Our Top 6 Takeaways from the just released Art Market 2021 Report

In this episode of the Art Business Morning Show, Patrick and Nick discuss the importance of focusing on not getting things wrong to succeed in the art business. They highlight the critical role of maintaining a collector list, the benefits of marketing directly to collectors, and practical strategies on how to cultivate and utilize this list. The discussion includes analogies to financial investing and real-world case studies demonstrating the success of pre-show sales to collectors. Additionally, they emphasize the need for consistent marketing and treating collectors as VIPs for long-term business success.

Podcast Transcribe

Patrick Shanahan: Today's edition of the "Art Business Mornings." We're talking about our top six takeaways from the just released Art Market 2021 Report. Specifically, we're gonna talk about some background on the report, some top stats, six stats that we picked away from it, what it portends for artists and photographers in 2021. And lastly, what you won't read in this report. Welcome to another edition of the "Art Business Mornings," the show that will put you on the path to a six-figure-a-year-plus art business. I'm happy to be joined by Nick again today. The Art Storefronts president CEO Nick, how are you doing?



Nick Friend: Awesome, how are you?



Patrick Shanahan: Notice your shirt actually matches my background.



Nick Friend: I know, it's like almost perfect.



Patrick Shanahan: What are the odds on that? What are the odds on that? Did not plan that, I just wanna let you know, did not plan that. So, I wanna talk about this report. You're like, "Oh yeah great, you guys put out a report." No, it was not by us okay? This thing was paid for, it looks like I don't know specifically, but it looks like the sponsors are Art Basel and UBS, UBS reporting specifically. What's awesome about this is normally the one that we've been looking at for the last umpteen years is this one from the Hiscox company, right? Which is like an insurer out of London.



Nick Friend: Yeah.



Patrick Shanahan: They do a report that's very similar. This is actually the first time I've seen this one. Maybe Nick you've seen it before but they've actually been putting this one out every year.



Nick Friend: Yeah.



Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, I had no idea. So I wanna start sort of at the top with the disclaimer on this because I think our natural tendency, you know certainly what I've already noticed that some of our customers think, is that this report applies 100% to you. The error in the thinking on that is who they survey for this report. The easiest way to think about it is like a sports analogy. Who they are surveying are NBA players, NFL players, major league baseball players, the top tennis players, golfers, right? Who they're not surveying is everyone else, right? So if you're a casual golfer or you're playing weekend softball and that's who you are as an artist or a photographer, not 100% applicable to you. Okay? Not 100% applicable to you. So don't let it freak you out whether you like this report or not, it's not gospel. What's awesome about it though is, you know we've been in this industry a while Nick. How many awesome reports do we get put out? One a month, one a week, no there's like two, right? This is the newest one.



Nick Friend: And there's only one a year, right? So, you know, you're doggone right we gotta talk about it, right? We gotta talk about it, it's awesome.



Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, for sure. I think the biggest thing about it as we will see here, when you start getting into some of the points that we've identified, is that it's directional, right? That's the way you wanna be looking at it. You're able to see from a high level, some really good data that gives you an idea of the direction that the market is headed in, right? Online, off, where things are happening, where the trends are, which areas are growing and expanding, which areas are not, and so forth.



Nick Friend: Let me, yeah, and let me tee you up on that. I figured I would read the table of contents 'cause I think that'll give it to you at a high level, which is good. This thing's broken up into seven sections: key findings, the global art market in 2020, dealer sales, auction sales, art fairs, online sales, global wealth and collector perspectives, and economic impact and conclusion. Totally an awesome read, really recommend everyone read it. The link to it will be in the show notes or you can just Google it. It's on Art Basel's website and UBS's website too. By the way, one of my favorite takeaways on this thing, they have got some new terminology that I've never heard.



Patrick Shanahan: Nick, what does OVR stand for?



Nick Friend: You tell me.



Patrick Shanahan: Online viewing room. Stated another way, we can't just be calling these things Zoom sessions when we're selling high-end art. So OVR, nice snooty way to get that thing under the radar, huh? Instead of Zoom session which I'm sure they're all just on, right?



Nick Friend: In other words, video conference.



Patrick Shanahan: A video call.



Nick Friend: Yes, yes.



Patrick Shanahan: That's all it is.



Nick Friend: Which you know, we haven't been talking about for the last year and a half, so I'm not gonna go down that thing. But if you want an OVR Nick, we're technically, we're not running a normal session right now, we are in an OVR, okay? Welcome to the Art Business OVR. We're running one right now. So what I've done, you know, my takeaway from this episode one, we love talking about this stuff. We love reading this report so we're just gonna rant and rave on it. We cherry-picked some stats that I like, some of which were aha, some of which are just gonna be fun to discuss. Like I said at the end I kinda wanna give you some takeaways that I read from it, which I, you know I enjoyed this thing, it was profound for me that you know you're not gonna read from the report, okay? And then we'll just see where it goes from there. But again, highly encourage you guys to check it out. So, number one stat okay? And I might have a different read on this one than you do. So I wanna read it, you go, and then I'd go, okay? Despite the contraction of sales overall, okay? Aggregate online sales reached a record high of 12.4 billion, doubling in value from the year previous okay? Doubling in value. So you go in that and then I'll go.



Nick Friend: Okay, well there's a lot that I could-



Patrick Shanahan: A lot.



Nick Friend: Talk about with this. There is a lot, but I'm gonna make a very big point here okay? Because what you said there is, despite the fact that like, okay, so 2020, this is about what happened in 2020, right? Markets got affected, people's finances got affected but the online market exploded, right? And I've made this point before, but what happened is all of the offline sources, right? Which are, let's just, you know, the shortlist is mainly galleries and art shows, right? Like local art fairs, things like that. All of that was gone and had to go somewhere, and it went online right? And what I mean by that is the demand. The demand for art, the walls that had to get filled in people's homes or businesses or whatever it was right? All the things that people wanted to collect, had to get fulfilled. And it went online okay? Now, why is that so profound and important? Well, for if you're somebody who depended on that world, it was not good for you, you got crushed right? But for the individual artist and photographer, who's working their business from home. And as you know, is selling in the online market, direct to their customers, doing their marketing, right? Doing their own marketing and doing all of that and had been doing that for a little while, right? And have learned how to do that, they exploded, they killed it, okay? And we know that, we've talked about that, we sent an email about it with a different person probably every three or four days. If you're on our email list like highlighting these people, right? Like literally record-making sales all-time, every year, people that had been doing it for 20 years had records last year. Like, out of, you know, out of the blue. And this is not like one isolated case, this is like all over the place. But it was only the people who were focused on selling art online, with e-commerce, for a little while, before the whole thing happened, right? Call it one year, two years, three years, four years, five years, seven years, the more the better that's what we know right? The more, the better because they got real, online, selling online takes time. You had to build an audience, you've got to learn how to do email marketing and get good at it, right? You've got to get good at social media marketing and all the marketing all the different facets.



Patrick Shanahan: First of all, all the digital marketing, all the digital marketing.



Nick Friend: All the digital marketing, there's all these different components to it right? But to go back to the point, okay? Is that the online market expanded so much okay? That despite the fact that if the overall art market went down a little bit, right? The amount that went online was so big, that for everyone that was selling online and focused on that, their market just exploded. It doubled, right? It doubled in size in one year. It literally went up by 100%. So like, let's just think about that right? So the market contracted by, you know, what was it? 15% or 20%, what did they say?



Patrick Shanahan: They just said, despite the contraction of sales or-



Nick Friend: Despite the contraction, so there's a small contraction right? But the online went up by 100%. So that is, that explains why, everyone who is robust at selling art



 online, killed it, you know? And so that was the biggest point to me in that quote.



Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, I mean, there's so many different ways you could read this. Like we could take this quote and divide it by six and give each one, a portion of the quote to argue and you could make a robust argument and no one would be right or wrong because it's so loaded and everything else. Sort of my takeaway is like, you could make an argument that matter is neither created or destroyed right? So we could say the demand for art didn't change, right? You could even make an argument that the demand for art increased which is the argument that I make, because we're all stuck at home for all the aforementioned reasons. We're all stuck at home, you know, no one's going into work, all of a sudden you're in a space, you're sick of your white wall. So my argument is that it increased right? The deeper layer down, you know when Forrest Gump's boats out at sea and all the rest of the shrimp fishing fleet is in the harbor and the typhoon comes through and wrecks all of those boats and he's the only one that can go fishing right? And you got the Bubba Gump Shrimp company. That's what happened here, right? Like the ones that had the ability to have a sales channel open were no different than Forrest Gump in that boat, they were still fishing. And not only were the conditions better than they've ever been, there was zero competition right? Like my biggest takeaway from this entire thing was, you know, it's sort of the same point you just made. But if you were one of the lucky few to be in the position to not have your sales channels eliminated overnight and you could still sell, my word, my word how well did you do? Right? And we saw quite a bit of this, I saw quite a bit of this. I continued to see quite a bit of this, and on both sides of the coin, the ones that are thriving and then the sheer panic in so many people's eyes for the ones that it's like, they're not coming back. It's not coming back, it's not coming back, right? You know, my traditional revenue sources, I've been patient and waiting this thing out. So, you know, no matter what the one takeaway is, whatever you have going on, okay? Whatever your sales channel is make sure you are cultivating one where you own everything right? Make sure you are cultivating one where if the typhoon comes in, you can drive your boat out to sea and not get destroyed along with everyone else right? Like my goodness.



Nick Friend: And this rolls right into like the fragility of a business right? Fragile right? So the people who had fragile businesses.



Patrick Shanahan: Yeah I explained that right.



Nick Friend: Well, what, it's a phrase that was coined by Nassim Taleb. Very successful guy, he has written quite a few books, they're very intellectual and he's got a book called "Antifragile" right? And it's about this concept. But when it comes to, you know building a, an antifragile business, right? The people who were fragile were relying on galleries and art shows and you know more often than not because we'd speak to, you know thousands and thousands of artists and photographers and we know this. They were reluctant Pat, for the last 10 years to go online. Either, you know you remember like seven years ago, you know like when Art Storefronts began and what was the most common thing? Oh, art doesn't sell online. Meanwhile, you literally show them and, you know, people are selling tons of art online, get them on the phone with these people and they'd still be like, "I don't know, I don't think it sells online. " Okay, all right. And so they would sit back there, they would never launch a website, and then those people would launch a website but they would just view it mentally as their glorified business card right? They never took it seriously as like, wait a minute, this is actually my art gallery that happens to be online on main street of the internet, you know? And I can market and build an audience and get people to come to this from everywhere in the world. They were just like, no, no, no, this is my online business card. Back to my narrow lane of galleries and art shows or one or the other right?



Patrick Shanahan: Yeah.



Nick Friend: And so they ended up with a really fragile business. And so I think that's one of the other takeaways here right? It's like I said directional at the beginning of the conversation. These things are directional okay? And you have to know as an entrepreneur that you cannot be behind on these things guys. The warning signs were out there every year for the last 15 years that the online art market was just expanding and exploding right? Growth, growth, growth, growth, growth constantly every single year. You literally had to be hiding under rocks, the data was there, you're in denial. It was there with a simple Google search in one second and literally see that that happened. But so many people just didn't do that, and they got caught with fragile businesses and they got hurt. So the lesson going forward is, you know you wanna stay ahead of the market, you know, and you wanna own, yes.



Patrick Shanahan: Like you said you wanna make sure you own your distribution channel right? Which is going direct to consumer where you control everything and you're not dependent on third parties okay? You can sell direct you've got your own email lists, your own audience and when I say that, I don't mean Facebook fans or Instagram fans.



Nick Friend: How many of you are out there that have plenty of Facebook fans and Instagram followers and you can't figure out how to get sales out of it right? You need to get those people off of that, off of that and onto your email list which is something that you can own and that you can take to other platforms because you can upload them up there, you know and show ads to them and different things like that.



Patrick Shanahan: Okay so I'm onto number, point number two. And I quote despite the high number of events being canceled, 41% of the high-net-worth collectors are high, what are they? Yeah high-net-worth collectors, and they call these H and W's, high-net-worth collectors surveyed reported that they made a purchase at an art fair in 2020, while 45% reported making one through an art fair's online viewing room, 45% reported making one through Zoom session. Staggering.



Nick Friend: Amazing, yeah.



Patrick Shanahan: Staggering so, you know, this one's pretty easy to interpret on its face and you know we've been talking about, you know the future of selling art online, really and offline too or sort of mix-match of mealy-mouthed way of saying it but, this is a new front that has been opened up in art sales okay? Leveraging live video whether one-to-one or one-to-many. And, you know, my biggest takeaway from this particular one because I run, you know, these art business workshops three times weekly Zoom sessions with me, you can jump on, or members of my marketing team, my own link in the bio, you know all that. 80 year old people once a month sometimes two a month, sometimes three a month, we'll get on the Zoom session, 80 year olds unmute themselves and ask questions. If they're doing it, the whole entire world knows how to do it right? It is our new reality. Ignore that at your peril, ignore it at your peril. And this data's completely backing it up, okay.



Nick Friend: Do you know what else I think from that I think is a very important point? And I'll just kinda leave it like a little bit of a cliffhanger is, what nobody realized prior to the last year is how important and effective video calls are in the art selling process right? Was anyone doing it in 2017?



Patrick Shanahan: No.



Nick Friend: No, nobody, nobody right? And that was part of the problem, that was part of the problem right? But it is very, it is a very effective way of selling art okay? There's a way of doing the whole thing right? And leading people into it and all that stuff, but it's very effective at being an alternative to the like the in-person, you know, gallery experience. It's the next best thing, it's the next best thing and it works like a dream. It works okay? And when I say that, I say it as people who have sold you know, tens of thousands of dollars personally, working with artists, right? Like artists on the Art Storefronts platform, so we will do these things with them in the beginning to test our marketing team will. I was even helping with these things as well when we were figuring this stuff out. And, you know, in the ones that we actually ran, we're talking, I mean how much have you sold Pat? 50, 60, 70 a 100,000 at this.



Patrick Shanahan: I'm running one this week.



Nick Friend: Yeah and you're running another one this week to freshen it all up right? But I think that that's a major point there, a major point is that online, you know online video was, it was missed and it will not be going forward.



Patrick Shanahan: Yup, number three is from 365 global art fairs planned for 2020, 61% were canceled okay? 37% held live events, and the remaining 2% of fairs held a hybrid alternative event okay? Which is just sort of fascinating in of itself right? Like one, yes we know the stats about how many were canceled. Two, they all scrambled and tried to pull something off. None of which I heard were successful. Maybe there



 are, I'm sure there was a couple that were successful. But you know, everyone tried to figure out how to make it a live event. Everyone tried to figure out how to make it a hybrid of live and in-person at 50 people can attend and.



Nick Friend: Well, what, really quick to, what else, what did we actually really hear? We had quite a few Art Storefronts members who said that they participated in some of these, they paid the fee and they got nothing out of it.



Patrick Shanahan: Yup, it got obliterated and that'll be in my final points. I covered that one quite significantly. But you know, my read on it is just, you know, our job, my job especially is to prepare the customers to have that you know, to be ready as soon as these things are back open, right? And you talk to enough artists and photographers that have been doing the show or if fair circuit for a long time. And, you know, I end up hearing all these metrics, all these like extractions for how they judge it. Like gotta make your booth fees on day one, if you don't make your booth fees on day one you're never gonna make the show pay right? And all these ways that people judge it and everything else. And a lot of people talking about how like, you know how hit or miss it is, right? You don't get anyone conclusively saying 100% of the time like, these shows and fairs are so, every single solitary one's a home run. I do so well out of that, like it's still a hit or miss business. The shows or fairs right? So, my takeaway was what I learned when I see is like we are gonna come out of this thing gun-shy, you know everyone's gonna play it a little bit different. Some people are gonna play it fast and loose. There was never anything, it was a hoax to begin with. Some people are gonna be like, "this still terrifies me." If you take even 10% of the attention, 10% of the attendance away from these fairs, that increases by orders of magnitude the difficulty to make it pay.



Nick Friend: Yeah.



Patrick Shanahan: Significantly, significantly, and that's also something like the specific things because in that 10%, it might be the one person that takes your entire fair or show, from boom to bust, right? Buys $10,000 for this stuff, buys $15,000 for this stuff buys $6,000, whatever it is with you, right? So, you have to plan for when these things do come back, okay? They're not gonna be at full strength. Now we love shows and fairs okay? We think, they are one of the most fantastic ways to validate art, validate new directions that you might be going in, get extremely aggressive with your lead capture. I mean, we are desperate to have them come back because we find them to be such an important part of overall building a successful art photography business. But we are also very, very bearish on them coming back in any strength anytime soon. My 2 cents, but the point.



Nick Friend: Yeah I think that that's.



Patrick Shanahan: Is you have to plan for these things okay? And if they're not coming back and you have resources namely your time for how long it took to load the car up, for how much the gas for the hotel fees, the booth fees, how long you stayed, time away from your family, everything else, you need to intelligently redirect that, okay? Into your own attention, marketing that you're gonna own, that you're gonna be able to sell to for years and years and you know, as you're looking at your year and planning out your calendar and knowing it, things are not gonna be back at full strength, you have to contemplate where do I divert those funds to to keep this business moving and growing? That's my 2 cents.



Nick Friend: Yeah and what I would add to that is, you know, when you I think that's the, you have to take the prudent point of view, right? And like the when you look at the fair art shows, right? And you look at galleries, you know what I see there? I see a lot of unknown, it's unpredictable. It could be great and we could be totally wrong, but it could be horrible right? But it's gonna be somewhere in between both of those right? And you don't know what it is. Everything that all of us are saying is just speculation because we don't have, we won't know until we're actually in it. But you know what? What is not an unknown? What is not an unknown? The online market and selling direct. That is not unknown. That is controllable, that is going to be there no matter what happens, with any of the situations that are affecting retail, right? Like whether art shows are good or bad, online is gonna be there, right? Whether art galleries are good or bad online is going to be there. And this is because it's the future, and it is far less fragile, you know, than any other method of selling. So yes, we are cheering these things to come back and to be there because it's better for everyone right? At the end of the day. But you know the right advice to provide to any individual artist or photographer entrepreneur is, look you gotta look at this situation and you've gotta, you gotta go is my strategy for, you know improving my business and growing my sales, like, is it consistent with where the market is headed, and with the risk that is ahead of me? Right? And if it's me, I'm going, I'm doing I'm going to continue to do every single thing I can to educate myself and become better and build the skillset and toolset to become better than every other artist or photographer that I can, at running my own art gallery business out of my home, online, you know selling direct that I possibly can. I think that is the smartest move that you can make. You know why too, what else are you gonna do? Are you gonna spend this all this time, like getting better at running an art fair or an art show? What do you do? You go there, you set up your booth, you know you have some tactics and you either make sales or you don't and you work it, for the three days that you're there, however long it is, right? What do you, what else are you gonna do? Right? Galleries, like you can't do anything there, galleries is all about like, you're gonna have to talk to the people and negotiate and have a contract and get into those. You, there's something you can do right now and you should do it right? And it is build the unfragile part of your business, the area that has done extremely well and where the market is headed and where you actually have control.



Patrick Shanahan: Yeah and a tease of this next point. So this is number four and I quote, the share accounted for by online sales expanded from 9% of total sales by value in 2019, to 25% in 2020. The first time the share of e-commerce in the art market has exceeded that but general retail.



Nick Friend: It's amazing.



Patrick Shanahan: It's a big deal.



Nick Friend: Yeah so this brings, this goes right into, you know the things that big companies have been talking about. Like the trend, like the habits that have been formed, right? The habits that have been formed as a result of everything that's gone on in the last year and a half, you know the last year and-



Patrick Shanahan: Habits that are not likely to change.



Nick Friend: Yeah and how, you know, those habits are not like, habits are not likely to change. They never do right? You never go back to the old world. That's a such an important point for everyone that's hanging on right? Like this has been like studied and done so many times and looked at so many times it never goes back to where things were right? So that the old world that it was, like is now history. It's history. There's going to be a new world. You know, when everything like, you know when everything opens back up or whatever happens there and it's going to be this new world that we don't know what it is yet right? But a lot of habits changed, you know. A lot of habits change. And if going back to like, you know video calls for making sales, right? On high dollar items, that's like a perfect point. So many things happened in the last year, live art shows, right? Like I could, we could, you and I could go down the list about all the marketing tactics that we invented and came up with, right? To help our artists and photographers. These are things that never existed that were forced to exist because everyone had to get creative, you know? And, but it turns out that these things were the missing things that could have been there before that were preventing more art from selling online right? But they're there now and that's why the world has changed. That's why the whole game has changed because the online your online abilities are way different than they were a couple of years ago. You know? And that's gonna have a big impact.



Patrick Shanahan: It's massive. Like, I mean, is this anything all that profound, this one now?



Nick Friend: Not really.



Patrick Shanahan: We all know everything's been moving online, right? It's not just about art, it's about every single solitary thing period. It just increased it, it just increased itself significantly.



Nick Friend: And everybody, like every big company was, you know you can see them they're in their stock filings.



Patrick Shanahan: All of them.



Nick Friend: They opened it and then by 2030, 80% of the market, or 70 to 80% of sales would be e-commerce. It's



 just been on this chart that all of them have had for the last 20 years right? Like this year we're expecting it to be this, this, this, and it's just going up and however what all that happened was 2030 just got brought sooner than expected.



Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, I mean.



Nick Friend: It was happening anyway.



Patrick Shanahan: Let's take it out, to take it out of the art for a second like dude sort of terrifying retail. That's gonna be the next couple of years, retail sort of terrifying to me but anyway.



Nick Friend: Yeah retail is gonna completely change. Retail as we know it is gonna completely change. There's gonna be different types of shops and you know businesses that are in the locations, taking over shopping malls or you know things like that.



Patrick Shanahan: My hope is that all the shopping malls turn into one giant laser tag where you can run in and out of the stores. You know what I mean? Love playing that laser tag.



Nick Friend: Kids would love that for sure.



Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, and I got kids. Number five, okay the share of online sales in the dealer sector okay? Including art fair OVRs, the Zoom calls, expanded threefold in 2020. From 39%, to 39% from 13% in 2019 that's massive. Dealers at all levels showed significant increases in the online components of their sales, with the largest advance by those in the 10 million plus turnover segment okay? To 47%. So, you know, the thing that infuriates me okay? And I know if you are all very well-meaning, again these stats are a little bit loaded, but if the rich people are doing it, everyone's doing right? Like, every single solitary person can leverage video and all of the high-net-worth individuals are there. And what do I get variation of, I'm not picking on anybody for this mind you it's just, you know, after you have one a thousand times you're like, "okay, I get it." Everyone tells me they want to market, they wanna go after, that their work is perfect for the high-net-worth individuals. Here's a stat it's telling you that the high-net-worth individuals now are extremely comfortable buying art including the $10 million plus via live video. Is there any other takeaway that is needed from that? I don't think so.



Nick Friend: Nothing, nothing.



Patrick Shanahan: Full stop.



Nick Friend: Yeah.



Patrick Shanahan: Next point.



Nick Friend: Yeah thank you.



Patrick Shanahan: And so that was number five. This is number six okay? 90% of high-net-worth collectors visited an art fair or gallery OVR in 2020 and 72% okay? This is, I can not wait to write on this one, felt it was important or essential to have a price posted when they were browsing works of art for sale online. That one's a sticker okay? So let me just say that again 'cause there was a lot going on there. 90% of high-net-worth collectors visited an art fair gallery OVR, so a Zoom session in 2021 or 2020. 72% felt it was important or essential to have a price posted when they were browsing works of art for sale online. That's an interesting one to me. That's an interesting one. Go ahead you have someone on that or you want me to go?



Nick Friend: Well, it's a, it's an obvious one to me because it's called the number one rule in retail. If you are selling to a consumer to an end consumer, you have a price tag, but have you ever walked into a store and you're like browsing and like you're kind of flipping through the sweatshirts, right? You're looking for a sweatshirt and it doesn't have a price tag on it, you're looking for it. Do you go and go grab the guy or do you just start flipping through to the next ones? Right? Like more often than not people just start flipping through unless they're just like, just adamantly in love with whatever it is that they just saw. And you know, the big problem with that is when people are browsing and they're not even sure they're gonna buy and they sorta impulse buy, you gotta have things ready to go on the spot.



Patrick Shanahan: So it's not surprising to me at all. If I buy something like high ticket, what are you doing? Just put the price.



Nick Friend: Yeah, don't make me work for it. A lot of people still make you work for it. My takeaway from that is like, don't waste my time and don't make me think.



Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, exactly.



Nick Friend: Don't waste my time.



Patrick Shanahan: Any consumer, impulse buy, have a price tag done.



Nick Friend: Yeah, 'cause there's so many situations where I like walk in somewhere and it's like, you know, I'm obsessed with motorcycles and scooters and everything else right? And like, I go into the dealership right? And I'm on the floor and I'm looking at it and when they don't have the prices on it, it just sort of infuriates me right? Like, I'm not even gonna waste my time then right? I was mildly interested in this thing because there's no price on it. You can pound sand I'm gonna go to the next one. It's so true.



Patrick Shanahan: End single products gotta have it.



Nick Friend: Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so you can interpret that one however you want. But I looked at all of this and I kinda wanna just wrap up with my thesis on all of this and you can poke holes in it as you see fit. But you know, two massive events recently, one was the whole NFT boom okay? And the NFT is non-fungible tokens, I think I talked about this a couple of weeks ago but, this guy Beeple, sold like $3.5 million, and then the next day there was a Clubhouse with all of these whales okay? Like pro artists and photographers, the biggest and the biggest musicians were in there too. Beeple was in there, you know the director of Sotheby's were in there and they were all talking back and forth. And what's interesting about Clubhouse, what was interesting about that experience and I'm not gonna make it any more about that, is just getting to be instantaneously inside of a conversation with all of these people that are at the top of their game. They're the biggest artists in the world for whatever they are right? That's number one, number two this report. And you know, whether this report okay? which is aimed at the pro artist or you the profound takeaway that I have okay? And again, this Clubhouse thing underscored it, you all have the same problem. It is all just a war for attention that's it? My takeaway from reading this report, okay? And being in this industry myself and being a marketer is everyone is struggling for attention okay? It doesn't matter the top artists, the top fairs, whether it's Art Basel, they were scrambling like crazy trying to figure out this show's canceled, we have all these investments, how the heck are we gonna get the eyeballs to this particular thing? Okay? The takeaway in all of this is, thinking the attention problem is just yours. Let me tell you that it changes a little bit. It's a little bit easier when you get higher up, but we are talking two sides of the exact same coin. The currency in today's day and age is getting attention and getting more out of the attention that you have. And I mean, I just keep getting slapped in the face with it at every level. This report does it for me, in like six or seven different places if you read it.



Nick Friend: As do I.



Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, yeah massive, it is everyone's problem.



Nick Friend: It's everything because the people that are at the top they had an attention problem. And it's easy to think like, oh, it's easy for him or her, right? When they're at the top. But you don't even, when you actually dig into their situation and you talk to them, they'll tell you, "dude I spent 10 years getting here 15 years," some 20 years right? Like you look at Beeple right? Like, there's a whole story behind him, but he put out a piece of art, 5,000 pieces of art. He's on like, you know I forget exactly the number that he's at but 5,000 pieces of art. So he was, he committed to doing one a day right? A new one every single day. So he put the work in right? And built the attention. But yeah, it's all about attention at the end of the day. The reason why, and this is one of the, you know, I hate to say this because it's just, it's the truth, and we see it all the time. But like, people are like artists and photographers are very critical of other artists and photographers especially when they're selling more than they are, right? And they're the first people to say, "hey that person's art sucks, why are they selling so much?" Literally see this almost every day Pat. You're in Facebook, comments of people's work right? And it's really sad and it bums you out. But you sit there and you just go, "dude this person has more attention than you do." That's what it is. You got great art, good. But you got no attention. You're terrible at marketing. You're going nowhere, because you can't solve the marketing problem. This person outsmarted you with worse art maybe, that's your opinion but maybe it's worse art because they said, I gotta solve my marketing problem, if I can solve the marketing problem and have the attention I'm gonna have a distribution channel, no problem. I'm gonna be making sales right? So stop, so if that's your problem, you know, you gotta stop sitting there and like just pointing fingers, just understand, that's all that's happened is



 that person just, you know just got the attention and they worked for it and they earned it. And that's why they're selling more. That's it, it's that simple, right? If you do the same thing, you'll probably sell more. If your art really is better, you know and has a bigger market potential.



Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, so point number one that you wanna read in the report, attention is a commodity. Nothing's changed there. Number two, which is like been so blatantly apparent and you know, again, these are, this is just so redundant to anyone that's listening to this show for any time but I've gotta say it. A new front has been opened up in selling art, right? We've covered it in many, many times. I'm gonna have to do my hand thing, just for the sake of argument. What is the single solitary best way to sell art or photography? Hasn't changed, in-person, face-to-face okay? Problem, we're all geographically fixed on the earth. We have to sleep, you can't have 15 conversations at once, you need a website. What is the new front that is the hybrid between the two? It's video live video in all the capacities, right? Whether they're a little buzzword, what was the buzzword I forgot it? OVR or Zoom sessions, whether it's one-to-one or one-to-many it represents one of the most significant upheavals to how art and photography has been sold certainly in our lifetimes right? You know, certainly since the website was created. The artist, okay? The smart artist understands that a brand new front has been opened up. They understand that no one has this whole figured out okay? It's early days. The big houses Art Basels, Sotheby's on down to the lowliest artists that's never sold anything. We're all struggling to figure this out right? They were all struggling to figure it out. The proverbial playing field has utterly, totally and completely been leveled okay? They've got nothing that you don't have. You can be just as effective okay? With a webcam okay? As you can to whatever lighting setup that Art Basel and Sotheby's has, it doesn't matter right? It is, it represents the obliteration of gatekeepers. It represents the utter, total and complete leveling the playing field and there's no playbook out there, it's brand new. Everyone's trying to figure it out. And you know, has it been a joy for me all year long to go and figure it out on my own? You're damn right it has. Has it been a joy for me to go and figure it out and stumble and fall flat on my face and have every stupid problem imaginable? You better believe it is. Is schadenfreude real? Yes, it is. Because when I see all these other people hyping it up for weeks and realizing that you should have shipped 30 of them first and they fall over their face, I do enjoy it okay. I get some enjoyment out of that, I'm a human being, right? Everyone's trying to figure it out. The biggest takeaway is it represents one of the most tremendous opportunities I've ever seen. And it's just, it's democratized. It's democratized. How many more times do you need to read it? And as much as myself Nick Art Storefront has been a broken record on this. You know, one of the things that I've been saying recently is like you are going to start hearing this in every single solitary industry imaginable that could possibly leverage it. It represents a tectonic shift in the way things are done, period, full stop. And those that get there first, are gonna get the best plots of land. Those that get there first are gonna get the beachfront realty. What are you doing? Are you shipping? I hope you're shipping, I hope you're shipping I'm shipping another one this week. But you know, the rant and the rave on that. You have any color to add to that or did I beat to death?



Nick Friend: No, you got it.



Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, so again, the smart artist, the smart photographer out there is going to see the writing on the wall okay? A well-balanced strategic approach to selling art, and this is really our the massive thesis of everything that we do. And we will be doing going forward. And this is critical right? Because I hate that we get boxed into the one thing, right? Like we are not the one thing, right? This is not what we advocate. We are not just a website solution, it's not what we do. The smart artist or photographer is gonna do look at my little hand thing and go, okay. So if I really wanna build a good business here it is, here's the cheat sheet. Sell art in-person, face-to-face as much as you can. Have the website to back you up and assist those efforts all the time. Constantly be running the live video, the live art shows as a new front to open up art. You do that while it's building your own attention, you will succeed. Also, if you can get any of the other older, other revenue sources to pay, squeeze them as hard as you can, but never in lieu of the only ones where you set the rules, that's it. That's what these, that's why we exist. That's everything we're gonna do, that's everything that we're gonna do for the next 10 years. I don't care if it's in-person or on the website or if it's via the live art shows or I don't care if you get external revenue sources working, this is how you build a business okay? That's it.



Nick Friend: And that's because that is what, that structure has nothing to do with us. But that's what actually works.



Patrick Shanahan: It's the reality, that's the reality.



Nick Friend: That's the reality that goes for any industry as well, right? And we talked about this at length. Like selling direct versus selling indirect. You know, we talk about attention a lot. These are principles that apply to almost every business. The specifics of it are a little bit different for the art industry when you get into the weeds right? But overall, that's the structure that you've got to have, right? So all we've done is we've built a business to help provide all of those things and make them simpler, cheaper, easier than trying to, you know, do the whole thing and build this you know, a valuable, successful art business, you know frankensteining all these different pieces together.



Patrick Shanahan: Yup, it's like it all, it becomes so clear too. Like when you, you know which is why this report was so profound, it's so fun to have these thoughts and articulate them yourself and constantly do them on these workshops and figure out the different ways that you're gonna say it and explain it and make it palatable like as a teacher. But then it's so nice to hear like other teachers that are really good at their own, you know, vocational aspects and ways of doing it, then it of melds with your own. But it's like, okay, your art business, the giant umbrella, the giant umbrella on the top is like attention okay? Getting more out of it, you know, getting more of it, getting more out of it. And then what's the best way to do that? There's the three okay? In-person, in-person, by video whenever you can, website to back you up and then below that are any additional revenue sources that you can get, that's it, that's it. What do we provide the biggest umbrella right? I gotta work on some of these analogies sometimes it's just spur of the moment, but that's what I got.



Nick Friend: All right.



Patrick Shanahan: I'll cover some other aspects of this report probably later 'cause I really tend to enjoy it but, everyone's got an attention problem Nick.



Nick Friend: Yup, well these I mean the reports, as you said they come out once a year right? And so you should check them out. We will always send them out, if you're on our email list or whatever, we'll send them out by email link you to them and all that. So, and it's good, they're good to just review and just understand where things are headed, right? If you were reading these things, you know every year for, I mean, honestly if you really want to just skim through it and get some high level you can do it in 5 or 10 minutes. If you were doing that for the last 10 years, you would have been in a great position these last couple of years, great position you know. Because you would have already known that the whole market was eventually going to be online by 2030 right? You would've already known that and you would also know that nobody's focused on it, nobody's really like, you know, working that hard on it. And so it was a great opportunity to, you know have a little bit of an arbitrage.



Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, well, on that note as always thanks for listening and have a great day. Bye guys.






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