Trolls. Not the kids movie. The other kind.

In this episode, Patrick and Nick delve into the challenges artists face with online trolls. Patrick starts by sharing a personal story about a recent encounter with ash while riding his two-wheeled vehicle in Southern California. They discuss the negative impact of troll comments on artists' psyches and businesses, drawing from years of experience and millions of dollars spent on social media advertising. They emphasize the importance of not engaging with trolls, instead recommending deleting and banning them to maintain a positive online environment. The conversation extends to managing unsubscribes and controlling inputs to stay focused. Finally, they touch upon merchandise marketing strategies in preparation for the holiday season, encouraging artists to stay proactive and resilient.

Podcast Transcribe

Patrick Shanahan: You will you get me a banner going as I tee it up?

Nick Friend: Yeah, yep, I will all.

Patrick Shanahan: Alright, so the Genesis for this number one, just as, as you're setting it in, I live in Southern California, okay. I have various two-wheeled machines because I like two wheels motorized or pedal style. I like all of them equally. And I just went for a cruise to go run an errand because the two wheels when there's traffic is pretty good. That was a bad idea, I got so much ash in my eyes. I can't even see, I was like, what is going on? And then finally dawned on me all the ash, it's terrible over here. We're gonna talk about a very important topic and it is equal parts, debilitating, sad, infuriating, fighting words and we're talking about trolls, okay. So I saw a post in our Facebook group today, okay. We're one of our customers, I'm not calling them out. They remain nameless, just got eviscerated by a Troll. Okay, you eviscerated by a Troll. What do I mean it was something I can't remember it now, but it doesn't matter because I've seen so many, it was something along the lines of, okay. Did your kid who is four years old in finger painting class, make that art? Okay, that was the long and the short of it, okay. And she was deflated that's a massive ego punch okay. And it comes from what we're talking about here trolls, trolls on the internet. And I felt like we had to make this broadcast one because we have Nick and I both years and years and millions and millions of dollars spent on ads on social platforms, okay.

I don't even know how long, 10 years of social media marketing in general, okay. We have run Ads with every different artist imaginable, every different subject matter imaginable, photographers, painters, men, women, different cultures, different body types, different everything, okay. And let me just tell you, it does not matter which out of any of them that we've used in our Ads that we've used in our post, every single solitary one of them gets these comments, okay. Gets these comments on a regular basis. And for a little bit of context going back, we have to deal with the actual business ramifications of this, of which there's one. And then we have to deal with the personal ramifications, okay. And I'll give you a little bit of context. So early on, early on the game, Facebook and later, so Instagram really rewarded engagement in terms of comments on a post, okay. So probably about three or four years ago, I would say, okay, again full disclosure, I'm a marketer. My job is to write catchy headlines to get attention, okay. I wrote and recorded two podcasts about how you validate your art, okay.

I called them that does my art suck test part one and two, terrible, terrible title in hindsight, okay. I could have tuned it up. The lightning rod of comments that that was back then was one of the craziest things ever. And Nick will tell you four years, one because it's my personality and my nature, I would get in there as a pugilist, okay. I would fight, I would get, I would get in the mock. I would fight, I would go at it. And boy, that was the context of it early on. Also early on, I would sit in there and put some of our artists in there, we would say, hey, we'd like to use you on our advertisement. Can we get some of your work? We create an ad, put them in there. And these trolls would come in leaving these just ridiculous, ridiculous comments, okay I'm--

Nick Friend: To this day to this day,

Patrick Shanahan: Don't even get started with this day because I feel like it's ramped up. But we have one artist that through a combination of determination and grit, right place, right time, talent luck is selling a tremendous amount. And when you're running paid traffic at a high level for a company, it takes like a little bit of a village. I hate that line, It takes a village, but it does, right? Like Nick's doing work, I'm doing work. I'm looking at his work, he's looking at my work. We're sort of covering for each other. And sometimes he would come in, okay. And I would get some troll comments, okay. And I would be agitated, all right. My kids will be driving me nuts. And I would fire off a diatribe, I mean fighting words. If this was the 1800s, I would have taken the gloves off, held it in this hand, went up to that person that commented, slap them in the face and said noon, pistols at noon, you and I let's go, right. And I would get so defensive and so dejected and so angry because here's this artist, It's like my good friend, okay. That we're using in our ads, who I know by the way, sells $100 of thousands in art a year. You've produced nothing, you little piece of (indistinct) and you're leaving that comment like that. It would infuriate me. okay. I would get so defensive. Nick really too would get so defensive early on and so angry and so agitated, if you would come in and be like, dude you got delete that comment. You can't leave that comment, but I didn't want to, I wanted to drive to the person's house pistols at Dawn. I wanted to fight that, right? Like it's just the worst, big picture. Here's the important thing, okay. A couple of things, One the line about pigs holds true. You know the line about pigs. The problem when you fight with pigs is you get in the mud, you get dirty and the pigs like it, right? Like hacked it, I can't remember what it is. Exactly what it's at context. Number one, you never win trolls, okay. You never, ever win the trolls, that's number one. Number two, everyone has the tendency to think that those trolling comments are a mirror, okay? That they're a mirror somehow reflecting on who you are, your message, your work, the quality of your work, your personality, potentially your looks.

And that is our natural human tendency and reaction. I'm telling you, I've been doing this for a long time. It's not a mirror, it's a window. And the window is into who they are. It's who they are as a person. It's how they're doing in their life. It's what's going on in their head. It's their lack of success, it's their anger, its their frustration and it takes a long time to reach that particular profundity. It is very, very difficult, not to wanna fight, not to wanna get objected, not to wanna get down in the mark. And if you can just remember, it's not a mirror, it's not a reflection of you or anything that you do. It's a window and how bad of a place that person is at. And if you can stop yourself and you can think about that and understand that you're in the wind better place. From there, what do we do to every single solitary one of them by which I mean, how many did you delete today? And how many did I delete today? You had the morning shift, what did you get? 20, 25,

Nick Friend: 10, 20, 25, 30, I don't know. And the, and the thing is and not only delete how many people did we banned permanently banned from art storefronts permanently block, okay. Because that's what, that's the next thing here, by the way very well set on your part. Very, very well said, okay, with that window analogy.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah.

Nick Friend: But, like in this, in the early days of social media, I think a lot of people, like a lot of professionals thought, like, I mean, even if you, if you Google it, you're gonna see nonsense articles that are like, you should respond to every comment. No, you should not. No, you should not coming from somebody who's built very big businesses. Okay, Patrick, same thing, okay. No, you should not, do not engage them, do not respond to them, if they are completely rude and negative, you delete it and you block them and you ban them from your entire ecosystem completely.

Patrick Shanahan: That's how you deal with trolls you guys. That's how all the, all the professionals, the state of the art technique right now today, is anyone who's bringing negativity in your world, bye, see you later. You don't think about it, you don't talk about it, you don't let it affect you.

Nick Friend: It's always gonna--

Patrick Shanahan: Easier said than done.

Nick Friend: Probably affect you a little bit.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, it's easier said than done.

Nick Friend: Easier said than done. Easier said than done, so we're all human, right. But the right thing is to be like, is to delete and block them, so they're never on your stuff again, they just lost all the value that you are gonna bring into the world, right.

Patrick Shanahan: I would also say early on, you know, I love analogies, so I gonna come with a couple stories whatever. Early on, I used to think of it as, you know, the scene, in what's what's the movie? You were the Hot Gates and the Spartans, the new version that we just had, What is it -

Nick Friend: I can't remember what the name of it is. You gotta know what it is.

Patrick Shanahan: It was a number, right? It was like 300 right? -

Nick Friend: That's right, thank you, so when like the ambassador of the Persian King Xerxes I is there and he offends them and there's the giant, well there, the guy goes, this is Sparta and kicks him in the butt. And he goes down on the wealth. That's how I used to think about it. okay. That was in my earlier days, okay. This is a muscle like anything else, right? You have to be able to do a neuro yourself while yourself off. Now, how I think about the troll comments is we're all on the, okay. And the boats, even away like this, it's moving, it's moving at a decent clip. And all of a sudden this person gets up on your boat and they're yapping and they're yelling. (yelling) You just push them out the way you just push them off the boat and then they're down they're flagging in the water going, (indistinct) getting quieter every second. And you just motor right past them. Just gonna right off your boat, get a, right off your boat, push him off your boat and keep moving. It's sad, they're in a bad place. Do not let it get you down and the reason I said like, Nick, we got to come on and we got to talk about this one. I wanna leave the video in the comment that Facebook group two, we'll talk about it tomorrow, but it's never going away.

Nick Friend: It won't.

Patrick Shanahan: It's not about you. It's happened to every single solitary artist or photographer we have, for whatever reason. These people think that somebody wants to hear their opinion. It is literally remember the window versus the mirror. It's just a window into who they are. And it's terribly sad we just, you can't let it get you down. That's much easier said than done, like everything else. This takes a little bit of practice. You just, you got to endure yourself. You got a lower yourself in.

Nick Friend: I've got to say that like over the years, when you have like going back to what you were saying at the beginning, when you have spent millions of dollars on ads done unbelievable amounts, quantities of Facebook posts, call it impressions, right? Like gazillions of impressions over the years, went through posts and ads on, on all the platforms, all the platforms, right? All of the platforms, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. I have to tell you that that like the thing that's blown my mind is every time we would do a new, like a new post on something, with a new artist or photographer, I'd be like, Oh, this is the one, this is the one that's not gonna get the trolls. There's no way this guy's like on the front page of this magazine, right? He's famous, world famous and all that stuff. Nope, not at all. Trolls like a magnet, there again, this guy sucks. How did he make it? Blah, blah, blah. This girl is this, whatever, what is this? I mean, it is unbelievable. And over the years it has totally taught me that like my goodness, like, do you know what it's really taught me? It's less about like, it's less about like, of course you got to ignore them and you delete it and all that stuff. It has really it's, it's like actually like, and I'd love to hear your take on this. It's it's viscerally impacted me, like on like the state of like humanity, like American society, like I'd been like, I cannot believe that people like this exist. You know what I mean, like it's -

Patrick Shanahan: Religious -

Nick Friend: Really shock to me. You don't, you don't Gary Vaynerchuk was the one he's a famous marketer, you guys. And he's the one who said that I'll never forget this. And what did his keynote speeches, a couple years back. He said this line where he said like, it was something like, "Social media is not the problem," right? Like it's not, everybody's like social media, turn it off, turn it off, it's like, it's exposing who we really are as human, it exposes who that human being really is because they can be this person behind the curtain and they can say whatever they want. And they'd never say it in real life or, you know, they can just, it can be an anonymous person and just be rude and like you said, like, I mean, these people are, there's something going wrong inside, but I never really understood how bad it was. It is really bad, it's really, really bad. And when you, when you understand how bad it is, then you can really get the power to realize, like, I gotta just let this stuff fly past me, right. Delete it, Ban the person and move on, done. Like, we're literally you guys, we are literally banning, like, I don't know, five, 10 or so people a day from ever even watching one of these or getting any value from art storefronts ever again, because they are crossing the line and being so rude, okay.

Patrick Shanahan: We don't want them in our ecosystem. We don't want them ever commenting on something ever again, getting anybody down or negative or anything I like that. And we don't want it either, right? Like just go to your troll areas. Go.

Nick Friend: Yeah, exactly. It goes back to the inputs, like, what inputs are you putting in your head? What are you allowing into your mind? I'm not allowing these people into, into our ecosystem, into our members ecosystem, right? Like for our, our private member, all of our private number resources and all of you guys should be the same, right? So like, whenever you get a troll on any of your comments or anywhere don't engage him, delete it, ban them, block them, whatever it is on any platform and move on.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah. And don't affect you just, just be like that person. Trust me it's not a credible person. Okay, because when we have people who are trashing, literally trashing artists and photographers, and I'm not talking about like, oh a few. I'm talking about every single one of them, every single one of them that we ever use in our marketing, every single one of them. And these people are selling $100 of thousand a year. They're all success.

Nick Friend: Doesn't matter.

Patrick Shanahan: It doesn't matter, it blows my mind. Doesn't matter who it is. It's just like, boom, the trolls will come on. So it's not you, it's them guys. It's not, you, it's them.

Nick Friend: It's not you, it's them. I've had a mentor in my life. Okay, he's, essentially like a second dad and Dennis seventies hugely successful, not that matters, but like incredible life known name, then there's so much great education. Like we're just one of the most amazing dudes ever. And there's been multiple times where I've been having his conversations with him. And once it was, I had to tell him about a mutual friend that we had that did something completely despicable. You know him to know we're not going to get into it and got himself into so much trouble. And it was like a little bit of gossip and I told him, cause I was like, look, you're gonna hear this from somewhere else. I might as well tell you so you know, I told him and he called me the next day. And he's like, I just want to let you know. I didn't tell him my wife and I wish he never would've told me that. I wish he never would've told me that, I didn't need to know that I didn't want that.

Nick Friend: I love that, that's the way that i feel I don't want any of you name.

Patrick Shanahan: If that ever comes up again, don't let me know. And so this was like probably like seven or eight years ago. So it just manifested itself again six months ago. And this is like, you get older and you get wiser. And it had to do with like what was going on with the riots. And like some of the harassment these people were doing in, in the writing capacity that was going on. And I was just, I was just so offended by what I was seeing. This wasn't protesting. This was just straight harassment of people, for whatever reason they were doing it. And I was like did you see this? I was like, you've got to see this. This is like cross the line times 11. He was like, don't send it to me. I don't wanna see it. It's it was so funny because it just reinforced like the inputs are everything.

Nick Friend: Everything.

Patrick Shanahan: Learning to control them, not easy, not easy takes time.

Nick Friend: Hey, you know,

Patrick Shanahan: You just don't lead them and move on and get them out of your life. And it's something that we all need to learn. It's a lifelong lesson and it's just like, you're going.

Nick Friend: Do you know what the smartest people say? They say, you have to be Savage about your inputs. That's the word? That's the word. It's not like delicate, it's not like, hey, just, you need to be Savage. You need to savagely control your inputs. And you know, as somebody who spends a lot of time with me, right? Like, there's like, I've hit it right back at you where I'm like, stop, I don't wanna hear it. I don't wanna hear anything like nothing, right? Like, because I control the information that I'm trying to put in my head. And then I wanna listen to at any time. And I, and like I do this everywhere. I'm like, nope, don't want to hear it. It could be, it could be, my mom or a family member calling about another family member to tell me something, don't wanna hear it. I don't wanna hear it doesn't matter, right. Like I don't want the inputs, okay. Because I mean, it's you gotta savagely control your inputs if you want your mind to be straight, right. Otherwise you're bouncing around. You're not living the life that you wanna live. You're not going in the direction you wanna go, trying to like achieving the goals that you wanna achieve when you got all these inputs coming in and you're being influenced essentially all the time, right.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah.

Nick Friend: It's very subtle, but it happens. And it's just, it's a distraction. Every, like, you just don't want those distractions. So you just get them out, get them out, get them out. You have to savagely control these inputs from coming in at you.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah and in like the example with the mentor I use like, you can just tell them straight up, like, look, I don't know, I don't care, I don't wanna see them. And even, even Meg. So we've mentioned Meg a bunch of the podcasts. She's longtime customer great friend family at this point. We started using her as an ad early on, and she's got a tremendous amount of success and she has a unique style and everything else fine. She had, she did it automatically on her own. She's like, yep. My husband told me there were some comments on there. Don't care, not gonna see them, done. You just took all their power away. You just took all the power away in one little swipe. So yeah, I think that, I think the Savage, is the right aspect to do it. Like not gonna bother me, can't get in here. You're out though keeps moving and you're gone.

Nick Friend: No reply. Guys, don't ever reply to these, okay. Don't ever don't ever say, well, that's really rude or anything like that don't ever do that. Just get rid of them, okay. We'll delete block, ban everything. Okay, because you don't wanna create these threads, right. A thread is like, it's gonna be like you say something back. And then the then all the person's going to do, like trust me Facebook and Instagram. This is what their whole algorithm is based on. They're going to ping them and say, somebody was applied to your post, right. And get them to come back. And that person is gonna come back and then comment back to you. And this is exactly why these social media platforms, that we are on right now are dangerous in ways, right? Because they incentivize engagement because engagement gets you back on the platform, okay. Spending more time and their business model, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube is all about how much time every individual person is spending on the platform because they want to sell more ads, okay.

So they need your attention to sell more ads. And so if you wanna understand what's wrong with our country, we're getting right at the, at the crux of it. But hey, we'll leave it there, right?

Patrick Shanahan: Do you wanna see something? Meta is just really funny, okay.

Nick Friend: I do.

Patrick Shanahan: Instagram, I'm gonna have to enunciate this because you're not gonna be able to see it. I've got a comment from Sadia here is the first comment on here. An example or is that a hater a troll. And this is my response. Strange, I don't see it. I wonder what happened to him. (laughs)

Nick Friend: God.

Patrick Shanahan: Did you already do that?

Nick Friend: I already outta here, don't let that.

Patrick Shanahan: It's already a troll and that person is banned, gone now.

Nick Friend: Done, Done Sadia.

Patrick Shanahan: Bye.

Nick Friend: Yeah, hope you have fun with your life.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah one last one. Again, so--

Nick Friend: Have fun with business have fun with your life. You're not in our ecosystem anymore.

Patrick Shanahan: I'm really glad we did this because again, like I've been through every phase of it our whole job, like that is like one of the most rewarding things is like, if you learn these things from the school of hard knocks and then you're able to impart their wisdom, like don't even worry about it. Then you just move on and it's nothing, right? Like--

Nick Friend: Nothing.

Patrick Shanahan: I have to worry about it. You don't have to worry about it. You have the permission to say, see you later, delete don't even let it phase you. Don't even read their name, just delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, gone, gone. Don't let it in. Don't let it in city walls up, gate down. Focused on your marketing, just ship it. Troll comments out, troll comments out.

Nick Friend: Yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: That's it full stop.

Nick Friend: Exactly yeah and look, I mean, I see enough artists and photographers like focused way too much on it. You know what I mean? Like worried about it, you know, it's it's look, do you know what to do? What's like an equivalent to this too. It's like the unsubscribing, like you get, somebody who unsubscribes from us. I had never seen a group of like our members at our storefronts. I have never seen a group of people, more concerned about unsubscribes. I can't even believe that pattern. It's like, if you are worried about unsubscribe, like they don't have anywhere near enough. Nobody has enough emails on their list, enough leads, right. And they're worried about every unsubscribe. I don't know what the deal is. I think MailChimp and some of these email platforms, because they're so worried about spam, right? Like they turn on the unsubscribed notification by default, they turn it on by default.

So everybody's getting an email every time somebody unsubscribes, it's literally like a, it's like a shot across the bow to your emotional state. Every time that happens, right. Literally the worst thing that you could do is have that feature on turn that thing off, okay. You don't wanna know what anybody unsubscribes and don't worry about it. Your job is not to manage the unsubscribes guys. Your job is to provide as much value as you can in your emails and expand your list as big as it can possibly get, trust me - if imagine If you're operating a retail store and you started freaking out every time somebody walked in the store and walked out of the store, that's what--

Patrick Shanahan: You flip it out.

Nick Friend: Probably that's what people are doing.

Patrick Shanahan: No big deal.

Nick Friend: Yeah, they're like, hey, I thought this was the right store. I thought this would have what I wanted, but you know what? You're cool, like, I like what you're doing, but it's not really my thing, so I'm just gonna unsubscribe. No big deal It's like it wasn't you, you weren't offensive.

Patrick Shanahan: Your last email wasn't offensive. You didn't do anything wrong. Let the people go like no big deal. Focus on the inbound, focus on filling the funnel. Not on the people that have unsubscribed, it's the wrong focus, right? But it's the same thing, it's the same. It's sort of the same thing it's focusing on, on the wrong on the wrong things, right? Focusing on the trolls, bad thing, focusing on the unsubscribes, very bad thing, very bad thing.

Nick Friend: These are negative areas that should not take your time and energy. I mean, Pat, honestly, how many years has it been since you worried about an unsubscribed since it was ever even mentioned, I'm serious, I wanna say for me, it's over 15 years, 15, I can't even remember. There's it's gotta be like the early years of like the 2000, if you are focused on unsubscribes guys, like just take it from the experts, take it from people who have, who know stop it. Don't ever talk about it again, ever. Don't ever talk about it again.

Patrick Shanahan: This boiler is boiling the ocean. And do you know, do you know who's perfect for the boiling the ocean job? The SS fail boat, okay. Because as you try to boil the ocean, you're running the SSB sailboat. You're never going to appeal your art, your photography to your entire list, to the entire room, to the entire world. And quite frankly, you shouldn't care about it, okay? It's not, it's like going into the bar and seeing a room full of beautiful women and thinking, gonna have conversations. And you're gonna make connections, go with them all. You don't want that, you want this narrow little focus, this narrow little focus. Those people that are interested in what you do that are gonna love what you do by what you do. The bar analogy was off thing, I work on that one. Sometimes you fire from the hip, sometimes you hit it. Sometimes it goes sideways. You got to practice reps and sets and sets. But yes, It doesn't matter. The trolls, the unsubscribes, the inputs, the negativity in the inputs, get it out, -

Nick Friend: Get it out of the system, yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: And Kim Winberry, she said, "I get abuse complaints." We all do, we always have, we can't stop it. I could send an email. I could send an email with like the most valuable thing. Like the best, the literally like the best secret advice thing ever for artists and photographers today. Right and we will get, we will get trolls, abuse complaints, everything. I mean, we get, we get abuse complaints every single day, literally every day, like that's gotten it. It's a fact, I know it is okay. We get it every single day because I see these things come back and you're like, you realize some of this stuff. It's like, these people don't even know how to use a computer, right? Because we have a big unsubscribed button on every email. Like we deliberately, we do not try to hide it. It is there, it's an orange, like it's big. And people are like, you need to unsubscribe me. What is going on, you send too much email and it's like, dude, click the button. We will never email you again, we don't want you in here. If you don't want to be here, literally, because you're gonna hurt our open rates. We want you out, if you want out, get out, please get out. You know what I mean? Like people think we want them. I don't want you on our list, if you, if you understand, like, I always explain this guys. The closest, the next closest people that you are going to close on a sale are not the people that are unsubscribing. It's the people that are on your list that are opening your emails, every once in a while, clicking on them, that just haven't bought anything yet. The people like that's who you wanna focus on, right? Those are the people that matter. The people that are unsubscribing or be trolley or whatever, they are so far out there that they should never even take an ounce of your thought.

Nick Friend: God, so true. These things are so hard to learn early on too. And like, that's why I think both the trolls and the unsubscribes and all of the negativity and the inputs, all of it just, shshh.

Patrick Shanahan: Oh yeah. that's why this is a great, that's why this is a great session. I'm really happy about like, I was kinda like is this really good topic?

Nick Friend: Okay, let's go.

Patrick Shanahan: You focus like history? It like, you sure you want to do that? And I'm like, nope.

Nick Friend: Yeah, you--

Patrick Shanahan: Give me the by Felicia. Kay thanks bye.

Nick Friend: But like I can think about times early in my career and I think a lot of people can resonate this and you can resonate with this. Like we all can like, you get like a trolling comment or some unsubscribes or whatever, some negativity thing. Right and then all of a sudden it hijacks your day and you literally, you waste, you eat. You're either like all out of sorts, or you waste your entire day, maybe even multiple days on something that doesn't even matter, right? Like nonsense, like it just took you off your offense. You were on offense, you were on the right path thinking the right way. And then all of a sudden you get a couple unsubscribes and you're like, Whoa, what is this? Is it the email provider? Is it, am I sending too much? Am I, this am I that? And you're so worried about it.

Patrick Shanahan: I can't even offer an email.

Nick Friend: Yeah exactly. So then you don't email as much and it's because of those two people who left your list, who are like, Patrick's analogy, the people just walked out of the store. didn't matter, you know what I mean? Like, it didn't matter. Like, it's not like they hate you, this is part of the deal. It's just,--

Patrick Shanahan: You were going to go out. They know where the store at any time--

Nick Friend: Exactly - it's like an unsubscribed is like, it's, like, you know, misappropriate, like mis-characterizes. Like I hate you, It's like coming along with that unsubscribe. It's like anybody, anytime an artist or photographer sees it. It's like, I hate you, you're emailing and messaging too much. And you know, that's what I think about you. It's like, no, no, no. They just like, like, they're just, I don't want this email. This isn't really a right fit for me, whatever. No big deal.

Patrick Shanahan: That's it.

Nick Friend: What are we, what do we have in terms of announcements? I've been on video from nine and a half hours today. I'm losing it.

Patrick Shanahan: My goodness, you know what? I'm exhausted too, but I will say fourth quarters right around the corner. Can't stop talking about it. Ooh, hey, what video? Biggest ads sale time of the year.

Nick Friend: What video did we just release on Tuesday? That was straight fire. What can I never stop talking about? Merchandise.

Patrick Shanahan: Merchandising? what are the six media types? Just, just, just, just do it, just humor me. I know, I just humor.

Nick Friend: We're gonna have to change your middle name. Patrick merchandising Shanhan.

Patrick Shanahan: What are six media types? Every artist and photographer might have ?

Nick Friend: One photo paper, one fine art paper.

Patrick Shanahan: Hold on, hold on. Hold on. Hold on one, five photo paper, one fine art paper. Next.

Nick Friend: One canvas

Patrick Shanahan: One canvas.

Nick Friend: Not two, one.

Patrick Shanahan: A green screens going to make it a little circus. Sorry, next

Nick Friend: One metal.

Patrick Shanahan: One metal check. Fuck, I just, sometimes I just like to show. what it looks like. oh, acrylic acrylic have yours in acrylic, I love it Look at that, nice ready to hang, anything else?

Nick Friend: And wood,

Patrick Shanahan: And wood, It's beautiful.

Nick Friend: I love that wood.

Patrick Shanahan: Nice little book.

Nick Friend: I love that word, its nice. I mean, if I can get my merchandising in and in 14 seconds there, you guys can get it into kitchen. Oh, anyway.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, so we've got this summer special. That's ending soon at the end of the month. So we it's, it's been extended and it's essentially like a get in before the fourth quarter, the biggest arts selling time of the year. You know what I mean? Get your act together, get your stuff together. Biggest starts all the time of the year. This is going to be the biggest ever, okay. By far online, we've already seen that we've had black Friday levels of sales, Every week, since April, since COVID hit all the demand has moved online for art, It's all there. So everyone that is participating in that market and building their skill set. You know what I mean? Doing their reps and sets, right? Like doing the marketing, that's what I'm saying, doing the marketing and preparing for this. The marketing actually begins for Q4, okay. For the holidays at the beginning of October, okay. That is less than it's moving back like 20, (indistinct) 21 days to October 1st, so get in gear, you cannot consider yourself a serious artist or photographer or anyone who's trying to make any money whatsoever. If you are missing out at the biggest art selling time of the year, when everybody's pulling out their wallets. And the vast majority of the demand is getting sucked out of the market and to every art storefronts member that's on this, I have to just motivate you guys and encourage you because get mentally prepared to merchandise.

Nick Friend: You won't stop. (inaudible) Yeah, to mentally get prepared that, you know, I know everybody's lazy, right? Like you haven't done as much marketing as you've wanted to probably, some of you not, but many of you are like, you know what? I've kinda dropped the ball a little bit. I've been a little spotty with my marketing. This is not the time to do that. This is the time to get mentally prepared, get yourself up like, do you know, do some meditation start working out, whatever it is, get your mind ready. right? Like I'm thinking about rocky in my mind, like running up the steps, this is the time to be a winner and execute as well as you can starting right now. Okay, to have a great fourth quarter, you'll be really proud of yourself because if there's one time to do it, it's now right. It's now and it's for the rest of the year. So you know, when, when the time is there, right? Like when it's, when, when things are good, that's when you should be spending the most of your, and really put the effort in.

Patrick Shanahan: Do not share that code on Facebook. Do not share that code on Facebook.

Nick Friend: No one give that code to Paula. I got this--

Patrick Shanahan: This is how I know I'm getting effective with my marketing. That code is for you guys and not for everyone.

Nick Friend: It's for the members only.

Patrick Shanahan: That stays inside That stays inside. Do not publish that code, sorry to yell. But you know, sorry. Yeah, so if you were asking someone who are not customers, like if you're on Facebook, go to the merchandising video on Facebook. If you're on Instagram, go to the merchandising video on Instagram. Why am (bangs the table) banging the drum on this thing nonstop. Find that when we talk to Mark, because the low hanging tweets of you guys getting all of the media types is massive. You guys talking about the media times, educating yourselves and merchandising is going to tick every box okay? I am compensated based on your level of success. I believe that this is the number one thing that you need to be doing to go towards success. I believe you need to have this before you have a website or your social profile or your email list. If you're going door to door, Nick and selling nice. What would you have with you?

Nick Friend: I might have the nice.

Patrick Shanahan: You went up the nice.

Nick Friend: If you're selling your art or your photography, Nick. What would you got with you?

Patrick Shanahan: The actual finished piece of art or photography.

Nick Friend: Did I show you what they look like? Did I show you I'm done? (laughs)

Patrick Shanahan: You're done.

Nick Friend: I'm not going to keep pounding thing, but it will change you guys. I'm already seeing it, I seen more success, okay. In the past couple of weeks, our storefronts customers, you have to back me up on this between the live art shows. And the flash sales that we've taught and all the techniques, and obviously a huge component of that is having the finished product. I have not seen this level of success from people that are just getting started to down the line at other advert. Full-stop I've never seen a technique that's working this well, the live selling. If you have your samples, if you have no merchandise is the elevator on the ground floor, doors are closing on floor one. How high it goes I don't know, what I've never seen anything like it that's it, I'm done.

Nick Friend: Paul, the discount code for art storefronts members for to get a discount on the prints, okay. it was discussed in the private member session yesterday., okay So if you go to the art marketing calendar or the workshops in the volts, than you can watch that session just fast forward. It like fast forward, past the beginning. Right when Patrick and I come on, we start talking about merchandising. We specifically talk about the discount code and where to make that happen, okay. So you could, you could track that down in like one minute.

Patrick Shanahan: Yep.

Nick Friend: Alright. Let's--

Patrick Shanahan: Caroline's asking on Facebook is this software. And I sat there and I thought about it. I was like, actually Carolyn has quite a lot. Today it's therapy,

Nick Friend: Quite a lot.

Patrick Shanahan: It's therapy, it's Internet Trade-craft. It's how to kick pearls off your boat. It's merchandising, it's software. And it's little, little, little, little, little bit of a mixed bag here. A little bit of a mixed bag on a Wednesday, that's what it is a little bit on Wednesday.

Nick Friend: Yeah, Carolyn, we as a company art store for us provide proper art gallery website, number one, number two, ongoing art business marketing consulting. To help you get more eyeballs on your art, more, email subscribers on your list, followers and sales, in the doors. That's what we do. If you're interested, go to artstorefronts.com and check it out. The rest of you who have been around for a little bit. If you wanna learn more about art storefronts, request a demo, that's the next step. The next step is to request a demo. There's a link in the post, or you can always go to our website. There's always a button in the upper right-hand corner that says request a demo. And then one of our team members will reach out to you, show you everything, including all the details about pricing and everything else.

Patrick Shanahan: Customers, Facebook warm ads, playbook tomorrow. It's a big one and guess what? It's gonna be a big one this week. Big one next week, week after that, all the way to keep four, gotta to have those warm ads in the water. If you meet the criteria. Alright, that's it, Party's over, thanks.

Nick Friend: Alright guys, thank you.

Patrick Shanahan: Just say no to trolls. Just say no to trolls. It is a window and not a mirror, bye.