Sales not where you want them? Solve the problem

In this episode, Patrick and Nick discuss common issues that artists and photographers face when their sales are not meeting expectations. They emphasize the importance of remaining unemotional and approaching the problem logically. Key points include being active in the market, validating art sales with non-family members, understanding the impact of niche markets, and the necessity of persistent marketing. They also talk about adapting strategies for the digital age, especially given the current COVID-19 landscape. They provide practical advice for iterative improvements and stress the importance of flexibility and experimentation in finding marketable art styles. Patrick and Nick conclude with announcements about Art Storefronts' pre-Black Friday sale and upcoming Q4 marketing workshops.

Podcast Transcribe

Patrick Shanahan: But look, I threw out the titles: Sales not where you want them? Solve the problem. Okay, and I want to start at the top by saying the tendency is to take it mega emotional, right? The sales are not where you want them, the tendency is to doubt yourself, the tendency is to think your art sucks, to think it's you, or you've got something else out there to blame. You get emotional about it. It's actually just a problem that needs to be broken down into its subsequent pieces, right? And it can be different in some different situations, so I thought we would talk through some of what these situations are that we've seen and we continue to see.

A massive amount of time, and I think when you're figuring out how to be unemotional about it, figuring out that it is just a problem like anything else, a math problem, and you have to work on the process of elimination to solve it, right? You know, process of elimination, trial and error. That's a heuristic in and of itself, right? That's like the most simple example of a heuristic, like a way to think through this and a way to solve the problem. But if you want, I will start at the top and rattle off some of the reasons why sales are not where you want them, okay? And you figure out where you want to start breaking and abstracting.

Number one: you're not in the game, meaning you're not even attempting to sell, period, okay? And yes, thank you, Captain Obvious, but it needs to be said. I talk to hundreds of artists and photographers a week, and a whole bunch of them are talking about all the reasons why their work is not selling. And then I ask them whether or not they have their work in their hands that they can sell, and they say, "No, I don't. I've never printed it, I've never heard it, I've never tried."

I use this example all the time, Nick. I'm going to hire you to go door-to-door to sell knives. What would you take door-to-door?

Nick Friend: I might bring the knives. I might bring them with me, yes.

Patrick Shanahan: So if you're trying to go door-to-door and you're telling me you're trying to sell your art, and you have pictures in a catalog instead of the actual product, you're not serious. You're not serious.

Nick Friend: You know, it's another way of saying that too. It's like, would you ever do an art show without bringing your art? Or like, just have everybody walk by your booth and all you have is a catalog, right? That's all there is. It's insane.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, but there's a lot of people that do that. There's a lot of people that do that.

Nick Friend: What's up, Sandra? Good to see you.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, we had a good talk this week, I think, Sandra. We had a good talk, got some good feedback, good advice, I should say. So number one is that you're not even in the game because you're not selling, right? Number two is the validation, right? You've not validated whether or not your art will sell. Validation, simply said, is selling your art or photography to people not named mother, father, sister, brother, girlfriend, right? That type of thing, and it's really important. That's the first layer of validation, okay? There's an additional layer of validation which means you might have sold some art to people not named mom, dad, brother, sister, to some strangers, but it's just never a big enough niche that's actually going to take you to where you want to be, right? The title is "Sales not where you want them."

So let's come back to it, right? We now live in essentially a digital age, okay? And you can make an argument about whether or not it's truly a digital age or not, but I mean, you come back with what facts you have, okay? I am a passionate soccer follower, okay? That's my sport that I love. Watching all of the club teams right now are split out to their nations to go play national friendlies, and then this thing called the UEFA Cup. The sheer number of players that are coming back with COVID-positive is out of control, okay? They travel to their corresponding countries, met up with their teammates, international teammates, they're playing these games, you know, they're spread out through Europe, South America, and a lot of them are getting COVID. I see yesterday that Cristiano Ronaldo got it.

Nick Friend: He got it, didn't he?

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, and Weston McKennie, the American that's on that team, by the way, plays with him on that team, an American, 22 years old. Okay, coming up, we're coming up. I'm looking at, I'm talking to my friends in New York, and they're talking about putting the potential lockdown back in place. I'm looking at Bill Gates today in a headline, and Bill Gates is saying things are never going to go back to normal unless we have a vaccine that works. So look, again, I'm not going to let that get me down. I'm an optimist, I'm not going to tolerate a new lockdown, but it is underscored by the fact that we are not going back anytime soon. I think that's safe to say, right? Who knows if it's election chicanery or whatever it is, but it looks to me like we're probably another year away from it being normal. So it underscores that if you're going to be selling your art and photography, the offline venues and the thought that they might come back is just not a reality, okay?

So let's take this back to sales not where you want them. A huge problem then is the chicken and the egg. How do you get the attention to sell your art if you don't have any, right? Like if you come in and you have the zero email list, you have zero Instagram followers, zero Facebook followers, right? You just started all of those things, you're just starting your listings from scratch. That's a problem in and of itself, right? You have to have some strategies and tactics in that one, right? So that's a solution, that's one of the problems within this problem. You're not doing your marketing consistently or you're not doing your marketing at all. Again, there's levels to that, right? But I think the reason that we're having this conversation now, and I want you to chime in in two weeks, but the reason that we're having this conversation now is all of these problems are relatively easy to solve. And the easiest way to solve them is to make sure that you're working exclusively on fixing the problem that you have to the detriment of doing anything else. And this is a big learning for us, right? We can't have the people that are in this situation, that are customers, working on anything but what is going to solve this individual problem. So it's no different than going into the doctor. There's the diagnosis and there's the cure, the medicine, right? And that's sort of where I'm at in my mind, but you chime in, tell me where you're at.

Nick Friend: Yeah, I like that. You know, I think, like, I'll take it a slightly different direction and just the way that my mind is unpacking it, you know? It's like we start at Art Storefronts with validation, right? We want to know before we will work with anyone at Art Storefronts, right? Like, we do this as hard as we can. Of course, some people slip through, but you have to have validated that your art will sell, right? And that's what Pat said earlier, which is at the top. You have to have sold some pieces, right, to someone that's not like your mom or your dad or your best friend, right? So some strangers is the best way of saying, right? It's not that hard to do. It's not hard at all to do. You can do it in one day or one weekend, right? And you just have to get that done, right? Because we can't solve that problem. You know, we can't solve that problem. And so then if you have validated your art, right, what I think with that is like there's some layers to that, right? You validated that people will buy your talents, they will buy a product of yours that contains your talent, i.e., that art, right?

Patrick Shanahan: Yes.

Nick Friend: It tells me also that you are capable of selling your own art. You have to be capable of selling it. That doesn't mean you have to be like a car salesman and you have to pitch people and all this stuff, but you have to be capable of executing enough. It could be just going live on Facebook. It could be just listing it on Facebook or Instagram, just posting it and having a good deal. It could be doing a booth at an art show in non-pandemic times or even during pandemic times, right? If there's a center of your city or town where people are walking, even with masks on, you know, we've even had people do stuff in their front yard, right? If they have foot traffic or cars driving by, setting up a little, a very small minor thing and you say, "Hey, it's COVID. I'm an artist. I'm having a major art sale here." You know what I mean? Thinking about starting my art business and you've got slashed prices on it, right? Even if this is the first stuff you've ever sold, the price that you would intend to sell it at later on might be, let's say, you're going to sell a piece for like, or you want to sell something for like $500. So you have that crossed out and you say, "I'm $250 or $200," right? At this, until they're gone, until these three pieces are gone, right? And there's so many ways of

actually doing that, but you show that you can sell your art, right? That's the second layer to it, right?

Patrick Shanahan: Can I chime in for one second? Like, you know, everyone has a different set of circumstances and we've got this guy, shout out to Amzi, we love Amzi, he comes on all of our business workshops, and he was asking thrice-weekly, thrice-weekly Zoom sessions you can join, amazing, link in the bio. Did I get a link in the bio on this one? I'm going to mess it up and just put the demo request. Anyway, you have to use what circumstances are best for you. He's asking me today, Nick, questions about, "Okay, when I do the live show, what do I do? What do I do?" Where does that guy live? Do you know where he lives?

Nick Friend: No.

Patrick Shanahan: New Orleans, right adjacent to the quarter, I believe. Would you be telling him to do live art shows if you lived right there and you knew that guy played the guitar?

Nick Friend: No.

Patrick Shanahan: You would not. Open the door, get outside, get outside, get on a corner and set up that art, right? And validate right there, right? Which is not to say he's not validated, he's been selling art for a long time, right? The larger point is, right, to your point, we all have a little different set of circumstances. This all goes back to solving the sales and the problem, right? And you have to validate, okay? And then it's like a decision tree. You have to validate your art, okay, great. Do you have any sort of social following? And it can be on a business page or an Instagram personal account. No, I don't have either of those two. Okay, next check down, do you have a big personal following on your Facebook page? You do, 3,500, okay, that's enough, or 2,500, a thousand. Let's try a live there first. Otherwise, if you have something that gives you the ability to do it locally in person, you know, you've got the French Quarter, one of the biggest internationally traveled venues, new groups of people every single solitary weekend. Like, you're just looking to have 25 to 30 conversations, right? You're looking to have 25 to 30 conversations. How many conversations would you have if you had an art show and you were in a booth? You'd have 25 to 30 conversations, right? So whether you do it in a social context or whether you do it in the booth, it doesn't matter to us, but you got to get out there and do it.

Nick Friend: Yeah, exactly. So you got to be able to do that, right? That's the second part. Now, after that, right, so we said, I said, you've validated that your art will sell to strangers, right? And that covers the fact that you personally, as a human being, right, can actually execute and sell your art. You've gotten that done, right? Those are two big boxes that you're checking. After that, what matters is, is your content scalable, right? And how scalable is it? Now, the content, the subject matter is defined.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, you got to define the scalable. Not everyone knows that.

Nick Friend: Sure, okay. So, and there is no definitive answer on this too. You're gonna have to just, you figure that out kind of as you go, right? But the size of how big of an art business you can build, right, it will depend from there on your subject matter, i.e., do you paint elephants? Do you shoot cityscapes? Like, what is it, right? What is your subject matter and how marketable that is? How scalable means like how big of a business can you build with it? How big of a market, how big of an audience is there that is actually really passionate about that subject matter that you can attack, right? That you can target. That's going to determine the scalability of that art business, right? And so there's no way of just like, of asking me or asking you like, "Hey, do I have a scalable art business?" It's all a guess, right? It's all a guess. But I'll tell you this, I'll tell you this. If it's really hard for you to target your audience, and especially if you're doing marketing tactics and you just don't know where they are and like you don't know how to find them, it's the first sign that you know that you're going to have a difficult time scaling your art business.

Patrick Shanahan: What was the Mark Cuban hack?

Nick Friend: The Mark Cuban, what he said was something to the tune of when he's looking at like, when he's getting pitched on startups, you know, and people are, and he's trying to figure out whether the market they're going after is big enough, you know what I mean? Like, can they build a big enough company? Is it worth investing in and stuff like that? He used to go to like the Barnes and Noble, like the retail bookstores and go to the magazine section and he would look to see if there was a magazine on that topic. And if there was multiple, then it was a really big market, right? So you start thinking about that, like you go in front of like, what do you see in the magazine? I see cars, guns, hunting, fishing, like, you know, boats.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah.

Nick Friend: Fashion, I mean, like, you know what I mean? Like jewelry, like, I mean, there's everything, right? But those are really, really big markets. And I've always had, as you know, I've had my own heuristic for this, like my own mental shortcut, which is like, if other brands and other types of manufacturers are already targeting that audience, then you know it's a good audience, right? Because it's very defined, very defined, right? And a very obvious example, right, that I'll say that everybody can understand is like, you know, like college alumni, right, of a certain school. Like, you know, I went to USC in Southern California. The USC Trojan fan base, highly targetable, highly marketable, right? You can target alumni, they love it. It's a, you know what I mean? They are passionate about their school and this goes for any school. But like, what, so how do you know that that's a great audience? Well, there are sweatshirt manufacturers selling sweatshirts to that audience, hats, posters, keychains, glasses, what do you mean? Like, healthy, every single thing you can imagine. It is a market that already exists. So you know, that's another way of reverse engineering a good market. But ultimately, like, it's not about being perfect about the market you choose, it's just about trying new stuff, right? Throughout time, testing new stuff. And so you start with what you have, you validated something that means that, that's why I think those first two components are so important, right? You've validated your talent, right? And then you've sold a piece, which shows that you've got some, some business hustle in you, at least in the tiniest, smallest bit. You don't need to have like over extensive hustle, you got to have something in you, right? Some common sense in you to be able to make a sale happen, right? And if you do those two things, you've got a really good start right there. And then from there, you'll iterate over years. Every single business iterates, every single one. Did Art Storefronts today look completely different than we did seven years ago? It looks completely different than we did five months ago. Every business I've ever started looked dramatically different, you know, after five years or seven years than it did on day one. This is how every business works. I mean, there's like extensive books written about this, right? Like the Sony Corporation, right? Started off like making microwaves or something like that, right? Like, I mean, it's just, you know, there's story after story about how, how businesses start and then where they end up. And so you're, you're, you're starting off with the validation and then you ultimately will iterate your way to building a bigger and a bigger art business. So it's really good to have that, that mental mindset because that's how it's just gonna go. And you know what I see though, Pat? You know what I see? I see a lot of people who they have one type of content or maybe they have like three types of content. They've never really sold a lot of it. Maybe they've never even validated it, but they have their content, right? And then they, they go for that content. And then if it doesn't work and they can't figure out their marketing and they can't get traction, it's over. And they're actually really talented. They might be a really talented painter and they're painting like stuff where you're like, why are you painting that? You know, like, I mean, I know it makes you feel good. And, and so I get that, like, I'm not, I'm not knocking that at all. Like, I, I really appreciate that. But there's a difference between like, you know, what do you want to do with it, right? If you just want to like try to sell, you know, maybe you sell one every year and you don't really care about making any money on it, then that's success to you. Then that's what matters. Like all that matters is what is success to you. But I'm speaking to a lot of the people that we, that we work with, you know what I mean? Or that, or that we need to talk to, they want, they want to have a business. They're, they're, they're, they want, their sales are not where they want them. The title of this episode, right? Their sales are not where they want them and they really want to get to the next level and they want to know how to get there, right? And it's our job to unpack these different things to allow people to see what they can do to, to fix their current problem, you know what I mean? Focus on it and fix it and then be in a better situation going forward.

Patrick Shanahan: Yep. So we've got the validation and, you know, I think, do you have attention or do you not have attention? If you do, you can do it very easily digitally. If you don't, you probably need to figure out a way to do it offline, right? And, you know, the, the larger point too, if the sales are not where you are, like you might, and we continue to see this, you might have validated your, you might have an audience that likes it, but it's just never going to be a big business, right?

Nick Friend: Yeah, exactly.

Patrick Shanahan: You'd be lucky to sell like five to six to seven thousand dollars a year in that. Now again, no one's saying you're a crappy artist. No one's saying you're a crappy photographer. All they're saying is this particular market in this niche that you're in is very, very small, right? So you need to, you need to test some new things, come up with some new ideas that might pivot and might put you into new, into, into a new circle, right? Into a new idea, into a new style, into a new subject matter, into a crazy way of spinning it, into a new backstory. It doesn't matter. All it is is experimentation, right? Like experimentation. And again, you know, the stat that blows me away. Do you know how many pieces were in Dali's collection when he died?

Nick Friend: How many?

Patrick Shanahan: Forty-five thousand. Forty-five thousand. The unsold pieces that his family had to squabble over for like, I don't even know how long. But what do you think that guy was doing, right? How many of those were winners versus how many of those were losers for him, right?

Nick Friend: Yeah, yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: The majority were like losers, but he was just taking shots.

Nick Friend: Yeah, believe it or not. Oh, I was gonna say, I actually, I actually like, probably about 10 years ago, I went to London, to the Tate Museum in London. It's a very famous museum, and there was a Dali exhibit there, like one of the, you know, it was a massive exhibit. And so I saw a ton of his work, and you're right, it ranged from, I mean, there was everything. There was, there was very simple stuff, there was very complex stuff, you know, the subject matter ranged around. I mean, it was, it was remarkable. He was, he was iterating and iterating and iterating, Pat, like crazy, you know what I'm saying? Like he was.

Patrick Shanahan: Yep. And it, you know, it really does come down to a situation where it's how many arrows you fire, right? It's how many arrows you fire. Like, you know, again, depending on where your sales are at, if, if they're not where you want them to be, you have to figure out how to solve this problem. And for some of you guys, you're very good at what you do. You just don't have a subject material that is, that is, that is resonating, right? And essentially what you're saying is like, I'm telling you, you're telling me you want a big business, and I'm saying, okay, in order to get a big business, you have to be able to hit the bullseye. Sorry, I got a call. You want a big business, right? So in order to be able to hit the business, you need to hit a bullseye at the archery target, right? And what you're telling me is I'm only gonna fire one arrow. I'm only gonna do my paintings of palm trees. That's all I'm gonna do, right? Or my photos of palm trees. And so you're saying you're gonna shoot one arrow. Dali, you could see he was shooting at every angle imaginable, right? He fired thousands of arrows and stands to reason he had more of a chance that he was going to hit, right?

I mean, but each one, each one I really do believe is a problem. And we're, we're very cognizant of the fact, especially in terms of our customer base, we've got everything. We've got not validated, period, right? We've got not working on their marketing, period, right? We've got not even, well, they have a website out there with us, but doesn't have dozens of samples, not attempting to sell the finished product, period, right? We have people that are validated, but too small of the niche, right? And so what, what is the task there? And you realize that when you teach big picture and you try to teach everybody, you've got some people in there that are learning and are attempting to grow their business when they've not validated their art. That's a recipe for disaster, right? You've got people that are grinding and trying to build a following on a niche that is never going to map to their ambition. So that's a problem. They're working on the wrong thing, right? So we literally have to be like doctors and diagnose these situations on a case-by-case basis and provide the recommended remedy, right? And there's nothing emotional about it. I honestly believe it's not anything to get emotional about. You've got a problem, we have to solve the problem and get you on the path. That's it, right?

Nick Friend: Exactly. So product comes first, right? That's, it's kind of an interest, like it's product comes first. And then with that, you apply marketing to it, to a product that's going to work and you will get a result, right? If you do the requisite marketing with the right product, you're going to get a result. That result can be, that result will be way bigger if it is a highly marketable niche. And also, also it doesn't, that's not automatic. That's not automatic. And if the artist or the photographer executes on the marketing as much as possible and as effectively as possible, right? Because you gotta, we, we see, we see people who have great niches and they're extremely talented and they might even be doing like a hundred thousand dollars a year in sales, right? And you and I talk about it, we're like, my goodness, they could probably be doing a million if they actually took the marketing seriously, like as seriously as they should, right? Focused on lead generation and doing that. Because I mean, the more traction you get, the easier lead generation becomes, you know what I mean? Like it just gets, it gets easier and easier. More people want to work with you. You get what works more often. You're, you know, you're compounding your own skill set and your own learnings, right? And so as you continue going along, you know, that's obviously like the whole point of like doubling down on your business, why you want to invest profits into your business as it grows, because the return on those profits continues to get higher and higher, right? Always. That's how it works. Like the business is getting better. And so the return on every dollar you're putting in is going to be, is going to be way better than the first dollars you put in, right? So stepping on the gas there is, is really important, you know? But like I said, there's people, I mean, who, who are at that level, at a great level, it could be 50,000 or a hundred thousand that could be going way, way, way further with it, you know?

Patrick Shanahan: You know, it's amazing. Yeah. You know what I love? You and obviously I love the analogies, but I feel like if you're, if you're questioning the size of your niche and where you're at and what that all looks like and what it all could potentially look like, the analogy to think about is like you started the business with a style that you have validated and it's like buying a restaurant on a good street in on Main Street, right? But the restaurant, maybe it's break-even, right? Or maybe it's barely profitable and you want a bigger one. You already have the restaurant though, so you can keep the restaurant open, keep the doors open, right? Keep the income coming in and then just rapidly iterate on some new dishes, right? And then what you might find is you found a new dish that works, you close the restaurant for 48 hours, you change everything, the decor, the menus, the name, the title, you reopen the restaurant back up, you still own that land, you still own that building, everyone knows where to find you, you know, but you now have a restaurant that might potentially map, right? So, you know, there's a lot that are in a great position in the sense that they've got some momentum, they've got a list, people know who they are, they have a niche that's not working, and, and, and that's owning the restaurant. You just need to get some new dishes in there, right?

Nick Friend: Yes, it is. It is. And then, and in addition to that, how often have we been seeing where people have pivoted their subject matter, right? And they're, they're, they're essentially utilizing that to bring people in for lead generation, right? And, and they're selling that content, of course, but then those people, those people fall in love with you and your talent and all that stuff when you do the right marketing, right? And what do they do? They start buying the other stuff, the stuff that was tougher to market. And so you win anyway, you win anyway, right? So you can still sell the stuff that you're passionate about and you know what I mean? And still paint that stuff. It may not sell as well, but it doesn't mean you got to take it off, right? And like, take it all down and, and like shut that down. You, it's not at all. It's like, it's, it's just, it's just really figuring out what res, what's going to resonate the most and utilizing that to get attention. That's the key, right? You got to get attention.

Patrick Shanahan: People get so emotional about this, right? And it's like, look, it's, it's hard, okay? It's hard when you have a large body of work, right? Like, and the photographer just like, well, I've been shooting this for three years. I've been shooting this for 10 years. It's like, those weren't wasted hours. You learned a ton. You got some great subject material. The material's just not resonating and you have to be true about that. And everyone, like the thing that bums me out is seeing these situations and I'm not going to name names. You see these situations where they're grinding so hard on their marketing, right? And it's like, they're out there on the street in front of this restaurant blowing the whistle and the horn and putting new ads in the paper and everything else because they're married to their vision, right? They're married to their vision emotionally. So and no one, you have to just go in and change the cook a little bit. You got to change the dishes, right? Yeah, it's hard not to get emotional about this, but you know what? That's also the brutality of the market. There's no emotion in the market. The market just is what it is. I think another one of these problems that we're talking about solving is like when to pivot, how to go about it, what the playbook looks like, and how not to spend the next three years of your life hard at work on your marketing when the market has told you your product is not going to map to your ambitions. That's, that's a hard conversation to have. That's one that needs to happen.

Nick Friend: It is. I mean, it's, it's, it's a hard conversation to have, but if you've ever been a business owner, everyone goes through it. You know what I mean? Like, let me ask you, let me ask you, right? Have you ever started a business where you thought the product was going to be amazing and it was just a total flop?

Patrick Shanahan: Multiple times. Had to learn.

Nick Friend: Me too. Me too. And did it, and, and did it hurt a little bit?

Patrick Shanahan: Absolutely.

Nick Friend: It did.

Patrick Shanahan: Most importantly, in hindsight, knowing that like the one precious commodity that we all have so little of, time, like it hurt, it hurt, it hurt that way the hardest, right?

Nick Friend: Yeah, exactly. Wasted time.

Patrick Shanahan: A lot of wasting.

Nick Friend: Exactly.

Patrick Shanahan: You don't know anything like that until you get older and wiser.

Nick Friend: Exactly, exactly. And that's why, that's why we, you know, that's why you and I talk about this, right? Like, and I mean, because we've been there, we understand, you know? Like, I mean, I was really hurt when it happened to me in the first few times. Nowadays, it doesn't matter, like, because I know it's kind of like, it's, it's a very similar thing. Like if you go to buy a house, like your first house and you get so emotionally wrapped up and then you get like outbid and you lose it and you don't, you, you are so attached to it. You know what I mean? You were like, you were, you had, you had imagined your life there, right? And it got snatched out from underneath you and you're like, oh my gosh, I can't even believe it. What a huge mistake, you know, all of that. It hurts, right? But, but eventually you learn, I gotta go about this unemotionally because I just don't know what the market's gonna do. You know, I just don't know.

Patrick Shanahan: You can't, you can't be sure. You have to. It happened to us in the first business we ever started.

Nick Friend: Absolutely, it did.

Patrick Shanahan: Had that original name that we had all that time, all that energy, all that effort, all that promotion, all that marketing, all that work into got snatched right away from us, didn't it?

Nick Friend: Yeah, we did. We had a name on this business that we worked on for years, okay? And we couldn't get the trademark to go through. And so the lawyer's like, look, you can keep working on this. And if you build this into a big business, they can sue you and take it all away. So what do you want to do? And we had to change it on the spot. We had a trade show coming up. We really had to change it like a 48-hour period. And it hurt. It hurt.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, it took a long time to get over it. Almost never did get over it. Maybe I'm not over it still.

Nick Friend: Yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: So the point is, I understand the sentiment and the feeling, right? Like, I get it, I get it. But you have to map to the output. Where do you want the business to be, you know?

Nick Friend: Yeah, exactly. You just have to look back and you go, even if you spent two years or three years, you know, building that content up, you know, if it doesn't, if it's not gonna work, and you, and you, you've actually checked all the boxes, right? You're doing the marketing work, you're not like shortcutting and all that stuff. And, and the whole thing is like, it's not working and it's not really mapping to your ambitions, you know? I like the mapping to the ambitions because it, it could mean that like maybe you're only, you, in the last year, maybe you sold a couple thousand dollars, but you're like, that's not what I'm going for here. I'm looking to be at, I was looking to be at 20 or 30 or 40 thousand, right? Well, if that's, if that's the case, then you have to, you have to reevaluate. But I think, you know, the other thing is too, is that, which is like so profound, is that unlike a lot of other businesses, as an artist or a photographer, you don't have to abandon everything you did. You don't have to, right? Like, you do tend to do that with other types of businesses. It's like the product didn't work, forget it. It's too hard to like scale a product you have to manufacture or software you have to build and maintain, things like that. You don't do that. You move on, right? But with artists, like you, it, all of it wasn't for naught, you know? You, you still get to use that. And then you can very quickly iterate using all the skills and talents that you've gained up to move to that next thing that's slightly or maybe dramatically more marketable than what you currently have. And what's crazy is how fast you can do it, you know? Like being an inventor, like, let's, let me talk about this for a second, right? Being an inventor, you guys are all inventors as artists or photographers. Do you understand how profound that is? As an inventor, you can create your own product and make it for sale. I really, I mean, this is, it's, this is an envious situation here, right?

Patrick Shanahan: With no overhead.

Nick Friend: With almost no overhead. You are inventors. Amazing. I mean, I will, I will say this, like, I will say this out loud. I got into software development, I was attracted to software development because I, there was, I realized that I could invent products like that, right? It was a way to be able to invent products. I mean, I could be an inventor, you know? And like, I understand the profundity of that. Otherwise, I'm not an engineer. Like, I mean, a, a, like a classical physical product.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick Friend: A physical product engineer or somebody who's going to invent some sort of a switch or widget or, you know what I mean? Like a camera, you know, like VR or something like that. Like, I'm never gonna do that, right? So, so, you know, I found a way to, to become an inventor. And there's huge advantages in arbitrage in that, right? And you guys, as artists and photographers, you guys are inventors. So you can go create a new product tomorrow and, and whatever. And we see that happening. Like one of our, one of our best-selling painters, we had her, we were talking about her in one of our recent customer workshops, right? And she painted, she painted Ruth Bader Ginsburg, you know, two days after she passed away. And for the next 48 hours after that, she sold the original. And I mean, dozens and dozens and dozens of prints in like 48, 72 hours, right? And if she was just marketing her same work in that 72 hours, she would have never had those sales. Never, because her audience already even already knew about her content, right? So she, what did she do? She invented a product on the spot, okay? And with her time and energy, that's all it costed her. And she blasted it out to everybody on her email list and social media and she sold a ton of it, right? And now she's on doing even more tests because I think it blew her mind. And this is somebody who sells really well. This is somebody who sells really well, you know, who you would otherwise be like, why is she even testing new content? Well, she is, and it's part of the reason why she's really successful.

Patrick Shanahan: I should, I should say too, you know, one of the other things that we're going to have to work through that we're going to have to solve for is this notion of when do you know when that it's been validated or not validated, right? Because there's a lot of people that will say like, "Oh yeah, myself just one sell," and you've essentially scored the game a loss before you've even played the four quarters, right? You don't know yet. You don't know yet because not enough people have seen it. So we're gonna, we're gonna have to solve for that part of the solution too. And that'll, I think that'll take some time.

Nick Friend: Yeah, yep, it will. And it's, it's not a perfect science. It's more of like guidelines, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's more guidelines, but, but we know, you know, I think, I think the best part, again, I go back to is that even if you got to make a pivot, it's not, it shouldn't even be like a big deal. It's like just try it. Like, okay, we're looking at the scenario. It looks like it's not really working the way, you know, the, the, the headwinds, they're in your face, right? Like it's, it's, you're pushing the cart up the hill. It kind of seems like that. You might be doing some things wrong. You might not be executing right. But hey, it doesn't hurt to try a new thing. It doesn't hurt to just try it, you know, and see what happens because that may be the thing that just opens everything up. And we've seen that happen. So like we've, we've been seeing it happen more frequently as we've been talking about it where some of our members say, oh my gosh, like I listened to this, I listened to you guys talking about the pivot and I did it and I can't believe what happened. All of a sudden it's like things are working, right? I've been hitting, hitting my, banging my head against the wall, trying to push the content that I had. And all I needed to do was just switch and it's like, boom, all of a sudden people are signing up for my email list. People are sharing my posts and I'm getting sales. I'm getting sales immediately, immediately, right? Like within, on like that day and days after. And it's like, oh my gosh, I just went from the last year or two of pushing this other stuff to a pivot and instantly with one new piece had this reaction. Your, your mind gets blown and you're like, okay, what am I doing? Like I just didn't have the, just my subject matter wasn't resonating. It's, and that's just it, you know? Or it didn't resonate enough to my ambition level of where I wanted my sales to be.

Patrick Shanahan: That's right. That's right. What do you have in the announcement front? I gotta go pick up the kitties.

Nick Friend: Announcement front. Oh, ooh, we got, what, we've got two weeks left, pre-Black Friday sale guys, halfway through the month, almost halfway. We're almost halfway through, we're running a pre-Black Friday sale to join Art Storefronts at a discount guys. So if you're looking to take your art business forward and, you know, have the wind at your back, you know, have, get equipped with proper art gallery website as well as, you know, the ongoing marketing consulting, which is the only thing that really matters because a website is not enough without marketing. It is a glorified business card, not getting you anywhere. So yeah, if you're, if you, if you like what we're up to or you want to learn more, go ahead and request a demo. All right, we've got a link in the bio in this post on Facebook, YouTube, because we're live on all right now. Click on that link, fill out the request a demo form, it takes like 20 or 30 seconds. Just put in your information and then somebody from our outreach team will reach out to you to take a look at your art, learn about you and your goals, what you're looking to do and see if you're potentially a good fit to work with us and see if we can help you. And we'll take it from there. So they can show you all the details about every single thing that we do. And yeah, we've got a big fourth quarter. The fourth quarter's already begun.

Patrick Shanahan: The marketing for the fourth quarter is beginning in what, a week or two, right?

Nick Friend: Capitalize on the fourth quarter. It's already begun.

Patrick Shanahan: It's technically already begun, right? But, but yeah, it's, it's, it's a great time guys because this, if you didn't know already, I mean, you know it intuitively, this fourth quarter for every industry is going to be the biggest online e-commerce numbers ever done in the history of the world, right? I mean, e-commerce has only been around for 20 years, but it's going to be unbelievably massive, right? Because obviously of the lockdowns and the pandemic and the way that habits have changed and everything that's going on. And so, you know, that's coming and it's extremely exciting. There's gonna be more art sold online than ever before, which is great for everyone because you guys can all participate in it.

Nick Friend: Yup, tremendous. And we've got, we had the workshop today, so I guess we've got another one on Friday. So if you want to join in art business workshop, get involved, a little Q&A, a little bobbing and weaving, you can do that. I actually think there's a link. There's not a link in the video, but there's a link in our Instagram if you're on Instagram or it'll be streaming on Facebook, 11 AM PST Friday, 1 PM Central.

Patrick Shanahan: Excellent. Good. Leave it there. Good discussion.

Nick Friend: Yep.

Patrick Shanahan: All right, guys, we'll see you later. Not one, not what we're going to solve overnight, but I'm fired up about it nonetheless.

Nick Friend: Yeah. All right. Speak soon.