THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Cory Huff:
Hi, I’m Cory Huff from the Inspiration Place. No. Hi.
Miriam Schulman:
And you know I’m putting this whole thing in. I like the bloopers.
Cory Huff:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hi, I’m Cory Huff from the Abundant Artist and this is Inspiration Place.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes, it is with Miriam Schulman. All right, good enough.
Cory Huff:
Hi, I’m Cory Huff from the Abundant Artist and this is the Inspiration Place with Miriam Schulman.
Miriam Schulman:
Yay. Okay, awesome.
Cory Huff:
You should leave that whole thing in there.
Miriam Schulman:
I am. No, I totally, I totally leave. You should hear the other ones I have somebody said, and this is the Miriam Schulman podcast like you’re on.
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 and inspiration behind the art. And now your host, Miriam Schulman.
Miriam Schulman:
Welcome to the Inspiration Place podcast. I’m your host, Miriam Schulman, an artist living in New York. This is a podcast where we go behind the scenes and talk about how artists actually run a successful business and we even cover taboo topics, such as money. That’s why I’m so thrilled to have Cory Huff with me today. Cory doesn’t believe in the starving artist myth. Cory is the founder of the Abundant Artist association and is an author of a bestselling book How to Sell Your Art Online.
Miriam Schulman:
In addition, Cory is also an actor, storyteller, and fiction writer, which is what makes him such an interesting guest. Plus he lives in one of my favorite artist towns, Portland, Oregon. Welcome Cory. Thank you so much for joining me today. I’m so happy you’re here.
Cory Huff:
I am super excited to join you from Portland.
Miriam Schulman:
You know, I realized that like almost half my guests so far are from Portland.
Cory Huff:
There’s a lot going on here.
Miriam Schulman:
There is a lot going on.
Cory Huff:
There’s a lot going on here.
Miriam Schulman:
You’re like the third. I’ve only recorded maybe five or six and you’re the 3rd Portlander, so there you go. And I think I have a few more planned.
Cory Huff:
Yeah, I bet. I bet I can guess who they all are too. I probably hang out with them on the weekends at the secret club meeting.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, maybe. You do know a few of them. So they’re not all artists either. It’s just very interesting people from Portland.
Cory Huff:
Yeah. There’s a lot of interesting people here, that’s for sure.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, New York too. But we’re like so snobby you don’t get to meet them.
Cory Huff:
It’s just different. Here, it’s like let’s just go and chill and be weird. And it’s so cheap to live here that you don’t have to like kill yourself to get by. And then in New York it’s like, “I got to make $5,000 this month or I’m not going to make rent.”
Miriam Schulman:
It’s true.
Cory Huff:
It’s just different.
Miriam Schulman:
It’s true. More than that, actually. That’s good. If you can get 5,000. I did make an outline and I am sticking with it.
Cory Huff:
You are an outline and planning fiend. You crack me up.
Miriam Schulman:
Because you know the truth is I’m really extremely disorganized, so it’s like to compensate.
Cory Huff:
You’re overcompensating for your weaknesses.
Miriam Schulman:
Exactly. And this is not my first podcast interview now, so I’ve kind of learning from my booboos.
Cory Huff:
I need to shut my door and turn off my air conditioner, hang on. Less white noise in the background is good.
Miriam Schulman:
Perfect. And I’ve learned to keep mine open because the first one I did, I sealed everything up and the cat decided she had to come in.
Cory Huff:
Sure. Yeah they do that.
Miriam Schulman:
Meow, meow.
Cory Huff:
So one of our cats has figured out what doorknobs are and so he jumps up and he pulled the door knob like he hangs from the doorknob, but he can’t turn it.
Miriam Schulman:
You have to get a picture of that for Instagram.
Cory Huff:
I really do.
Miriam Schulman:
You really do because artists love cats.
Cory Huff:
Yeah. Yeah. Everybody loves cats.
Miriam Schulman:
Plus Instagram loves cats.
Cory Huff:
Instagram loves cats. Yeah and no it would be great to get a picture or even a video of him doing it. Just like a little boomerang. Going up and down.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes. Yes.
Cory Huff:
Full disclosure, I just finished the World Domination Summit, so I’m super amped. This might get weird. Okay.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay, that’s great. I’m so happy to have your positive energy. So anyway, Cory, I wanted to dig into a couple of different questions and questions I just been having myself, so I figure I’d pick your brain and then I also asked our audiences some questions. So you want to dig into those?
Cory Huff:
Yeah, fire away.
Miriam Schulman:
All right. And before we dive into all these questions and there’s really, really good ones, I just wanted to make sure all my listeners know that I have a free Inspiration Place Facebook group. There are, as of this recording over 5000 members there. You do not have to be a professional to join, you just have to be interested in art. And that is where I got most of these questions and sometimes I’ll be jumping in there and if I have a guest expert, I’ll be taking your questions directly from the group.
Miriam Schulman:
So if you want your questions answered on this podcast for a little bit of free coaching, that’s where you need to go. So it’s the Inspiration Place on Facebook, but I’m going to have a link for that in the show notes. My show notes are schulmanart.com/4 because this is episode number four, or if you just want to go directly to the Facebook group, it’s schulmanart.com/group and that will take you to my free Facebook group for artists. All right, so that’s it. Now let’s get back to the show.
Miriam Schulman:
So one question I saw on your Instagram, which is what? The Abundant Artist.
Cory Huff:
Yep, @theabundantartist.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay, all right. Should artists frame their art?
Cory Huff:
I mean sure.
Miriam Schulman:
So that’s a no. Absolutely not.
Cory Huff:
I feel like it’s an expense that you don’t need, especially at the beginning of your art business and people are just going to swap out the frames for the one they want anyway. But I do know artists who are able to, you know, they do the framing themselves or whatever and then they’re able to add a bunch of markup to it. But I think at the end of the day, you’re an artist because you want to make art not because you want to be a framer and make the art, you want to make, sell that and let somebody else frame it. That’s kind of how I feel about it.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. I mean, do you know how many frames I have in my basement right now from people who like I sold the art, but they didn’t want the frame and I had to take it off.
Cory Huff:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. My wife shops secondhand shops and we buy somebody’s really crappy uncle’s art and throw away whatever that was and keep the frame. So we have in our storage unit downstairs, we have probably about 20 frames.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. So I encourage people, well, my own experience is either I sell watercolors that are matted, but not framed or art on canvas that is gallery wrap canvas unframed. Because anytime I’ve ever added a frame, it’s ended up being an additional expense that I had to eat.
Cory Huff:
I’m looking at the stuff behind me on the wall there and I’m like, okay, that’s on a, what do you call it? Like a piece of wood. And then both of those frames, these frames. But yeah, all those frames, we did not buy any of those frames from the artists. We framed all of those ourselves.
Miriam Schulman:
I’m going to skip around cause we actually got a question. This came from Carmen. Her question was how to sell myself to secondhand or resell stores. And my first reaction was that people would only be buying it for the frame and not to do that.
Cory Huff:
Which is exactly what I just said.
Miriam Schulman:
Exactly. People do not buy art from secondhand stores unless they’re planning on throwing it away.
Cory Huff:
So yeah. I have a feeling that in that question she maybe means something else. When I say we shop secondhand shops I’m talking about stuff like Goodwill.
Miriam Schulman:
Right.
Cory Huff:
Right?
Miriam Schulman:
Well, that’s what I thought too. What is she referring to then?
Cory Huff:
I think she might be just talking to retail boutiques. Right? Because you don’t sell through Goodwill, you just give stuff to Goodwill, and then Goodwill sells it. But I think she’s talking about retail boutiques, specialty boutiques. I think that’s what she’s talking about. I’m making an assumption. But within that assumption, assuming that you’re talking about getting into, there’s no secret to it. You just go to them and you say, “Hey, I have this art and I think it’d be a good fit for your shop because of XYZ reasons. Here’s my wholesale prices.” And your wholesale price is half the retail price and you either give it to them for free on consignment for 60 days, 90 days, or however long or they buy it. If you’re an unknown artist, it’s probably going to be on consignment.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. Okay. That’s good advice. Points for Cory.
Cory Huff:
Next.
Miriam Schulman:
All right. Now here is a question I wanted to ask you. Your opinion, is Etsy dead?
Cory Huff:
Oh no. Okay. Is Etsy dead? No. Etsy is not dead. Long live, Etsy. Etsy has never been a thing for professional, fine artists who are trying to make a living from their work. Etsy has never been a thing for that. Okay?
Miriam Schulman:
Although we do have exceptions to that rule.
Cory Huff:
There’s always exceptions. Every time I say there’s a rule, somebody’s like, “I make $200,000 a year.”
Miriam Schulman:
So it’s like look at Lisa Congdon, she only uses Etsy as her shop.
Cory Huff:
Okay.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Cory Huff:
So Lisa Congdon doesn’t make fine art landscape oil painting.
Miriam Schulman:
True.
Cory Huff:
Right.
Miriam Schulman:
Right.
Cory Huff:
So I’m talking about like if you sell original art for three grand and up, Etsy has never been your place. Right? But if you are an illustrator doing small originals or prints, or if you’re a fine artist selling prints that are under $200 then yeah, you can sell stuff on Etsy. But Etsy has conditioned their audience to look for inexpensive craft and inexpensive art or increasingly mass manufactured stuff.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, yeah. I had a recent tantrum about Etsy where I just unlisted all my art from Etsy.
Cory Huff:
There’s no serious art collectors or I shouldn’t say no, but there are very, very few.
Miriam Schulman:
There are, but now the artists who are there, it’s like it’s become very competitive and Etsy, they want to spread the sales around. So if you have sales they will actually limit you for a while and give somebody else a chance. They’ve actually said that that’s their business model is they kind of want to democratize it, but that’s not good for somebody who’s actually trying to make a living.
Cory Huff:
Yeah and that is no different from any of the other marketplaces that are out there. Right? You’re talking about ArtFire shop, Saatchi online, Fine Art America, all of those marketplaces. Their business incentive is to give as many artists as possible a sale, which means that they’re going to try as hard as they can to make sure that people are exposed to as many different artists as possible. If you’re trying to make a living, stick your stuff there, sure. But you want to start driving people to your website rather than spending time driving people to these third party marketplaces.
Miriam Schulman:
Completely agree. All right, my next question. Okay. Here’s a really good question. This is to give credit to the person who asked it. This is something that’s come up in my own life though. This is from Jamie. So Jamie wants to know how are artists handling older art? This happens to all artists that were fairly prolific and nobody can possibly sell all the art that they make. And this has been true forever. Monet. I mean everyone. So what happens with all this excess inventory?
Cory Huff:
I don’t know.
Miriam Schulman:
Do you have any suggestions of what to do, how to move it?
Cory Huff:
If you become famous, right? Like if you’re a Monet and you’re 70-years-old and you have a lifetime of work and you’ve done a million things, right? Then the thing you do is you set up a foundation and the foundation figures out a way to archive and catalog your work. And they purchase a storage, a temperature controlled storage unit somewhere and store it all there. But that is because you are a historically important artist and they want to preserve the work for the sake of the culture and they want to. And they know that at some point all of that work will either go to a museum or gets sold, right?
Cory Huff:
I’m reading, I’m almost done with a biography about Leonardo da Vinci and there’s something like 4000 pages of his journals that are existing, right? And they keep finding more all the time. Every few years they find a few more pages of Leonardo da Vinci’s journals. And so there’s tons of them, but they’re all spread all over. That’s sort of a tangent, but okay.
Cory Huff:
So assuming you are not a super rich world famous artist, you have to just start making a decision. If you have a garage with tons of space in it and you can store all your stuff there and just hope that someday somebody wants it. But as far as can you hold a sale and move all of your old inventory? If you’re not already selling like crazy, holding a fire sale of all your work is not going to do anything. You’re just going to disappoint yourself.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. Now you wrote an article recently about how to hold a flash sale on Instagram. So would that help move inventory? You want to explain that.
Cory Huff:
It’s possible. It’s possible. So the idea of a flash sale is you let people know that you’re going to have a sale and it’s going to last 24 hours, 48 hours, whatever. And you give them a few days, heads up, three days, seven days, whatever. And then you put up all the inventory for sale on your website or on the Instagram, however you want to do it. And it’s available there for that amount of time and then you take it down. Right?
Cory Huff:
And this is nice because you can kind of stuff in some of your older stuff, but one of the challenges that I see artists have, say you’re an artist and you’ve been painting for 20 years, your style is going to change over time and your subject matter is going to change over time. And once you become well-known for a certain style or subject matter, if you are trying to shoehorn a bunch of old inventory that is unrelated to what you’re doing, it doesn’t work.
Miriam Schulman:
No, because it sticks out like a sore thumb and then it makes your good work look bad. Then it makes you look like a hobbyist like you have one of these and one of those. You really want to, when you’re putting out art, whether it’s in a gallery style setting, it doesn’t have to be a gallery, but you are putting on a show and that show is your website or that show is Instagram, or that shows whatever it is. You want it to be curated and you want it to make sense. I mean, I even have that problem because I paint in both watercolors and mixed media. Sometimes I feel like, “Oh, I can’t show them both in the same month.” If I have a streak of showing some, I like things to make sense like why am I painting this and what story am I telling with my art? So it’s really can be off putting to somebody who’s new or even who’s not new to suddenly see, well wait, what’s this?
Cory Huff:
Yep.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. It’s kind of like people who start suddenly show pictures of their food when they’re expecting art on your Instagram feed. All right, so we’re going to have a lot of art for our grandchildren to share basically is what you’re saying?
Cory Huff:
Yep, that’s what I’m saying.
Miriam Schulman:
So I can put their names and tape underneath like my brother-in-law’s mother used to do it. You go to their house and change the tape on the China. Okay, this is a great question and I think we both have some advice and opinions on this. This came from Emily. Emily wants to know how to engage with a journalist. Can we tweet, email them direct and say, “Hey, please write about me.”
Miriam Schulman:
So you and I have both written about artists. What would be your response if somebody? Do you get approached by people for them to write about you?
Cory Huff:
I do. Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
Because I do. Yeah.
Cory Huff:
Yeah. So you have to understand that there’s a million artists out there who want journalists to write about them. So you need to know why your story is important and unique and different from everybody else’s. You just need to have a compelling story in the first place. Right? I paint is a really boring story, but if your story is I paint the feelings and emotions that come up as I recovered from cancer. That’s a specific interesting to some people’s story, right? Monet painted because he wanted to see how light works, right? He was exploring how light works. Those are the kinds of things that journalists can write about. It’s a story they can latch onto. So what I usually teach artists in our How to Sell Your Art Online courses is figuring out what your story is and then essentially write the story and then go pitch that story to the journalists, right?
Miriam Schulman:
That’s a technique, but as somebody who has written articles for Professional Artist Magazine, it’s also a little bit backwards because at least the type of articles that I write, it starts with the relationship. I’m rarely going to write an article about one artists. We put out an issue for that magazine and I don’t know how many articles, I’m just making up a number. Let’s say there’s 10 articles in that issue.
Miriam Schulman:
There’s only going to be one where it’s just going to be a feature article about one artist. Most of them are going to be topic-based where the writer is going to go to their friends or those artists who they have relationships with and ask the question. So the advice that I would give Emily is to start building relationships first. Are you following that journalist or that writer? Let’s say it’s me or you, are you following them on Instagram? Do you like them on Facebook? Do you share their posts?
Miriam Schulman:
So you build a Goodwill with them first and the relationship before you go in for the ask. So it’s kind of like you have to date them for a while and build a relationship before you ask them to marry you. And then I wouldn’t say, “Do you want to write about me?” I think the ask would be more along the lines of I’m available, if you have questions about my process rather than putting in that big ask like that.
Cory Huff:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
What do you think about that?
Cory Huff:
No, I think that’s absolutely true and that’s actually like compiling a list of influencers and we include journalists and bloggers and social media, people who have large social media followings as well as a bunch of other types of people. We will tell artists to go figure out who are influential to your ideal collectors and then go start developing relationships with those people. Right? And that means getting out of your studio and going and acting like a human with other people. And hopefully they become friendships at some point. But just even professional relationships where you provide something of value for them as well as vice versa, is the way that you have to do it over the long-term.
Miriam Schulman:
Completely agree. Okay, so I hope that answered your question, Emily. All right, and now my next question is from Gabrielle, and she wants to know if it’s possible to market your art or make sales from your art if you’re not on Facebook and Instagram.
Cory Huff:
Sure, yeah, absolutely. I think that there are five distinct business models for artists, right? And a couple of them don’t have to involve social media at all. So the first one is selling through galleries. Right? If you get into the right gallery, you don’t have to do anything on social media at all. Right? You can just be the enigmatic artists behind the screen who just shows up for the openings. But it is a pretty rare gallery that can just take your work and sell it without you doing any additional work.
Miriam Schulman:
I totally agree. the gallery that I’ve been in, I pretty much brought them their buyers.
Cory Huff:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Cory Huff:
So then the second business model is licensing, right? Where you give companies the permission to use your work on their products and they pay you for that privilege. That doesn’t require social media at all. That is literally just contacting the buyers for these corporations and pitching them your portfolio. The only thing you might get involved with in social media there is to find those buyers on Instagram and see what kind of stuff they like. Right? But that doesn’t involve you posting on social media at all.
Miriam Schulman:
No and I’m told that these buyers are less on Instagram and more on LinkedIn and Twitter. Have you heard that as well?
Cory Huff:
Yeah, because they are, if you’re a buyer for, I don’t know, I’m just going to pick some random retailer Target. Unless you really love art for some reason, you’re probably not going to care so much about Instagram and as a corporate employee, LinkedIn is super important for you. Twitter’s probably important and the art is not the only thing you’re buying. You’re buying art and you’re buying clothes and you’re buying a whole wide variety of things. Your job is to acquire stuff for target to sell. So you just need to basically email them and say, “Here’s my portfolio, do you want it?”
Cory Huff:
And then the third model is selling through art directors, right? And so this becomes things like putting work in hospitals. I sort of look for hotels. Hospitals, hotels and other corporate offices. Right?
Miriam Schulman:
But that’s also known as going to an art consultant. That’s the same thing.
Cory Huff:
Yes. Yeah, art directors are consultants, same thing. They have different titles depending on the region and who they’re working with. Construction firms, architecture firms that are in charge of building large buildings. They are also given an art budget by the client and it’s usually a one or 2% of the overall construction budget. And you contact the construction firm or the architecture firm and say, “Hey, who’s the art director that you’re working with? Or the art consultant that you’re working with?” And they might give you the name and then you go find that person’s email address and you shoot them an email and say, “Hey, here’s my portfolio. Am I a good fit for any of your projects.” Right?
Cory Huff:
And then you email that person once or twice a year and just let them know that you’re still alive. And when they do have a project that is a good fit for your work, they will say, “Hey, here’s the budget, here’s the size, here’s the deadline. Can you deliver in those parameters?” And they’re not flexible, right? The art consultant has been a $100,000 budget and they need work on five floors and certain parameters that have already been measured. So it’s not like you can really negotiate it. That’s the budget, that’s the size.
Cory Huff:
And once you develop relationships with 50 to a 100 of these different art consultants, you’ll have work fairly regularly. But it takes several years to get to that point. And that doesn’t require social media at all. One of my close friends is a sculptor who 90% of his sales happen that way is through art consultants. And he places 50, 60, $80,000 pieces in corporate headquarters all over the world.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s fantastic.
Cory Huff:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
Do you want to give him a shout out so we can look up this artist?
Cory Huff:
No, he doesn’t want me talking about it.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, he doesn’t? Okay.
Cory Huff:
Yeah, yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
Because you already said how much he makes or?
Cory Huff:
Yeah, yeah. Because he intentionally keeps a low profile. He’s never been in a magazine.
Miriam Schulman:
Is he afraid people are going to kidnap his kids if they know how much he makes?
Cory Huff:
He’s just a really private person. He’s just a really private person. So if you met him, he would just seem like a really regular dude and he’s never been featured in any art magazines or anything like that. He just prefers to be very private. Yep. So there’s those three and then the others are direct to collector, which you can probably do direct to collector yourself without social media if you’re doing like outdoor art fairs or something like that. But I think you really hamper yourself if you’re not going to use social media.
Miriam Schulman:
Also commissioned artists definitely can do. I mean-
Cory Huff:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
I mean, what do you think we did before social media came along?
Cory Huff:
Sure. Yeah. I would argue that even if you’re a commissioned artist, there comes a point of momentum where you don’t need social media anymore. But in order to get to the point where you have so many people referring you, you do need to do some work. And I think that direct to collector sales and commission work, it can work. You can make it work without social media, but it’s just harder.
Miriam Schulman:
I think I would also point out the thing about social media, it’s also social proof. So if you are even any of those other categories you talked about, whether you’re looking to, you’re new to licensing for example, or you’re new to art consulting or you’re new to whatever the category is. If you’re able to say to some, “Hey, I have 20,000 followers on Instagram.” That now says something about the likeability of your art and a lot of times people are going to look you up and see. I mean, that’s one of the first things I do. Like with Emily’s question, if somebody were to approach me, who I never heard of, I might look up what’s their Instagram following before I even engage with them if they’re somebody who I might want to interview to see how they are.
Cory Huff:
Yep.
Miriam Schulman:
So how do you get there?
Cory Huff:
You’ve got to engage and some artists are just so introverted that they don’t want to do it, they don’t want to bother. So that’s fine. And in a lot of ways social media is poison. A lot of the ways that people use social media is poison and if you are the kind of person that needs to narrow your world so that you can be really focused on the art that you make and all that kind of stuff, I totally get that. You just have to pick a business format that makes sense for your lifestyle.
Miriam Schulman:
Right, right. With the artists that you’re working on, the top salary artists let’s say. What are their business models? Is it a mix of those or do you see the more money being made in a particular category?
Cory Huff:
It’s all over the place. Just kind of think through the artists that we’ve worked with who are doing well, most of them do use social media to some extent. This is something that’s really fascinating to me. I’m known as the guy that teaches artists how to sell out on the internet, but more than 80%-
Miriam Schulman:
That’s the name of your book.
Cory Huff:
Yes, yes, but the reality is that more than 80% of all sales across retail sectors still happen offline.
Miriam Schulman:
It’s so true.
Cory Huff:
Yeah. So they happen at outdoor shows, they happen at galleries, they happen at open studio events, all of that kind of stuff. So the internet, there are some artists who only sell online and they do really well. But most artists who are doing well are using social media and email and other digital marketing to drive people to come see the work in person.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Cory Huff:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
And you still have to pick up the phone.
Cory Huff:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Cory Huff:
You have to pick up the phone. Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
It’s really hard. When you want to close a deal, they’re not going to necessarily do it on email for a $2,000 painting.
Cory Huff:
Yeah. So I think most of them are still using social media, but a lot of it is just to drive people to whatever in-person event they’re having. Yeah, I feel like most of them are using social media, but I think that’s just because most people use social media. If you’re trying to avoid social media, it’s either because you have a principled stand against the poison of Facebook or you are afraid of joining the modern world.
Miriam Schulman:
Right. I just find you may not necessarily be closing a deal because you posted something on Instagram, but it’s a good way to remind your collectors that you exist.
Cory Huff:
Yep. Yep.
Miriam Schulman:
Instead of taking out print ads.
Cory Huff:
It’s like 50 years ago when the telephone first started becoming a big thing in business, more than 50 years ago. However long ago that was, people were like, “Why should everybody have a phone at their desk? That’s really stupid. Nobody needs a phone. We just write letters to each other.”
Miriam Schulman:
Well, I remember when my husband tried to get me a cell phone, I was like, “What do I need that for right now? I can’t walk out of a room without it.”
Cory Huff:
Yeah, yeah. So it’s just the way that we communicate with each other evolves. And if you don’t want to be on social media, I just consider why don’t you want to be on social media? And if it’s an intentional statement, then I can respect that. You just have to realize that you are closing one avenue, but you can put a lot of energy into some other avenue.
Miriam Schulman:
Right. Now, if you look at art history like Matisse would send works in progress to his top collectors, like the Cone Sisters, he would send them photographs and letters and like you said, basically all we’re doing with social media is automating and systematizing and scaling that same process. But you should still be doing a personal touch with your top collectors.
Cory Huff:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
All right, Cory, this was so much fun talking to you today. Thanks for spending this time with me. We’ll have to have you back, right?
Cory Huff:
Yeah, absolutely.
Miriam Schulman:
You’ll come back and we’ll do the same thing making you commit on the air.
Cory Huff:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I’m happy to talk to you anytime.
Miriam Schulman:
No, this is a lot of fun. So thanks so much for joining me. Where should people come and find you?
Cory Huff:
If you want to learn how to sell your art on the internet or just sell your art in general, then head on over to theabundantartist.com.
Miriam Schulman:
Perfect. And I definitely recommend your book. In fact, I was looking through it again this morning and I was like, “Oh yeah, I might want to start blogging about my art again.” It’s really inspiring. I really enjoyed it a lot. So definitely also pick up Cory’s book, How to Sell Your Art Online, and I will put a link to that in the show notes, as well as everything else we talked about today.
Cory Huff:
Thanks so much everybody.
Miriam Schulman:
Thanks Cory.
Miriam Schulman:
Alrighty. So that wraps up episode number four of the Inspiration Place podcast. Remember, you can find all the links we talked about today on my show notes, which you can find at schulmanart.com/4 I’ll have a link to Cory’s book. I’ll have a link to everything we talked about as well as that free Facebook group, the Inspiration Place where you can ask questions that will be answered in future podcasts. So I hope to see you in the free Inspiration Place Facebook group. Again, you can find that at schulmanart.com/group or in the show notes, schulmanart.com/4. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you subscribed so I’ll see you here next week, same time, same place. Bye for now.
Thank you for this thing to the Inspiration Place podcast. Connect with us on Facebook at facebook.com/schulmanart, on Instagram @schulmanart and of course on schulmanart.com.
Miriam Schulman:
All right, so there you have it. We really did cover a lot of ground. Now if you want to get your questions answered, please request to join my free group, the Inspiration Place. There’ll be a link for that in the show notes, schulmanart.com/4 so this is episode four and they’ll be links to anything else you need as well in the show notes. But if you request to join, then next time, maybe I’ll be answering your question on this podcast.
Miriam Schulman:
Speaking of next time, let me tell you what’s coming up next. Next time I have a real treat because I’ve invited a New York gallery owner to discuss how they price art in their gallery. Listen in.
Charlotte Troisgros:
We have 35 galleries around the world. So for the artist, it’s a great opportunity to be displayed in Moscow, in New York, in Sedona, in Mexico, in Shanghai, in Paris.
Miriam Schulman:
So if you don’t want to miss a single episode, be sure you subscribe on iTunes.
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