When Are you Ready for Facebook Ads

In this episode of Art Business Mornings, Patrick and Nick delve into the topic of Facebook ads and specifically address the practice of boosting posts. They argue why most artists and photographers are not ready for Facebook ads and outline the key prerequisites for running successful paid traffic campaigns. They emphasize the importance of building a solid marketing foundation, consistent marketing efforts, and achieving traction in sales before considering paid ads. Patrick and Nick also highlight the limited effectiveness of boosting posts and encourage focusing on warm traffic and ongoing marketing to grow an art business. The episode also touches on the upcoming Q4 season as a crucial time for art sales and the booming growth of eCommerce in 2020.

Podcast Transcribe

Patrick Shanahan: All right, coming up on today's edition of the art business mornings. When are you ready for Facebook ads? Specifically, we're going to be talking about boosting posts. Why you're not ready for Facebook ads and what to do when you finally are.

All right. I'm really excited about this episode. It's going to be fire again. I feel like our content marketing operation is just getting so much better because instead of us sitting in our own little digital worlds, thinking about what content you guys might actually want us to address and see we're instead curing it about 55 times a week.

In which case we know we probably need to get into it. We probably need to address it. And so that's what we do. Right? We address it. Exactly. I think, you know, big picture too. If anybody watched the intro episode and watch the intro episode. If you didn't watch it, listen to it. It's three minutes everywhere.

What are one of the things that I harped on? The things. That we, this show, Nick and I, uh, what we can take off of the plate of our customers, tell them not to focus on because either A, we have the data on it or B, we have the experience on it, we know it, are as important as anything we actually tell you to do.

Okay, the things that we can take off of your plate. Okay, you don't need to be reading any blog posts. You don't need to be listening to any podcasts or talking to anybody about this particular thing because you are not ready to do it right now. You are not going to see an ROI. It's not going to make you successful.

Stop, full stop. It's out of your head. Poof, gone, right? So if you want to be on the path, a hundred K a year plus business tagline of the show, that is not the way to do it. Right. And it's like, that's an awesome thing to be able to say to our customers. And this is one particular area where we get to do it.

We get to do it obviously with some caveats. So when are you ready for Facebook ads by extension, Facebook and Instagram ads, you really want to get clever. When is an artist or a photographer ready to run paid traffic? Okay, so I want to start at the very top because again, how many times last week, Nick, how many times the week before?

How many times a week before that does somebody talk to us about boosting posts? How many times?

Nick Friend: Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, it's many times, many times, every session that we have,

Patrick Shanahan: every session we have, let's define it. Boosting posts is sort of the gateway drug into real Facebook and Instagram advertising in the sense that.

You know, if you're walking through the casino and there's a chair right there in the slot machine, all you do is put a quarter in and pull. That's like a gateway drug to like the craft table or blackjack where you have to like sit down and everything else, right? So boosting posts is where you press the boost post button on Facebook or on Instagram.

I forget what Instagram calls it. You run a little campaign. Forgive me if I don't know because I never do it, nor should you, right? The comment that we get all the time, okay. Week in week out and tell me if this sounds familiar to you, Nick. Yeah. So it was awesome. Uh, you know, I boosted some posts on Facebook immediately.

Nick and I, our heads going, who the hell told you a boost? Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no. But they go, I boosted some posts on Facebook and what did they get a lot of Nick likes, likes, what else likes, likes, likes, like follows, follows, comments, even they got comments, two shares, two shares. What you learn, okay. Number one about boosting posts.

Do not boost posts, okay. You're not in the boost posting business. You're giving it up. Hang up your, hang it up. Stop it.

Nick Friend: Never boost a post again. Never boost a post again. We're going to talk about all the why. But never boost a post ever again. You're flushing your money

Patrick Shanahan: down the toilet. That's number one.

And it's gotten, it's gotten so bad now that, you know. Through pattern recognition and through the fact, the reason that we get the, because people bring this up all the time. I don't even waste any time. I immediately, I mean, this is a bit of a, you know, I just say this every since. So how many sales did you get as a result of that boost?

I'll wait. And I sit there and I wait, still haven't heard about a sale, still looking for that sale. Maybe it'll pop somewhere. I doubt it. I doubt it. Okay. That's number one. We'll, we'll circle back on why boosting posts never works. It's targeting. Facebook is very good at giving you tired kickers and not buyers, all of that, but why is this awesome?

This episode today, the question I get all the time, in addition to the boosting posts, How much money. Do I need to spend on my marketing each month to really get going? Okay. Woke up this morning, logged into my email, Patrick. I'm ready to take the next step with our store friends. I just want to know how much money do I need to spend on my marketing every month?

Okay. And my answer always surprises folks next to nothing, nothing. Patrick, Patrick, uh, you surely you can't be serious. I am don't call me surely. Right? Like, you know, the analogy is incoming. Okay. You cannot even begin to think. About Facebook ads until you can do 100 push ups in one sitting. If your goal is to do 100 push ups in one sitting without stopping, what would you do?

You would start practicing building up your muscles. Perhaps you were, you were just starting out. You can only do 10 at a time. Okay, great. Do 10 at a time, five times a day. In a few weeks, you can do 20 in a month. You can do 50. You're on your way. What are the a hundred push ups then? They're your marketing muscles, the marketing machine and practices you need to have in place before you can even think about running Facebook ads.

Okay, and I'll bring you in a second. I got finished my rant. Let's talk about how artists and photographers think paid traffic and Facebook ads work versus how they really work. Okay, stated another way, uh, how folks think art sells versus how art really sells, how you think paid traffic and art sells. I create an ad.

Offering, discount, time sensitivity, flash sale, today only, 40 percent off, storewide on metal prints. You go to Facebook, you set your targeting, you run that ad, a whole bunch of people who don't know who you are, have never seen your art before, are going to just buy it. They're just going to buy it. You're going to take 500 and put it in the Facebook ads casino, and it's going to spit out 2, 500, and you're just going to rinse and repeat, okay?

You are the wizard of smart and on your way to a huge business, right? Okay. Wrong. Wrong. Okay. Let's talk about how it really works. And by the way, as many artists and photographer accounts is the art store friends count follows. Okay. Which I'm logged into all day. Do you know what these accounts don't look like?

They don't look like any of the sports stars accounts. I don't see any of the jets or the fancy cars. Okay, or the Prada bags or the shoes or the or the crazy vacations You know, that's weird that I don't see any of that on an instagram account It's because it's not easy to be really successful as an artist or a photographer And rule number one, you're not going to get away with it with cold ass Okay, I'm almost done.

Let's talk about how art sells in the real world. AKA, the real world. Okay, I see your ad. I was not even an image. It was a video. You were unveiling a new piece. I was intrigued. I, the first time I've ever seen it, I was intrigued. I kind of saw who you were. I followed Page. Okay. Few weeks later I saw you doing a Facebook Live again.

I enjoyed it. Started to get to know you, thought you were funny, interesting person. Then I got on your email list. Then I got busy. I went dark for a few months. Then I lost my job. Then I realized I would have to move to get a new one. I moved. Okay. Got a new job. I was living out of boxes for two weeks. Uh, it's a Friday night.

I love my new job. I just finished the last box. I sit down on the couch, pour myself a glass of wine to celebrate. And I look at my blank walls. They're staring back at me. They're looking low. So I need to sort it out. I start flipping around on Instagram. I see your post, I look at that post and I go, Oh, that's right.

I've got an email box full of their emails. I go to the email box. Okay. Then I think about my wall again. Boom. And I'd buy. Okay. Now variations of that story abound. They come in all stripes and sizes. But that, in our experience, is how art sells. Okay. How art sells online. If I didn't see your sale ad, I know I want it.

Hold a trigger in a single session doesn't happen. That just doesn't happen. And yet what is everyone think that there's some easy way to get into this? That you can just run a flash sale ad and that people are going to buy your art. I mean, it just doesn't have to, it needs to be stated that that's not the way art is sold.

Maybe in some weird instances, but not big picture, right?

Nick Friend: Yeah. And let's be honest, let's, let's be, let's, let's just be completely real about it. If that works, everybody would be doing it already. And this would be the easiest thing in the world. And every artist would be rich. Yep. Right. Every boosted post, you'd be rich.

It was that, it'd be that easy. Of course, it's not that easy. It's not working for anyone. It's not working for anyone. Right. And, and so, you know, like my way of, of looking at, um, you know, the, the, uh, like when you're ready for Facebook ads, it does tie back to episode number one of art business mornings, the, the, the introductory episode.

So if you didn't see that, definitely go back and check that out, you guys. But one of the five pillars that you went over of a successful art business, right. Of getting to like 100, like the path to 100, 000 a year, successful art business, right. That's like the aspirational goal that we have, right. Like where we want everybody there and above.

Right. And we've done that. So, um, and it's, it's, I think it's pillar number three. It's about consistent marketing. It's about consistent marketing, right? So if you're, so I'm going to go through this like step by step. Okay. Number one, if you're not selling at least, let's say five, maybe 10, 000 a year from your website already, like online, like in the online market, you're not ready for Facebook ads.

Just forget it. Done, nothing,

Patrick Shanahan:full stop, hold on. And what I'll say, I know because we talk about the 100 pushups that if you've done the work to get that system in place, okay, the marketing muscles regularly posting on the socials, always attempting to capture emails, emailing often going live on the socials, running sales when the time is right.

Guess what? You're probably already over five grand. Congrats. It's not because you have the system in place. Right? You're already there. Exactly.

Nick Friend: Exactly. So it starts right there. Yeah, it starts. It starts right there. It starts right there. And the reason for this, you guys is because Because what I see is I see a lot of photographers and artists trying to solve their traction problem.

They have no traction online at all. They have no traction with their art business yet. If you're not selling at least five to 10 K a year from online, like you don't have traction yet. So you need to solve the traction problem. You don't do that by throwing good money after bad, right? Oh, maybe I just need to like, Get boost a post or throw some Facebook ads out there and that's going to do it.

No, no, no. You got another problem there. You need to go sell 5, 000. And you need to hustle and hack your way to get there. There are ways to do that. It's not that hard. It's not that hard if you actually put some effort into it. And so, so right there, you gotta be at five to 10 K. That's like the first thing.

Now. Secondly, right. You even if you're at that level, I've seen, you know, we work with people that are like, So in 20, 30, 000 a year already, and they don't have a marketing system. They're just, they've been good enough to get there. Right. They have good traction. They do. They work their way digital, right?

Like they have some, yeah, exactly. And it's. And it's not systematized. Right. Like they're doing one thing here, one, like a couple of things there, but, but they're missing a couple of pieces to have it be really consistent, but, uh, you know, they're, those people are in a really good spot. Right. But, but if you're going to, if you're going to do Facebook, as if you, if you meet that first qualification of where you have traction.

Right. Then the second thing is you have to be doing consistent marketing every single week, regularly. Okay. And by that, that means regular email marketing, regular social media marketing on all the platforms. Right. And doing it the right way. Okay. Romancing, you know, like there's a, there's a right way to do these things all year long.

Okay. And the reason is because you will never get the return on investment. On any advertising that you buy period. I don't care if you're, if you're talking about an ad in a magazine, which I'm not telling you to do, but I'm just, or it doesn't matter what it is. It's the same concept when you are buying ads, radio, TV, prints, online, anything in any business.

You are, you need to capture leads and then you need to work those leads over time. And then over time, you know, there's, it's called the sales cycle. You know, when that person is ready or they have a need, then you hope that they buy from you. The way you do that is by doing consistent marketing. This is how every single business works, right?

So if you're buying Facebook ads and you don't have a system in place, Like you're, you're, you want to think of it like you need to plop these leads into a machine where this is going to create sales. Okay. If you don't have the marketing machine, that's built there and ready to go, then you are burning that money.

Even if, even if they are good leads, even if you are actually bringing in like qualified buyers. You know, art buyers or potential future art buyers. If you're not good enough at that, somebody else is going to get that sale when the time comes and you're going to miss it straight up, straight up. So you're completely wasting your money, right?

So let's recap right there, right? If you don't have five to 10 K in sales, forget it. You've got another problem, not, and it's not Facebook ads. Okay. Don't even bother. Yeah. The marketing machine ain't there. And the traction is not there. Period. You don't have traction. If you're not selling five to 10K a year online already, like from your website, like, I mean, you just don't have traction.

Okay. You got to solve that problem. And if you've been primarily selling offline, this is a very important point. If you've been primarily selling offline over the past few years, like through the indirect, right. We say direct versus indirect. If your model has been primarily indirect. Selling through galleries and even art shows that have all shut down.

Okay? Like you, what all you have, let's say you've been selling 5, 10, 20, 30, 50 K, a hundred k, through that method, all you have is, is that, is validation that you really have an opportunity and a great business there potentially, right? Yeah, you do. But when you switch it over to, you know, to running your business online and taking advantage of the online market, you're starting from scratch and you need to get that traction first.

Right. You, you can't just jump, you're not gonna jump in and just buy some ads and get some sales, or there's not gonna be any shortcuts. Sorry. Hate to tell it to you. Okay? Because we, we know people, we work with people that sell a hundred thousand dollars, 200,000, even $300,000 plus a year in galleries, right?

Prior to the pandemic, which went completely kaput. And they are beginning from scratch. Now they've kind of got rocket fuel, you know, because like they've got serious validation. So they're, when you actually start doing the marketing. Like you should have absolutely no problem when you're in that position, right?

To start really growing it and going further. Um, but it's just important to have the right mindset there, you know? So you got to solve that problem first, get that first five or 10 grand, get the traction and go. Then you have to look at, okay, am I, do I have a marketing machine in place or am I just like dabbling here and there being crazy about it?

You've got to solve that.

Patrick Shanahan: If you can't do the a hundred pushups, you're not ready for that. So you're not ready. Yeah. I can pivot. When you are ready for Facebook ads. Okay. And, and, and, and let me just stop before you contemplate getting ahead of yourself. Today's episode is going to start and finish with warm ads.

We're not even going to cold ads. That will be another episode that I might never record period. Okay. Now, warm ads, warm ads, let's define it. Some of you guys out there are like, what are we talking about? The relationship example is where this always goes. Okay, showing ads to cold traffic is like walking into a bar full of people.

You've never met. You have to introduce yourself. They're cold. They don't know you warm traffic. Okay. Are walking into a bar where everyone has met you or had some experience with your brand loosely knows you. Okay. Advertising on Facebook to warm traffic. If you have a marketing machine in place is an absolute no brainer.

It's beyond a no brainer. It is a must do Facebook and by extension, Instagram are pay to play platforms. Okay. Here's the abstraction of how, of how I want you to think about showing ads to warm traffic on Facebook and Instagram. If you can do a hundred pushups. Okay. Everybody remembers the golden days back in the day.

Okay. You would follow someone on Facebook, you would see a hundred percent of the posts. They would follow you. They would see a hundred percent of your posts, Instagram. Same thing. You could even follow a brand and see a hundred percent of their posts. Okay. Those days are gone. Okay. Those days are gone.

They're finished. Now we post one to 2 percent of our followers. CR plus. So we give Facebook money in a daily consistent throughout the year. Okay. Uh, uh, uh, cliff we post regularly and all we're doing is pain to go back to the good old days when everyone would see our posts. And guess what? Let's, let's, let's,

Nick Friend: let's recap that real quick.

Cause that was a really important point. And you went through it pretty fast. I just want to make sure everybody on here understands. That when you do a social media post on Facebook or Instagram, not everybody who follows you is seeing it. It's only one to two percent of your followers

Patrick Shanahan: Will see that. So all we're doing is just paying to go back to the good old days, right?

And I could, I could give you this analogy a couple of different ways. And then I want to go to the most profound part of all of it at the very end. Okay. The analogy is like, Let's say you're paying for one of the streaming services, right? Like, like, let's say it's YouTube. Right. And you can pay for it.

And get rid of all the ads, right? So here it is, here's this free service you're using. And then they're saying, give us 10 a month. Okay. And you can get rid of the ads, right? It's sort of like that in reverse, like you have to pay Facebook in order for your followers to see your posts. That's just how it goes.

So when you have a market, and this is the most profound part of all of it, okay, when you have a marketing machine in place, when you understand that you are going to pay daily consistently throughout the whole year, all you're doing at that point is paying to use Facebook as a service to get access to all your attention.

It's no different than your cable subscription. It's no different than what you're paying for your housekeeper to come four times a year, your trash service. That's what it is. That it is a cost of doing business. And guess what? It goes deeper. This last layer is the most important one. When you can do a hundred pushups, when you have the marketing system in place, it's not about one conversion or did all these people come from the post and buy 10, 000 worth of art.

You don't care. Because the score is going to take care of itself. If you have the marketing system in place, posting regularly, emailing regularly, having the sales, understanding all those mechanics, and you are showing ads to warm traffic, your business is going to grow. That's a hard one to wrap your head around, isn't it?

That's a hard one to wrap your head around, but if you don't have the system in place, it's not going to work for you. It's

Nick Friend: easy for me to wrap my head around. Yeah. Cause I mean, cause I've been doing it for years, years, we've been doing it for 15 years. Like this is just the way that this is just the way that marketing works.

Yeah. This is the way that marketing works in business in general. Right? Like you have to acquire leads, every lead you acquire, like in the old days, like pre pre like, you know, proliferation of internet. When I started like, uh, my second company right in 2003, like we, we did a ton of trade What's the purpose of doing a trade show, right?

The purpose of the trade show is to collect leads. Collect leads, meet new people for the first time, brand new, like you said, right? Brand new. They've never heard of you before. They don't trust you. They don't know you. They haven't looked into you. They don't know if what you're selling is a value. If, if, if you're a, some sort of scammer, I mean, they don't know anything, right?

It's the beginning of that relationship. It's kind of like, like, think about like the beginning of a friendship that you had where nobody introduced you. It wasn't like a friend who introduced you. It's just like some random person that you met. And it's like, And it's like, okay, we're going to go to like, do you want to go like, uh, Hey, do you want to go spend the weekend together in San Diego?

Right. Or like, and it's like, wait a minute. I don't even know you. Right. Like, I don't know if I want to spend that much time with you on the weekend or anything like it could just be. And I'm not, I'm not even saying like a, like a romantic relationship. I'm just saying friends. If you just met a cool guy or a cool girl, right, and they're like, Hey, let's go to, let's go down to San Diego for the weekend and go surfing or like, go to the restaurant.

You're like, wait a minute, hold on. We just met each other. Like, how about we just do like coffee. Right. And then, and then maybe after coffee, if that goes well, then really we'll do lunch. Right. And then maybe we'll do lunch for like a year, you know, maybe a dinner. Maybe I'll introduce you to some of my friends.

It's a, it's a dance. It's a romance. It's like a, there's a whole period to it, right? It's exactly the way that it is with a cold lead. Although nobody wants to think that way. Nobody wants to think that way. You know, what's it, you know, what's amazing. I'll tell you guys an amazing experience that, uh, that I had when I was younger, when I, when, when I started, uh, my company breathing color in 2003, you know, I, we started doing international trade shows.

Okay. And um, and you, you can't imagine how different things are in Europe. Alright? So like when you do a trade show, when you do business in like the UK and in Germany and in other countries, right? It is very different from the us. And when we first did it, I was there and, and I'm there and I'm like, I'm like trying to close deals like on the floor of the show, you know?

And, and one of, one of our partners there came up to me and he goes, Nick, you can't do that.

Patrick Shanahan: No,

Nick Friend: no. He goes, you can't do that here. And I'm like, what are you talking about? I'm like, what, what am I doing? I don't even, I don't even know what you're talking about. I had already like three years experience doing trade shows in the U S like the normal way.

Right. And he's like, no, no, no. Like you got to slow things down here. Like, this is like very slow. You just get a business card, you call them at, you know, a month later. And I'm like, Whoa, you know, it's, they've got it more like the way that it really is in the U S and America. Everybody just wants results, results, results.

Immediately. Right. No romance. Give me the money. Give me the money. I paid for ads. Give me sales. Now, you know, and that's just not how it works. And so anybody who even tries is already setting themselves up for failure because you have to, you have to buy, you know, um, if you're buying ads, you have to buy cold traffic.

You have to buy leads and you have to romance them over time and then bring them to a close. Now the challenge with Facebook is you have to make sure that your targeting is good enough You know, and you have some milestone metrics in between to make sure that, you know, you, you are actually getting some quality in there, right?

You can't just blindly just be getting traffic or emails or whatever, because, you know, that's where, that's where cold ads are fraught with danger. That's why you're saying you should be

Patrick Shanahan: doing cold, very

Nick Friend: few of you should be doing cold. You're far from cold. You need to be doing warm first. Right? So, um, and you need to be doing warm as hard as you can do it so that like you're, you're, you're getting the most out of all the people, all the, all the leads you've already captured, all the traffic, all the followers, all the fans.

Because as Patrick just said, you're not getting like, yeah, exactly. Facebook is not giving you, yeah, they, they're the broadcasting platform. Okay. They have a wall, they have a wall in front of you in front of all of us. Right. And it's like, Hey, I know the people who like you and have followed you. Right. I know who all your friends and fans are.

However, you're like, I'm only going to show your posts to one to 2%. If you send something that's amazing, maybe I'll show it to 3%. Right. That's like a really high engagement post. Right. Uh, maybe 4 percent of your luck, you just announced that you're getting married or that you had a baby. Turns out that they know it when you do that.

And that's why you see those things again and again and again every day. Yeah, exactly.

Nick Friend: Exactly. They know what they're doing. It's just and and so that's all it is. Yeah, and you're paying to get in front of all of those people because they, that's, that's their deal. That's their paywall, right? That is their business.

They've got the attention. They've got the eyeballs, like they've got the whole, they've got your people there. And so you got to pay to get them to, you know, to see your content. And when, when you're doing warm, when you're ready for warm ads, it is very effective, very effective. We should say. Right. So that's the deal.

That's the deal. And I should say we leave, we leave it there for now. I don't want to get into the tactical. I don't want to get into any other layers where this is, this is not going to be solved in one specific topic, but I would say, you know, we always have a balance of customers and non customers on here.

If you're not a customer, you like what you're hearing. You'd like to go deeper. You've got questions about the, uh, the algorithm like Lauren here or what the tactical looks like or what the spend looks like come to one of our business workshops there thrice weekly, three times a week, uh, zoom sessions, uh, where people can pop on, ask the questions we can get more in depth into the technical and the tactical.

We, we like to keep the art business mornings, high level, keep you guys motivated, get you fired up, uh, uh, catch you on the path to 100k plus a year art business. Gotta get them on the path. Do not boost boost. Do not show ads of cold traffic until you can do 100 pushups. And start with warm traffic. It's just a cable subscription.

That's what I got.

Nick Friend: Yeah. And last thing that I'll mention, you guys, Q4 is around the corner. Gotta, gotta remind you, can't leave without reminding you, the Q4, in other words, uh, October, November, December, the biggest art selling time of the year. If you have been on the sidelines. And you, and you haven't gotten your business launched or you, you you're in the middle of it and you haven't gotten it done, or you haven't started on your marketing or any of that stuff.

Now is the time to get out of your chair and get to business. Like get on it now, today, today, right? Like do not, there's no time to waste. We actually sent an email out today. The subject line I saw from this morning, it was, 48 days until Q4 marketing begins 48 days, that is, that, that's, that's a month and a half.

That's a month and a half until, until the marketing really begins. Okay. And, and you have to take advantage of the marketing if you even want to do well. So, um, yeah, Q4 right around the corner guys. So it's time it's we're in the prime time and Oh, you know what else, you know what else about that? There was a stat, uh, that came out, uh, uh, I think it was like on Monday and it was, um, it's like a huge report and it's covered by all the news.

And it's that, um, that eCommerce sales of 2020 are going to reach, they're going to reach and exceed eCommerce sales of 2019 by the end of September. Like by the end of the third quarter of this year, that's how much eCommerce sales have boomed. So it's, it's so exciting. It's, Because anytime that that business is moving online, you guys, it's good for all of you.

It's incredible for every single person that is a home business, you know, a solo entrepreneur. It's like, I can't tell you, it's like, this is the, like, this is the type of power shift that is so monumental for all of you. And, um, I'll tell you what the people that take advantage of it, the people that are investing in themselves and their own skill set, how packed think about how big of a lead these people are going to have over the next three to five years.

Like this is the, this is the arbitrage. When you are an entrepreneur, when you're a business owner, you've got to always be looking for an arbitrage. Like an arbitrage is your advantage, some special advantage. And you know what? Yeah. You know what? This is it. This is it. The people who are able to execute on their marketing and take advantage of this opportunity, because it's never been more worth it to do your own marketing and go direct and have your own business.

It's not that it's, it's, it's never been more worth it, but it's never been more necessary, right? Because you have no other option. You have to go direct to consumer and do your own marketing and own everything, right? It's the only way that you can have a consistent business. Private. Necessary is a pretty good way to describe it.

Yeah. It's a total, it's a total necessity. So, um, yeah, it's, it's, the time is never, the time is never better. But I think about that a lot. I think about that a lot. You know, the fact that like, wow, the people like, because there's no shortcutting the skillset. There's no shortcutting. You got to learn. It's taken me 20 years to learn all of this.

You know, you like, that's why we're experts at it. And it's like the people that are become experts in it in their own way, you know, in this digital age, it's like, this is like literacy of the digital age of an entrepreneur. Like if the more that, you know, a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, the more skills you have.

In marketing your business direct, those are going to be the people leading the charge. It's not going to be like the, the finest talented artists. It never is. It never is. Right. It's always the best business people, the best marketers who actually get it done. Of course, you know, the quality of your art plays a role, but way less than most of you think way less than most of you think.

Patrick Shanahan: Also also too is like no gurus here. Okay. No gurus. It's only practitioners here. Right? We're doing a podcast live. We're live on Instagram. I've got headphones on and earbud on. I've got a soundboard here so that we don't have to do any editing after the fact. Why? Because I don't have it all figured out.

It's moving too quickly. This digital thing is evolving too quickly. Unless you get involved in it and you start working on it, you start learning, you start getting better and you keep improving. Where are you going? Where are you headed? Where are you headed? Right? So, alright, we leave it there. Hope to see you on the Art Business Workshop.

It's going to be a fire day. I'm excited about it. Thanks for hanging out guys.

 Never forget it.