THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Jeffrey Shaw:
Hey, this is Jeffrey Shaw from Creative Warriors Podcast and you’re listening to the Inspiration Place with Miriam Schulman.
Miriam Schulman:
Perfect. Well, you did that so well. I was hoping you’d screw up so I’d be able to use that in the blooper reel.
It’s the Inspiration Place podcast with artist Miriam Schulman. Welcome to the Inspiration Place podcast, an out world insider podcast, for artists, by an artist where each week we go behind the scenes to uncover the perspiration and inspiration behind the art and now, your host, Miriam Schulman.
Miriam Schulman:
Well, hello, this is Miriam Schulman host of the Inspiration Place podcast. Today we have a special guest. We’re going deep on how to identify your creative genius using compliments and we’re also going to talk about how to price your art, plus we’re going to talk about why there’s no glory in being a starving artist and finally how environment affects your creativity.
Miriam Schulman:
Today I’ve invited Jeffrey Shaw, one of the most sought after portrait photographers in the US, Jeffrey photographed the families of such notables as sports stars Tom Seaver and Pat Riley, news anchor David Bloom, supermodel Stephanie Seymour and C-suite executives from Twitter Anheuser-Busch and 3M as well as Wall Street leaders too many to mention. His portraits have appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, in People Magazine, O, CBS News and much more. So Jeffrey is hardly a struggling photographer and he’s turned how he’s been able to manage business by helping others now coach their creative businesses and he’s host of the very successful podcast, Creative Warriors Podcast. The reason I really wanted to have Jeffrey Shaw on the show though, is because I absolutely adored his book, ‘LINGO’. ‘LINGO’ is the book to discover your ideal customer secret language to make your business irresistible. But more than that, he really gets into the nitty gritty and the details of how to price your art so that you can reach a more affluent customer. So without further ado, let’s welcome Jeffrey Shaw. So I’m bursting-
Jeffrey Shaw:
Okay, let’s go.
Miriam Schulman:
… to ask questions. I have to tell you what happened. I remember I already told you this story. Our mutual friend, Jason, had messaged me before I got on the plane saying, “Hey, I can get you these TEDx talks for next Tuesday,” and I’m like, “Yeah, I’m busy. No, thank you.” I was on the plane, I had downloaded Michael O’Neill’s interview that he did with you. And all sudden you’re saying, “Oh, I’m doing a TEDx talk on Tuesday.” Right? So I had paid the extra on the plane for messaging and I messaged Jason, I was like, “Can you still get me that TEDx talk, there’s somebody I want to talk to.”
Jeffrey Shaw:
Great.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, you had me at, you were talking about the difference between when you walk into Walmart and you walk into a high end boutique.
Jeffrey Shaw:
I think the funnier comparison I love to make is that, at restaurants, you walk into a great diner and there’s going to be a cash register and a bowl of mints, right? You walk into a nice 5 Star restaurant with linen tablecloths, right, there’s a hostess stand, there isn’t a cash register. So same thing is true, if you go walk into Walmart, you walk into… In most of your typical department stores, there is a lineup of cash registers. Yet if you go to a high end store, Bergdorf’s, Neiman Marcus, you’re hard pressed to find a register, right? It’s going to be discreetly tucked away. Bergdorf Goodman does an amazing job at completely making it impossible to find a cash register. And the difference is that whether you are speaking the language of relational or transactional to your customers. So if you’re a very transactional business, and this is the irony of it is that, in the middle to lower end market, there’s actually more focus on the money, right. And in the higher end, it’s all about the experience and the value, so you don’t draw a lot of attention to the transaction of money. When you walk into a Walmart, it’s obvious that this is going to be a money transaction, because it’s a very cost conscious atmosphere, right?
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Jeffrey Shaw:
You go to the Walmart to be conscious of how much money you can save. You go into a place like Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, it’s, “What quality can I get? What experience can I have shopping here?” And they really minimize the impact of the transactional experience right down to the visual that you can’t find a register.
Miriam Schulman:
Well, I actually went to Bergdorf’s yesterday. I make it sound like I go there all the time. I think I hadn’t been there in ten-
Jeffrey Shaw:
There’s the bag.
Miriam Schulman:
There’s the bag. So I wanted to test some of your theories. So, first of all, well, the main reason I was there actually is, do you know the artist Ashley Longshore?
Jeffrey Shaw:
The name’s familiar.
Miriam Schulman:
She’s definitely worth looking up.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Okay.
Miriam Schulman:
She’s one of the top, I’d say 15, women artists in-
Jeffrey Shaw:
I was just in Bergdorf last weekend myself, does she have a display?
Miriam Schulman:
They actually gave her an installation in the downstairs cafe.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Okay, I may have seen it because I was just in Bergdorf last weekend, and I was in the city and at least when I’m in the city I stop in. And I was just there last weekend, so I may have come across that.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. And they also are selling some of her things up in the home goods section. So they initially had gifts, a buyer had stumbled upon her art in New Orleans. And she was invited to show her art in that hallway that they have in the home goods sections in the seventh floor.
Jeffrey Shaw:
In the seventh floor, yeah, outside the… Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
Exactly. Stuff was up there, and then she did so well there, she basically came in during the opening, plopped herself down, Instagrammed the phone number of the store that she was there, and they were getting calls from all over the country to buy the stuff, it was gone within a week. And then from that experience, they offered to give her an installation in the downstairs cafe. And I was told this is the first time that they ever did that. But anyway, so I wanted to buy her book, ‘Do-Dad’, and I had my wallet out in the cafe, but I wasn’t allowed to buy it there. So I had to go to the seventh floor, so meanwhile, this is a strategy that I didn’t do on purpose but happens to work really well. If you’re walking around burgers with your wallet out.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
The sales people pay attention. I was waving around my wallet as I walked down the hallway.
Jeffrey Shaw:
It’s funny.
Miriam Schulman:
But anyway-
Jeffrey Shaw:
Just put your credit card in a lanyard.
Miriam Schulman:
Exactly, right. So I was there and I bought her book and they wrapped up a plate in tissue paper. But then they also wrapped the book in tissue paper. I was like, “Oh, that was so unnecessary.” And the guy did not use tape, as you mentioned in your book, he denies that being a policy by the way. So those of you who haven’t read Jeff’s book, ‘LINGO’, which I completely recommend, you had done some Bergdorf research yourself, just wanted to enter the high end market.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Yeah, most definitely. Yeah, and who knows whether it’s policy. And the store has somewhat changed over the years. I mean, my first experience with Bergdorf Goodman would have been in 1987 when it was a little more old school than it is now. Although I find that a lot of the principles still remain. I mean the cool thing to me Miriam is that I went to Bergdorf Goodman as this poor 23 year old trying to figure out how to serve the affluent market, and the cool thing is that without it being a long period of time, I mean a few years later, I became a pretty committed shopper at Bergdorf Goodman, and I still am to this day. So to me, if I want proof of concept of what I teach in my book, ‘LINGO’, it’s like, “Well, I went from being a visitor to a store that is so exclusive to actually being able to afford to be a pretty consistent customer there.”
Jeffrey Shaw:
And so my learning with Bergdorf Goodman as an experience kept unfolding. So for example, when I became a pretty ongoing customer, when I would go there as a customer particularly on the holidays, I would buy gifts for a lot of different people. I had a special aunt, my mom, there were certain friends that would appreciate the value and the quality that was presented there. And what I loved is that as the shopper, this person assisting you as a shopper would walk around with you. I’d say, “Well, I’d like one of these,” and they’d say, “Well, who’s it for?” Right? And they would write it down and what I just discovered after my first experience with this, which then became, I realized, part of their ritual. When I received this box of merchandise, each item was individually wrapped and tagged for that person.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, wow.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Right. So I knew that this is what, without opening it and yet I often did, and that’s the story I tell in the book about the candle, I would do exactly what they did, right? I would untie the bow, I would take off the box top, I would unfold all the tissue paper, make sure what I bought for my aunt was intact, and then I’d put it all back together, which is why you can’t use any tape. If you use any tape, you wouldn’t be able to do that. But I learned real quickly how individualized that experience felt when I got the big box, inside of it, each individual gift for whomever was for, was individually tagged. And to this day as a photographer, I still do the same thing. When I take a portrait order for my clients, they might say, “I’d like five 8x10s of this.” And I’d say, “Well, whom are they for?” And they would say, “Well, this is for this set of grandparents,” and in my case most often my clients are buying multiple portraits for each grandparent or each… Nowadays, you have divorced parents, there’s a lot of names to keep track.
Jeffrey Shaw:
So each family member gets a box contained with the portraits that I know are indicated for that person. And that’s what I mean by secret language like man, you would never… I grew up going to Kmart, you didn’t get that at Kmart, right? That’s when you realize there’s a whole separate language going on, a whole separate vibration. And it’s not just the high end, because it’s just as clearly spoken, if you will, on the low end. There’s a reason why Walmart advertises roll back pricing, right? There’s a reason why the pricing psychology of Walmart is down to the 100th of a cent, right? Because they’re speaking a cost conscious language, they want to make sure you know that you’re not paying even 100th of a cent more than you have to for this item.
Miriam Schulman:
So now that you’re talking about the pennies and cents, which is so interesting, so Jeffrey, you say in your book how you went from charging $48.02 for 8×10 to $300. And by the way, over 10 years ago, I used to sell on eBay, they actually used to tell us that we would have better sales if we priced past the decimal point, if we let people know that we were thinking about that. But it never occurred to me it would only make the sale better in this market because people are bargain hunting.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Right.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Another classic example is the number, and it’s one of the biggest gaps I see when people come to me for coaching and their complaints are that they don’t feel that they attracted the right customers. They feel like they’re always being talked down, their customers don’t appreciate their value, etc, etc. Then I look at their pricing structure, and it’s the classic kind of online marketing pricing structure where the course is $197 or $497, or $997. It’s like, “Well, you’re the one drawing attention to the fact that $3 matters.”
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Jeffrey Shaw:
If you’re going to price yourself down to nickels and dimes, then you can’t complain about people nickel and diming. Because you’re literally calling forward the nickel and dime minded customer. And so-
Miriam Schulman:
Yes. No, I have to tell you after reading your book, I had to price a very tiny thing that I made. And I was making a bunch of them. I agonized, “Should I price it for $48? Or $50?”
Jeffrey Shaw:
Yeah, yeah. And we’re constantly-
Miriam Schulman:
“Or should I just price it for $300 like Jeffrey did.” And it’s a load of $300.
Jeffrey Shaw:
And then the point is, I think that what people really need, is just saying that pricing creates a perception. And I think it’s really important for artists to remember that we are also customers, and you have to think about your own behavior. And yet, you have to also make a separation. I’ll talk about that in a second. But you do have to pay attention to what perception you get for pricing. So how often, so most of everyone has had this experience where you choose to not buy something because it’s priced so cheaply, you don’t think it’s very good.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s so true Jeffrey, I see that with artists all the time. They think if they just price their art low enough, it will sell. And sometimes the reverse is true, that they price their art too low and people don’t buy it.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Right. So because pricing creates a perception. The example I give in the book ‘LINGO’ is, you go into a restaurant with no prices on the menu, there’s a perception. And you go to McDonald’s for the dollar menu, there’s a different perception, right? So when I’m working with a coach client, we’re working on their pricing, literally, the first thing I say to them is, “What perception do you want people to have of your business? Let’s start there.” Because you can actually control what perception people have by the power of pricing psychology, which is twofold. It’s the actual price but it’s also the visual of it. How your prices look visually, also has an impact. If you use a dollar sign or no dollar sign, makes a visual difference. It looks more elegant if it just says ’50’, no dollar sign, no decimal point, no zeros, versus ‘$50.00′ has a different perception.
Miriam Schulman:
And I also was told that people leave, on menus, that they leave off the dollar sign because it’s so… What you were talking about before, it’s that idea that we’re not focused on the price, we’re telling you it’s the price, but we don’t want you to think of this as a price.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, as a photographer, for most of my career I didn’t use… It’s not really until the business world became very heavily web based and our primary prices needed to be on the website that I had to constitute the dollar sign, only because in photography we’re all working with numbers, right? If it’s a 24″x30″ portrait, it’s ’24×30’, and if you don’t have a dollar sign it gets confusing, there’s so many numbers.
Miriam Schulman:
Right.
Jeffrey Shaw:
But I never used a decimal point or zeros after a decimal point because that’s just too precise for a higher end market. And again, the power here, and I think this is a core message I want people to realize, and it was one of my concerns from writing the book. I had a fantastic editor and one of the first things my editor said to me was, “Make a list of all the objections that you can imagine people are going to have reading the book. Let’s just cut off the objections, cut off the bad reviews.”
Jeffrey Shaw:
One of my big concerns about an objection would be that the principles that I teach in ‘LINGO’ are only for the high end, and they’re not, right. They’re not just for the high end, if you’re talking about perception, like what perception you want pricing to have when you talk about… All the concepts I talk about in the book really are applicable, because that’s the power I want entrepreneurs to have, particularly creative entrepreneurs. I want creative entrepreneurs to have the power to create the business they want more so than any other type of business person or entrepreneur, because we as creators go into business because yes, we want to be financially successful, but more than that, we want to give our gifts, we want to be personally fulfilled.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes, of course I become a professional artist, I could paint just for fun but I know that I have to make money if I want to be able to dedicate myself to this full time instead of getting another GOB.
Jeffrey Shaw:
So to me I want creative entrepreneurs more than any other type of entrepreneur, I want creative entrepreneurs to have power and to realize that they can build a successful business, it’s not an either or by any means. And there’s no shame in being financially successful. Because Miriam when people of that sort, that ilk get free from financial stress, they just become better humans, right? They will do more, their whole soul and spirit is uplifted when free from financial burden. So there’s no shame in having a successful business because of how much better you become at what you’re already gifted at.
Miriam Schulman:
And I want to also refocus this a little bit more specifically on artists because I think that there’s too many of us buy into the starving artists myth, and then feel shame about asking too much money for something that they love to do. And I actually wanted to read you something I had highlighted in your book about asking your worth. You say, “Creation is a generous act, while creation may come from within, ultimately, it is a very generous act to beautify the world with art, create products and services that make life easier, and in one form or another, have an impact on the world be it locally or worldwide. Make no apologies for your act of generosity and be sure you get paid what you’re worth.”
Jeffrey Shaw:
Yeah, here’s where I think people get hung up the most, is they have a hard time charging for what comes easy to them. And yet, that’s an alignment with your gift. I’ll give you a specific example having worked with so many photographers, photographers that photograph weddings have no problem charging a lot of money for weddings, because it’s hard. It’s hard work, it’s hard labor, it’s a lot of hours, they have no problem charging a lot of money. They eventually get worn out, they come to me to transition their business into more of a portrait business model. And they have a hard time understanding, “How can I get thousands of dollars for family portrait, it only takes me a couple of hours and it’s easy and it’s fun and it’s easy.” But what comes easy to you is often what the world wants most from you.
Jeffrey Shaw:
So one of the exercises I suggest my coaching clients do, which always turns the world upside down, is to make a list of compliments they’ve heard throughout their life to help them get in touch with their natural gifts, but then also to get clarity about the business model they can build, because a lot of entrepreneurs struggle. That’s why this exercise of looking at your compliments is really powerful because the world around you has probably been telling you or pointing out to you your innate characteristics all along that you have undervalued. In fact, one of the things I tell my clients when they’re doing this exercise, is to pay particular attention to the compliments you want to shrug off. Like, “Oh, but that’s no big deal.” Right? As soon as the words enter your mind, “Well, that’s easy for me.” There’s your value.
Miriam Schulman:
Interesting.
Jeffrey Shaw:
And that I think is the biggest hang up, it’s that we have a hard time, that’s where the whole starving artist modality comes into. It’s connected to my worth, it’s connected to what’s hard.
Miriam Schulman:
Right. How can I charge for that. I liked doing it. Right.
Jeffrey Shaw:
How can I charge for it. Yeah, so one of the quotes that I used to kind of base this is, because again, I’m working with people who want to find their passion and want to find something they’re deeply connected to. And I’ll say, “Find something you’re so passionate about you’d be willing to do it for free, and then never do it for free.”
Miriam Schulman:
I like that.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Right? It’s that simple, right? So find that thing that makes you so passionate you would love to do it for free and then never do it for free, because that’s actually pointing to your greatest gift.
Miriam Schulman:
Now, you said something interesting back there about you being worried that people thought you’d only be talking about the high end market?
Jeffrey Shaw:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
And I almost was wishing you had the sequel to this, how to talk to your high end customer. Because those were the parts that I was like, “Yes, give them a pen, give them a pen with their orders.” So what I’m referring to is Jeffrey, you talk very beautifully about how you would make their holiday cards and actually include a silver pen with the order. And to me this goes beyond actually talking the language of your customer. And it’s about delivering that high end experience for your customer.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Yeah. I think it’s even beyond that honestly, Miriam. Because when I speak of lingo, lingo by definition is a jargon, right? But I’m reframing what it means. To me to speak someone’s lingo is to speak their inside heart code, right? If you think about lingo amongst teenagers, how twins can have their own way of communicating, especially as toddlers like nonverbal, that’s lingo to me. I love watching that, when babies have a way of communicating because they are actually getting each other. So specifically, that to me is lingo. So lingo to me is a common used, to speak someone’s lingo is a combination of understanding their life values, their priorities in life, their essence, and done by the way with complete empathy.
Jeffrey Shaw:
And again, objections that I was concerned about in the book, and I set it right aside the beginning is that this is not about being clever or manipulative or getting into people’s heads, this isn’t about having the largest capacity of empathy you can imagine where you are actually willing to walk in the shoes of someone that you may not know right now or you don’t understand, and to do so free of judgment, free of assumption, just completely open heart and say… And believe me, I don’t necessarily agree with even the political position of some of the very wealthy people I serve. But I don’t have to agree with them to have compassion for them and understand. I can tell you honestly, Miriam, I have such deep understanding and compassion for the challenges of being wealthy. And in a lot of ways, that’s what I was addressing as their family photographer. So for example, when you have money and money is no longer an excuse, there’s a lot of pressure on you. So you can’t send two of your kids to an Ivy League School and send the third one to community college.
Jeffrey Shaw:
But for most, like I’m the youngest of three kids, and you could literally see my parents finances deteriorate as they had… Most of us when we have children, it sets us back financially. And I was the third, so I was the one that tipped the scale, right? They had to move out of my grandmother’s apartment that they lived in probably renting it really cheap, if not free, and they had to buy a house because their life was legit now, there were three of these brats running around. My mom had to go back to work, I was the first amongst the three kids that was a latchkey kid, my brothers had a stay at home mom. I came along and she had to go back to work, right? So for a lot of families, us normal folks, life deteriorates, the more there are more children. But if you have money and money is not an excuse, and here’s the interesting thing, here’s how this really plays into my role as a photographer, is that no parent I work with ever wants to answer the question to their child, “Why does Johnny have more photographs than me? Why did you photograph Suzie’s Bar mitzvah and not mine?” Right?
Miriam Schulman:
Right.
Jeffrey Shaw:
It’s not a choice. So the level of responsibility in being buttoned down that is on someone that has affluence, it is tremendous. And I have a tremendous amount of compassion for that, both for the children and for the parents. I understand the pressure for the parents, and I understand how it feels to be the child and-
Miriam Schulman:
But do you act as a safety net to keep them from forgetting?
Jeffrey Shaw:
Yes.
Miriam Schulman:
Because you know the reason why there’s less pictures of the second and third child, is not because they ran out of money or they love Johnny less, but they got busy and they just don’t care as much about having photos as they did for child number one.
Jeffrey Shaw:
It’s a combination though, I mean I think I said if you’re middle socio-economic lower, I mean in my family I would say it kind of ran out them. I mean, just life became more challenging. That’s why the younger child gets hand-me-downs too, right? You just need to re-use things and it is yes, they get busy. So yes, to your point, I mean, I always felt as a photographer, as an artist for these families, I actually felt like my real role is to help them be the most responsible parents they can be. Now I assure you not one person in 33 years ever called or emailed me and said, “Hey Jeffrey, can you help me be a responsible parent?” Right? They ask for photographs. And this is what I talk about in the book ‘LINGO’, is the difference between acknowledged need and deeper need.
Jeffrey Shaw:
We only know to ask for our acknowledged need. We only know to ask in our lives, even from our most intimate relationships, we only ask for what we know we need. But what’s most powerful, think about this in your personal relationships, what’s most powerful is when you know your partner or loved one needs something that they don’t even have, that they can’t even ask for it, but you know they need it, right? When you can deliver that, that’s a home run, right? And I make the comparison for anybody listening that might be already making the comparison, there’s a very popular book from many years ago called ‘The Five Love Languages’.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Jeffrey Shaw:
All right. So I make the comparison of the book because there’s no coincidence that there’s some comparison to what we’re talking about here and the way we’re talking about love language. When I read ‘The Five Love Languages’ in the early ’90s I think it was, maybe mid ’90s.
Miriam Schulman:
I didn’t know it was out that long.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Oh, yeah, it was because- The parenting was a breeze for me for my first child, which was my son. My second child came along, my daughter, and my my first experience with little girls because I had all brothers, I was baffled. I’m like, “What is this creature?” I had no idea how to handle her no matter what I did. And what I discovered by reading the book is that I wasn’t speaking her love language. My son’s love language happens to be words of affirmation, which for me, was what I thought parents did, because we often counterbalance what we lacked, right? So I didn’t get words of affirmation as a kid, so when I became a parent, that to me was what the best parents did is they told their kids how wonderful they were and proud of them. So I exalted all that on my son and I happened to meet his love language. But then my daughter comes along, and I could tell her she’s fantastic till the end of the day, and she kind of knew it, but then she didn’t need to know that. What she was, she was a quality time. What she wanted was for me to sit down and play dolls with her. And that felt like love to her, and to this day, she just wants my time.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s nice.
Jeffrey Shaw:
And then my youngest child, my youngest daughter, the third, she’s physical touch. And I’m acts of service and my then wife was gifts. So literally, we had all five languages comprised in our family, and it totally changed the dynamic. So I was taking all this in and realizing actually I had built my photography business that way. Here’s the difference, and it’s always been a hard thing for me to explain, in business, we can’t possibly speak the love language of every one of our clients individually.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Jeffrey Shaw:
All right. So you need to look at who is your ideal customer, who represents what’s in a broad sense, who’s your ideal customer. They, in common, have a love language that means something to them. So I understood the mindset, because I said I understand, you could say they’re affluent, but more than anything, I understood the pressures and the mindset and the values for people that had disposable income.
Miriam Schulman:
Jeffrey, let me ask you something. We are talking about the love languages, don’t you feel there are touch points that you can give your customers that kind of hit upon those?
Jeffrey Shaw:
Yes.
Miriam Schulman:
So for example, when I deliver a piece of artwork, let’s say it’s in the mail, I can wrap it in beautiful tissue paper so they feel like it’s a gift, even though they paid for it, I’d still like them to feel like it’s a gift.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Sure.
Miriam Schulman:
And you have a handwritten note, okay, that’s words of affirmation. So it’s like there’s different touch points that you can add to the experience that might hit upon people, like the customer love language-
Jeffrey Shaw:
And you should, yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
… That might help their love language.
Jeffrey Shaw:
So I would refer to it as well, the way I explain it is that there’s a lot language and then there’s accents, right, just like in the United States, majority of us may speak English, but there’s a Southern accent, there’s a Northern, there’s different accents. As a business, you want to carve out your lane, right? You want to serve a particular clientele: high end, low end, anything in between. That’s the language of the value systems of those folks that you want to speak. So I’ll give you a specific example comparing Walmart to Target, have you ever noticed that they’re right down the street from one another. Almost always, right?
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, yeah. Right.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Because they’re both serving the same community but they both… Target is a value conscious lingo and Walmart is a cost conscious lingo. And you don’t get a lot of crossover, right, you’ll get some Walmart folks go to Target, but you don’t get a lot of Target people going to Walmart, there’s literally a pattern difference there. But the reason they’re right down the street from one another is because it all exists in the same community, there are people that are more value conscious, and there are people that are more cost conscious. So they can actually play nicely off each other by speaking a slightly different language, slightly different accent, even though the socio-economics language of that area might be the same.
Jeffrey Shaw:
So to your point, when I had a brick and mortar gallery, and people would come in to see my work, the first time they came in, we’d ask them how they take their coffee, but we would actually put that in their file and I do systematize everything imaginable, so that you can be consistent. So we would add it to their file either a literal manila folder back in the day or a digital file in the later years. And the next time they came in for the coffee, the next time they came in for a visit we would have a coffee prepared. It was this little… So yes, it’s an enriching experience, but again it’s everything that you’re doing that is just really speaking to the land.
Jeffrey Shaw:
The pen you mentioned earlier was probably one of the biggest hits ever in that… So I used to design these beautiful, and we still do, beautiful custom designed greeting cards. The inside greeting was typically printed in Christmas green, Christmas red or blue for Hanukkah, sometimes a metallic silver, sometimes gold but the inside greeting was of a color, so what we would do is we would give… So if that was the inside of the card, the return address on the envelope is printed the same color. So we would give a pen, a nice kind of small calligraphy nib pen, not that you needed to know calligraphy, but we would give a pen that matched the color of the return address.
Miriam Schulman:
Brilliant.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Right? So now here’s the really brilliant thing about it Miriam, is that it wasn’t actually about it just being matchy matchy, it was knowing your clients so well that I knew that they would want it to match and if I didn’t provide the pen, they or somebody in their house would be running around town to try find that pen.
Miriam Schulman:
But what I really loved about it, Jeffrey, is that you’re thinking beyond the customer and you’re thinking about the person now who is receiving that holiday card. And it’s about their experience that it’s a holiday card, and it’s like a wedding invitation all of a sudden, because the pen matches and it elevates the whole experience for everybody, not just the sender, but also the receiver of that holiday card.
Jeffrey Shaw:
I mean, I sign my books, ‘LINGO’ is a red covered book, I sign them in red. I couldn’t do otherwise, I can’t use a black pen or a blue pen, I just can’t. So it’s just ingrained in me. So I have a series of red pens that match the color of my book and I sign it, but again, I also want to walk my talk, these little details are in the book so I make sure that I also demonstrate them in all that I do. One of my other favorite little experiences that we created was, I think it was for my 20th year in business, again during the holiday season. As a promotion, we gave away the number of stamps that somebody would need for the number of cards that they put holiday cards that they purchase.
Jeffrey Shaw:
So if they purchase 200 holiday cards, they would get 200 stamps. And we had a sample of each of the stamps that were available from the US Postal at that time, be it a very religious one, a more seasonal one, Hanukkah, whatever. So when we took the order for the cards, we’d ask the client which stamp they would like and, again, we would provide that number of stamps. So from a business perspective, it’s also a really smart model because the gift that you’re giving away for free is proportionate to the amount of money they’re spending.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, right.
Jeffrey Shaw:
So very smart business wise, but-
Miriam Schulman:
But again, it’s like I say you are also then acting as a curator. You’re not letting your customer mess up your beautiful card by sticking a tacky stamp on it.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Right, and isn’t that what we all-
Miriam Schulman:
You’re helping curate the best experience, because there’s going to be a perception now, everyone who receives this holiday card. This is a Jeffrey Shaw photography thing, and how gorgeous everything from the pen it’s written with to the stamp you put on it.
Jeffrey Shaw:
And you know what’s cool about that Miriam, is that in chapter two of the book, it’s about defining your ideal customer. The kind of funny story behind that is I actually wrote the entire book, it was in the hands of the editor pretty far to the ending, and that’s when I started doing the podcast interviews that I was doing to promote the book. And I kept getting asked by every podcast host, “Well, how do we know who our ideal customer is?” And I realized I wrote an entire book, assuming people knew who their ideal customer was. And I realized, “Oh, they don’t.” So I had to go back and write what is now chapter two. And the title of that chapter says it all, the title of that chapter is, ‘Who will love that’, which is completely the opposite way that we have been taught or experienced in the world about how to build business.
Jeffrey Shaw:
And I think it’s really so important for creatives in business to understand is that almost everything that we need to do, the right way for us to do things is almost completely the opposite of what we see in the world. I mean, other businesses like your cable company and your hair salon can get away with offering discounts to new customers only. You can’t, if you’re in a relational building business and building a business that you want to create a loyalty and retention and have people refer you and build a real relationship, that’s the last thing you want to do. You want to have discounts, if anything, you want to have special offers for people who have been loyal to you, your patrons, right.
Miriam Schulman:
Right.
Jeffrey Shaw:
And yet the rest of the world is doing it upside down. So we almost always have to do things differently than everybody else. So when it comes to defining your ideal customer, it actually initially has nothing to do with the customer. It has everything to do with you.
Miriam Schulman:
All right, Jeffrey. So I know you’re looking for affluent clients, but what else do you look for in your ideal customer?
Jeffrey Shaw:
In my photography business, we do everything we can to attract the clients who want to text, as far as their primary form of communication, which I’m very publicly available with my cell phone. I actually want the clients that text because the clients that are more willing to text, tells me a lot about their lifestyle, they’re busy, they want to get to the point, they’re more likely to pay me the most amount of money, let me do my thing and never bother me. What I suggest is you first have to define what are your innate characteristics, and then ask yourself, “Who will love that?” What’s your skill set? And then ask yourself, “Who will love that?” What’s-
Miriam Schulman:
So we’re talking to artists, so let’s make this a little more specific so people who are-
Jeffrey Shaw:
Yeah, all right, so let me circle it around, so you know what I’m saying. So an innate characteristic of mine for which I’ve been made fun of my entire life, is that I am compulsively neat and organized, right. And rightfully so, I drive people crazy in my personal life, because it’s not easy to live with someone like me.
Miriam Schulman:
But you can come clean up my studio anytime you want to.
Jeffrey Shaw:
I mean, I know where everything is. I mean, I just don’t lose things. I mean, I’m-
Miriam Schulman:
I know where nothing is, I waste so much of my life looking for things.
Jeffrey Shaw:
I know, I don’t. I could put my hands on… I’m ridiculously organized. Well, when you come down to that question, ‘Who will love that?’, you know who will love that? People that live a life where they need all their T’s crossed and I’s dotted, affluent people, right? I am such a good fit for this clientele because I can send portraits and holiday cards on their behalf that they never have to worry about it being received by the recipient in anything less than perfect condition.
Miriam Schulman:
But it’s not just that Jeffrey, it’s also playing into the insecurities of, like I was saying before, thinking that you’re going to screw it up with the wrong pen and the wrong stamp. You’re taking away those problems from them.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Protecting your own art. Yeah, yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Jeffrey Shaw:
It is.
Miriam Schulman:
Because I know when I pay extra for things, it’s when I’m afraid of making a mistake. That’s when I pay more for things.
Jeffrey Shaw:
And that right there, it’s so important you just said that Miriam. Because one of the results of working with your ideal customers and speaking their lingo, is that it, and I say this in the book and people don’t want to believe until they experience but it almost makes the polite price irrelevant, right?
Miriam Schulman:
Mm-hmm.
Jeffrey Shaw:
You can charge a premium price when people… The greatest compliment any of us can get as artists and creatives and if you’re an artist and you want people to buy your stuff, you are also a marketer. The greatest compliment you can get is when someone says to you, “Man, it’s like you’re in my head,” right? That to me is the ultimate compliment because actually I know I’m not in their head at all, I’m actually in their heart and in their soul. People that’s a phrase kill because, “God, it’s like you’re in my head.” But in order to feel like somebody is in your head, what you really realize is somebody has deeply touched you. That’s the ultimate compliment. But that takes work, and that is what LINGO is about.
Jeffrey Shaw:
LINGO is about taking the time to care so deeply about your clientele, your own art, that you’re willing to go the extra work. And I think another really important part for artists and creatives to understand Miriam is that particularly as artists, we are almost always serving a clientele that is better off than we are, right. I mean, because we need them to be in a financial position to buy our services so that we can then afford to buy someone else’s services, like the mechanic to fix our car so we can get to the gigs and the appointments, right?
Jeffrey Shaw:
It’s just the way it works, particularly if you’re in a creative or service oriented business, we are almost always serving a clientele that can afford our services. So there’s a really good chance that the pure ideal customers, you may not be perfectly identified with their lifestyle, there’s something for you to learn there. And in my case, it was a huge gap because I grew up lower middle class and went up serving people of such tremendous wealth, so for me the gap was extreme, but it may just be a notch or two higher. But I assure you for creators in business, there’s something that you need to understand about your ideal customers’ lifestyle that you don’t currently know. You need to understand their lifestyle, you understand what makes them tick, their emotional triggers, there’s something for you to learn in order for you to then deliver your business in a way that triggers them emotionally so that they choose you as their choice for a creator.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s great. I know we’re running out of time. And I know I promised I would respect your time. But I do want to circle back to something because I know my audience is going to ask me this, how did you go from $48.02 to $300? That’s what I get asked the most questions, tell me what that magic number is. How did you come up with that number? Did you research other Greenwich photographers, New York photographers?
Jeffrey Shaw:
I assure you none of them were charging anything near that. So the story is, and how it unfolds in the book, it really is a lot more exposed. So first of all, the price that I was charging in my hometown for an 8×10 was $48.02, right? So right there, there’s… And how did I come up with that amount? Because I was taught a formula on overhead and cost of goods and blah, blah, blah. And I followed it verbatim, $48.02. Well, meanwhile, I’m in my hometown promoting myself as a high end portrait photographer, for which no one is buying it. And yet I had Walmart-like pricing. Okay, that’s how I learned the whole lesson of lingo. It was like, “Whoa, I’m literally saying one thing but showing up differently.” Further to that I realized that people in this town were not willing to pay $48.02 for 8×10, right? Not when they’re used to going into JC Penney or Sears in the day and getting a pound of photographs for $19.99. I couldn’t sell, it was a mix of values, and that was the light bulb moment, as I share the story in the book of realizing, I’m literally barking up the wrong tree, right.
Jeffrey Shaw:
I have values that are important to me about photography and handing them down from generation to generation, I’m speaking the lingo of responsibility and long term thinking to a clientele that doesn’t know if they can pay their rent that month. It didn’t work. So that’s when I realized that I had a luxury product and I needed to serve people. And just who I was in my soul, my innate characteristics, I just knew I was meant for people that had financial means, I got them better than… I still to this day, I understand them better than they understand my family. I just don’t understand not being financially responsible, I just don’t. So again, the pricing thing was a combination of a lot of things. I mean, one, when I went to Bergdorf Goodman, I realized that pricing on the high end is rounded off. You don’t do $48, you don’t do $48.02. You could just do it $50.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. But that’s the question, okay, $50 is a no brainer, then it’s like-
Jeffrey Shaw:
But why $300?
Miriam Schulman:
It’s $300, why not $100?
Jeffrey Shaw:
Well, because there’s more to it than that. So and I still to this day, particularly photographers because I know this business so well, but it’s true of a lot of other businesses. I start at the top, it’s like, “Well, how much money do you need to make in order to support your life and the lifestyle you want?” And then the second question is, “What are people going to buy from you?” So I literally make my photography coaching clients draft up a fictitious invoice, that’s realistic. Like, “What are your customers going to want to buy? Is it one large painting? Is it one single piece of jewelry? Is it a matching set of jewelry?” Like, “What’s the best expression of your creativity?” And again, power, I want creatives to have power. It’s your choice to decide what you want people to buy.
Jeffrey Shaw:
In my photography business, I don’t even refer to it as an average sale. Because average means of mathematical formula of a high and low. I want to know what’s typical, my ideal customer is going to place the ideal portrait order. So you get to decide what is the perfect expression, the ideal expression of your art, and how much money does that… What does that need to cost in order to support the lifestyle you want? And then how much product do they need to buy to equal that amount? So here’s what I figured out, I wanted, especially when I was starting my business, I knew then I wanted a typical scenario to be about $5,000 because I was only going to be able to photograph, probably at that time I probably guessed maybe 80 to 100 people. I mean, at the peak of my career, I did 150 to 175 shoots a year.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s exhausting?
Jeffrey Shaw:
Yeah, and it was just about 15 years straight, I did at least 150 sessions. That in general, is over a million dollar business, because the average sale was high. And again, I’m one photographer, but if I wanted them to spend, let’s say for example, you want them to spend $5,000. And I could pretty much tell you, instead, what they were going to buy. They were going to buy a large wall portrait for a focal point in the room over the mantel over the sofa, they were going to buy two to three small to medium sized wall portraits representing each of the two or three kids they have, they’re probably going to want five 8x10s, because they’re probably going to keep two or three of them for themselves and there’s going to be two for grandparents. There’s going to be probably three 5x7s for aunts, godparents, things like that, and maybe 150 greeting cards was the average. So if I knew what they were going to buy, and I knew that I needed that to equal $5,000, I just sat down and figured out, “Well, this needs to cost this, this needs to cost that.” Because if the ideal customer places the ideal sale, it needs to add up to ideally what you need.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. And you didn’t do the Sears thing like package A, package B, package C, right?
Jeffrey Shaw:
No.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Jeffrey Shaw:
But I think this is a level of control that creatives in business just don’t think about. You have to start at the top, there is no glory in being a starving artist. So figure out what is it that you… Because again, the reason you want to financially succeed, is to free your soul from the trouble of being under pressure so that you could be even better at what you do. And then you wind up creating a tipping scale at which the freer you are to do what you’re good at, the better your results, which means the more the word spreads, that means the more abundance you have coming in your life and you’re just on an upward spiral.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Otherwise, it’s a race to the bottom, which is what a lot of artists feel like, they feel like they’re in a race to the bottom. You can turn that around. But you have to turn it around again by thinking the opposite of what we see in the world around us and start at the top. How much money do you need to live the life you want to? What are the pieces that your ideal customer is going to buy that you can just tell by their lifestyle? And then how much do those individual pieces need to add up to equal the amount of money you need? Forget formula, forget cost of goods. I mean, you probably, do you know the Picasso story and the napkin? Have you ever heard that story?
Miriam Schulman:
I think I have but go ahead and tell us.
Jeffrey Shaw:
I mean whether it’s true or not, who knows, it’s great folklore, but there’s a man painting… Does a sketch drawing on a napkin and a woman walks by and says, “My gosh, it’s really beautiful. Can I buy it?” And the gentleman says, “It’s $40,000.” And she’s like, “What do you mean it’s $40,000. That’s a napkin.” And he’s like, “Well, that’s because you don’t know who I am.” And it was Picasso, right?
Miriam Schulman:
That’s awesome.
Jeffrey Shaw:
A Picasso drawing on a napkin is worth 40 grand, at least.
Miriam Schulman:
Maybe more.
Jeffrey Shaw:
In fact, probably even more so being on a napkin because it’s so-
Miriam Schulman:
That’s right.
Jeffrey Shaw:
… It adds a whole different element to it, it seems so personal. So it has nothing to do with cost of goods, it shouldn’t be based on a price, it should be based on the heart and the soul of the people you’re serving and how that fits into the life that you want to live.
Miriam Schulman:
This was so inspiring. Thank you so much, Jeffrey, for spending this time with us today.
Jeffrey Shaw:
My pleasure.
Miriam Schulman:
I’m really glad that we’ve had this conversation.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Thank you. Well, thank you for bringing up the conversation. In the photography, and I think it applies in a lot of businesses, but in the photography industry, it’s called the dirty little secret. And the dirty little secret of most creative businesses is that those that succeed financially at their art, not only love the art they’re doing, but also embrace what they do as a vehicle for something bigger. And for me, I enjoy photography, but I love watching what happens to people in front of the camera. I’m not a science geek. I don’t love the whole f-stops and shutter speeds. I mean, I never buy new equipment. I mean, there are photographers that that’s what they’re deeply passionate about, but I’ll tell you those that are artists that I see, that really freed themselves from the financial burden are those where their art is a vehicle to something that’s bigger.
Jeffrey Shaw:
And for me, my camera has brought me all over the world to meet amazing people that have enriched my life that I now can look back, and as much as I lived my life on what I felt was on purpose as a photographer for three decades, I actually think it was all a learning lab for what I do now. It’s all those experiences and where that camera brought me as a vehicle that now enables me to stand behind creative entrepreneurs and creative warriors, as I refer to them around the world, for them to have the business they want because I would not have learned what I learned without the experience of that camera.
Miriam Schulman:
And you still do portraits for-
Jeffrey Shaw:
Very little.
Miriam Schulman:
… Just for the people who you’ve already in your customer base?
Jeffrey Shaw:
I’ll do like 10 shoots this year and that’s it. It’s just really the people that… The kids are at a stage where I just can’t let go yet, right? It’s such wonderful ages that I’m not able to… So I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Yeah, I’ve definitely, the last four years, I’ve continued to decrease the volume but sticking with the 10 or so clients that just… If any of my past clients call upon me and I’m available, I will definitely work for any past client, I’m just not marketing myself or taking on any new work.
Miriam Schulman:
And so it’s an excuse to go to Nantucket for the weekend.
Jeffrey Shaw:
If you want me to fly to Italy, I’m not going to complain.
Miriam Schulman:
All right, terrific. So this is Jeffrey Shaw, author of ‘LINGO’, we’ll definitely put a link to that in the show notes and where else Jeffrey can people find you?
Jeffrey Shaw:
As you can probably tell, I like relationships, so I’ll start with that. So what I’ve created to give away is called the LINGO media kit, which they can get at lingomediakit.com, and in that kit is an infographic because by large, my audience are visual people. So I created an infographic of the five steps of speaking the secret language of our ideal customers. So it’s very visual, really handy to have and there’s also a free chapter of the book which is chapter three, not chapter one because that would be too easy. I gave away chapter three because it’s the foundation of the strategy. There’s also an audio version of that chapter which has been kicked up with sound effects and it’s kind of fun. So I suggest just go to lingomediakit.com.
Miriam Schulman:
Again, done like a pro. What’s my editor going to do?
Jeffrey Shaw:
I got news for you, you can fake it.
Miriam Schulman:
It’s because I did acting in high school.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Excellent.
Miriam Schulman:
Nothing is wasted.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Yeah, isn’t that the truth, yeah?
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Hang on to all but you never know when it’s going to come back.
Miriam Schulman:
Thank you so much. I like the way you have the little LINGO poster in the background.
Jeffrey Shaw:
I know right? subtle, right. And then I’ve actually just- … just painting here, which is one of my favorite paintings done by actually a former employee of mine, who paints beautifully and he painted it out of a place that we would often photograph at in Greenwich. But I’m moving it and the Creative Warriors logo is going there next, so I’ll be flanked.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay, then you have to crop yourself so you’re blocking the-
Jeffrey Shaw:
Exactly, and I have to figure out why zoom isn’t cooperating with my camera so I can zoom in on those two things on either side of my head.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes. And maybe you need a gallery light in the back there.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Well, that’s possible.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Jeffrey Shaw:
I just moved into this apartment three weeks ago, so I’m still fidgeting with setting things up. My previous apartment, I love this apartment much better, and I’ve got much better views. But the previous apartment was a really dramatic loft. And where I would do webcam things was on the upstairs loft. And I mean, it just looked like a museum behind me, people all the time are like, “Where the hell are you?” I’m like, “This is my apartment.” I mean, I had this massive, really cool light hanging from the ceiling, it looked like it was floating because you couldn’t tell what was attached to it. It just looked like the naming hat from Harry Potter. It’s that, then there was chrome and metal behind me. So I’m trying to readjust the fact that this current apartment, which the rest of the apartment is so beautiful, but there’s a room which is just a guest room, so it’s not really as dramatic. So I’m trying to tweak it.
Miriam Schulman:
But you just hang a little track light and point it at LINGO.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Although this is later in the day too, I don’t usually do anything after 3:00, I just did this for you-
Miriam Schulman:
Thank you.
Jeffrey Shaw:
… but I don’t usually, I try not to do anything after three o’clock other than generate content. I do all my calls, appointments, everything up till three o’clock and then from 3:00 to 6:00 or 7:00 is when my brain is developing content.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay, that’s interesting because I can’t really produce content that late in the day.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Most people can’t but that’s how I wrote my book too. And I think it was just a habit I got into where I, every afternoon, wrote the book from 3:00 to 7:00. I’m definitely a late afternoon. I know most people are morning or early morning writers, I’m not, I feel compelled to take care of anything and everyone in the morning. It’s not until I take care of everybody else’s needs, then I’m like, “Okay, now it’s my time.”
Miriam Schulman:
Interesting.
Jeffrey Shaw:
And then I can just shut all that out, and so I’m a content generator in the afternoon, which I know, is not normal. But yeah, you have to find your own pattern. I said one as a creative, and we didn’t get to do this in the show, but I think one of the greatest tips I’ve ever given, and it comes back to me all the time, is for artists to define whether they’re a starter or a finisher.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Right. I’m a finisher, I’m not a good starter. But when you race, whether you’re a starter or finisher, it makes such a huge difference because I can get everybody else to start things for me and I can finish everything beautifully. I’m just-
Miriam Schulman:
Interesting.
Jeffrey Shaw:
But it’s also… And I can see the connection of my photography, that’s why as a photographer, I photograph on location. Because you can drop me anywhere in the world, and I can make something beautiful from what’s there. But you’re bringing me to a studio with a blank background and I’m like, “I have no inspiration here.”
Miriam Schulman:
Wow.
Jeffrey Shaw:
So it helps if you get in touch with what your soul creativity I think is, whether you’re a starter or a finisher. So that to me, I think that’s also why I work later in the day. There’s something about being towards the end of the day and just being a finisher, it’s a healthy way for me to finish my day.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s awesome. And then you said something else that was interesting. Are you familiar with the book ‘Rest’?
Jeffrey Shaw:
No. I mean, I know of it but I’ve not read it.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. So you were saying you work from 3:00 to 7:00, which is four hours. So in the book, one of his thesis is that people really only have four hours of creativity in them a day, whether they’re a writer, an artist, a musician, whatever it is. So I found that…
Jeffrey Shaw:
What I also found, that’s why I moved honestly, I mean, I didn’t expect to move to Miami. When I came down here in 2016, it was supposed to just be for three months, and I never left. Because what I realized, I was such a New Yorker, people couldn’t believe I was leaving New York, it was just in my soul, I never thought I’d leave New York either. But what I realized is that as my business transitioned from photography to personal development and supporting other people, I needed to support myself in a way that I never had before, and I needed it. And a lot of it had to do with environment.
Jeffrey Shaw:
So when I say I’m writing from 3:00 to 4:00, that is often sitting poolside, right? I mean, I wrote my entire book poolside. So I would write until my brain couldn’t take it, I would dive in the pool, refresh myself, get out and write. So it was kind of a four hour practice, but a lot of it had to do with the environment. I don’t think I could have pulled that book off in New York City. I mean, I play heavily with my environment, which is why I’m very… And believe me, my accountant always feels like I should cut back on my lifestyle a little bit. And also you know what this one thing is I will never give up on, is the environment in which I live, because that is everything to me. And I think that you could tie it to childhood experiences of growing up at an out of control environment. But to me, I use my environment very strategically to activate creativity.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s so interesting. That’s a whole another conversation.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Yeah, yeah, there’s a great book out there I read for a podcast, it’s called ‘The Language of Man’. So what I love about this book is that it’s a study of pockets of creativity, like Florence, Athens, Dave in Silicon Valley, he studies… And the overriding question is what came first, the environment or the genius. Why were their pockets like Florence, Italy, where so much art came out of, and Athens in Greece. And it begs the question, “Which came first?” Was it the environment that stimulated the creativity or did creativity create the environment, but why are there certain pockets in the world that have just had… And I actually think it’s happening in Miami, very much so. There’s something very interesting happening here in Miami with regards to certainly the art scene. I mean, Art Basel is here, Art Basel is the largest art festival in the world. 300,000 people would come a year in December. But aside from that, it’s an innovation and startup community like I’ve never seen before. There’s so many fresh and creative startups here. It’s more innovation centers and really vibrant startup community that I think Miami is going to put itself on the map. But it’s a really interesting study and he doesn’t necessarily strive to answer the question but leaves it up to you to decide which came first, the chicken or the egg, right? Which came first, the environment or the art. It’s really interesting.
Miriam Schulman:
But then other social scientists will say is that once you have a community of artists, that helps the creativity flourish.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Yeah. To me, I think of it as kind of one leads to the other, I think a lot of artists are innately drawn to grit because of the certain amount of starving artists who struggle and because of the starving artist modality, have tended to choose places where more rent affordable, if you will. And the grit inspires the inspiration but once that gets going, then you start attracting your patrons of the arts. And then it turns around… I made a funny observation a couple years ago, I was driving out to P Town, and before I had been to P Town for the first time a couple years ago. Have you ever been to Providence Town? Have you ever been to P Town?
Miriam Schulman:
Absolutely. We go there every year.
Jeffrey Shaw:
It’s so gorgeous, right? And driving out there and I’m thinking how is it, I was with my then partner, I said, “How is it the gays ended up with all the best real estate in the United States?” And it was best scene kind of quiet, but then I really said, “You know, what it is if you actually think about it, you got Fire Island, you got P Town, you got South Beach, Miami Beach.”
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Jeffrey Shaw:
I mean literally the gays have ended up with all the best real estate. And the reason is if you actually look at it, it’s a trajectory from a major city. Because the gays were, in the day, an outcast, right? We needed to find our common ground in our community, people to bond with far from the metropolitan city. So Boston to P Town, right.
Miriam Schulman:
Providence Town.
Jeffrey Shaw:
So if you actually look at it, Fire Island from New York City, all the best, and these remote areas that ended up being the best real estate.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. We, Jews, have the same problems too, if you want to live with Jewish people, it’s the most expensive places.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Yeah. Exactly, exactly.
Miriam Schulman:
But The reason why is, for Scarsdale, which is where I live, it used to be that they didn’t sell real estate to Jewish people in Pelham. So we could rent in Scarsdale. That’s how it ended up transforming into a Jewish community, it’s because we started off as renters.
Jeffrey Shaw:
And then you wind up with one of the prettiest towns there is, right? So saying, I mean it all comes around, there’s always a little-
Miriam Schulman:
And I think what you were saying before is a lot of these pockets, it’s where they started off, where the starving artists were trying to get to what’s the most affordable. And part of the art community, there’s a lot of outsiders in an artist community that includes gays and other people who are on the outside, that is sometimes what makes being able to be an artist, is you’re on the outside looking in.
Jeffrey Shaw:
In, exactly.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. So you start off in these places, and then because of the art, they become the sought after places.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Yeah, exactly.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. So thank you, again so much. This was really inspiring.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Congratulations to you on having a new podcast and you should come to Podcast Movement sometime.
Miriam Schulman:
I am. I’m coming.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Are you? Good. All right, I’ll be there.
Miriam Schulman:
Are you speaking?
Jeffrey Shaw:
No, I’m not speaking. I didn’t attempt to but I haven’t reserved or anything to go, but I’m sure I’ll pop up. I usually end up going.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, I need someone to help me navigate which speakers[inaudible 00:59:05]. Maybe the idea is just to hang out with people and talk, I don’t know.
Jeffrey Shaw:
There’s a lot to learn but the best stuff always happens in between, it’s the meeting of people and I just find it really an inspiring in convention, because the nice thing about podcasting is it’s too new for anybody to be jaded. Everybody just pretty much has a good… Podcasts don’t have huge failure stories yet.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s great.
Jeffrey Shaw:
So it’s a really optimistic convention, especially being in the photo industry where 50% of the audience are down and depressed because the industry has been around so long, when you go to supply Podcast Movement, everybody’s up because it’s all new to everybody. That’s very upbeat.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Jeffrey Shaw:
Well, thanks for your time.
Miriam Schulman:
Thank you so much. Well, that wraps up episode number three of the Inspiration Place Podcast. Wasn’t that amazing? Let me know what you think about how the environment affects your creativity. I would love to hear from you. You can send me a direct message over on Instagram, @schulmanart over there. You can join my Facebook group, it’s free the Inspiration Place Community, you just have to request to join. You can drop me an email at miriam@schulmanart.com, or as always go take a look at the show notes for this episode. You can find that at schulmanart.com/3 for everything related to this episode. And if you liked the show, tell a friend and subscribe on iTunes. Until next week, I’m Miriam Schulman. Have a great day.
Thank you for listening to the Inspiration Place Podcast. Connect with us on Facebook at facebook.com/schulmanart, on Instagram @schulmanart and of course on schulmanart.com.
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