The Art Validation Strategy (Will your artwork sell?)

In this video, Patrick and Nick discuss the crucial topic of knowing when to call it quits or pivot if an art business isn't working. They emphasize the importance of validating your art to ensure it sells beyond just family and friends. Using a variety of examples such as starting a taco shop or trying new art styles, they advocate a bottom-up approach where entrepreneurs directly engage with potential customers to validate their product. The discussion includes insights from the book 'The Lean Startup' and practical advice on minimizing investment and maximizing real-world feedback. They stress that validation isn't only essential for newcomers but is a continuous process vital for any business. The episode also highlights the value of their biweekly private workshops for Art Storefronts members.

Podcast Transcribe

Patrick Shanahan: And we're gonna talk about when to call it quits, if it's just not working. All right, coffee machine's kicking up. It's gonna have to be an afternoon latte today. All right?

Nick Friend: Yeah. Yep.

Patrick Shanahan: That's how it goes.

Nick Friend: Already had one.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. That's how it goes sometimes. Independent, independent of everything else, and before we get into this, which is gonna be a hot button, I, they got me on an email today. They got me on an email. You know, sometimes you just have to respond and have a little bit of fun and we had this art business workshop earlier this morning, right? It was a great workshop and one, Taylor, TE on the marketing team sent me some Mark Twain quotes. Okay, and Mark Twain's got this book that he wrote that no one's really read called "The Innocence Abroad" and he essentially got paid to go on a cruise ship and travel around the world, write about it for like a magazine and he wrote this book and so, you know, he's got his constant wit, right? So I'm going through my Kindle highlights and I see like 20 of them and I just love his creativity. I can't get off of it, right? So I go into my Art Storefront's email box and I get one of these emails and this is a normal type of email, okay? And I promise the short will be short and we'll get to it.

"Hey Patrick, super interested in the service. I'll make you a deal. I'm gonna give you my biggest original, plus 15% of my prints for life. All I need is a free membership." And I can't remember what his name was and I'm not knocking you brother, but I just had a little Mark Twain fun.

I was like, "Dude, this is great deal. I'll take it. I'll take it. Let's do this. Here's the deal. You're gonna pay full price for your membership and after you've marketed for four years consecutively and followed all of my advice marketing and I see you putting in the hours week in, week out, 52 weeks a year, I'll take the deal, refund you, take the original and take the 15%. Please respond back." Now I'm probably not gonna get a response on that one, am I? (laughs) But it's...

Nick Friend: Nope.

Patrick Shanahan: It's interesting how it goes both ways. I had to flip the script. Enough about messing with that poor gentleman today, you know, have a little bit of fun, turn about their play. We've got to talk about validating the art and it's come up 25 times in the last two weeks and then 50 times the weeks before that and the weeks before that. So we need to define the term.

Nick Friend: Always.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. We need to define the term validation and in the art world, ultimately, with all the other BS boiled out of it, will your art or photography sell? Will your art or photography sell to people not named mom, dad, brother, sister, best friends, family, right?

Nick Friend: Yeah, exactly. And I think, and I don't mean to jump in on you, but I just, I had a thought on this and I think you'll appreciate it as an entrepreneur, right? We're both entrepreneurs. Okay, and started several companies and you know, I think what we should do is step back and talk about this in the context of just any business, right?

Patrick Shanahan: Yep.

Nick Friend: Validating your product will sell is a fundamental thing that you need to do as an entrepreneur in any business, right?

Patrick Shanahan: Yep.

Nick Friend: So what do you do? You go out and you sell your product, right? Like, for example, if I'm thinking about starting a taco shop, Nick's Taco Shop. Okay? Literally, like...

Patrick Shanahan: Yes.

Nick Friend: Well, actually, I'm sorry. Let me say this. If I'm thinking about starting a, a pretty serious Mexican restaurant, right?

Patrick Shanahan: Yep.

Nick Friend: And my main product is gonna be these amazing fish tacos. Let's just say, right? Like high-end fish and the whole thing, right? What do you do? You do not go invest in the restaurant, you know, build out the whole concept, get a business license, you know, sign a lease for a year's rent, you know, and empty the bank accounts and quit your job and go for it. That's not what you do. The first thing you do, okay, is you make some of the product and you go out to some different places, right? You might go in front of some corporate buildings with lawyers where they're working, you know, where high net worth individuals, whatever it takes. Today. You do it today and you, and you make like 30 of them, you know, and you package them up really nicely and you, you know, you dress nicely and you get out there and you, and you probably set up a table. Even today, I would do it with a mask on. Okay? And gloves and the whole thing, I would look so sharp, I would make the, and I'd say, I'm trying to validate this new Mexican res, con, concept. It's gonna be a restaurant, but I'm testing it on the clientele I plan to have. I'm offering these tacos for $10 each. Right? And see what happens. See what happens. Right? Have them taste them there. Have them taste them there and you know what I would probably do? I'd say they're $10 each, but try one right now. Here's a plate and whatever, if you don't like it, you don't have to pay me. If you like it, pay me. Right? Pay me. Like, and, and you validate that, that they liked the product and now you have $150 in your pocket of real, real people departing with their cash for your product. Okay? Then you should do it again and again and again, right? It, with different things and then now, you're, it's no longer a, Hey mister mentor businessman, I'm thinking about starting this restaurant, do you think I could make it happen? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's you, your product in the market and you go sell it, because I have news for you. If you can't sell your product to real human beings on the streets, okay? Right out in your town, your local community or whatever, even during COVID, even during COVID, you're not gonna sell it online, right? Now, now, okay, wait. I should also, I should, I should adjust that for a second, because the same way that you could sell it with your current Instagram or Facebook following, same thing, you should be able to do a flash sale today with your product your art, right? And sell it on the spot. You should be able to do one or the other. If you don't or if you can't, okay? No one can solve that problem for you. Nobody. Nobody can solve that problem for you and you're dancing around the real problem, which is, you know, can you sell your art? You have to be able to sell your product, folks. You. Not someone else, you. You have to be able to do it. If you can't, everything is going to crumble. It's that simple, right? Because maybe your art is good, but you can't figure out how to sell it. Like, you're in person and you're confusing people or you're, there's something that's turning people off. I don't know what it is, but you have to be or like you just can't make it happen. Either way, you got a problem. You might have the best art in the world and you can't sell it or the best product in the world. Imagine the guy that, you know, imagine somebody else that, that does my, my restaurant idea, the taco idea, right? But he goes to the same building and you know, he's in like, you know, shorts and he's barefoot and he doesn't look the part and he's, you know, and he's just, you know, like the whole thing is sort of off, like he's charging more money, but the, there's like, you know, the, the packaging is dirty. It's got like, you know, salsa spilled on it. Like the whole presentation is just a big turnoff, right? Like, and then he's like, you know, I couldn't sell my product. It's like, exactly. Your product might have been very good. It might've been amazing, but you know what? You turned everybody off or there's something not clicking. There's something not clicking. Either way, you have a problem.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. And I, I don't know what was out there historically speaking, but you know, Nick and I are, are entrepreneurs and follow everything that goes on in tech quite closely and have for years and so there was this guy, Eric Ries that wrote this book called "The Lean Startup", right? That, that I think fundamentally changed the way everybody talks about this, introduced some jargon into the world that now everyone uses in the startup world and, you know, yes, we're talking about selling art or photography, but when we say the startup world, this book is really just about business. It's just about business, right? And validation is the core of what it is and out of that book, came the term, the MVP, the minimum viable product. In Nick's example, it wasn't about renting the building and filling it, filling the decor and putting a giant taco in the roof, kind of like that donut thing in LA and getting mariachis and doing the entire thing. It's about going to the door, the cheapest quickest way possible with a little cart and making tacos and see if people, you know,

line up out the door. It wasn't about building the restaurant. What's the quickest way you can figure out whether or not your product would work? That's the MVP. Create that and go, and it, and it totally translates to what we do selling products, period. Right? And so all of this discussion has come along out of this book and there's follow ups to it and everybody in the industry uses the terminology and I remember my like young Gusto days, I like printed out this like Five Steps of Product Market Fit validation on my wall, right? And I tried to find it as I was Googling ahead of this and I couldn't find it, but one of the dangers in all of this, that happens again and again and again, and look, it doesn't matter if you're an artist or a photographer or you're trying to start a startup, or you wanna build a soccer team, whatever it is that you want to do, it, everyone in the, in the, in the venture capital community, the people that actually write the checks say the number one problem, and I'm quoting this one from Andreessen Horowitz website, but it says the number one problem I've seen for startups and artists, photographers, same thing, is they don't actually have product market fit, using a better term, when they think they do. They have not actually truly validated their art when they think they do. Right? And what do I mean when they think they do? You've won awards. You've gotten a ton of likes and comments and shares, right? People have told you for years your work's amazing, but until you take the credit card, the payment, okay, then you have not validated anything and you can't just take it once, you have to take it several times. So I think, I think, you know, there's no way in one episode that we could possibly tackle this whole thing. I think it's gonna have to be many, many discussions and there are many, many layers to it, as well. Early on in this business at Art Storefronts, I recorded two podcast episodes on it and they had a title I didn't want to repeat, but the concept was what is the best way about going about validating this? So I think we should get into that and talk about that somewhat and then I think we should pivot to when do you call it quits? Because it's a, that's a, it's a very important part of the discussion and my fear, my danger, and, you know, we get, we get all kinds, right? All kinds of every 350 artists and photographer questions I'm feeling on a weekly basis, okay? I've seen everything under the sun at this point and a lot of times, you know, you, you give advice and you tell people to do things and you provide the best practices and we give you rest playbooks out there and some people just take off and destroy it. Like some people do it right away and then there's the middle of the curve, varying different degrees of success at different times and then there's some others that are just stuck. They're just stuck and they all took the same advice, right? They all took the same advice. It's the same tactical, right? You just skin it for what you're doing and we see all these varying different degrees of success and my fear is that without us clearly articulating and invalidating and not artic, articulating and codifying this validation strategy and when to call it quits, you might potentially end up spending all this extra time and energy and effort and years in marketing and doing this and grinding and you haven't validated it, because it hasn't been pounded in your head how important it is to do and I'm not saying we're gonna get that done in one episode, but it's a genuine fear I have, right? It's why we don't, it's why that guy that emailed earlier, like we're not in the business of picking horses, okay? I can't tell you whether your art is gonna sell. Nick can't tell you. Only the market can tell you and she's brutally honest. She's brutally honest. She doesn't care about any touchy-feely anything or likes or shares or stats or how awesome people tell you are, that like it, it, either a transaction happens or it doesn't. Right? So I think we could talk about some validation strategies. I think we can talk about when to potentially call it quits with, with two other quick caveats. One, it sounds like it's likely just for people that are just getting started. Nothing could be further from the truth. It applies as equally to us, Art Storefronts as where we are at business, to any of the rest of you, right? Because guess what? You're gonna have new initiatives. You're gonna have new series and this is a muscle that you need to build, like anything else, right? You know, Pepsi Clear isn't around anymore is it? Right?

Nick Friend: Nope.

Patrick Shanahan: They probably should have tested that a little bit better. Right? Like, so, those are the types of examples. Like you're gonna have new series. You're gonna have new directions. You're, you're gonna try new things. You're gonna get bored and stagnated with what you're currently working on and wanting to go in another direction and so understanding this concept of validation, how to potentially systematize it, how to think about it. Like, this is a really important topic for everybody. Us included.

Nick Friend: It's so important. Us included. Like, new marketing initiative, right? We're trying this new thing. Like how much time are we gonna give it? What is gonna constitute validation on that? Right? Like what are the, what are those metrics gonna be? And like, here's what we're gonna devote to it. It's, it's, and it's science. Right?

Patrick Shanahan: You know... Exactly and, you know, do you know what I love about it? Is that like, I think it sets like the right, it sets an entrepreneur on the right path, right from the start. Okay? Which, which is rather than taking a top down approach, you take a bottom up approach, right? You start with the customer and you work backwards, because when you're validating whether your art or your product will sell, what else happens in that process, Pat? You're talking to customers and what happens when you talk to customers? You find out what really resonates with them. You know, what content really resonates with them and so when you and I are advising, you know, non-Art Storefronts members and they're like, you know, I've got this niche and I've got that niche and you know, I got, I, I do painting and I also do photography or I do boats and I also do still life. I mean, like all this different, you know, all these different things, you and I are like, just get out. Just get out there and start selling it, right? Online, you know, to your, to your current social media following and we have a way of doing that and we've got a playbook guys, a validation playbook, and we should get it in the comments for everybody and, and that's what you should follow if you are in this position where you need to validate your art, right? But that bottom up approach is the way that you should run the entire business and so it sets, it sets you on the right path, right from the start, you know, where you're starting with the end, the people who you're trying to provide real value in their life, right, through your product and you're finding out whether they like it or not. If I go back to the restaurant analogy, right, with my tacos, what if somebody's like, "Hey, I love your steak tacos. These are unbelievable. You know what I mean? But I really don't like your fish." And I'm like, whoa. The whole reason I'm here is 'cause I thought I had these amazing fish tacos and I went out there and in one day, one day, everything in my mind got flipped around, because all of a sudden, I've got the best steak tacos in town and I didn't even realize it. That seasoning that I put on there, you know, I thought it was pretty good, but everybody's going crazy over it. They were asking me to order more so they could take it home, you know? And I, and I go back and I'm just blown away, right? Pat, how many times has that happened to you? Right?

Patrick Shanahan: Oh God.

Nick Friend: Like situations like that. I mean, it has happened to me so many times where I've been proven completely wrong. In fact, more often than not, you find out that your hunch is wrong. Is that not true?

Patrick Shanahan: Oh, all the time. All the time.

Nick Friend: All the time.

Patrick Shanahan: And the analogy is just like, you know, let's keep it in our niche. You're trying to sell art or photography. That's what your overall overarching goal is. So let me give you an analogy about why this process is so powerful, it works so well. You ever see the Karate Kid? You ever see the Karate Kid, right? What is the Karate Kid trying to do? He's trying to learn to do karate. Okay? What is Mr. Miyagi having him do? K. Paint the fence. Wax on, wax off on the car, right? Side to side and the point I'm making is you're trying to sell art or photography. Learning this whole validation process tricks you into learning all the skills, so you can actually do Kung Fu, right? Or karate or whatever it is in, in, I guess Karate Kid, Kung Fu. Karate Kid for Pete's sake, but that's what it is, right? To your point, you trick yourself, not knowing it cognizantly, to actually taking these things to market, to making the creative course corrections that come at you, that can only come at you from validating your art and you end up getting there by, by a route that you didn't realize and all the sudden, you know, you could do karate and you see all these people like, you know, I'm working on my stuff. I'm just gonna get 10 more pieces and once I have 10 more pieces, I'm gonna launch and I'm sitting there going, I don't want you to do that. I don't want you to waste, to waste your time on 10 more pieces. Take the two you have and go sell them. Go sell them and see whether or not you can get it done, right? It's the same thing. It's the same thing, like, you know, your analogy of the, the taco and starting the restaurant and taking out a lease and doing all that. It's like, people, people ask us all the time, like, Hey, you know, do you offer financing? Is there a financing plans? Like, yeah, we do, but I'd prefer you don't do it, because there's, you're, you're, you're hanging your hat. Like, well, I'm gonna quit my job and do this. Like, no! No! No! No! Go validate first, right? Go validate first. So...

Nick Friend: Yeah and, and if you can't go out there and sell enough product to pay for the business, you got a bigger problem here, right?

Patrick Shanahan: You're not ready.

Nick Friend: You have to solve that problem first.

Patrick Shanahan: You're not ready.

Nick Friend: Yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: You're not ready. You're not ready. You know? I mean, look, I, there's a couple, like two other things that I wanna say on this. Like, I've never actually mentioned this before, but I think it's a, or publicly, at least, which is when we started Art Storefronts, we made mock-ups. Okay, design mock-ups of what the website, you know, buying experience would be for the art buyers. Okay? And we sent it out to about 30 artists and photographers and, and, we got commitments from them. Actual, like had them pay $30, right? For the year, if we were to build it. Actually got money out of them from mock-ups. Right? We did, we, and then, and then it took us a year, like eight months or to a year to build out all the software to actually deliver the product to them. Right?

Nick Friend: Yep.

Patrick Shanahan: Like you would never think that...

Nick Friend: MVP.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. MVP. Exactly. I mean, but look, that's, that's after, that's after 20 years, or I'm sorry, at that time, probably what, 12, 12 or 13 years of being an entrepreneur, somewhere around there and learning the hard way, but it just shows you that it can be done even for a big project. Now, what I wanna say though is that, is that, you know, what, what year was it that we started our first company? 1998? I think. Let's just say it's 1998.

Nick Friend: Yeah, I mean it's 97. 97.

Patrick Shanahan: Okay. So, you know, a long time ago, right? But the, the, and, and then I started my second company in 2003, right, Which was Breathe in Color and the thing that I have to say is that back in those days, it was really hard to start a business and I think that's one of the biggest problems these days, right? It's a lot easier. These, all these generic website companies, right?

Nick Friend: Too easy. It's too easy.

Patrick Shanahan: Like they're, they're marketing at you and they're making you think that if you just start a website, you have a business and there could be nothing further from the truth, okay? Nothing further from the truth. Remember guys, you know, we, we quote this stat often. You can Google it and in fact, you should. 99% of all Shopify stores fail. 99% of all Shopify stores fail. Google it. Go Google it. Why is that? Well, you can read all the articles that are there. It's because the only thing that you have to solve is marketing. You have to solve the marketing problem. Your biggest part of your marketing problem is your product and whether it will sell, right? Your product is part of the marketing and so you have to do that first and then you have to market your business. If you don't do that, you will never have a business, but in this day and age, you know, once the generic website platform, Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, WordPress, go down the list, right? All, all GoDaddy, a gazillion options for a generic website got out there. Anybody can just launch a business like today. You could start a website today and upload a couple of things and all of a sudden, hey! I've got a business and it's like, no, you don't. You don't. Like, I, that's the worst part about it is like, it's, it's like you're being attracted to taking this backdoor route. When in the old days, before, you know, when it was hard to build a website, you had to pay custom website developers, you know, or there were no websites. It was very expensive. You know, you had to be very intentional about like, whoa! I'm gonna throw five to eight grand into this, just this website, you know? And like, I gotta make sure I got a business first and so the lean startup was, was written in those early years, you know, to try to help people to understand, like, don't go down this road until you validated your product with a minimum viable product. You know what I mean? And so that's what's kind of underpinning this whole thing and so it's really good for you guys, you know, all you guys listening that haven't necessarily validated your art yet, like to understand that these are the factors at play, right? People are trying to get you to buy websites and buy logos and buy this and buy that, you know, before you even validated your product, you can validate your products in like a week. Like, I mean, seriously, you really can. You could, you could do it practically today. I'm just gonna say a week or two weeks, just because we're in COVID and it's a little bit harder, but you just go outside. Just go anywhere where people are congregating. You don't need a business license or anything like that. Just take a few products out there. You know what I mean? And have a little sign and a little table or whatever, and say, I'm just, you know, these are hard times and I'm trying to figure out whether I'm, you know, I should start this business and I've got this amazing deal and here's my art or photography and, you know, boom. Like you should be able to sell a couple of pieces, you know, or, and/or you go online and you do our validation strategy, right? Where you do a flash sale today or tomorrow, you buy a couple prints and you post it to your social media following, Instagram and Facebook. We've got a whole playbook for exactly what to say and how to do this and you do either, or both of those two things. If, you could, you could do them both and you'll have like, you know, a full validation. If you do that and you can't make anything happen, you should not do anything. You should, you know, retreat, you know, try to figure out what you might've done wrong. Or, or maybe there's a problem there and you gotta fix that first. Keep trying to fix that and then once you have success there, that's it. That's all you need. You're ready to go. You are ready to go at that point, but you've got to have that validation and it's so easy to get with almost no investment at all. You don't need a website. You don't need a business card. You don't need anything. You know what I mean? You literally, you don't need a consultant, because we're giving you the exact strategy on how to do it for free. For free. We have how many people at this point have done this and have successfully made it happen, Pat. A lot. A lot. You know? There's been a lot of people where you and I pumped the brakes on them. You know, I remember this one gentleman specifically on one of our non-member workshops, which by the way, we have one tomorrow, guys. We've got one tomorrow at 11:00 AM Pacific, one Central, two Eastern. So get on our email list if you want to come to this stuff. Free art business consulting session, right?

Patrick Shanahan: You can register, you can register it in the show notes on any of the links or anywhere else, but yeah. Keep coming.

Nick Friend: Beautiful. Beautiful. Yeah. So this one gentlemen, you know, he's like, "I've been, I've been a photographer for 15 years and I've, you know, a dark room..." You know, he's going through all of his credentials and he sounded like he was really legit and he had great photography in the background. He's like, "I haven't been able to sell anything in 15 years, you know? And I think it's my niche and it's the stuff that I've just decided to shoot and all that." And he's like, "I feel like I should just join Art Storefronts, because you guys will help me, like to finally pick my niche and make some sales. " And I said, "Nope." He's like, and he, and, and, he's dancing around it, right? He's like, "Well, I feel like, you know, like I can tell you guys really know what you're talking about and all of this, da da da da da. I really want to do this." And I go, "Nope. Nope. " I just, you know, and that's what happens. That's what happens. People wanna get around this some way and it's like, nope, you gotta face this, because if you can't do it, when I'm giving you all the advice in the world and we're giving you a validation strategy and we're giving you the advice, if you can't follow the advice that we're giving you right now upfront, then you're not gonna be able to follow the advice with all of our art marketing calendar and all the assets that we give you to put the wind behind your back. You know what I mean? To, to help you market your art. You know what I'm saying?

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. I mean, as you're just talking it out, I'm, I'm, I'm realizing how much more we're gonna have to do on this and I was just like thinking in my head, right? Like if I was...

Nick Friend: What are you thinking?

Patrick Shanahan: I mean, if I was brand new, and given how cheap the prints are these days, right? And this isn't some sort of pitch for print business, like, look, I don't care where you get them, they're cheap, okay? I would, I would, I would, and mine would be photography, 'cause I couldn't draw a stick figure to save my life. I'd do my six, seven, 10, 15 different styles and I would put myself on some sort of lifecycle that was so short. I mean, shoot for two weeks, I'm assuming you have, you know, your craft is honed at this point. I would go shoot something for two weeks. I would get probably 20 prints. I would try to sell them for two weeks, at the end of which I'd fire sale them all, realize I either did it or I didn't do it and then do it again, right? Two week, two week sprints or something like that, I would need, I would need to map it out, but the amount of places that you can set up with a table and your work and start talking about it and attempting to sell it, even in this COVID world is pretty striking and it's still so much easier, so much faster, so much more efficient face to face, right? As much as I'm a digital guy and I advocate for all these digital things, we're living in a time that makes that face to face difficult. It's still really possible and better still, you're gonna feel way more confident when you have a mask covering your face, right? You know? They won't be able to see you frown or whatever else if it, if the results don't go the way you want it to go, but, independent of that, I think, I think we need to come up with more and more layers to it and more and more aspects of validation and you know, Juan, I see your comment, I'm not sure, you know, who told you if you've never sold a thing to, to jump aboard, we can get into the semantics on that later, but if you sold offline, then you're good to go, right? Like there's many that have sold several thousands of dollars offline over the courses of years. Okay, you're ready to go, but also too, there's layers of validation, right? Like you're validated at some basic level, like, hey, you sold a bunch of pieces offline, a couple thousand dollars offline. You're ready to go. You're good to go. People want your art, but then there's also like, I have the ambition to sell $500,000 worth of art a year. Okay? And so there's additional layers of validation as you go up the chain, too. But I still think offline's best. I still think the flash sales work incredibly. I get it, if you don't have a huge Facebook following, that that can be difficult, but it does seem like we need something more substantive there. I'm just thinking out loud in my head. I mean, I'm gonna, I'll, I'll start creating it, but also too, like validating new styles, right? Validating the big show you want to have, right? Like, you know, that's a terrifying thing, when you think about it, like you're gonna paint for nine months or a year to have a big show and you haven't validated the styles. Whew. That's quick sand, right? Like if you're a great artist, you have a great brand, it might work out well, but what's the difference between a home run and a base hit? Right? Hopefully not a year's worth of your life. I don't know.

Nick Friend: Yeah, and, and, you know, and Juan, Juan, we'll look into you, like, I'd love to, I'd love to look into your situation and understand, because, you know, you said, you're saying that, you guys are talking about validation now. We've been talking about validation for years. You know what the benefit that we have is on this? The videos are saved. They're all public. They're on our YouTube channel and they're all over Facebook and Instagram.

Patrick Shanahan: Dude, the podcasts were like 2017, dude.

Nick Friend: Yeah. There's a, exactly. There's a podcast episode and it's the "Does My Art Suck? Test". That's Patrick's...

Patrick Shanahan: Terrible title. Terrible title. (laughs) Controversial. I'll regret that. I'll regret that forever.

Nick Friend: Yeah, but I mean, we're talking about this all the time, so I'm very curious, you know, this is not a new topic.

Patrick Shanahan: I'm looking at it right now and it's July 14th and September 14th, 2017. So almost, you know, almost what, three years to the day.

Nick Friend: Yep. How long, how long we've been talking about it, but we need to delve into it quicker and we need to do some better definitions, I think, on, you know, overall advice of when to call it quits and when to fold up shop and quit the whole game of poker, right? And, you know, I said that...

Patrick Shanahan: Or pivot.

Nick Friend: No, I said that, that's where I was going. I said this earlier on the call, like two of the most prolific art sellers we have on the platform were on the verge of hanging them up and pivoted, right? And the minute that they pivoted, boom. Businesses took off, right? Like, you know, it, the, the, the physical sentiment or the, the emotional sentiment, just to think like, if your stuff doesn't sell, your art sucks. You're a bad artist. You're a bad photographer and that's not the case, you just don't have a product that the market wants. Right? You've not created food the dogs wanna eat. You have to just change the recipe up a little bit. So a different style, a different creative direction, a different photographic subject, something new and creative is often what's called for and that pivot makes all the difference. But the only way you find out is if you attempt to validate, right? It's the only way you find out. Only the market can tell you. It's a big topic. It's a big topic, we'll get, we got a lot of mileage on this one.

Nick Friend: Yeah and a pivot, we've got a question from Avery about pivot. Like, how do you pivot? Pivot means, you know, like sort of abandoning, or just putting aside the, the niche that you've been currently painting or shooting, because it's just not resonating and pivoting to a new type of subject matter. Right? One that you know has a market. Okay? One that you know has a market and I have a, I have a heuristic for this, which is if the market already exists, if, if products are already being sold to that audience, then that market is probably a good market. Okay? And so what, like a perfect example, like, you know, Austin, you know, there's Austin, you know, mugs, there's Austin, T-shirts, there's Austin skylines and all that stuff, right? There is a, obviously an audience that exists to buy Austin products. The Beatles, a band, just take any band, right? There are Bealtes shirts. There are Bealtes records. There are Bealtes stickers. There are Bealtes posters, right? The audience exists. Don't try to create one; find one that already exists and then fit into that, right? So use that heuristic and you can reverse engineer a great niche. Okay? So if you have, and that's what these people did, straight up, Pat. Is that not the truth? You know, that's what they did. They went from, you know, 'cause they still have the old content on their sites and what's funny, what's ironic about this is that we have seen over time that people that buy their art on their new niche are, are, are buying the art of the old niche, because they become so connected.

Patrick Shanahan: They are the brand.

Nick Friend: Yes, because the artist is the brand and when you do your marketing correctly, it'll drive sales of your other niches, right? So you'll have a lead niche. You might just want to have a lead niche that you use in your marketing to attract people, because it really resonates with them and there's a market there and then once you do that, you're creating collectors who will buy your other, your other subject matters, ya know?

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. The whole thing, the whole thing is just amazing and I think, you know, our job, our job is to create successful customers, right? And so it makes a ton sense to start on the low end and, and just getting started, because that's where you build the muscle. Right? And you build this ability to do this and it's super counterintuitive. It's not taught in school and you start to only learn it by like being in the business community and going through this whole startup exercise and everything else, but also too on the new series and the new stuff and to be honest with you, it's, it's the best way period, right? And you know, the easiest way to think about it is like, you're not an artist, okay? You're an artist of a different sort. Let me say it that way. You're a chef, right? Why are pop-up restaurants all the sudden so popular? Pre-COVID, Pre-COVID, Pre-COVID, right? Because you get to try out a new concept for a month in like a Hocker mall or in, or in a location and then bounce. Right? You get to see whether or not you can validate it before you spend any money on the menu, way before you've, before you've rented and signed on the dotted line and financed all the equipment and everything else, you get to pop in, try something and pop out, right? Like, you know, you do 12 of those in a month or, you know, however long it takes you to come up with a recipe book. Like, that is a tremendous amount of sense. If you're a restaurant tour, my goodness, is that good. Right? Like if I owned a mall and like, I was the one, or I owned like a, you know, a mini mall, right? Like where you have restaurants in and out of there, like, I would almost say, hey! You know, you look like a good business. Come in, you know, before I spent all the money on the TA, right? And getting the new signs.

Nick Friend: Right.

Patrick Shanahan: Whatever, like, hey! Come in, bare bones, let's test you out for a couple of weeks and see how you do, right? If it does it really, really well, then we'll sign a three year lease. If not like, you know, you as a building owner are gonna get smoked, because some new concept that's not been validated is gonna come in, fail in six months, your building's gonna be vacant for six months. You're gonna get in a fight over the lease. Then, then you're gonna have to get it all painted and get it all cleaned up, release it, and then potentially, you know, some new type of business wants it and then you have completely redo everything. You get smoked.

Nick Friend: Yep.

Patrick Shanahan: It's bad for everybody. So this is a muscle.

Nick Friend: It is.

Patrick Shanahan: It is a muscle that we need to develop. It is a, a concept that we need to work on and it's, it'll never fail you. Right? Like it applies to everything. It applies to marketing messages. Like how quickly can you get that baby to market and find out whether or not it works. Right? Like...

Nick Friend: Yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: We sorta take for granted that we're doing that all the time, but it's a muscle that's been built up, like anything else over years and years and years.

Nick Friend: Yeah and you know what, too? Like, this is like, there's a really important lesson in this, because it's not just about, you guys, we're not just talking about, you know, those of you just starting out. This applies towards new, new niches that you want to go after. It applies towards new products you wanna go after, right?

Patrick Shanahan: It applies everywhere of...

Nick Friend: It applies to everything. It's validating whether your products will sell, your new niche will sell, you know, or anything else. Like, you know, for example, you know, we get questions like, hey, well I'm thinking about painting a new thing. How should I, how should I launch that? Should I just launch it? Should I just throw it all on the same website? Do this. Validate it. Right? Do the exact same thing we're talking about. Like over the next week, get some prints made, go out in person, you know, put it up, do the flash sale on social media, explain, follow the playbook and see what happens. Simple as that. That's it. That's the answer to the question, right? You're thinking about, hey, I've only offered, you know, paintings, originals and I'm thinking about offering limited editions or prints for the first time. Go validate it. Go validate it first.

Patrick Shanahan: Yep. Just dip your toe in the water. No one's gonna care. Right? And say, hey, it's, COVID, you know, these are interesting times. I'm gonna, for this, you know, I'm not sure if I'm ever gonna do this again, but for this time period, I'm gonna offer these five prints on, of, you know, I'm gonna offer prints for the first time or I've just gotten creative and I decided to paint some animals. I know I normally do beaches, but I'm doing animals here, 'cause I'm really inspired by it and you know what? These might be the only five I do. I would love to see, you know, how you guys like them. Let me know. Send me your comments and guess what? Anyone who wants to buy one, they're 50% off until they're gone. Right? And then you see what happens. So one of our painters, you know, he did this in the last couple of weeks, right? He painted a, a specific type of content. All right. It was a, it was a, a Jesus painting. He's never done anything like that before. It was a painting of Jesus. Never done anything like it. In fact, his content couldn't have been more opposite. Right? It couldn't have been, it really couldn't have been more opposite in, you know, in many ways and he sold the original on the spot. Okay? And he said, I've had the, and he came back to us and he was like, I've had the biggest reaction to this that I've ever had in anything I've ever released. What do I do? You know? And so we were kind of coaching him on that, on how he should move forward. The first thing I said was go paint another one. Go, go paint another one and go do it again next week. And he was like, whoa. It's like, should I do, he was thinking about like big, huge plans and I'm like, hold on a second. You just sold it on, on the spot. Like you just made like $3,000. Right? I'm like, go do another one and go do it again. Now you'll have $6,000. Right? And, and then after that, you might release some prints and there's some different creative things that you could do, but the supply, the whole point here is that how easy is it to just validate this stuff, Pat? Don't, you don't have to ask, just go out and validate it. If you can't validate it, you got a problem. You know what I mean? That, that, that thing has some sort of a problem, but the best part about it, it's so liberating, you guys, I have to tell you, like, don't get emotional about it. Don't get like emotionally bought in. Just get out there and validate it and be as stoic about it as you can, because if it doesn't work, then you just move on and there's something really liberating about, like, once you find out that the validation like didn't happen, then like, you could be saving years of your life and more hours and time and money than you could possibly imagine, 'cause you just move on to something else. Right? You just move onto a new piece of content and the sooner that you do this...

Patrick Shanahan: Rinse and repeat.

Nick Friend: Yeah, exactly. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. And then, and then what eventually happens is you strike something and you know, you will notice how everything is different. You, you won't have to ask, you won't have to ask me and you won't have to ask Pat, because you will know. You will feel it. Like, you know how like when you fall in love, you can feel it and you just know? That's what it feels like. You will just know and it'll be obvious. You'll see the reactions. You'll see the demand right there and you'll know, I just struck a cord and that's where you wanna, and you know immediately, like, that's where I'm gonna focus.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. We got many more layers to this. Many more layers coming. If you're not a customer. You wanna talk about validation. You wanna talk pivoting. You wanna talk about any other art or photography related questions. How do you do that? Join me for an art business workshop. Thrice weekly, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I've got one coming up tomorrow, depending on when you're listening to this, there's always one coming up in a day or two. So I'd love to have you join me on that. There's a simple Zoom link that you can sign up for. No pressure, no harassment. It's just a Zoom link. If you, if you wanna get on and join. Other than that, you got any announcements?

Nick Friend: No, I just want to say that, you know, like Juan Pablo and anybody else on here that's an Art Storefronts member already, make sure you are coming to the private member workshops. Okay, they are free. Sorry, I shouldn't say free. I mean, if you're an Art Storefronts member, they're free. If you're an Art Storefronts member, these are biweekly or two times a week. Okay? Marketing consulting sessions for you. Right? So there was one today at one o'clock Central, there will be another one on Thursday at one o'clock Central. Patrick is in there with his team teaching it. I'm in there pretty often, you know, it's our entire strategy to help you guys, you know, market your art, figure this stuff out and so you get that as being, as part of being a member. So please don't be missing out on it. Don't be missing out on it. It's the most valuable thing. It's the most valuable aspect of Art Storefronts. So all of you members out there, make sure you are attending these.

Patrick Shanahan: I've got, I've got a bunch of thoughts on this too. It's just such a hot button. I can't wait to delve further into this. So part one. This isn't even part one. This is a part, part 0.01. The warmup. Calling it the warmup.

Nick Friend: Yeah. Sorry Instagram, my phone's charging and so it's been a little wacky here with my, with my camera.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. Hashtag the warmup. All right? I'm playing the outro music. I got to go. All right.

Nick Friend: All right.

Patrick Shanahan: Oh, there it goes. It's firing. All right, thank you guys. As always, thanks for listening and have a great day.