick Shanahan: There are ways to really make some nice things like the coaster. Think about coasters. What if you released like five sets of coasters and you sign the back of each of them, right? And they're like a five-pack. You might charge $500 for them because the high-net-worth individual that owns one of your originals, I will guarantee you, he or she would love to have a set of coasters signed by you.

Nick Friend: You know what I mean? To be able to brag about them. "Oh yeah, here they are. And I've got one at a limited edition, one out of five." you know what I mean? One out of five ever made. There's ways to go with this.

Patrick Shanahan: There's a bunch of ways to go. So another massively important one. So we're gonna be getting into all of these things and the fun thing about laying this all out in like a 2021 perspective, the year ahead, whatever you wanna call it, snazzy headline, is we're just gonna be revisiting these things all year long.

Nick Friend: All year long, coming out in different ways 'cause they're that important. Next one, price point diversity, okay. I gotta go into my little 10-drawing situation. Art Storefronts' followers, Nick's followers, my followers, your followers, all the same, they all follow the Bell Curve. This is reversed.

Patrick Shanahan: So it's really gonna mess me up. But think about a Bell Curve, okay. Low class, lower-middle class, middle class, upper-middle class, upper class, right. Everyone's followers follow that curve, okay. And the low-end people, yes, they don't have a lot of money. They're still awesome human beings.

Nick Friend: They're gonna like, and comment and share on everything you have and maybe buy something on the low end. And then you get the middle-class that buy various different things. And then you get the high-net-worth individuals that will just buy the expensive stuff because they love the prestige. If you don't have the price points, okay, to speak to each of those, right.

Patrick Shanahan: 'Cause what do we see? We see all these people that just sell originals and starting prices at 1500 bucks. I can't afford 1500 bucks. What do you have for me? There's nothing for me in the store, Nick. I can't buy anything. And if you wanna revisit the earlier point about what is the easiest customer to get, the one that you already have, you have to have some price point diversity in your store, okay.

Nick Friend: You have to have it. And I don't care how you get it, right? You can offer cheap prints or you can offer smaller originals. Yes, the merch makes it very easy to do that. You can have your really expensive, limited editions and then you can have the lower-end items. And not only do you have to have it on the lower end, you have to have it on the higher end too.

Patrick Shanahan: Everyone understands this. Go into your store right now, and price something outrageously expensive. Just do it. I'm talking if your top price point right now is 2,500 bucks, I want something in the store for 25 grand, because guess what? Somebody might buy it, number one. Number two—

Nick Friend: I might go 10.

Patrick Shanahan: Look at that. I'd go 25. Look—

Nick Friend: It's a great point.

Patrick Shanahan: You have to have it in there, okay. And not only do you need to have it in there, even if it never sells what it does to us psychologically is it makes all the rest of the items that we have in the store feel like a better purchase, okay. More value to them. Everyone is breaking that rule, right?

Nick Friend: It's called price anchoring.

Patrick Shanahan: Price anchoring, thank you. Psychological scenario, okay, but critical. So the price point diversity.

Nick Friend: It's so interesting to think about, right? Like some people might have some originals that took them extra long or they love them or whatever. And they've got them on their site, put them on your site, offer them up there for 10,000, $20,000.

Patrick Shanahan: And don't worry if they ever sell, right? You're price anchoring. You're setting the tone for the value of what you're doing.

Nick Friend: Yes. And it's like, think about the car dealership, right? You know the car dealership has the cars that are inside the glass house. And then there's all the cars that are outside, right? Like what do the cars cost that are inside the glass house, Nick? Cost a lot of money, right? I mean, the Mercedes dealership is the one that's closest to my house, but that's the worst analogy

Patrick Shanahan: But they have the $275,000 SLR, crazy-looking thing, right. Number one, somebody is gonna buy that thing. Number two is just like, Hey, I can't get those ones in the glass house, but I feel way better about this more expensive one I'm gonna get out here. So it works, okay. Everyone does it. You gotta do it.

Nick Friend: But those are the high-level business things that I think I've just seen it happen so many times. But you and I did an episode last week on the look back for 2020, right. And the terms we used in there is the perfect storm for art and photography sales. And it bears repeating if you didn't see that episode, okay.

Patrick Shanahan: What do I mean the perfect storm? What was it in 2020? It's the same thing we're in now, right? We are in the most unprecedented times any of us have ever lived through right. Still in a pandemic, okay. All offline venues to buy art or photography are instantly closed. By the way, have you seen the news out of Europe? How gnarly they're going into lockdown? Like it's happening again. So all of the usual venues, okay, this is the perfect storm to buy art or photography, instantly closed, gone, poof,

Nick Friend: Not coming back, right? Lockdowns, whether enforced or not, new norm. Everybody's working from home. E-commerce adoption took 10 years of projected growth and did it in three months. People are still fleeing the cities. New home sales explode and still are across the country. Quick aside on that, my wife works for a marketing agency based in Los Angeles, okay.

Patrick Shanahan: They had to close down the office. Now, like 30% of the company went home because they live in Los Angeles, it's really bad in Los Angeles. They went home for Christmas and they ain't coming back. They're not coming back. They're staying in their hometowns. Their smaller hometowns here, there, and everywhere else.

Nick Friend: It's like, I just keep hearing story, after story, after story. Anyway, big one, new home sales continuing to explode across the country. Okay. Those levels are out of control. As a result, home decor sales across the board, of which art, photography plays a huge role, are continuing to be through the roof.

Patrick Shanahan: And the only place left, big picture anyway, anomalies aside to buy art and photography are online galleries, too much competition or directly from the artist or photographer, right? So that constitutes a perfect storm. What's more is all of the venues that they're gonna be buying from, you are not gonna have the 50/50 split, you're not gonna have to pay for booth fees, and you're gonna get to keep all of your customer data, right? That's insane. That's amazing.

Nick Friend: Collectively, I think that was and is the perfect storm. You have all these reasons why art has been selling better than it ever has before, and then and e-commerce adoption. And then you have all of the venues to buy it shrinking. That's a perfect storm. Any which way you look at it, like an extraordinary time, that has just so happened to benefit the art market.

Patrick Shanahan: So it continues to be the perfect storm. We were extremely bullish, let's just say on 2021.

Nick Friend: Because 2020 was the best year in history for artists and photographers to sell direct. Full stop. No debate. Not even close. It's not even close. If you were selling direct, if you were set up to sell direct to your customers, i.e.

Patrick Shanahan: direct to market, doing your own marketing, right? Not going through galleries or not relying completely on galleries or art shows. If you were equipped to sell direct, you killed it and your art was validated, right? You're not just new and didn't have any art that could sell, you killed it. Those are the people who just raked it in. Records broken all over the place from those people like crazy, right? And so everything you just explained is only taking that exact scenario that created that and even pouring more gasoline on it for 2021.

Nick Friend: And so the same thing is happening again. So it's an incredible scenario for all of you guys who are working right out of your house, starting a business, or have already been doing it. And you're like, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna market directly. I'm gonna have my own art gallery website.

Patrick Shanahan: I'm gonna figure out how to do this. I'm gonna have my own relationship with my customers and all of that, like perfect decision, right on the right track. You know what I mean? 'Cause what else are you gonna do? What else do you need to do? I really wanna emphasize though, it's not even about what else are you gonna do. It's more like the excitement that I know you and I have for the opportunity that is there.

Nick Friend: Like, it's really there. You know what I mean? Like if two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, if somebody said to me like, yeah, but it's so hard in this market 'cause there's the galleries are taking this and they're doing that. I'm like, yeah, but what are you gonna do? You gotta figure out a way.

Patrick Shanahan: You gotta get around it and do it on your own. Well, now all of that is aside. It's like the Red Sea parted and it's like it's right there for you. It is right there for you. And the numbers are there. The numbers are there to prove it. This is not a debate. It's the truth.

Nick Friend: It's just the most remarkable set of circumstances.

Patrick Shanahan: Oh, it's incredible.

Nick Friend: And we should also, I'll also wrap a bow on that, on everything that you said about the circumstances, right? And just say that regardless of whether you love it or you hate it, okay. There is going to be more stimulus next year no matter what happens politically which is only gonna exacerbate spending, housing, and all of that stuff.

Patrick Shanahan: And that's just another bit of fuel on the fire.

Nick Friend: Yeah, every single solitary sign points that—

Patrick Shanahan: Everything.

Nick Friend: Until the status quo changes which is showing no signs of doing we're in this. So the perfect storm remains, right? The perfect storm remains. And it's about whether or not you're in the game.

Patrick Shanahan: Next big one, and this one is so important. This one is so important, but it's perspective—

Nick Friend: Oh, big one.

Patrick Shanahan: on how long you take. Now we had a post in our Facebook group. I've not asked permission to read this. So I'm gonna keep this. He won't care about the numbers but I'm not gonna use his name 'cause we didn't ask him. But I wanna quote this post because there is a huge contrast between how people in general but certainly how artists and photographers think their business could and should grow versus how it actually goes. And I think this is an incredible summation of reality for anyone that's really trying to grow a business.

Patrick Shanahan: And I quote: "2017 was my first year here on ASF. 35 people signed up for my newsletter and eight people bought something. It was a painfully long slow beginning, but I stuck with it. I followed the ASF marketing plan as much as I could. I posted to social media daily.

I did emails weekly when I could. And this year I added live videos and front yard art shows. My goal for 2021 is to jump in with both feet into the six-figure club." And so he posted this little spreadsheet and it's got 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020. He's got total visits, new contacts, orders, sales, Facebook followers, Instagram followers, email list.

So let's just go over the sales. So first year, $728. Second year 2018 $5,147. Third year 2019, $12,531. 2020, $47,069. And then he's got his email stats and his Facebook follower stats, like I said, I'm not gonna read those now.

Nick Friend: The key point there, three years to get to what was it? Was it 15,000? Is that what you said?

Patrick Shanahan: 12,531.

Nick Friend: Okay, three years to get to 12,000 a year. Like in the third year he got 12,000.

Patrick Shanahan: Yes.

Nick Friend: And then he went to 47.

Patrick Shanahan: Yes.

Nick Friend: Yeah, so—

Patrick Shanahan: We should preface that too, with a full-time job.

Nick Friend: With a full-time job, exactly. So, this was on the side but what does every artist and photographer think, right? And many of you listening, and this is the part to really sit up in your chair and pay attention because most people think that year one should have looked like year three or year four, otherwise you're a failure.

Patrick Shanahan: So I'm about to say his name. So I'm not gonna say it, I'm gonna follow your lead. But this individual that we're talking about, his first year he sold $700, right? How many people out there have thought about or are thinking about quitting or that they're a failure because their first year that's all they did.

Nick Friend: He started from nothing, side business begins. You don't know what you're doing. The odds of the first content, this is another important point. The odds of the very first content that you release taking off and working really well is almost zero. It's so close to zero that I might as well even call it zero.

All that is, is a line in the water. It's like, you're putting bait out there, right. And it's always telling you is what direction to go next. That's all it is. And so, and that's what it was for him. And so what did he do? He learned in that year and then he got to 4,000 and then he got to 12,000.

Each year he's learning more, okay. This is the content that's really working better than the old, the first stuff I was doing. Nobody cared about that. And then what happened? We know that he really got onto the right content. That was the big move, the big change in 2020. And that's where he popped at 47,000.

But just, well, I'm just saying guys like the normal way of things, the normal way is it takes three to five years. That's it. If you're not going into a business with a three to five-year mentality of iterating your way there, don't even do it. Don't even do it. You're fooling yourself.

That's not how it works for anyone. The norm is three to five years in every industry not just art, every single business in every industry. It's every business I've ever ran. You've ever ran, Pat and anybody out there that's ever had success, they will all tell you that. Yes, could you find a unicorn every once in a blue moon? Of course, but they're unicorns for a reason.

Patrick Shanahan: There's almost none of them, and it's a big lie that's perpetrated out there. And the number one reason—

Nick Friend: The number one reason—

Patrick Shanahan: is this perspective that we're talking about, perspective. Because if you don't have the right information in your head about what it takes, you can really get yourself down.

Nick Friend: Is it my talent? Is it this? What's wrong with me? Why can't I sell more? Why is that guy selling a hundred grand? When you hear a story about someone else, you know what I mean? That's not at it. It's like you gotta go through your journey and it's gonna be three to five years.

Patrick Shanahan: Yep. Once you start selling online, and honestly this is the number one reason that artists and photographers fail, because they've been fed some sort of lie that it's really easy, and you just start a website and fish jumping in the boat and everything else. And it's like, look, there's no shortcut. There's never been a shortcut. If you're looking for one, you're setting your expectations this way. It's a cancer that will take all of your entire body and leads you to failure and unhappiness, right.

Nick Friend: Honestly, we see it time and time again. But once you have it aligned correctly, oh, are you in a good spot. Oh, are you in a good spot. Because you know, it's gonna be a grind. Early on, it's gonna be a grind. There's no getting away from the grind. I use the example. I have a three-year-old and a five-year-old, okay.

Things are tough right now, okay. I mean, and they're getting slightly easier from where they were a year ago, right. Or two years ago. So I've got a guy in diapers. I still can't leave them unsupervised but every little bit of time, every little bit further momentum and getting going, things get easier.

Things get easier. Things get easier. It's just that early season, so.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, it's a marathon, not a sprint. That's the key thing, right. And there's a comment on here. "Any advice on staying motivated?" The best advice that I have for staying motivated during the hard times of entrepreneurship is think about if you've gotta write these things down, that's fine.

But like, think about the wins that you've had, the customers that you've made happy, right, with your art, with your products and remember that, okay. And just, and remember that if your business is moving forward and you're making some people happy and you're doing better than you were doing a year ago or two years ago, that is good.

 You're going in the right direction. You might not be going as fast in the direction that you want but as long as you're going in the right direction, you're always gonna end up in the right spot. That's the thing. People get so impatient and they're like, "I'm failing, I'm failing.

It's like, but wait a minute, you did 1000 in sales and then what'd you do last year? Oh, I did 5,000. It's like, okay, you just took some major steps forward there. Yeah, but it's not 50,000 like that guy, right. And it's like, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Like you're making progress, progress compounds.

You're learning, compounds like compound interest, right. In the same way, it stacks on top. And that's how you get better and better. And so that's really important as you're trying to move forward and maintain your motivation.

Nick Friend: Yeah, and another thing for staying motivated, you've gotta clip the haters out of your life that are telling you that you're never gonna make it.

You just don't stand a chance and you have to get around some people that are going through the same struggle that you are. It seems like this is coming from the Facebook group. So don't worry, you're gonna have it. But you have to have some positive motivation to help you along, right?

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, don't get down on yourself.

Nick Friend: If you are actually going in the right direction. If you are going in the right direction do not get down on yourself. It's really pressure over time.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. Always. Which dovetails up our next one perfectly which is, the consistent work on your business marketing all year long. If I could give you one thing, if I could give you one thing only it would be consistent work on your business which is really just your marketing all year long.

And everyone, I mean, I talked... I honestly believe that in 2020, I talked to more artists and photographers than just about anyone out there I've got to be in the top 1% you do too. I mean, just, just sheer number of conversations. And how many times I hear, I tried such and such. I tried such and such, it didn't work.

Oh, really well, how long did you do it for? And if they're a customer and they're complaining about something, I log into their analytics and I look at their account and they did it for a week and a half, or they did it for a month and a half and they throw their hands up and they say, this is just not working.

It's not for me. If you don't understand how important the consistency piece is, you're in a bad place. You're just in a bad, bad place. I don't care if it's one hour a week that you had to give to the business. I don't care if it's two, five, 10 you have to do it 52 weeks in a row.

You have to do it consistently. You can move mountains by daily incremental work consistently. It sounds cliche, I get it, but it's the only thing that works. It's the only thing that ever has worked. And it's you pair the consistency in your marketing working on growing your business with the perspective and you're cooking with gas.

You're cooking with gas. I mean, there's no other way to say it. I mean, I feel like I'd beat this point non-stop all year long, but I can't stop. I can't stop.

Nick Friend: I'd love to add a little bit of color to it with just saying that, it's not just the fact that it's good for your business to do consistent marketing.

Like you have to do it, right? I'll go back to the compounding, right? It's the learning that you're getting that is making your business actually move faster, even though you haven't seen it in the numbers yet because you're learning like, wow, now I know why all my last year's social media posts were so terrible, right.

I had no idea, but now I know. Now I know, 'cause I'm seeing what's actually really working or now I know why that content that I was trying to push on everybody wasn't the right content. Like no wonder they weren't buying my work. No wonder my emails weren't resonating and all that.

This is the stuff that really compounds this knowledge. And the only way you get this knowledge is by doing the consistent work. You've gotta do it. You can't shortcut it.

Patrick Shanahan: No, there isn't a shortcut. Okay, so that gets into the high-level stuff. Next, we can talk about some trends that I think it's gonna dictate success in 2021.

I mean, they're that critical. The first one, covered it in the last episode, covering it again. It is video by which I mean leveraging video in all facets to market and sell your work represents the single biggest disruption to how art and photography are sold in the last, probably 50 years. Step one to understanding all of this is just understand it.

Step two is to embrace it completely and start working on it all year long. So our earlier points about consistency. And the premise of video, okay, it's just more efficient and effective than any other communication method that exists. And when I'm talking about both one-to-one and especially at scale one to many, okay.

And if a task normally takes an hour, it can usually be accomplished in 20 minutes with video. Comparing the task of doing it via video versus sending emails or having phone calls or any of those. If a normal sales cycle for you to sell a piece would be six months with traditional marketing methods, you could probably shorten that to a month with video.

It's just, it's more efficient, it's more effective. It is a catalyst. And leveraging live video, okay, whether it's done to consultatively sell on a one-to-one Zoom with somebody or a FaceTime or whatever or a live art show or leveraging it in your regular everyday creative marketing, showing live painting, walking to a photo location if you're a photographer, landscape photographers, talking about your process, whatever video needs to be leveraged, okay.

It needs to be leveraged in 2021. You need to do thousands of them, okay. That is literally the bar. If you have done none of them, it's a new year, it's time to start. Here's your resolution. If you've done 10 of them, it's time to do a hundred a hundred you're on the march to a thousand, okay.

When you use this lens, when you set the bar up there again like all these points, dovetail, perspective, consistency then you're gonna set your mind in the right place and you're gonna keep going. And is it nerve wracking at first? Oh, is it nerve wracking at first? Is it fraught with technical difficulties? Oh, is it fraught with technical? Okay, yes you will likely play to empty rooms with each session though, you will get better, okay.

And, again, we practice what we preach on this one. Look no further than what we're doing right now. I mean, how many hours have you, have I been on video today? And do you think it's for our health? I hate being on video. You don't like it much more than I do, but guess what? Why are we doing it? Because it is that effective, okay.

It is more effective. It is more efficient. It is a catalyst. And I'm not kidding. I am going to have every single solitary Art Storefronts member do hundreds of them this year, hundreds. And maybe I won't get anyone to a thousand, maybe I will. Gretchen put a comment here earlier. Gretchen's got into a thousand, okay.

Gretchen's got into a thousand. But you don't understand how much stuff you have to learn, right? Does your heart even elevate a beat anymore by the way?

Nick Friend: Not at all.

Patrick Shanahan: Now it's utter total routine. Utter total routine, and let me tell you, you have 75 different technical difficulties ahead of time.

And you're just like turning the knobs in the airplane. Yep, yep, airlocks okay. Yep, yep, flying done. And it takes a while to get there and it takes a while to work on your pitch and it takes a while to work on your merchandising. Next point, next point. But do you have anything else on video? I mean, talk about something that's fundamentally changed—

Nick Friend: It's just remarkable to appreciate what it is. You always say this and I think it's so important. The best way to sell art traditionally has always been in person,

Always will be. I mean, in person for any goods is usually the easiest way to get a sale, right? The person can see it, feel it, touch it. You can talk to them, you can sell them, you can build a relationship. The next best thing right behind that is live video, is video in general, but even live video on top of that is where they can interact with you. It's the next, it's the closest thing. And it's such an incredible innovation that has happened to where there is actually something that bridges the gap between, like in-person sales and the cold, faceless, nameless internet transaction on just a webpage, which is a big gap.

And you get to bridge that gap and most importantly become your own like retail store yourself, your own art gallery, right? Where instead of being on the main street, in your city or town, you're on main street at the internet. And you get to open your store up and talk about your products and show them and all that stuff. And that is unbelievable.

Patrick Shanahan: You'll end up hearing about it. "The New York Times" and "The Wall Street Journal" and all the rest of those publications will start talking about how video commerce is forever changing the world. And you'll laugh at that because you're gonna be a year down the road already.

You're already gonna have the reps and sets which are not easy to replace, right? Like learning how to do this, getting comfortable being comfortable on camera working on your pitch, all of it. It takes reps and sets, zero shortcuts, zero shortcut, right? The only way you can do it is learning how to do it.

It's like kite boarding or something, right? Like really hard to do, no novice jumps on that thing. And it's the same thing with this. So it is one of these single solitary most important things that you could be focusing on in 2021. And trust me, you're gonna see us doing it. You'll see us doing it.

And then some that ain't stopping anytime soon. Once you understand, and you've taken the red pill on video you're ready to talk about merchandising because 2020 is gonna be the year of merchandising. 2020 is gonna be a decade of merchandising. And you better have your work ready to go as samples.

If you're selling merch, you better have samples. You'd better get comfortable being able to show your work. Talk about your work. Talk about the differences between the media types. How does it hang on the wall? How does it ship? Is it ready? What are the nuances between one media type and another? What are the differences between the sizes? What do the various different merch things look like? If the artists and photographers that are running around out there thinking that you are selling a 2D image and that that is sufficient, that you could just post that crap on your Instagram page and it's gonna work, you are missing the boat, okay. No one is buying a 2D image, okay. No one's buying a screensaver or a cell phone background.

They are buying the thing that goes on the wall. They're buying the thing that they can touch in their hand.

And if you don't have the capability of being able to show it off, articulate it, talk about it, you are missing the boat. A little hyperbolic on my part, but I mean it. You know, how fired up I am. I'll just start up another merchandising.

Nick Friend: I mean, look, another point that just drives me nuts, it's like, who gave everybody the idea years back to just post an image, like on your website here's the 2D static image, right? When the customer is buying a canvas wrap gallery wrap or a metal print, right.

Or an acrylic and with a frame or without you know what I mean? All these different elements that is the finished good that we're after. And it really matters. You know what I mean? It really, really matters. Like people are not there to just like, "Oh, I'll take that thing on anything." It's like, no, the finished good really matters.

And if you're not showing it you're making a huge mistake. It's like the number one mistake in merchandising is you gotta show people what the actual product is. You have to show them. And so that's the purpose of what you're talking about.

Patrick Shanahan: It takes practice too, takes practice, right? I still work on it all the time. I got my pile down here, but I just, I don't wanna go get it. It's the end of the day. The next topic we get into and you should probably take this one 'cause you got your passion fired up on this one is the pivot. Okay. Is the pivot. And we should probably define it as we're using it, okay.

I mean, it's sort of a broad term. You wanna tackle it—

Nick Friend: Was I really that fired up? Was I fired up earlier today on it.

Patrick Shanahan: You were fired up earlier today, yeah.

Nick Friend: I'm always kinda fired up, but yeah, I'm really fired up on this one. I think this is, I really think that this is a big one. I think that this is probably the biggest thing that has gotten in the way of the vast majority of failures that are out there or people failing right now, or not selling enough, not selling what they want or what do they wanna get to.

It's a big deal. So define the pivot for me first. And then I'll rant on this a bit.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, so I guess you would say the origins are in the startup community, right. And the business startup, tech startup community and you would come to market with a business idea. And as a result of coming to the market, you got these learnings and the learnings told you, actually, Patrick I don't like that product A that you're selling but what what's that over there? What's that B over there? And because you took it to the market you realize that people wanted B, they don't want A and so you pivot away from A to B, right? That's sort of a digital way to think about it. A way to think about it in the art and the photography world is you're creating a subject material. You take the subject material to market. This was what you had a passion to create.

This is what you wanted to create but people are telling you, they don't want it. They don't necessarily want it or maybe they do want it but there's a lot of competition in that niche. Or maybe they do want it, but the sales are not mapping to your expectations, what you'd like them to be.

And so a pivot is essentially a way to try out new material, a new direction, a new subject material, a new way of taking a photograph, a new lens combination, right? Like a new brush or a new medium or whatever it might be a new subject material and see whether or not you have a hotter product than the original one you do, okay.

And that's the idea of it. And I would say that it is as important for the artists selling a million dollars a year as it is for the one selling 500,000, as it is for the one selling 50 and five and hasn't even sold $5 yet. It is a critical part about understanding new styles and all the greatest artists of all time have done it right.

And I always use the example. And then you take over of, why am I blanking on his name? It's been a long day, Picasso, okay. Picasso died with 45,000 pieces. 45,000 pieces were in his inventory that he didn't sell that his family had to squabble over. And what do you think those were? Those were his pivots, right? He kept doing this and trying these new styles and to take him to the market and getting the feedback until he arrived at a home run, until he arrived at another home run and you have to be doing this.

And there's so many artists and photographers out there that don't do it. They get bought in on the subject material that they're creating because they're just like, this is my hill to die on. This is what I've created. I'm taking it to market and they're not getting the reaction that they want.

And what do they do? They instantaneously internalize all of it. And they take it as criticism. You think it's speaking to your talent, right? And the fact that you're not good with the lens and that you don't know what you're doing with your camera or that you are not talented as an artist.

And you do not have the proper composition or definition, your brush strokes and what you're missing is it's not that they don't like this particular or they don't like you or your style or your talent. It just, they don't like what you're putting out there. You need to provide something different, right.

You can't internalize it as criticism. You gotta try something different. You have to pivot.

Nick Friend: Yeah. And I like to think about this from the lens of a businessperson, entrepreneur, right, which will take us completely out of the emotional art side. Okay, what you normally do if you're gonna start a business with a product, right.

Is you're gonna create a prototype, okay. You're gonna create a prototype and you're gonna get it out there, so the potential customers that you think this product is going to be a solution for, right. And then you find out what happens. You sell some maybe, right. And then that's just version one.

Then you come out with version two, three, four, five. You might do all of that. You might have 30 versions in your first. I've had that before. I've had 30, probably 40 versions. I remember at Breathing Color, when we were coming up with new canvases, we might've had 30 versions before we got to the right one with the right white point and everything that we wanted on there.

And, so when you think about it, Pat, what are most artists and photographers doing? They're going to market with their prototype their V1 prototype, and then they're going, that's it. What I want you guys to have—

Patrick Shanahan: And then they quit, right?

Nick Friend: Yeah, and it's like they quit. What I want you to have is a prototype mentality instead.

I want you guys to have a prototype mentality where everything you are selling right now is just a prototype. If you can flick that switch in your brain right now, your whole world just changed. You are only selling prototypes right now unless you're selling a hundred thousand dollars or let's say 50,000 or a hundred thousand dollars, right, you are in prototype land.

Maybe you haven't done marketing and put the gasoline behind your current content. I'll give you that. But if you have put a proper marketing strategy and plan behind what you have and your sales are not quite there yet all you've got is a prototype. But the truth of the matter is, like you said, Pat, the people that we know that are the most successful pivoting all the time, prototyping all the time.

They were prototyping at a hundred, 200, $300,000 a year in sales, they were prototyping. They were prototyping throughout the whole fourth quarter, taking advantage of the biggest art selling time of the year with prototypes and everything they already have. Why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you? You wanna talk about like revenue expansion, the biggest way, one of the biggest ways to expand your revenue is to expand your market size.

And the way you expand your market size is by appealing, having products that will appeal to a wider audience. If your current content right now appeals to this, because you can't get it out there, add a bunch of stuff and make it this, you know what I mean? And so think having that prototype mentality just makes you realize, like, wait a minute, I'm gonna have version 40.

And you know what? You're gonna have version 60. And fuck and version 500.

Patrick Shanahan: That's normal.

Nick Friend: Because your mind should never stop getting better, right. It should never stop. Every company that exists is trying to make a better product, right over time, right. Even Coca-Cola, you could even go like, what's one of the most static products you've ever saw? A Coca-Cola can.

But what is Coca-Cola doing? They bought every other beverage company that you could possibly imagine, because why? The growth eventually every product has its ceiling. They hit it. And they're like, we gotta buy Dasani Water, Dr. Pepper. I don't know all the brands but they literally had every single Vitamin Water.

You know what I mean? And so whatever prototype you currently have has its own ceiling. And by testing new prototypes, you're gonna be able to test the ceilings of all of these. And what's amazing, Pat, for artists and photographers is all of this stuff can be done at the same time with almost no investment, right? I'm not telling you to go out if you're a photographer and go do like this massive photo shoot. I'm telling you to go take one picture of something that you think is highly marketable.

You know what I mean? And then you'll take another one and another one. Of course, you'll probably take a bunch while you're there, but I'm not telling you to just like make this big thing out of it that gives us like a hundred hours. It's like, what's the least amount of time that you can take to get a really good shot of something where a market exists.

You don't have to create the market, it exists. There's people passionate about that market and you can get in on it and get prototypes going for all of that. That is what I would recommend.

Patrick Shanahan: We've danced around this subject all year. We haven't gone completely all in on it by any capacity imaginable, but now's the year to, right? Like people need constructive, structured how to approach it, how to look at it.

How do I know I've gotten enough feedback on my work before I try something new? Ways to think about it that literally decouple them from just the emotional aspect of it and the emotional aspect of it more than anything else. For whatever reason when it's your creation, when it's your baby, right.

And, you have the artistic brain photographer or artist, it's very, very hard to internalize this concept, right. Or you're working against some sort of a wall that you run into. And we see it time and time and time again, but it's just like anything else, right? It's just a different way of doing things.

And when you figure it out, you have this epiphany moment. And we talk about there's not a lot of businesses where it's as easy to pivot as art and photography. Like, let me tell you, use Nick's example. Ask him how expensive it is to put a new canvas together or maybe you make knickknacks and you gotta go get like an injection molding or—

Nick Friend: Or what if you could write a bunch of software for a feature.

Patrick Shanahan: Oh, don't even get me started.

Nick Friend: I mean, your talk—

Patrick Shanahan: A startup first are just—

Nick Friend: Is there anything easier. I do not think if there is anything easier to prototype in art and photography. And guess what? No one's doing it. No one is focused on it. No, one's doing it. And you know what? I'll tell you what, our Art Storefronts members, they will be.

And we're gonna give them the entire playbook on how to think about it and everything. I honestly think that should be our next session on next Tuesday. I think it probably supersedes the premises talk that we wanna have for that group. Just because getting started on new pivots is so high leverage.

It's so high leverage like the sooner that you can get started on them and the more that you can get in the water the better. And so there's a question from somebody in our private Facebook group, it says, "How often do you recommend a pivot change things up? I was told to stick to one identity. What's your take?" That's what we are completely disagreeing with. I don't know who told you that or how much money they've made selling art, right? Inputs, be careful who you listen to. Be careful who you listen to. Because why is everybody that we know that is the most successful pivoting all the time, prototyping all the time.

That's what we know and those are facts. I can't tell you people that have just stuck to one thing. Like if you said, "Nick, you've been in this industry for 20 years, can you show me a hundred people that have stuck to one thing from day one and just went all in on it and been really successful." I can't do that. I literally cannot do it. It's not possible, you know, it's the exact opposite. So I'm literally saying that the right advice is the exact opposite of that advice. And I wanna know who gave it and how successful they were? And who knows, maybe they were one of those unicorns that that's all they did, but you're not gonna find many of those.

So pivot often, because it's a prototype, there's no rule on it's like one a month. It's like, dude, how quickly can you paint? How quickly can you get things in the water. Pat, if it were you and I, together on a business and I was the painter and you were the marketer, you would be literally telling me, "Wait, Nick, okay, how quick can you paint? Okay, I can make one every eight hours."

"All right, how fast do you wanna grow this business?" "I wanna grow it really fast, Pat." And you'd say, "Okay, I'm gonna give you a list of 50 different types of content that you're gonna paint and I need them all." And I'm gonna look at the list and it's gonna be every popular thing that you could possibly come up with.

There'll be Trump, Biden, this, that, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Santa Claus, Jesus.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, we'll probably get a little bit into that I always use the green contenders.

Nick Friend: You would create this list of 50 things or a hundred. And you'd be like, I want all of those at my disposal. I'm gonna get them all in the water and we're gonna just ride whatever rides.

And then we're gonna go deeper on whatever we find works with Nick, because your particular way of painting and our particular way of selling it and marketing it, whatever is going to resonate with in certain niches the most, and we're gonna figure out what those are and the faster we do it, the faster we're gonna grow.

Am I wrong? Or is that exactly what we would do?

Patrick Shanahan: No, it definitely is. I mean, look, you're skating on thin ice with saying like, "Well, you can't just, you know, it takes a long time to develop a subject material and an understanding." Yes, of course it does. And we're not poo-pooing that, but the larger point is, is that like, you have a talent to create, okay, you need to have an audience that is responsive to the work.

You can actually flip the entire script on its head. And instead of saying, "I just love flowers and I love macro photography. So I'm gonna take macro photography of flowers and that's what I'm gonna do." And you can say, "That's my hill I'm gonna die on." Or you can say, "Let me go find some people that are diehard, crazy passionate about flowers, okay."

And so you hit Facebook and you look at every Facebook group for flowers and you figure out that for some reason, the phalaenopsis, the white phalaenopsis orchid group, or just the phalaenopsis orchid group has like 60 million followers. And so what do you do? You are now the new specialist in phalaenopsis orchid photography, right? And it's, you started with demand, okay, and you worked backwards.

You started with demand. You started with this diehard, crazy lunatic, tribal people and you work backwards and nobody ever does that.

Nick Friend: Yeah, and you don't create the market, right? You find the market that exists, the demand that exists, the passion over a subject matter, that exists and then you fit into it, right? That's the way to think about the pivots.

And Gretchen has a great point on here, she said, "many people like pivoting and style are not the same thing." Exactly. Exactly. We're not talking about changing the way that you paint or changing the way that you shoot or anything like that. It's literally just, instead of going from general landscapes, right, go to something very specific, like a specific, famous bridge in your own town that people love that you understand that they love 'cause you live in that area, right. So the odds are, you might strike a chord there and that's the way of thinking of it.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, it's sort of insane to think, and there's some other comments in here you can see, to think you have to stick to this one thing and that's your style and that's what you've done and that's the hill you're gonna die on, those are not good odds.

Those are not good odds. And what famous artists going back hundreds of years, have you not seen pivot to a bunch of different styles? Right, like history is replete with examples of this being the norm for every successful artist you've ever seen, right?

We're the biggest contemporary guys. Damien Hirst goes from the dots on a painting to giant sharks and tanks, right, and everything else.

Nick Friend: Salvador Dali, I went to an exhibit of his, and it's the same thing. It's like, you look at his earlier work and his later work, completely different.

Patrick Shanahan: Hey, stop. Somebody's like pounded into your head. It's like a vicious feedback loop. Like, this is what I wanna do. This is what creatively inspires me. And then you take it to market. Ooh, I'm criticized. I'm not gonna do anything anymore. It's gotta stop.

Nick Friend: You can look at somebody like Wyland, right, who is all like ocean, like oceanography, what would you call it? It's like the whale.

Patrick Shanahan: The whale guy.

Nick Friend: Whale arts, things like that, right? And so when you figure out that, you're really there and you found that niche and it's amazing, and it can scale, then you can go deep on it. But by that point, you're already at hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales of validation. That is the case. Do you know what I mean? You don't do that and go, "Oh, the way that I'm gonna get there is just I'm gonna pick one thing and I'm gonna do exactly what he did." You don't realize that the way that people eventually get to the niche that takes them to such a high level is by prototyping, right?

Patrick Shanahan: Yep.

Nick Friend: It's just by trying different stuff in prototyping.

Patrick Shanahan: Yep. Huge one. And it's one that everyone needs to hear, right?

Nick Friend: You're right, I do get fired up on it.

Patrick Shanahan: I love, I actually love it. It's part of the reason why you see my energy because it's the concept of prototyping and pivoting is so entrepreneurial. You know what I mean? It's like, if you've done it a lot, which I have and you have, it's like you get where everybody is out there and you understand don't sit there and try to force it.

How many times have you and I tried to force products on people in like 20 years back? You know what I mean? Like you get it. And you're like, no, no, no, this is gonna work.

Nick Friend: It's completely awesome. What do you mean you don't want it?

Patrick Shanahan: What do you mean you don't want it? And you just keep trying to—

Nick Friend: You don't want this.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, and you keep trying to find ways to get people, to get it. And eventually you're banging your head against the wall for so long that you finally allow yourself to pivot. And then all of a sudden, the next three or six months of your life, are like... All of a sudden you went from going uphill like pulling a tugboat uphill, and then all of a sudden you start going downhill and you go, "Oh my gosh, what was I doing? What was I doing?" The sooner that I can get the information from the market about what's right about, what's really resonating for what I'm trying to provide, the better. And then you wanna get everything out of your way. You're just like, "Oh my gosh, let's get to market as fast as possible. Get me out of the way," right?

Yeah, I heard this analogy on a podcast I was listening to a couple weeks ago and this guy went to see this professor speak like lauded professor of psychology, amazingly accomplished, PhD, all the rest of it, multiple best-selling book, author and everything else. And he was sort of talking about his books and he opened up the session with this huge stack of paper like this. And it's high up like this and everyone starts like, "What is it? Is it his next book? Oh my God, look at how thick that thing is, it's insane." He goes, "You know what this is? My stack of rejection letters. No one ever wants to talk about that, do they?" That is the stack. It was his real stack of rejection letters for every single salted publisher that said, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no." Different books, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no." Did he quit writing? No, he didn't. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no," like all the way up there, right? People aren't told these things.

Nick Friend: No, they're not always told that's everywhere. It's like, Airbnb just went public and it's like one of these, like you can read the stories. It's like 36 out of 40 venture capital firms said "No way, we're not touching it. This business is going nowhere." 36 rejections, right? And four people went after it. I mean, that's how it goes. That's how it goes.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. All right, I think that sums us up.

Nick Friend: All right.

Patrick Shanahan: That's the list, that's your follow list in 2021?

Nick Friend: It was a fiery one.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, it was a fiery one, it was good.

Nick Friend: It's good to get back at it.

Patrick Shanahan: No, it's way good to get back at it. It's a new year for us as anyone else. I gotta get out after I'm not used to going on. Hold on. It's coming in. We haven't done this in so long. I started forgetting everything. Thanks for listening and have a great day.

Nick Friend: I can't even remember how you stand it. Thanks for listening and have a great day.

Thank you everyone. Good to see you. We'll see you again.