The Pivot What is it and why you need to start doing it yesterday

In this episode of 'Art Business Mornings,' Patrick delves into the crucial concept of the pivot, emphasizing its importance for artists and entrepreneurs. He starts with defining what a pivot is, explores historical and modern examples, and explains how pivoting can apply specifically to the art world. Patrick shares compelling stories of artists and businesses that have successfully pivoted, including Art Storefronts' own evolution. He provides practical scenarios and analogies, such as the 'monkey analogy,' to illustrate how to contemplate new subject areas and execute pivots. Ultimately, he underscores that understanding and implementing pivots can transform an art business, making it more resilient and profitable.

Podcast Transcribe

Patrick Shanahan: Coming up on today's edition of the "Art Business Mornings" show, we're talking about the Pivot, okay? And specifically, a quick intro, the Pivot defined. We're gonna get into some historical examples. We're gonna get in some art examples. And then we're gonna get into how to contemplate subject matter areas and really, just how to get started.

Right, a little music, ya plan another new Art Business Morning. What is this? This is The Show, okay, that will put you on the path to a six-figure-a-year-plus art business. And depending on where you're watching this, please do subscribe. If YouTube is your jam, subscribe on YouTube. If Instagram's your jam, subscribe on Instagram.

And Facebook, you know the drill, please do follow us on Facebook because we're releasing these, guys, sometimes one in two days a week. They're very up-to-date and relevant. And boy, is today's subject material even perhaps more so relevant. The concept of pivoting is just so, so amazing. There is so much to love about it.

It's one of these concepts, not new, it's not new in the sense that entrepreneurs, business people, and yes, artists and photographers, okay, have been doing this throughout history, and have done several pivots back in the day. It didn't have a snazzy buzzword, now it does. So we use it, we say pivoting.

And you know, it's not something that's really often taught or talked about. It's barely even mentioned. There's not a class in a business school that I'm aware of, let alone art or photography school that talks about pivoting, that defines it, that explains how important it is to do it.

And you know, I also love about this concept, there's so much to love about it. Just like what the concept of live streaming in the socials, what do we do here at ASF, We advocate you do a thing, and then we teach you to do a thing, and then we lead by example. We either have done it or more than likely, are doing it constantly.

In the case of live streaming, we're doing it right now. What about pivoting historically? Art Storefronts. Started out as a company that made software for print studios, for people that were running print studios, that had printers and were reproducing fine art. We pivoted to creating websites for artists and photographers, we pivoted again, we're providing education for artists and photographers.

So we used to be a website solution. We pivoted to offering the best education for artists and photographers online, that was a pivot. Then we realized that not all artists and photographers want to do their marketing all the time. So we pivoted to an in-house marketing agency. And we will likely, ourselves as a business, pivot again this year, probably multiple times.

Like, you know, do you need your dog walked? It's an honest question. If we believe that by offering a nationwide, and Canada, when they're really about Canada dog-walking service would drastically help our customers improve and get better at what they're doing. Guess what we're going to do.

We're going to pivot to dog-walking. The larger point is, is that you have the ability to do this and that we are practitioners in it. We are practicing what we preach. I took a great deal of pride in not being in a situation where it's like do, as I say but not as I do. You know, the private actor that sits down and has a lecture about global warming and then flies home on a jet.

Like do, as I say, not as I do, ah ah! We're doing it as a business art storefronts regularly. Yet another reason why I love this why we're going to be making it a mainstay sort of of our educational experience going forward, we're gonna hammer it on the podcast. We're gonna hammer it on the live shows.

I'll, we're gonna hammer it on our office hours sessions for our teacher, for our customers. And that's is this notion underpinning it? Why, why, why the pivot understanding it, getting good at it is as important for the person that is sold absolutely nothing. Has not sold a single solitary piece as it is for somebody that's selling multiple six figures of art a year.

And moreover perhaps most importantly it's just another marketing in business muscle. Like any muscle it needs to be exercised regularly doing so will strengthen it, It'll make it easier to do so more often, more effectively. So let's define the pivot. A pivot in terms of startup business jargon and a structured course correction designed to test a new hypothesis about the product and or business model.

That's like a formal startup level definition a structured course correction designed to test a new hypothesis about the product and business model. Let's do it out of business jargon and put it into art, photography, jargon, testing, additional styles subject materials, niches, media types, service offerings in short revenue sources that have a potential to vastly exceed what you're selling currently.

And as business owners we're faced with essentially two options we can pivot or we can persevere. Pivot we have covered, we're about to cover, persevere is sticking with what you have. You keep working on trying to build a valuable business with the product and hypothesis. I.

e, I live next to the smokey mountains and all I have are landscape photos of the smoky mountains. And I'm going to continue selling these landscape photos of the smoky mountains and not do anything else for the rest of my career. That's it? That would be an example of persevering, right? Not doing any pivots. And as you think through this notion of pivot or persevere, you gotta ask yourself the question And everyone's gonna be in a couple of different levels.

Perhaps you been attempting to sell your particular subject material and style your niche If you like, for quite some time, you've gotten that art that photography in front of hundreds of people's eyeballs You showed it to a bunch of people and you've had zero sales. You've had zero warm leads.

Hey, Patrick, that was really interesting. What are the prices you had really zero activity. Really no inquiries, no one's bought it especially not named mom, dad, brother, sister, family friends. You you've been unable to sell the work to strangers. It's pretty clear then, it's time for you to pivot.

But what about the folks that are seeing mild levels of success? You've been attempting to sell your photography or art for quite some time. You sold it to some folks not named mom dad, brother, sister, family, friends. And you're excited, you're enthused by the fact that you sold some art and photography but the business is not mapping to your expectations.

You are not quitting your day job. You're still working, you're still grinding. It's not bringing in enough income. You feel like you're working harder than the revenue that you're getting back. And there's a fantastic analogy for this. So what do you do in that situation? You sold a couple of pieces, you'd been at it for awhile.

you've phoned in some marketing, the business is just not growing to where you want. This puts us into the monkey analogy. What does a monkey do in the rain forest? Traversing through they have a hold of one branch and they swing to another branch. If the other branch is not as firm or firmer than the one they just let go of then they don't let go of the branch they have.

So if we think like monkeys we can do the same thing that branch you have your hand on is your current business with your current style. It is your landscape photos of the smokey mountains. So you're gonna stay holding onto that branch. And the pivot is gonna be trying some new styles. You're gonna to take photos of lakes in the smoky mountains.

You're gonna take photos of the squirrels in the smoky mountains, or you're gonna do a complete 180. You're gonna move to Delray Beach, Florida. And you're gonna take photos of the Florida Panhandle Like that would be a complete pivot, a new branch to try. And all the while you don't have to let go of the branch you're on.

And you can be trying these things looking for a firmer, better branch a branch that potentially has more ROI for your business. That's kind of a way to think about it if you're in the middle. But what about if you've been attempting to sell art and you have a ton of attention, a ton of eyeballs your sales are going really well.

How could it possibly be important for you? Because you always need to be testing new ideas and more often than not, what do we discover that people that are in this particular situation they're pivoting all the time anyway. That's how they got there in the first place. You can never stop with this concept at the pivot.

You can never stop pivoting. And I mentioned upfront that let's talk about some historical examples. I will go old school to start out and then I'll come back to some more new school, techie type of ones. But let's play a little game. A little game called what company am I? All right, ready? Gonna be fun.

I began life in the post depression 1930's as a wall cleaner designed to clean

the black residue the coal heaters left on walls. However, less than two decades later oil and gas heaters replaced the coal there no more black suit on the walls. There's no more black suit on the walls and the business was going down the tubes.

But one of the founder's sisters in law, she was a teacher, and she said, she'd been using the product in arts and craft class. And the children could make ornaments with it and they loved it. What company am I? Plato Plato, huge pivot. How long have they been around? Long time now selling that product.

They were meant to be cleaning walls, that was the branch that they had access to, they pivoted to another one and it ended up changing everything. Next one, founded in 1938 is a company that moved dried fish and flour from Korea to China. We went through a series of transitions in subsequent decades selling insurance textiles, and then electronics, Samsung we started out and began as a maker of photographic paper and photography equipment.

The guest ones close to home. We were originally called the Haloid company. We licensed some technology, came out with a machine in 1959. Today the whole world knows our company name Xerox. You don't make copies, Xerox them. Another one we started at the end of the 19th century, I had no idea this company was this old by the way, the end of the 19th century selling playing cards, later we messed around with taxis and even ramen noodles.

Then we created Mario and Luigi. What are we Nintendo right? So there's some classic examples of pivots and these are huge fits. Modern day, YouTube started out as a video dating site. Starbucks, started out selling espresso machines. PayPal started out where you would take two palm pilots and be able to send each other money, by beaming it.

Amazon sold books, Airbnb, look at their stock and how much money they've made, ridiculous, started out renting rooms for people that showed up at conferences. And there were air mattresses in the living room hence the "air" in Airbnb. So let's pivot to a famous artist. When I died back to my original game, when I died had to squabble over the 45,000 works, I had left unsold, which what's my name of Pablo Picasso.

What was he doing that all time with the forty-five thousand pieces? He was practicing pivots. He was exercising this pivot muscle. He was determining his next best hit. And so when you zoom out, okay. And when you zoom out of this whole thing, you sorta realize boil the emotion out in the sales and business aspects of everything else.

It's just that it's just a model. It's a mental model. The concept of pivoting, is a framework. It's a premise of sorts. You know, a technique that many the buzzword aside had been using and leveraging for centuries. What is the spoiler alert? It's you can use it too. You can use it to, to fundamentally grow your business.

It's an important thing to do, as well and perhaps a specialty so or artists and photographers and why, and what do most artists and photographers, quotation marks dare I say humans, do we turn into chicken little. The sky is falling special. What do I mean, we pick a subject material not based on any criteria whatsoever other than the fact, it's what we like.

It's where we're geographically located. It's what we feel creatively passionate about. It could be the photographing in the smokey mountains, or it could be I love painting flowers. So I'm just gonna paint flowers or whatever particular style you are. We take that product to market. The minute that it's not met with worldwide praise, [Indistinct] we instantaneously take it as criticism.

We start second guessing ourselves. My art's not good enough. I don't have enough talent. My brush strokes are muddled and lack to find composure. You start beating yourself up. That's stage one, stage two. You start looking for people to blame. Well, art just doesn't sell online Instagram has ruined the art industry with all these cheap photos.

You know the market is simply not buying art, or you know, if you're a customer[Indistinct] you start blaming the software you start blaming the education. You're looking for someone to blame. You never take into consideration. What if it's not the fact that your work is not selling is not a knock on your talent or your ability to operate a camera lens and understand the rules of framing and take a compelling photo.

What if it's not about your talent and it's instead. About your product selection the subject material that you're choosing. That's a profound statement and is when a lot, a lot of artists needed to learn and a lot, a lot of photographers need to learn and I've had to learn over my career many many times.

You just naturally want to take it as criticism. You wanna internalize it, and guess what? It might not have anything to do with your talent. It could have just all been on your niche selection. Your product, your lack of pivoting. Yes, you have to have tenacity. Yes, you have to get over the fear of rejection, but you got to stay at it.

You got to stay on it. I was thinking about this episode, I was like, and some quick questions that I got from the live stream. Biz resume is pivoting would be the same as prototyping. Yes, it is. It's the exact same thing. Great question. But I want to tell three stories to kind of take it out of the realm that we're in currently and sort of move it into a real world example.

You have to have tenacity. You have to get over the fear of rejection and you have to keep that it. Three stories. Story number one, After college. I had a group of guys that I would run around with. We all had jobs. We were all very single and we would all go out to bars, and clubs and house parties and all the rest, presumably an ideally looking to me women.

I got one of my buddies, Curtis. His first job out of college was was for a dialing third dollars type of like a I don't even know what you would call it. It wasn't like an equipment [Indistinct] or whatever. It didn't matter. He had to make 500 calls a day. So he went an entire year doing 500 calls a day.

The sheer number of rejection that he received doing this, the sheer amount of times that he was rejected heard. No, no, no, no. It was staggering. Turns out though there was a huge benefit on this one. Tremendous benefit. Let me put it this way, the first person you called to go out as a single man was Curtis.

And here's why, it didn't matter, what bar, what club, what situation where we were locally, domestically, internationally. He morphed into the expert. While all of us were standing around, having a drink , talking about which one of us were gonna have the minerals to go over and talk to a particular group of women.

He was gone already. He was gone. He was over there. He was starting the conversation. Ideally merging the group and getting us all into conversations that we didn't have the minerals to go and start on our own. And he was his fear of rejection was just gone. The 500 calls he had to make a day, just anywhere.

He was the best opener in the history of mankind. A phenomenal skill, a phenomenal talent. (laughing) Amazing. So he had no fear of rejection. He was willing to walk up at any conversation anywhere any time. It's a way to think of pivoting. You'd pivot, you get lousy feedback. You don't care. It happens all the time.

You're the next pivot. It's just how many times, coincidentally, he was like one of the last guys to get married which made no sense whatsoever. Peter Pan, come down to earth Peter Pan. That's one story and it's a great story. The next one, I was listening to a podcast. It's by this guy calls himself Prof. G.

His name's Scott Galloway. He's a professor at NYU School of Business, like super tech startup guy but he had what I believe is like his literary agent, his book agent on. He dropped this line. I think it's just put down, so I'm gonna play it here. If you're watching my Instagram, your hose you can't get it in there.

I'm having technical issues. So you're gonna have to just deal with some dead air for a second apologies but listen to this.

Was this may be 40 years ago, I went to hear a presentation by a psychologist. I admired named Tom Cottle. He stood up on the stage, next to a six foot high stack of computer printout paper. He opened his talk by saying, See this stack, these are my rejection letters. To have somebody who was such a role model for me, who I just thought everything. I mean, this guy was every week. It's something that had been the Atlantic or Harper's, the New York Times Magazine. There was just no end to it or I'm thinking cheesy, they must accept everything he sends in. He's got a six foot high stack of rejections is saying 'You see my published articles what you don't see is my rejection letters'.

Is that not profound? In Instagram, you missed it sorry but a six foot high stack of rejection letters. You think about the Picasso example, like everyone knows Picasso one of the most famous artists of all time. One of the most successful artists of all time but no one ever talks about the 45,000 pieces that he died unsold. Obviously some of those, he didn't want to sell or he didn't care, but those were all pivots along the way that was Picasso's twenty-five foot stack of rejection letters. You have to continually keep trying these new styles.

I use a third example of stand-up comedy. And what are the standup comedians do? They book a Netflix show now it used to be an HBO special. They have that thing on the books. They have their show title an idea that anyway and then what do they do? They take an entire year, two years sometimes before that big comedy special happens and they go and they tour all the small comedy clubs all over North America sometimes all over Europe.

And night in, night out, they're in small venues in front of small groups of people, testing the material that is going to make it into that big show. After they'd been through those 40 towns or 50 shows or whatever it is, there's a whole lot of material that doesn't make it. There's a whole lot of jokes that they told and it was crickets.

Now the ones that did really well that really killed, they're gonna make it into the show. And the job over that two year period is to get as many jokes that can absolutely kill it. Into the [Indistinct] show and it's no different for an artist or photographer. You're going to tell some jokes that are going to bomb.

They're not going to go over well, they're not going to resonate. It's okay. You don't need to internalize. It is part of the creative journey. It's an important part of the creative journey to find a work something that is going to work better than what you have, that is going to allow you to let go of the branch that you have currently and swing into a new one that is potentially more profitable.

I wanna get into some artists examples and I've got to get my screen share I've been going. So if you're listening to this on the podcast after the fact by the way there will be some visual examples. You might want to jump onto YouTube and take a look at it. I'll put the link in the show note.

But anyway I wanna start out. So actual artists pivots. Both historically and collectively. I love talking about William Stidham who's been a customer forever solid friend of our storefronts for years. If you go back to the art marketing podcast and I think this is like the first or the second or the third episode, I interviewed him.

If you're looking on the screen-share he had an original body of work that looked kind of like these that were like figures of women painted in his style and the way that he does it I can't remember what he called it. It just wasn't selling it. It wasn't selling. He was selling some here or there but he was doing the show circuit.

A lot of times, he was just not making enough money. He was very close. He talks about it in depth in the podcast, to hanging them up, going back to construction, doing whatever he was doing and never just giving up on an artist. And then what did he do? He did one last pivot. And in his case, it ended up hitting a home run.

He came up with what he calls his "Sacred heART Series". You see it here on the screen share, and it's find watercolor drawings of his famous rock stars but his favorite rock stars. He's been doing this for years and he's built an incredible business. So the whole fact that he's successful as an artist is due to a pivot.

But in the perfect example of why this is a muscle of why everyone needs to do it, the more successful you are the more you need to be focusing on it, the more you need to be doing it is he's pivoted again recently. It's been an incredibly successful situation for him. So if you're looking at the visual example you can see he's got his Sacred heART Series the number one thing that he's done.

Well now he's pivot into a new series and it's called "Life Force". It's a bunch of famous athletes that he likes and it's a new direction for him. Here's the guy that's been painting nothing but rock stars. You can see that those are in there but in here we got opinion of Santa Claus.

We've got a painting of Jesus at the last supper. I've seen the sales on these. These have been some of these highest is best-selling works. They have taken off for him, like exploded his sales grown his sales by 20, 30, 40% over a year period. And you look at that and buy one little pivot by going outside of his comfort zone, by holding onto his one branch of course he's not changing everything but going out and reaching for some others.

It could have been crickets for him. It ended up being a home run. Again, I'm on the podcast. You got Megh Knappenberger and I remember number one I have a podcast episode discussing her story too. You can see it. I'll try to get those into the show notes. But originally, what was she doing? Showing their circuit with her various different Midwest animal paintings.

I'm showing some of them here on the screen share and there was somehow okay but they weren't selling great. She was a similar situation like eight hours on her feet in a day, in a booth doing a live art show, coming home dusted and exhausted and not going, what am I doing here? This is not working.

So what did she do? Huge pivot. She swung for another branch. What did she found? She arrived at Kansas Jayhawks. There's a whole story of that. I'm not going to get into it but she like bill is a perfect example of one that was just trying to figure it out one was struggling one that was contemplating quitting at all and then one big pivot completely launched her career.

Then just like the case of Bill just recently, Megh's the mother of daughters. She was a huge RBG. RBG is Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. Megh sorta did some news jacking instantaneously came out this Ruth Bader Ginsburg portrait, which by the way I didn't even know she did portraits.

How talented is she? This thing looks insane. So she created this. It was a timely portrait because a woman had just died instantaneously sold the original, sold the tremendous amount of prints. So there's two painter examples it's phenomenal. I look at a guy like Bill Wensel. William Drew photography is this business for years and years he was known as essentially the Minnesota cityscape guy.

That's where he lives and so he's got some incredible photos. He expanded out a little bit more he did some more city scapes and his business was doing okay. It was not doing phenomenal. What did he do? He did a pivot to shooting Disney stuff. Now we shooting Disney stuff. What's happening as a result of shooting the Disney stuff.

He's grown his business incrementally. Like there's a post in here. I don't know how much of this I'm supposed to show but it shows his growth from 2017, 2018, 2020, 2019 to 20. And it has grown incredibly. Incredibly as a result of the pivot not just the city scapes but letting go of that branch to a certain extent and grabbing another one, he's exploded his business.

There's another screenshot that I'm missing but we had another post in our recent small winds group talking about how someone just did another pivot. So literally nothing the year before and decided they were gonna do a new style. Did a new style, instantaneously sold the original got a bunch of commission orders.

So the stories are bound. It is absolutely a fantastic technique. And the good news is, there are micro pivots and there are macro pivots. It's all just a muscle. You can go and run the marathon, the iron man, the Spartan race or you can go run stairs for 20 minutes. A macro pivot, a micro pivot. It's all just a muscle.

They all make an impact. You know, the macro pivots, we sort of covered. Like if you've not done any, if you've never sold anything, you attempted, you got no feedback. People told you it was great but when it came time for the transaction crickets. You've probably heard. If you've not gotten your work in front of anybody you have to do that first.

If you have though, and you haven't sold anything, you need the macro pivot. You need a whole new subject material and you can start by doing a bunch of quick pivots but you need a macro pivot. The other side of the coin, is that there are micro pivots as well. None of them have to be big sweeping changes.

Like if you're just offering originals and you're not offering commissions offer commissions, there's a little micro pivot if you're offering originals and commissions but you're

not offering prints, I'm to offer prints, micro pivot. If you're selling your stuff on Fine Art "Paver", because that's the only thing that you like and you'd never tried metal, opportunity for a micro pivot to metal.

So you can make these small ones, you can make the large ones and you can make time-sensitive pivots. There's smart ones. Gap, Nike, Zahra, Brooks Brothers and smaller manufacturers started making masks and scrubs given the time that we're in. Bicycle and sports equipment manufacturers are shifting to make protective equipment PE.

For frontline healthcare workers. Louis Vuitton started making hand sanitizer. WaterField a huge trucking company is basically quit their logistics business, and started stocking and delivering for supermarkets. So there's time-sensitive pivots. The idea is that you don't have to reinvent the entire wheel throw out your entire collection.

You've been a photographer for 30 years archives all the images, and start shooting new stuff and go all the way in and spend years doing it. You can do these tests quickly, laser focused, a new thing, a new thing, a new thing. What does it look like over those 10? I got a bunch of feedback on this one quiet on these other ones.

So you can go all in on that one. There's gonna be a number of different ways that we're gonna sort of unpack this over the time, over the coming weeks and months. But we realized that fundamentally it's about as important a thing as you could possibly do. And it's a muscle like anything else.

It's gonna take time to learn how to do it. So that's the pivot. I think just talking about it, just putting the concept in real people's minds is just, it's gonna be profound. It's gonna be incredibly powerful. You know it takes time. It takes the workout day by day though summer bodies they're made in winter.

So we all have to be working towards it. So I think that covers a pretty good introduction on the concept. We're going to be dive in real real deep on this on the days, weeks, months to come. We'll start using more real world examples too because let me tell you, we are doing the full court hardcore press on all of our Arts Storefront customers to do this to contemplate this, to start putting it into action.

How to think about niche selection, how to think about starting with demand and working backwards instead of taking them product and market. Start with the demand and work backwards. Also a super foreign concept but you guys are just creators, and you have a talent and you have an artistic talent. A lot of you are off the mark solely because you are not pivoting.

You're saying, this is what I'm creatively inspired to do. This is the only thing that I'm gonna do. This is the only thing. Like contemplate that stack of rejection letters and how high that stack of rejection letters is and understand that is the norm to be in really successful contemplate Acosta's 45,000 pieces.

That he died with. And could have sold probably once he knew who his name was, he didn't care. Those were all the various different ways to getting there. And so you could potentially argue that the strength the success of your business of your potential art business might just be down to how many pivots how quickly you can execute them.

So what does that framework look like? Like what does a system like that look like? How do you one contemplate ways to create the thing. This could be, starting with demand and working backwards. This could be what type of an arbitrage do you have? What type of a unique thing do you have? Are you geographically located somewhere that only you are? Do you have access things to own that own you have Do you potentially, as you zoom out and you come to terms with this.

Have some other creative areas that you've always loved, been inspired by and you've never given it a shot. There's all these little mental frameworks that we need to be thinking about to figure this out. When you boil the emotion out of it, it's literally just a formula. It's a mental mode.

It's a premise, it's a formula. So we're really gonna be hammering that. You have no idea how awesome it is, the position. This is one of the single solitary greatest advantages to being an artist and a photographer relative to other businesses. What does it take for you to create and test something new? You need a business plan.

Do you need $30,000 in upfront costs? Do you need to get an injection mold from China at $3,500 to $35,000 per. Do you need to pay a software designer for six months to build a product that you can take the market? No, you can create it. You can get in front of eyeballs and you can get the feedback instantaneously.

you can do so it's such an incredible clip. Some many of you without even leaving your house. So I think after you contemplate that after you get in that mental model and after you realize the most successful people that are customers of our certainly are doing this all the time. So what do they know that you don't.

It's just they've developed the muscle, that's it. They've developed a muscle. So I hope today's episode is sort of put the thought in your head, planted the seed on how important it is. You know, the tagline in this thing is why you need to start doing it yesterday. And I'm serious you need to start doing it yesterday and we're doing it.

You should be doing it and start thinking about it. We're gonna have a ton more content to you follow. So on that note, I'll leave it there. We're definitely not done on the subject. I wanna thank everybody for listening And have a wonderful day.

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