No art marketing days lost, how social media is going all in on the creator economy, and finding new revenue sources through commissions

In this episode, Patrick and Nick discuss the concept of 'no lost days' and emphasize the importance of maximizing opportunities to market art and photography, particularly around major holidays. They explore upcoming holidays and the seasonal art buying trends, stressing the necessity of being active in the market. The episode also covers the tremendous potential of social media for artists, highlighting updates from Instagram aimed at supporting content creators and boosting their visibility. Real-life examples of successful artist marketing strategies, including the effectiveness of authentic, low-production content, are shared. Additionally, innovative revenue streams such as commissions, personal branding, and diverse merchandise are discussed, with insights on how artists can receive valuable feedback and direction from their audience.

Podcast Transcribe

Patrick Shanahan: One of the most important things to us is this notion of no lost days. We don't want you losing any time, any opportunities, any moments where it's effective to be marketing your art and photography. It's important to talk about what holidays we have on the calendar coming up. You have a ton of opportunity for new homes, downsizing, upsizing, new towns, and so that really spurs on a big art buying season in general. The year is almost halfway done. Where is my art business? How social media marketing is literally going all in on the creator economy. The constant reminder that we just have to keep saying is that when the biggest art selling times are happening, you got to be in the game. You cannot miss these.

Nick Friend: Welcome back to another edition of the Art Marketing Podcast. I'm excited to keep exploring this new show format that you and I have been doing, which is touching a little bit on current events, on time of year, on what we're thinking about right now, and what we think you should be thinking about right now and paying attention to.

Patrick Shanahan: One of the most important things to us is this notion of no lost days, right? We don't want you losing any time, any opportunities, any moments where it's effective to be marketing your art and photography. To have the wind at your back is one of the things that I like to say. As we're recording this here in the beginning of May, where has the time gone? Unbelievable. This is a very important time, and all the time is an important time, but it's important to talk about what holidays we have on the calendar coming up. Kids are about to get out of school, we're about to get into the summer season, and summer is when the most people move. You have a ton of opportunity for new homes, downsizing, upsizing, new towns, and so that really spurs on a big art buying season in general. But we also have some big holidays coming up that are huge art selling days: Mother's Day, Father's Day, and all the craziness of the summer. Yes, you have the Fourth of July in there, yes, you have Memorial Day in there, yes, Amazon Prime Day, which has turned out to be a huge e-commerce holiday made up out of thin air. God bless Amazon, very intelligent there. It becomes more important than ever as you say, the year's almost halfway done. Where is my art business? What have I been working on? What's been working? And what are the next six months going to look like, right? Especially as we get into the all too important end of the year, which is the biggest art selling time of the year every year. One of the things that we found over the ten years of doing this is if we get way ahead, okay, if we get way, way ahead of these holidays, if we get way ahead of the Q4 and we're banging the drum incessantly, you got to get ready, you got to get geared up, you got to go. Our customers end up being more motivated to take their marketing seriously, to not come off the gas, to not say, "Oh, summer's here, I can just forget about doing everything," and then when fall comes, I'll get back at it.

Nick Friend: Yes, exactly. And I think just that constant reminder, as you were going through all of the big art selling holidays that are coming up here right ahead of us, and then end of summer, and then into the fourth quarter, it's just like the constant reminder that we just have to keep saying is that when the biggest art selling times are happening, which is around these holidays, you got to be in the game. You cannot miss these. The biggest art sellers out there on our platform and off are taking full advantage of these. When you see a direct correlation between people, like artists who are marketing very well around these biggest art selling times of the year and ones who are not, you just got to get out of the weeds and understand at a high level that you might be thinking about how to make a better reel today or a better TikTok post or Facebook post or whatever it is that you're doing. If you're not taking advantage of the biggest art selling times of the year and you're not ready to do that and you don't have a plan, like Mother's Day is right here. Have you been executing on your Mother's Day strategy? Have you been taking advantage of this? This is a huge art selling holiday. If you are not selling a bunch of art right now as we speak during this time, you're not taking advantage of the Mother's Day art selling rush. You're out of the game. Even if you have a website, even if you've done SEO and you're in the search engines, even if you've done whatever it is, if you are not selling right now, you're not in the game. And you got to be in the game.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, the momentum really is the key, right? And we have to incessantly bang the drum. You cannot miss these holidays. Every single solitary one builds. It's like training for a marathon when the marathon is that end of the year. And the more you get these reps and sets in, the bigger and faster your business is going to grow, the more new customers you are going to acquire. The more new customers you acquire between now and the end of the year, the more folks you have to email, okay, when you have a Black Friday special, when you have end-of-year deals, when the end-of-year buying season is going right. So it's really important. We'll come with some more creative content. I've been able to witness over the years some of our customers that are really good at taking advantage of holidays. I have this one gal in mind, Kim Zabia, shout out to her. She'll sell like 75 to 150 individual small Mother's Day custom pieces every single solitary Mother's Day. Everyone does it, and they're hand-painted flowers, small, she does them in like 30 minutes a piece and does so incredibly well. And so I've got to see people that truly understand how to take advantage of the holidays, but then also self-gifting on the holidays you guys cannot be ignored. "My art doesn't fit moms, my art doesn't fit dads, my art doesn't fit this holiday, my art doesn't..." That's not the game. And it's not even about either like, "I don't want to be one of these artists that's constantly on sale, right, and is constantly running these sales and you're making me feel like a used mattress salesman." Every time there are one of these holidays, whether you're discounting or not, or you're just running a promotion letting people know you exist, letting people know that you have art for sale, the wind is at your back. We can see, and I should mention, we have a

little bit over 14,000 customers now. Are we the biggest art thing in the game? No, but our data is starting to get significant. Like we have enough transactions going down on the platform that we can see the spikes, and it doesn't matter what type of promotion that you're running. Do not let that get in the way from you saying, "I've got to take advantage of these holidays because it's just a wind at your back."

Nick Friend: Yeah, and I think from a data standpoint, you make a good point there. When I think about any artist website platforms, like where you're empowering an artist to sell direct to market through their website by marketing digitally and all that stuff, there is no one that's even near our size in or data that's out there. So we're seeing data specifically from the artists and photographers that are trying to build their own direct business and take control of their own destiny. So that's why this data and the things that we're coming out with are important in terms of understanding the trends.

Patrick Shanahan: 100%. And I'm not sure if you saw the recent quarterly reporting from Etsy, but Etsy was not good. They're down quite a bit, and I contrast Etsy's numbers with our numbers and say, is this just reflective of some broader economic trends or what's going on? And our folks are still growing. I'm going to talk about some customer interviews that I've been doing a little bit later in the show. You'll hear from them in some of these interviews, like their businesses are still growing. What you notice is that contrast these two things: you throw your art up onto a marketplace and you don't do much else, you're just hoping people discover you that way, versus actively working on a business in which you own everything, okay? And not coming off the gas of the marketing, you're less susceptible to the vicissitudes of what happens in the market, any of the ups and downs that are taking place in the market, because you're the one that's actively marketing, right? You're not as subject because you're not competing against a marketplace that just goes for the ride based on the economy. You are doing your own job, your own marketing, getting more attention, and that process can go up. It does not matter what the on-the-ground art, economically speaking, doesn't matter what it looks like, because you're not competing against that. You're just competing against you: did I do more marketing? Did I acquire more new customers? Did I acquire more new email addresses? Have I done more in-person fairs or shows? So you can't let the facts on the ground interrupt your ground game because that's the only thing that matters. It's the only thing that matters. And we've seen that, our numbers reflect that, and it's exciting to see. It's exciting to see when you take control of the destiny of saying, "I'm going to keep growing, I'm just not going to stop." So I think that's really important.

Nick Friend: Yeah, there's so much to talk about within that. And you know, I think one of the things that's amazing that will last in any type of economy, and you really have to experience this personally, but buying a piece of art or any type of artistic item, whether it's like a merchandise item, like a puzzle or a mug or whatever it is from an artist that you like, when the artist does like the right marketing, and what I mean by that is like the right marketing, it's not how many posts a day and all that stuff that obviously plays a role, but it's more just like the way that the artist is connecting with their audience and the connection you feel as a buyer of their product. The joy that you get from, and this is my whole point, the joy that you actually get as a human buying that piece of art is a really big deal. It's amazing. It feels good. You feel good supporting the artist. You're not comparing prices anywhere. And that's the problem with the marketplaces, right? Marketplaces, it's like everybody else's art is one click away at a lower price, and it's like a race to the bottom. So it's just a whole different experience when you're selling direct. And like, I'm buying from you. I'm not sitting here going, "Wait a minute, how much is this art in comparison to other artists like this person?" And are they priced competitively? That has nothing to do with it. The only thing you're thinking about is how much you're willing to pay to have the joy of owning those pieces from that artist. And so I think that's a really important point when you're building a direct business. No matter what the economy is, people want to be happy. People enjoy buying things to make themselves happy. This is just the truth. The better you get, and it takes time, you have to learn what makes you tick from a marketing standpoint and get into your own rhythm and what resonates with your audience and what subject matter it might be and different things like that. That's where you've got to be like constantly trying to iterate and refine that over a period of time. And then that's when your results will get better and better. But this is, I think, what's going to be driving the creator economy going forward. This is the crux of what it is. And the better that you can do it as an artist, the better you're going to be doing in the future.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, I totally agree. And that gives us a nice little pivot point to some great news, okay? For all of you guys that are out there that are creators and anybody that's been watching any of my live broadcasts recently would know that I'm really hot for you guys as creators on Instagram to follow the head of Instagram. It's a weird thing that's unique to their platform. Some of the other social networks have CEOs, but the CEOs are never constantly creating content that is, "Hey, here are the changes that are happening on the platform, i.e., I'm reading the tea leaves for you. If you listen to what I'm saying, you're going to be doing significantly better." So Instagram, for some reason, I don't know why they decided to do it, has a head, and this guy Adam Mosseri, and I really encourage all artists and photographers to follow him because it's something that you can do tactically, which is going directly to the source. And so they had a huge announcement. And I should say, going directly to the source, because this is important to me. I see this guy make posts and then I see 35 news articles, Nick, pop up on all the tech blogs and Tech Meme and here, there, and post shared writing about this. And I'm like, "Why do I want to read their regurgitated version of it when I can just go to the source and read the tea leaves myself?" So I want to play this briefly. We can talk about it, talk about some of the bigger things that portends, and then just get on this notion of how social media marketing is literally going all in on the creator economy. And this has been happening for quite some time, but it's really ramped up. So let me just play this.

**Adam Mosseri:** Significant changes to how ranking works that you really should know about if you're a creator or an aggregator on Instagram. Now, we want to be the best platform for creators online, which means we need to do more to drive reach to creators who create original content, i.e., all of you guys. So one thing that we've started to do and we're going to be doing

more over time is something that we call "direct replace." So if we're going to recommend content, that is, show a photo or video to someone who doesn't follow the account that created it...

Patrick Shanahan: Can we just talk about this for a second? This is like the biggest thing that's happened in social media in the last two years. Maybe you're aware of it or loosely aware of it, but in the olden days, i.e., a year and a half ago, you created content and the only people that saw it were your followers. If you wanted more of your followers to see it, and it's some small percentage of your followers, if you wanted more of your followers to see it, it was pay to play. It was ads, and that's it. Otherwise, they weren't showing it. Now, in this new era that we've entered in, ushered in primarily by competition, TikTok's done a great job introducing competition in the market, Meta, they're doing more and more of showing your content to people that do not follow you. And I cannot tell you as like a lifelong social media marketer how profound this is, okay? Because it means you could start an Instagram account today. You could have two followers, you, your significant other, maybe you and your mother, okay? She supports you. I love you, Mom. And it will show your content on Instagram to people that it thinks will like that content, i.e., it knows people that are interested in what you do, in your niche, because the algorithm and the AI that's scanning your images, scanning your work, scanning your process videos, what you're doing, it knows people that like just that. So discovery for individual creators is literally at a level that we've never seen before. Let me keep playing the video.

**Adam Mosseri:** We're going to start now looking to see if we can find the original piece of content, if there is one, and if so, we're going to actually show that original piece of content instead of the content coming from the aggregator or the re-poster. Now, we might not always be able to find that original piece of content. Maybe it's posted on another platform, but as we get better at this over time, this should affect reach more and more for creators in a positive way and for those who repost other people's content in a negative way.

Patrick Shanahan: So people just don't even understand how big of a deal this is. Let me just explain this in plain English. You share your artwork and you have a small account, okay? The artwork is beautiful and catches someone's eye who is a professional social media marketer and has a big account. He calls them aggregators, we call them curators, doesn't matter. What would have happened in the past is they would have grabbed your content and shared it on their account, okay? Then that post, because the artwork is so creative, would have gone viral, all right? Now that's awesome for you because you're getting that free attention, but all of the following, all of the interaction, all of the engagements, the likes, the comments, the shares, the saves, the posts would have gone to that person who discovered your content and shared it, okay? That's how it used to be. What he's saying now is our technology has gotten so good that when you post your content, we are going to attribute that to you. You own it and we know you own it, okay? Then we see, okay, that someone else has shared your content and all of a sudden it's blowing up and exploding, okay? That's going to trigger a little alarm bell in the algorithm. It's going to go, "Whoa, this content is going viral." And then the algorithm is going to go, "Who created it? Do we know?" And then the algorithm is going to go, "Yeah, we do know who created it, right? It was Nick." Then they're going to redirect all of that traffic back to your account and start showing that post. This is like a significant deal, okay? Especially with creative artwork that inspires people or is timely or is melded to a social period of time or a big sporting event or any of these sorts of things. Because this is happening, you guys that in the past had something go viral, that virality is all now going to be redirected to you, the creator. This is a significant advancement. And let me tell you, they're all towing the line. When TikTok introduces something like this because their algorithm is the most advanced, Instagram instantaneously picks it up. Then YouTube shorts says, "I got to get on it." And then eventually Facebook is on it as well. So this is a big deal. And again, it all goes back to this notion of the creator economy, okay? And how it is absolutely exploding. And Instagram realizes, "I've got to go all in on this. I've got to go all in on this. I don't care about these bigger accounts. I want to reward the small guy because I know if I do that, more small guys will come to my platform, create more content, keep more eyeballs on it." And so we're getting into the "you scratch my back, I'll scratch your back" being a little bit more in balance rather than just "create, kill yourself creating on my platform, and maybe I'll toss you a bone every once in a while." It's shifting to, "Wait a minute, you're the lifeblood of this platform. We finally realized it. We know we need you. Let us give you some free attention." That is a big deal.

Nick Friend: Yeah, and I think first of all, a couple of points, right? Number one, the way that things are trending in favor of the creator, right? Yes, the creator of the content, the individual who is contributing to the platform is a, is just a huge deal, right? That's just a, that is so positive to think about. You, everybody who's listening individually, who's probably doing your art business out of your house, you have no employees or anything like that, you don't have the funds to go spend thousands of dollars on ads every single month and do all of that. And the fact that this is happening is democratizing the ability to build whatever your business is, in this case, an art business. Secondly, I think the big point is, or another big point is just stepping back and just realizing that the day and age that we're in with social media, because not everybody, people hear about social media, we talk to so many artists all the time, and they're like, "Oh yeah, social media, I'm supposed to be doing social media. I guess there's people on there or whatever." And they don't really understand. And it's, I think it's important for us to step back and take the time to define what this really is, like what this social media age really is and its importance historically, okay? And so to start with that, the way that we've talked about it is, and I think a lot of marketers out there talk about it, is it's the Fox News, CNN, ABC, NBC, take your pick. If you think about it in the context of TV and all the eyeballs historically that were on TV, and then ads would come on TV when you had to buy those ads and they're extremely expensive and all that stuff, otherwise you didn't really have any distribution, magazines, things like that, there was print and whatnot. But in this day and age with the internet, the social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, just go down the list, right? This is Main Street of the internet. This is those big media platforms. You have billions of people on these platforms every single day. You can't get away from it. We all see it everywhere. Everyone is face down on their phones all the time. You look over at a car at a traffic light, people are on their phones waiting for the light to get green. You're in line getting food, you go to dinner, couples, both husband and wife are on their phones. Moms pushing the strollers, walking the dogs, it's everywhere. It is literally everywhere all the time. And you as a creator are able to tap into this. This is such a big deal, right? And this is why understanding what's going on with social media and learning how to do social media better as an individual creator, like this is where you're gonna invest. You want to invest your time and get better at it because this is your opportunity. This is a real big opportunity. You actually, you don't have to go buy ads on TV or radio or print, which was cost prohibitive. And this is why the starving artist problem has existed for so long. How does someone getting started advertise? How do you get out there?

Patrick Shanahan: Exactly. You really had no options, and you needed a publisher, you needed galleries to do this stuff for you, aside from going and doing local art shows, which was only getting you limited distribution. And those are still great, don't get me wrong. We totally support those. We love when our customers are doing those, just because it's an easy way to get in front of eyeballs. Sometimes it's easier if you're having trouble getting started on social media to just go to a local art show. It doesn't matter if it's like a brewery on a Saturday market.

Nick Friend: Yeah, farmers market, exactly. Setting up a table at the beach without even a permit, right?

Patrick Shanahan: Exactly, all of the above. Just getting your art in front of eyeballs is always a good thing to get that direct feedback and grow your email list, have people do signups and all that stuff. But the whole purpose of getting those emails and seeing those people is to actually get them into your digital ecosystem, so to speak. Because once they're on your email list, it's a lot easier to get them to follow you on social media and start seeing your stuff. And now your audience is

 growing and all that. So it all ends up back in the digital space. But I think it's really important to understand that you as an individual and these social media platforms represent the biggest opportunity that artists have had in history. And everyone can do it. Everyone can do it. It's totally democratized. There's nothing stopping anyone. The only thing, the only reason some artists are doing better than others, obviously your product, your subject matter will help you a lot, the popularity of it will help you a lot, but it's just about your own knowledge and skill in being able to create some content that actually gets reached, that actually gets out there. And that's what you want to learn how to do better.

Nick Friend: Yeah, there's no question. And like, I've been doing this for a long time and especially encouraging and motivating, inspiring, teaching artists how to get better at telling their story on social media. And I know all the pushback. The algorithms are, I just don't understand them, they're all against me. I don't want to share what I had for breakfast or lunch. I'm not really techy, I don't like doing this. I don't live an interesting life. I don't really understand what to post or how to post or when to post or any of these things. This is just not my generation. And I understand all those arguments completely and there's a ton of validity to them. But you have to zoom out for a second and be contrarian about this whole thing. And I like leveraging an analogy in this. And the question I might ask you is, where are the fish, Nick? We have to go to where the fish are, okay?

Patrick Shanahan: Yes.

Nick Friend: And my analogy is, if we're fishermen, okay, we go down, our job is to go down to the boat in the morning, all right, drive the boat to where the fish are, get our lines in the water and try to catch as many as we can to feed our family. Okay, let's talk about that historically. Historically, you go back 20 or 30 years, the fish was pretty much an art gallery, if you could get into them, or it was doing local fairs and shows, okay? Early on in media consumption, at first it was newspapers and then emerged radio. That's where the fish were, okay? That's where the fish were. Then came TV, the big channels, that's where the fish were. Then the horizontal expansion from three channels, the big three, ABC, CBS, NBC, to 55 different channels and all these different niches, that's where the fish were. Guess where the fish are now? They're on the social media sites. That's it. So it's not a game of, I don't want to post what I had for dinner or what I did last week or I don't have an interesting life or any of that. It's no, we're just being contrarian about where the fish are. That's it, okay? That's it. And that's the way that you have to think about it. And you can't get caught up in any of the rest of that nonsense because it's all irrelevant. The good news is that by and large, most artists and photographers are terrified of it. And I was talking to a customer yesterday. He said, "I have these great landscape photos, Patrick, and I'm so excited about them." And I go on social media and I see this guy, he's got this beautiful video of an eagle landing in a tree and the resolution is so perfect. It's the most incredible thing. Where can I even get started? Going back to what we said earlier, you don't have to worry about what anyone else is doing. You just have to worry about you because there are so many fish out there that anybody can catch them. It's just about your output, okay? And I've got another video from Mosseri and then another little quick tweet so that we can wrap the bow on this one that I just, I want to talk about just briefly.

**Adam Mosseri:** For this week's Creator Spotlight, I want to highlight Aki and You. For those of you that are not watching, it's this delightful, presumably Japanese couple that makes a video every single solitary day. And they're probably like in their 50s, 60s, 70s, somewhere around there. They make a video every day about what outfit they're wearing when they're going and walking the dog. Point is, they are a couple, they do these amazing videos every day. You'll notice yesterday, the day before that, of their outfits. Another great detail is every video starts with you can see them recording it or turning on recording, which is a nice way to make it a little bit more intimate. Remember, consistency and intimacy, both incredibly important for creators.

Patrick Shanahan: So this is why you have to constantly follow this guy. It's Adam Mosseri, again, read the tea leaves. Consistency, okay, important. What we teach all the time. Authenticity, very important. And one of the huge takeaways that I have, and I want to have another data point on this in just a second, is, you know, Patrick, I don't have a professional camera. Nick, I don't have a professional lighting setup. I don't have hair, I don't have makeup, I look disheveled. And this is like one of those things that gets stuck in your drain, right, that prevent you from achieving the consistency. And here, this hilarious Japanese couple, it's just them in their daily lives doing what they're doing. They're being authentic, okay? And what Mosseri is telling you to do is, look, you don't need this high level of polish, okay? You just need to be consistent. And what do I constantly say that I've been drumming, banging the drum on for quite some time now? Art sales are 50/50, you guys. It's 50% the art and it's 50% the artist. Who you are, who is the authentic you, what makes you interesting, what are all the things that I can learn about you on social media when you're not just talking about your art, okay? When you're not just talking about your art. I've got a marketer I've been following for years, and he's got another data point on this. And the line for this tweet, for those who are just listening, is "beautiful doesn't equal more likes." And he's run a huge data set on this notion of low-fi versus high-fi content, i.e., I'm just going to turn the camera on and show me being authentic, okay, versus I'm going to make this thing look like a polished television commercial with lights, camera, action, edits. And what he's found by analyzing a significant amount of posts is that the likes per post, okay, on the low-fi content, on you being authentic, is significantly higher than the likes on the polished stuff. And the comments on the low-fi content is significantly higher than the high-polished content. And so what we need to take away from all of this is that social media is where the fish are. It is getting better and better for creators, okay? And that if you share authentically who you are as an artist, what makes you tick, what makes you interesting, if you operate under this rubric of "what can I share on there that has nothing to do with my art that just has to do with me," you're going to win. You're going to win. And that low-fi content that you're so terrified is not going to be polished and not going to present beautiful works better than the polished stuff, which just does. And we found this in our own marketing. Like, we just turn the cameras on and we go. It doesn't matter what day it is or for what reason it is because we have this incredible ability to reach so many people just by being consistent.

Nick Friend: Just by being consistent. Whenever we've produced like a high production video, like for ads or, and like, they all bomb. They all bomb. They do terrible. And it's always just the authentic, like, quickly done content that was like on the fly, like me or you on a selfie video or a customer on a selfie video or something like that.

Patrick Shanahan: In the backyard, yeah, exactly. And I've gotten to the point, and then there's that whole trend in marketing about make ugly ads. Make ugly ads. It's like a hashtag, it's like a real thing because for whatever reason...

Nick Friend: It works.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, so what I mean by that is like everybody listening, like when we're all going down, like scrolling down on our phones and whatnot, do you notice how when something looks like really produced well, like you just scroll right past it because it's an ad? You're getting sold to.

Nick Friend: High design, beautiful, flawless photography and lighting.

Patrick Shanahan: The Pinterest photos versus, oops, dropped it versus created with this in two seconds.

Nick Friend: Yeah, right, versus the exact opposite. And this is where like a lot of AI type of content that's trying to make like really nicely produced videos, it's probably not going to work either because the world, all of us will all see through it and we always will go towards wherever the authenticity is. So that's where everything will go. And I think for the creator, this is amazing because again, Pat, you go back 20 years marketing land and everything was about production value, design, production value and all of that. And it's, that's really hard and expensive to do. And the fact that it's actually the exact opposite now and is just can be as ugly as you want and that will probably perform better because people will see it's authentic. They're like seeing like a real moment in the world. And that's way more entertaining and way like a way better experience than some produced ad that was like some phony thing that somebody's trying to sell you.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, and I think recently that came up in marketing land. A great example

 of this, just to put it into a different world, is that Kanye West, now Ye, bought a Super Bowl ad, okay? And I, I have no idea what's going on in this guy's mind, but his line was, "I spent all of the money I had to spend on the ad and I didn't have on the ad, the time buying the Super Bowl slot. And I didn't have the money for a full production crew." And so it's him in a car, terribly lit, and he's just filming the selfie video.

Nick Friend: Yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: That's what it was. Had a selfie video as a Super Bowl ad. And, and as a result of that, everyone talked about it. They couldn't believe it. Crappy quality. And he did significantly better, you know, than he likely would have done otherwise. One other quick point before we wrap a bow on this is just like going back to the authenticity and trying to connect with people in your social media. It's really important to have the mindset that, or ask yourself this question, are you doing a post of your art? You mentioned that eagle art. Are you posting your art with the intention of just selling that image and that's what your mindset is? Or are you making social media posts of your art and with you and all that with the intention of creating fans of you and your process and the way that you do things? Because that's a totally different mindset and it will make you think about what type of content you want to be producing totally like completely differently. Because if you want me to become a fan of you, unpack that. How does that actually happen? Is it just by posting photos all day? Not really. I don't, that's not how I become a fan of something. Like I, I might love like the pretty pictures, but I'm not necessarily becoming a fan. I become a fan when I understand your process more and the workload you, and your thought that you put into it and the different things that might open up a window into you, what makes you tick or whatever it is. But to me personally, it's always more about the art and, and how you're doing it and the story behind it. Photographer Tim Layman, one of our customers on the platform, like I just, he's a great example of it's like he takes pictures of birds in like incredible settings that are, he's probably the best in the world at it, right? National Geographic and all that stuff.

Nick Friend: Photographer of the year.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. If you look at his photos, the first time I learned about him, I just saw his photos and they didn't mean much to me because I'm not really into birds. But then I started seeing his videos, his own videos where he's up like a thousand feet in a tree, spending the night for 15 hours waiting for the perfect shot. And I'm just like, whoa, I am instantly a fan now. I would have never considered buying one of his pieces because it's just not what I would hang on my wall. But now that I understand Tim Layman, I am in awe. I'm a fan and it has nothing to do necessarily with the visual image, but the visual image is good and there's so much meaning behind it. And now the whole thing changes. And so you want to be thinking about content in that sort of a way, right? How are you going to be creating fans? And has the content you've been posting been consistent with that or has it not?

Nick Friend: Yeah. Amazing. So some programming notes. The podcast has been around for a long time now. We have over 500,000 downloads, which is awesome. We've experimented with different things. It started as all the hardcore tactical marketing stuff. We threw in some customer interviews early on. We did some customer interviews later. You and I talked about everything that happened with the pandemic and went through special episodes on that. More recently, we've been doing sort of these current events, free flowing. And then probably, I don't know, six months ago, I teased that we wanted to go to the Joe Rogan style of the podcast. And what do I mean by that? You love Joe Rogan or hate him. He's the biggest podcast in the world. So we all study him. And he has his interviews that he does. Those are some of the episodes he does. He has his MMA stuff, his fighting stuff. And then he has his comedian stuff where they all sit around in a room. But all three of those episodes are on the one podcast feed. And what I love about this model is you are going to find and want to listen with what resonates with you. It might be all of those things. It might just be occasional ones. It might be guests. And I love personally that mode of consumption because you got to just listen to what is important to you, right?

Patrick Shanahan: Well, you want to have a ton of variety and you want to always have an episode to be able to go to. And so we teased that six months ago and then our crazy Art Storefronts status working on a million things, we never really put it into place. That is now changing. The episode that you're listening to today are these ones that Nick and I like to do, free flowing, talking about facts on the ground, what we're learning, what we're seeing, giving you guys a window into what the data and what we're learning from our customers tells us. And these are awesome current events. So we're going to keep doing these, but we're also now bringing back in a more intentional way than we've ever done, a massive amount of customer interviews. And I think one of the things that I realized is as we've grown and matured as a company, we have this amazing customer now and we have these amazing stories that are in there. And I've recently embarked on really starting to put a bunch of these interviews in the can. I think I'm eight of them in. Some of you might have seen one here or there because I broadcast them live, but you don't have to catch them live because we're going to start releasing all of them on the podcast feed. And Nick, we have artists, photographers, creatives from just about every season of life, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, every niche imaginable, combinations of niches, every different media type imaginable, okay? And we are going to start bringing these stories to you. And what's beautiful about them is every different level of success from just getting started to high revenue numbers to in between. We've done a bunch of high revenue numbers in between, but we've had gaps in what does a year one art business look like? What does a year three art business look like? What does that trajectory look like? What did they find that was working for them? And it is through these stories that I've just been learning a ton. I can show you one of them briefly. This was...

Patrick Shanahan: All right, guys, Patrick from Art Storefronts here with customer Brian Cole. This guy, he is so insanely talented with the detail he has on this. So we're going to be showing the work. We're going to be giving you the Instagram handles and the websites of these folks so you can go and check them out and see how they're doing it. And I'm finding that I'm just learning a tremendous amount about that. So one, I'm letting you know about this, that you're going to start seeing these things on the feed. And just like the Joe Rogan podcast, like if you just like the ones that Nick and I do, just listen to those ones. If you just like the hardcore tactical marketing ones, listen to those ones. But we're going to start introducing more and new and different shows because so many of you guys have been so positive with the feedback on the podcast over the years. And the one refrain I get all the time, got to eat our own dog food here, Nick, consistency, got to be more consistent. So we're going to get back to likely a weekly cadence of publishing and then quite a bit more than a weekly cadence of publishing. So those are big changes that are coming up. And I want to touch on one quick subject matter material that I've learned through this whole process that you can riff on, and then I want to finish up on commissions. But the thing that I've learned that is really quite frankly, seriously inspiring is as I've gone in depth and started doing some of these customer interviews, and some of these guys have been with us for five or six or seven years, I've never even met them, which is staggering, right, for as much as we do internally. But this notion of the sheer width, breadth, and variance in revenue sources that are available to creatives, okay? And what do I mean by that? I feel like we've been pigeonholed, and maybe from our own lack of communicating, as the outfit that specializes in wall art and artists that just sell wall art, right? Well, come to find out over the years, we've transitioned into merch being a big portion of the business and helping and empowering our customers with that. And there's a bunch of stories there. But the sheer width and breadth of revenue sources that are available to creatives is a story that is not getting told enough. There are opportunities in all of them. And what I have long said is our job as a business at Art Storefronts is just to help you find the revenue sources and maximize them. And we don't care what it is. I have been interviewing artists, photographers, fabric artists, okay, mixed media artists of every stripe imaginable. Originals are being sold. Limited editions are being sold. Commissions are being sold. Prints are being sold. Merch is being sold. Tours are being given. Classes are being taught. Handbags are being sent in and custom repainted and sent out. Like the sheer amount of revenue sources that are out there exist. I've learned that

 we have multiple customers that are leveraging their art into speaking engagements and then leveraging the speaking engagements to have a booth set up. We have a ton of road show warriors or road warriors that are doing the fair and show circuit in a number of different capacities that are like boggling my mind. And so I think it's incumbent for us, Nick, to start telling some of the stories of these additional revenue sources that are out there for creatives, okay? Some of the additional things that you can try as a creative, okay? Some of the additional paths, and not all paths are the same. Any and all of these things might work for you. And I want to kick this to you, but I want to tell one quick story about this customer, someone that we have. She's coming on the workshops and she's, "Yeah, I'm really getting some good Instagram follower growth." And I'm like, "What do you mean? You just started. You had 50 Instagram followers." She said, "Yeah, I'm up to 16,000." I'm like, "What is going on here?" Do you know what it was? She's so good at painting clouds that everyone wants to learn from her on how she is painting clouds. And she now has a business selling courses on how to paint clouds that is 50xing what she was getting from her art sales. And guess what? That's great. That's okay. That is your audience telling you, "Here is my money, take it." It might not have been what you thought it was going to be, Nick, but take my money. And we support all of that.

Nick Friend: So many misconceptions can get out there after many years of doing this. But like, we are totally agnostic to the path that actually happens for any artist. We're supportive of all of it. And if something like that just takes off, that's what you got to promote. That's what you got to lean into if you're trying to make a real business about it and you care about growing your revenue. If you don't, then it doesn't matter. And I'm not judging that either. Anybody can do what they want to do.

Patrick Shanahan: You never know what's going to happen. You never know what's going to be your path. And you just got to get out there and do it and keep looking for the signals and lean into whatever is working. And everyone's path is going to be unique and different. Everyone's is going to be different. That's why there's no formula to follow out there, guys. And if anybody is trying to sell you some sort of a formula, it's like a, it's the equivalent of a get-rich-quick, it's snake oil. It's complete utter nonsense. Do not follow it. Do not buy it. Do not follow it. It is not true. And if you are listening and you were hoping that Art Storefronts was one of those like magic, it is not. It is not. Let us be the first to tell you. The best that we can do is give you all of the information and data and everything that we can, and that's what we give to our customers. And it turns into the form of playbooks and suggestions and a calendar to follow from a marketing standpoint, but you got to make your own path.

Nick Friend: Yeah, you got to make your own path. It's what are you going to sell? What subject matter are you going to choose? What are you leaning into and not leaning into? What stuff is going to take off for you versus not? Like every, and based on all of that, every individual is going to determine their own path based on that. And, and that's actually the way that it should go. The only way you get there is by experimenting and actually just doing it and just launching stuff and shipping stuff and trying stuff. And some stuff works and some stuff doesn't work and you just figure it out as you go. So you just got to go and get out there and do the marketing and promote yourself to see what is actually resonating and you go from there. And, and what you end up selling and what niches you're in and all that will probably end up surprising you.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, and we've had some wonderful playbooks for certain aspects of running an art and photography business. And now we're really like starting to add into new ones, right? One of the things I've been mentioning recently is we're seeing an incredible trend with individual artists and photographers. And again, just completely following into this notion of the creator economy, right? The individual empowered it. Back in the day, you used to have to worry about how you were going to get into a gallery. Now we've got a trend with customers running their own gallery. And this is everything from the polished kind that we're all used to on Main Street to side warehouses, okay, that are not on Main Street where they're using it as their studio gallery. And so we've got to come with the playbooks on how you advertise that, how you get butts in seats to that gallery, what that looks like, right? So too with this of selling courses, so too with the commissions that I'm going to get into in a second. And our job is to say, "Oh, that is a completely interesting way to bring revenue to take your creative talent and turn it into an actual business. Let us show you some ways to pour gasoline on that fire." And that's where the marketing comes in. And that's what's so exciting about it. And going back to social media, it works no matter what you're doing. It works no matter what those revenue sources are. And better still, it helps you discover, okay, who is pulling their credit card out of their wallet and saying, "Take my money, Nick. This thing, not what you were doing, what you thought you were going to do, but this thing is very interesting to me." So that gives me, it gives me the perfect dovetail and we'll close on this commissions notion. But hot off the presses already, okay, in these last eight to ten customer interviews I've had, I am continually seeing success with our customers learning what these new directions are by opening themselves up for commissions, okay?

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, our official position, and then I want you to talk about your commission playbook. Our official position as a business has long been, every customer, whether they ever want to do them or not, should have the commissions button on top of their website. They should have the commissions button in their story highlights. Open yourself up for commissions. And the reason is not that you want to paint people's dogs for the next 20 years, okay? But if you do, that's also a great thing for some people. But the notion is like, all that is, is like you're fly on the wall to try and understand what people are really seriously interested in, what people really want. It's this notion of, yes, I as a creative am going to create the things that inspire me, that I really enjoy creating, but sometimes I need a little guidance on where I should go. How many folks are like, I've got this style, I've got that style, what style should I be? Our position is the commissions, is the crowd, is the audience, are the buyers saying, "I think you should go here." And let me tell you, that is the best way to decide, not asking others what they think is great, but letting them tell you, "This is the direction you need to go in."

Nick Friend: And I think it's important to clarify too, when we say like position, like there, we don't have a position, like a firm position, like if you don't want to do commissions and you don't like the idea of custom artwork, don't do it, you know? Like, because a lot of times we say stuff and people are like, that is being advocated. And I think it's just important that we say, it's like your own path, what you want to do. It may be different. You don't have to do it that way. But that's, that goes back to what we were just talking about earlier, like what our job is. Our job is just to give the information that we're seeing. It's not really a position. It's just like a, hey, we're giving you what we're seeing. And this is an absolute fact. Like I created the custom artwork strategy that we have. That's for our customers, that playbook for it, which is many other team members have now contributed to.

Patrick Shanahan: Explain what it is at a high level too.

Nick Friend: It's just, without going into all of the details of it, it's just the way to offer very quickly in five or ten minutes, some custom artwork to your audience, right? By social media. And then if that works, you can send an email out as well. But you're getting all the BS out of the way and you're just asking your audience, what do you want? And there's a playbook for how to do it because you can offer a size and a price and you're trying to just like, you have scarcity, like you're going to open up one spot, like just one so that you see if somebody can, will take it. And then they can send you a picture of whatever it is, whether it's like a wedding photo or it's a pet or something like that. And then you can paint it. And there's ways to do this as a photographer as well, right? Like you just think about like just custom stuff that you could do for clients that might be local or whatever it is. There's a play on all of this. And the reason that this is so successful is because all of you out there are starting with raw talent. You have a talent with whatever your creative product is, whether it's a painting or photography or a sculpture or whatever it is, you have a talent and people will probably pay you for that talent. But the product you're offering them that you have chosen, which is, i.e., your

 subject matter, may not have any relevance to anyone that is following you or that's in your orbit or maybe anyone out there. You just don't know. Like your subject matter, your niche just might not be resonating in any way. And the way to get that out of the way is to offer custom artwork and let your audience tell you what they want. Let them tell you what they want.

Patrick Shanahan: And it's also a great qualifier, Pat, of your current audience. If you offer a great deal on one custom artwork, custom shoot or whatever it is, and it's really a great package deal and you'll never lose money on it because you're offering one and nobody takes it, then it's a great validator of your existing audience that like, nobody's going to buy anything that you currently have. You need to get outside of that audience. You probably need to get out and maybe do some shows in person. But something that is not resonating at all because nobody's willing to pay you for your talent, right? So if you keep dropping your price and nobody just, you get no takers, you're going to find out right there what's going on with that. It gives you incredible fast feedback on your subject matter, on your audience, on different things and will help you get in a better direction when you start seeing what people are actually asking from you. And that's a really big deal because what I would say is that the vast majority of artists that are out there that are totally struggling are just pushing multiple niches on people, on their audience without feedback.

Nick Friend: And they often times, more often than not, are so talented and the talent is there, the quality is there, all of that is there, but they're just pushing their talent in the wrong direction and it's not working and it has nothing to do with their talent. If they put their talent in the right direction, they're probably going to do pretty well. And that's the shift that needs to happen. And offering commissions in custom artwork can help make that happen.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, again, I just, I'm seeing a tremendous amount of success in ideas that are coming directly from customer feedback, right? So I think opening yourself up to that feedback, figuring out how you can get people to let you know what they want you to create, and just being open to saying, "You know what? I love creating what I'm creating, but I also want to get some feedback and hear what some other ideas are." And then use that as a further input, this notion of this whole commission in the first place, right? Not that you want to be doing them all the time or anything else, but I continue to see artists going in new directions as a result of opening themselves up for this feedback. And the new directions end up becoming their bestselling thing.

Nick Friend: Can't end on a stronger point than that. Awesome episode. Really appreciate it. Get ready, podcast feed, the new episodes and the new branding. Are we committed to the new branding?

Patrick Shanahan: I think we are committed to the new branding.

Nick Friend: I think we are.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, I think we are too. It's all coming soon. Can't wait to tell you about it. Thanks, Nick. Everybody, thanks for listening. Have a great rest of your day.