THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Miriam Schulman: A few weeks ago, I got on a coaching call with an artist. I’ll call her Nora. And when it was her turn, she said, I don’t really have any wins. And her voice cracked and she was trying to hold back tears. She had just come off a show. Months of work loaded the car, drove, set the whole thing up. Stood there for three days. But in her words, nobody was buying. So I asked her a few questions. Did you make back what it cost you to be there? Yes. Did you sell anything on top of that? Yeah, well, a few hundred dollars. And how many people gave you their email address? I don’t know, 20. Maybe more. Did anyone stand in front of your work and have a real conversation with you about it? The kind where you can tell they’re actually thinking about buying? She said yes, several. Okay, that’s not a failure. 20 people who liked her work enough to hand over their email, a handful of serious conversations with people who wanted to buy. But she was sitting in front of me, almost in tears because she was certain the show was a failure and certain underneath that that the failure was her artwork.
Speaker 2: It’s the Inspiration Place podcast with artist Miriam Schulman. Welcome to the Inspiration Place podcast, an art World Insider podcast for artists by an artist, where each week we go behind the scenes to uncover the perspiration inspiration behind the art. And now your host, Miriam Schulman.
Miriam Schulman: Hey there, I’m Miriam Schulman. In case you haven’t met yet, I’m the author of Artpreneur and your curator of inspiration. Here’s what I told her, and it’s what I want to tell you. That show didn’t fail. On the weekend it happened. It was decided 90 days earlier, but nobody told her the clock was already running. So that’s why I put together today’s episode. Your exhibition isn’t something you hang. It’s something you launch. Now, most artists spend months creating the artwork. Hundreds of hours late nights, framing, choosing titles, rewriting perhaps the artist’s statement 11 times, agonizing over which wall gets which painting. And all that’s important. But when I asked the question, when did you send the save the date? Have you pitched the local paper? Which collectors have already told you that they’re coming? What’s your plan for the work that doesn’t sell? Okay, here’s what’s actually happening in that silence. They plan the artwork, but they never actually planned the marketing around the exhibition. And those are two different jobs. Your exhibition isn’t something you just hang. It’s something that you launch and launches don’t begin on opening day. If you think about movies, it’s not like they wait until July 5th when the movie comes out to start talking about it. You’re hearing about movies six months in advance. In fact, I remember wicked. I think it was a full year in advance. They started promoting the trailer. So today I’m going to do something I’ve never done in an episode.
Miriam Schulman: I put the entire 90 day exhibition timeline on the screen. The actual sequence, the playbook phase by phase that the artists who sell out their shows are running while everyone else is still stretching canvases. Now stay with me, because about halfway through this, there’s a phase almost every artist skips entirely, but it’s the one where the most money is made. Here it is, six phases, 90 days. So we’re going to count backwards from 90 to 0. So 90 to 75. This is the audience phase. Before you plan a single thing about the show, you need to figure out who the show is for. Not everyone. Not art lovers. Specific people in specific groups. This is the phase that determines everything downstream, and it’s the phase that gets skipped the most. Days 75 to 60. This is the publicity phase. This feels insanely early, but really, some of the publicity could even start on day 90. It’s not early. I’ll show you why in a minute. And the reason why will probably annoy you. Day 60 to 30. That’s actually the the invitation phase, not an invitation. A sequence of invitations. Different messages to different groups released in a deliberate order. Day 30 to 7 is the nurture phase. This is where the actual selling happens. Yeah, before the show. This phase is why some artists walk into an opening night with red dots already on the wall.
Miriam Schulman: Okay. Opening week. That’s the harvest, not the sale. The harvest. And there’s a difference. And it’s a big one. And day one to day 30 is the follow up phase. You didn’t think I’d forget that, did you? Yeah. Selling doesn’t end when the show comes down. This is the phase that almost nobody runs. This is the phase where the largest share of money actually comes in. All right, now let’s look at that timeline and ask yourself an honest question when you did your last show. At what point on that line did you start? Don’t feel bad. For most artists, the answer is somewhere around day 14. Everything to the left was spent creating the artwork. That’s the whole plan right there. Everybody’s competing on the wrong 90 days. So let’s walk through what’s actually happening in each phase. Because I know you’re saying, Miriam, you went through that fast. Are you going to tell me exactly what to do? Yes, I will tell you. But more importantly, why? The audience phase. You don’t need more people. You need the right for every artist I’ve ever met said the same thing before a show. Oh, I just need to get more people through the door. Guess what? More people is not the goal. If more people were the goal, then those flea markets with bouncy castles would be a great place to sell art. It’s not about more people. More people is how you end up with a room full of friends who tell you your art is stunning.
Miriam Schulman: Eat all the cheese, drink your wine, but then go home. And I’m not saying not to invite your friends, but you don’t have one audience. You actually have four and they’re not interchangeable. So the first one, these are the people who have already bought from you past collectors. This is the warmest money on earth. And the group artists are most embarrassed to contact because you’re worried about bothering them. But this is where the money’s made. Two. These are your amplifiers press curators, gallery owners, interior designers, community organizations, people who don’t just attend, but they bring people with them or they bring legitimacy. And three. Your warm Audience. Everybody on your email list and following your work. Who has never bought anything? They still love you. They’ve been watching you for years. They’ve never once been asked. And for your circle friends, family, neighbors, the community. And these people are wonderful. But understand what they are. They’re the room, but they’re not necessarily the revenue. That’s your friends. Okay, here’s what’s going to change your life. Each of those four groups need to hear a completely different message sent at a completely different time. The past collector gets an early private, almost quiet message. The amplifier gets something formal and something newsworthy. The warm audience gets a story. The circle gets a party. Most artists write one email, usually for for the party, and they blast it to all four.
Miriam Schulman: And that’s precisely why the room fills up with the wrong people on the wrong night, in the wrong mood to buy anything. And yeah, I’m talking about this as if it’s like a gallery show. But just know that many of these same principles we’re talking about throughout this video absolutely apply to when you’re having an art festival, show a booth, show any of those things. It’s just who you’re targeting will change a little. Now, I want to ask you something, and I want you to really think about it before you answer. At the last art exhibition you attended. Not one of yours, but somebody else’s. How’d you find out about it? Was it a postcard? An email? Did the artist call you personally? Did a friend drag you? Did you read about it it somewhere. I want to hear from you. What exactly got you in the door? Because I know the last two exhibits that I attended. Friends invited me both times. But let me tell you. Because whatever moved you is almost certainly what moves the collector towards somebody else’s show. Now, I do read all the comments. I’m curious to see how it lines up with what I see behind the scenes. The publicity phase. Let me tell you the number one thing artists say to me about press. I sent it as a paper two weeks before the show and I never heard back.
Miriam Schulman: Of course you didn’t. Two weeks before your show, that paper’s issue was already laid out. The arts editor made those decisions in a meeting you weren’t in about six weeks before you emailed. So publicity doesn’t run on your calendar. It runs on theirs. Monthly magazines. Lead times measured in months, not weeks. Community calendars submissions close before you framed anything. Local TV segments get booked ahead. Podcasts record on delay. Regional art newsletters. Editorial calendars set a season out. So here’s the rule and I want you to write this down. Everyone else’s deadline comes before yours. That is the entire reason the publicity phase sits between 90 and 75 on that timeline, a point where most artists have still, still have wet paint on the easel and haven’t even settled on a title for the show. It feels absurdly early, but that’s what you need to do. Now, the way I handled my press is I always had a spreadsheet with all the various press, and had it grouped based on which publications were three months in advance, two months in advance. I did it based on their deadline, so that I knew when I had to send each one, and then I would make a deadline calendar for every single show. Every single show? Yes. Booth shows two inside the Artist Incubator. We don’t build the calendar forward from today. We build it backwards from opening night because that is the only way.
Miriam Schulman: Press timeline and painting timeline or art creation timeline ever line up? I always tell my incubator members, you start with the event and you work backwards. Now if that publicity timeline just made your stomach drop, good. Sit with that for a second because that feeling is the single most useful thing that’s going to happen to you today. Here’s what most artists do. When a show underperforms, they go back to the studio and they create more art, more hours, better techniques, maybe bigger canvases, a whole new body of work. Because clearly their last collection wasn’t good enough. So let me save you a few years. You don’t have a talent problem. You have a timeline problem and a strategy problem, and no amount of creating art has ever fixed a business problem. And that’s exactly why I made a free masterclass called How to Sell More Art Without Being Insta Famous. It’s where I show you the actual five things you need to focus on, and where most artists get it wrong. It’s free. It’s on demand, and you can watch it right now at SchulmanArt.com/sellmoreart. The links are going to be in the show notes. Go grab it and come right back, because the next thing I’m about to tell you is the reason some artists walk into opening night with their art already sold. The invitation phase. I want you to start thinking about this as not one single invitation.
Miriam Schulman: I want you to think about this as a sequence. Ask an artist how they invited people to their last show, and the answer usually is. I made a Facebook event and posted on Instagram a few times. That’s not an invitation strategy. That’s hope. That’s post and hope, you know. At The Inspiration Place we don’t do posts and hope. Hope is not a strategy. Attendance is not one message. It’s not two messages. It’s momentum. Attendance is momentum. And momentum is built by stacking. So what do you do? First, you send a save the date. That’s what sets the hook. The behind the scenes glimpse is what builds the story. Personal note to pass collectors. Make them feel chosen. Press mention gives the whole thing outside legitimacy and the community partner brings in their people. Remember, the reminder catches everyone who meant to come, but maybe they forgot. And a lot of us are treating that those emails the week of as the main thing. Those are just the reminders for people who’ve already planned on coming. Now, one of these does not do much on its own. It’s the sequence over 30 days that compounds. And by the time the doors open, showing up feels less like a favor to you and more like something a person would be sorry to miss. That’s the difference between a gallery that’s half empty, an open studio that’s empty, or a booth that’s buzzing.
Miriam Schulman: One where people are waiting on the sidewalk to come in and notice. Nothing in this phase is really about the art. It’s all about the order. Now let’s talk about the nurture phase. Pricing is not a price tag. The price tag is the last step, not the first. So we’re at day 30. And this is where two things happen that almost nobody connects. The first one is pricing, and here’s how most artists price at a show. They finish the work, they frame it, and then they panic. And roughly four days before the opening, they post in their artists Facebook group asking strangers what they should charge. Don’t tell me you haven’t done this. I’ve seen artists do that. Not in my community, but other communities I’ve been in. Okay, so pricing should not be a last minute decision. Pricing decides your collection planning. How many low price should you bring versus large? It decides your inventory, how deep it goes. It decides your layout, what a person sees first, what they see last. It decides scarcity, whether red dots appear early, which itself is one of the most powerful sales tools in the room, which means the price tag is only the final expression of a pricing strategy that should have been started a long time ago. So think about that. Your pricing strategy starts the day you start creating the art, not the day before the show. Okay? And if that just rearranged something in your brain, that’s the kind of thing that I share on this channel every week.
Miriam Schulman: The business behind the art, the stuff art school never taught you. And most artists don’t figure out on their own. So if you want more episodes like this, make sure you’re subscribed so the next one doesn’t slip past you. The harvest. Every artist believes opening night is when you sell. Opening night is not when you sell. Think about what actually has to be true for someone to spend $2,500 on a painting. They have to know your work. They have to trust you. They have to have thought about where it goes in their house. They have to decide somewhere in the back of their mind that this is the thing that they’re going to do. Now, does that sound like a decision a person makes in nine minutes, holding a plastic cup of Chardonnay in a crowded room with your aunt, talking loudly behind them about her hysterectomy? Of course not. The collector who buys an opening night has usually been watching for weeks, reading your emails, seeing the previews. They already have a favorite. They picked it out in their kitchen on their phone 23 days ago. So opening night doesn’t create that decision. Opening night gives them permission to act on it. Which is why I have artists who sell paintings before the exhibition even opens, and why, for them, opening night isn’t necessarily a sales event at all.
Miriam Schulman: It’s a celebration of sales that already happened. I know exactly what some of you are thinking right now. Okay, but how does an artist actually sell artwork before the doors even open? And the honest answer is it’s not a trick and it’s not luck. It’s a system. Selling art is what happens quietly over weeks, when the right people are invited into your world in the right order. And here’s the part that matters most. That system doesn’t switch on for one weekend a year. It runs whether you have a show coming up or not, which is the whole difference between an artist who hopes the show goes well and an artist who has income they can actually count on. Now I’ll walk you through the exact system, the five foundations you need to have in place, and the five biggest mistakes artists make in my free masterclass. How to sell more art. If your art income right now depends on one exhibition going well. This is the class that changes it and it’s free. Go to SchulmanArt.com/sellmoreart. Again, SchulmanArt.com/sellmoreart. We’ve linked it in the show notes. Now let’s talk about that last phase on the timeline, the one nobody runs. The one where some of the biggest money is sitting untouched right now. The follow up phase. The show isn’t over until it’s over. Or I should say the show isn’t over when the show is over.
Miriam Schulman: Here’s how a show ends for most artists. You take everything down. You load the car, you drive home, you bring the unsold work into your studio, you lean it against your wall, and you tell yourself you’ll deal with it later. And then you collapse for a week because, yeah, you’re exhausted and honestly, maybe a little heartbroken. That’s it. That’s your whole post-show plan. And unfortunately, it is, without exaggeration, the most expensive mistake in this entire episode. Because look at what’s actually sitting there in the 30 days after the show. Everyone who came loved the piece and didn’t buy, but would have with more conversation. Everyone who wanted to come but couldn’t. Every piece of unsold work, which isn’t failure, it’s inventory. The commission conversations that started and never got followed up. The referrals that never got asked for. The gallery owner who took your card and an email list that grew and is now warmer than it will ever be again. But all of that decays and fast. Every day after the show, that attention is worth less than what it was the day before. And most artists let it all evaporate while they’re lying on the couch. The show is not over when the show is over. There’s a post show sequence, and it’s the phase that turns one exhibition into next year’s audience. I want to name the real reason most artists never run it, and I know it’s not laziness.
Miriam Schulman: You’re not lazy. It isn’t even the exhaustion. It’s because most artists are what I call polite creatives. The polite creative is brilliant in the studio, but apologetic everywhere else. She’ll spend nine months on a body of work, but then won’t send a second email because she doesn’t want, you know what I’m going to say, right? She doesn’t want to bother anybody. She’ll have a beautiful conversation with a collector, take their card, but never use it because reaching out would feel pushy. She waits to be discovered because asking feels graspy like begging. But here’s the cruelty of it. Politeness might feel like good manners, and it might feel like the classy choice, but it really isn’t. The single most expensive habit in the art world. And it doesn’t cost you a sale. It costs you a career. One uncontacted collector at a time. The person who bought your painting isn’t sitting at home hoping you’ll leave them alone. They’re sitting under your painting, telling their friends about you, waiting to hear what you’re working on next. Which brings me to a question, and I want you to be really honest. The artwork that didn’t sell at your last show. Where is it right now? Leaning against the wall in the studio, wrapped in a closet, under a bed in your parents basement. Has anyone laid eyes on it? Since I’m asking? Because I want you to notice what your answer says.
Miriam Schulman: That work is not failed work. It’s inventory. And what happened to it after the show tells me more about your business than anything that happened during the show itself. So tell me where those pieces ended up. I think I’m not going to get anything in the comments about this. I have a feeling a lot of you are about to find out. You’re not alone, though, if you are brave enough to share. The synthesis. Let’s pull it all back together. Successful exhibitions are not successful because the lighting was perfect or the wine was expensive, or the labels were beautifully printed. They’re successful because somebody spent three months, 90 days quietly, deliberately building demand and then opening a door. Yes, the artwork deserves those months too. Fine. You already gave it those months. But the audience, they also deserve those months. Publicity deserves months. Collector relationship deserves time. Follow up deserves its own time after everyone else has gone home. And none of this happens by accident. And none of it, absolutely none of it, happens in the two weeks right before the show opens. And listen, if you’re sitting there nodding, if some part of you has known this for years, but nobody ever said it out loud, give me a thumbs up. Not for me. Do it because it tells YouTube to put this kind of content in front of you. And by the way, if you have an artist friend you want to share it with, do them a solid.
Miriam Schulman: They’re about to put six months into a body of work and just two weeks into the promotion of it, and he or she is about to stand there in a nine person room and decide it’s because their artwork wasn’t good enough. And that artist deserves to hear this before their next show, not after. Let’s slow down. I want to get back to Nora because everything I’ve just told you, she was living. She didn’t have a name for any of it. She didn’t build the audience in the 90 days before, or run an invitation sequence or nurture anybody. Toward that weekend, she showed up with her beautiful artwork on a folding table and hope. And maybe she did some of what we’re talking about. Nor if you’re listening, by the way, not her real name. I know you’ve done some of this, but let’s get on the follow up now, because once the weekend comes and goes, don’t make that second mistake. The one that costs you far more than the first. Don’t drive home with those 20 some email addresses and a handful of serious collective conversations, but lean the unsold artwork against the studio wall and not look at it because you think it was a failure. Because that’s what polite creatives do. But we’re better than that. So let’s sit with it. Let’s sit with the facts also. She covered her costs.
Miriam Schulman: She made money on top of it. She had real conversations with people who wanted her work, and she walked away with a list of humans who volunteered their email address. And nobody ever gives you their email address just to be polite. They don’t. So those are the facts, every one of them. And on top of those facts, don’t build the story that you failed or your work isn’t good enough. Now, here’s what I need you to understand because this is the whole thing. The facts don’t determine what you do next. The story does. So don’t tell yourself the story that I failed. Tell yourself the story. I just met 20 people who want to hear from me. Go home and start a relationship with every single one of them. Same facts. Same week and same number. Same artwork, but two completely different careers. You don’t need better work. The work was never the problem. It was the thing that you need to do before and the thing you need to do after. So now I want to give you a happy story. Let me tell you about Masha. I think I mentioned her before. She didn’t wait for a gallery to pick her up. She didn’t even wait for a festival art show. She didn’t wait to be discovered. She threw her own show and sold seven paintings. That was $10,000. And I want to be precise about what actually made that happen. Because it wasn’t luck and it wasn’t magic.
Miriam Schulman: She stopped making work that didn’t mean anything to her. People don’t buy medium. They buy meaning. If art doesn’t mean anything to you, it won’t mean anything to them, and therefore it won’t sell. Now, yes, she painted big because I told her to, but she was ready to. And she bet on herself with her prices. And she looked at the numbers that scared her, and she put them on the wall anyway, and her collector said yes. She didn’t get better at creating artwork. She got strategic and then she got out of her own way. And here’s the thing I want you to notice about Nesha, because it’s the reason why I know she’s going to keep winning. The second that show was over, she didn’t coast. She came to me and said, I’m on this momentum. What’s the next step? I don’t want to go back to nothing happening. That question. That’s the whole game because almost every artist I meet coming off the best weekend of their show has no plan that follows it. How do I know this? You guys tell me. You tell me. Well, they paid for Venmo. I don’t have their email address. Reach out to them on Venmo. Then you need to follow up with your collectors. You need to stay in touch. That’s the whole mission. That’s the whole game. You can’t hope that they see you on Instagram again.
Miriam Schulman: You know how low engagement rate is on Instagram. Reach out to them now. Nesha asked the question before the momentum died. That’s the difference between a good month and a real career. Now, I know you heard both of these stories and the lesson is not make better art. Art was always good. Nor’s art is also amazing. The difference between artists crying on a call and artists selling out her own show has never been talent. It’s the 90 days that start in front of the show and 30 days after. So here’s what I want you to walk away with. Stop thinking about your exhibition as a weekend event and start thinking about it as a 90 day launch. You’re already doing the hardest part. You’re already making the work. Nobody in that room can do what you can do. The only thing missing is the 90 days around it. Heck, let’s call it 120. And if this episode made you realize that what you actually need isn’t another exhibition checklist, but a real business strategy for selling your art, then start with the free masterclass Schulman Art dot com slash art. Everything else I do from where you are now to coaching inside the Artist Incubator. Yeah, you can find out about that too. It’s over at Schulman Art dot com slash I z. All right, my friend, I’ll see you the same time, same place next week. Until then, stay inspired. Bye for now.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to the Inspiration Place podcast. Connect with us on facebook at facebook.com/SchulmanArt, on Instagram at @SchulmanArt, and of course on SchulmanArt.com.
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