THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Maria Brophy:
Hi, this is Maria Brophy, author of “Art, Money, and Success.” And you are listening to the Inspiration Place podcast with Miriam Schulman.
It’s the Inspiration Place podcast with artist Miriam Schulman. Welcome to the Inspiration Place podcast, an art world inside a 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 Episode 11 of the Inspiration Place podcast. I’m your host, Miriam Schulman, an artist living in New York. So, today, we’re doing a free coaching segment, which we sometimes do here on the Inspiration Place podcast. And I have my friend, consultant, and artist agent Maria Brophy to help me. So, in this episode, you’ll discover which is more profitable: selling in person or online. We’ll also talk about how to brainstorm unique angles for your next press release, and the best ways to build your email list. After the Q&A is over, Maria and I also talk shop where we discuss how she can get started with her online classes, and you’re going to want to check that out as well.
Miriam Schulman:
Now, before we get in today’s episode, I wanted to tell you about today’s freebie offer. If you’ve been wondering how to boost your success as a professional artist step-by-step, and you’re ready to start investing in your art career, you’re in the right place. I’ve done it and I can inspire you how to do it too. My specialty is making the tech simple. Attracting high-end portrait commissions, building your social media following, email marketing, and online classes. I only coach a few select clients at a time, and it’s by application only. If you want to apply for a complimentary 15 minute session with me to see if working with me is a right fit for you, go to schulmanart.com/apply. You just choose your appointment and apply for an application, and once your application is approved, you can meet with me for free so we can talk about if working together is the right fit for you.
Miriam Schulman:
The other thing I wanted to share with you is that Maria and I discuss online classes, and I use Kajabi for all of my online class platform, so I have a special affiliate link I can share with you. If you go to schulmanart.com/kajabi, you get 15% off any of the programs that you can choose there, so if you’re thinking about doing your own online class and you want to save one what I consider to be the best online class platform, go to schulmanart.com/kajabi, and you can enjoy 15% off. Okay, now back to our show.
Miriam Schulman:
Maria Brophy is author of “Art, Money, and Success,” a book that guides artists to earning a living with their art. Maria has created a lifestyle of selling art and traveling the world for nearly 20 years. Her expertise is on art marketing, sales, and licensing. She acts as agent to her artist husband, Drew Brophy, and also consults other artists on the business of art.
Miriam Schulman:
Welcome, Maria! I’m so thrilled that you’re here today.
Maria Brophy:
Thank you, I’m excited to talk to you today.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, so I have gathered up a lot of questions from my audience, many from my free Facebook group, the Inspiration Place, which you can find at schulmanart.com/group. So, there’s a lot of questions for you, and what I thought we could do is, I’ll pose the question and I’ll get your opinion first as from your experience from working with your husband, and then if I have a different idea, I’ll put in my two cents. Sound good?
Maria Brophy:
Perfect.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay, great.
Miriam Schulman:
So, my first question is from Sally Trays. And Sally wants to know, what is your prognosis for artists who only want to sell online and not do any selling in person?
Maria Brophy:
Well, I think if you can find a way to make that happen, that’s awesome. The advantage to only selling online is you don’t ever have to go out and talk to anybody. Wouldn’t that be great, to never have to leave your house or your studio?
Miriam Schulman:
I know, but then we’re all going to turn into Emily Dickinson. That’s my greatest fear, other than turning into my mother.
Maria Brophy:
Oh, god.
Miriam Schulman:
Except it’s already happened, so.
Maria Brophy:
No way, never.
Maria Brophy:
So, that’s the only advantage to selling online, and that’s great, but here’s some challenges, right? You grow a diehard collector base, a group of people that love your work that will want to collect it forever and ever. You have to really deeply connect with them, and yeah, you can do that through Instagram and you can do that through Facebook and other online platforms, but when you go out and do live events, live shows, live exhibits, that’s when you get the real feedback from people, that’s when you really connect with people. And that is a great way to grow your collector base, your email list, your fan base, is by doing things in the flesh. My previous life was in the insurance industry before I got into the business I’m in now, which is the business of selling art, and in the insurance industry we had a saying. And it was called, “If you want to make more sales, you have to press the flesh.”
Miriam Schulman:
That’s great.
Maria Brophy:
“Press the flesh.” It’s an old saying in insurance sales, pressing the flesh means getting out and meeting people. But hey, I’m not one to knock whatever’s working for you. If just selling online is working for you and you’re making money doing it and it’s exactly what you want to be doing, then knock yourself out.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, I’m really glad that you pointed some of those things out that you did, and I would even further add, in my very first episode, which would be Episode 0 with Jason van Orden, we talked about how important it is to create feedback from people who are looking at your art, and unfortunately we’re living in this gathering likes on Instagram, but the problem is that only gives you back the positive feedback. So, you’re either going to get positive feedback or silence, and you’re not going to get the kind of feedback that you might get from having a conversation with somebody who’s standing in front of your art. So, they might say, “Hey, I really like that, but do you have it larger? Do you have a butterfly? Do you have…” So, those conversations I find really happen in the real world when people are responding to your art and you’re able to see what their objections might be to why they are or aren’t making a purchase, whereas online, you’re either going to get a sale or you’re just going to get nothing. So, that’s not really feedback.
Maria Brophy:
Well, there’s one other thing I want to add to that. Every creative person dreams of something big happening to them, right? When you see an artist who has their work on billboards or their work is featured in a T.V. show or, think of all the big things that can happen, the things that we can only dream of. Those things, while maybe it could happen with only an online presence, those things really always happen when you are out networking, when you’re at a trade show, when you’re in a group exhibit, when you are connecting with people. That’s when those opportunities come about. I know that some of our biggest deals that we’ve gotten for my husband, Drew, it’s always been with an accidental meeting of someone-
Miriam Schulman:
That’s so interesting.
Maria Brophy:
Who discovered his work, yeah, and-
Miriam Schulman:
Can you share a specific story of when that happened?
Maria Brophy:
A couple years ago, Drew studies sacred geometry and he studies ancient cultures, and he started switching his painting themes from surf images to completely different theme, which is sacred geometry, more of the metaphysical bent that incorporates universal laws, metaphysics, and quantum physics and things like that. Well, there are certain people that he studies under, that he’s studied under where he’s read their books and he’s taken their online courses, and a couple years ago, he decided he wanted to meet some of these people in person.
Maria Brophy:
Well, how do you meet some of these big names that you’ve been following for years? Well, you go to the places where they are at, right? And so, we went to the Conscious Life Expo, we set up a gig where Drew was doing a life painting at the Conscious Life Expo, and we set goals for what we wanted to achieve by being there. And one was to introduce this new work to a new audience. The other was to meet three people. And we wrote those three names down on a piece of paper, and in the weekend, we met two of those three people and we didn’t meet them by following them around because they were big-name speakers. They actually stumbled upon him because he was doing a live painting, he was the only person in the entire giant conference that was painting live, and so he was a magnet to people.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, I want to point out something very interesting because I know the law of attraction folks out there, they say, “Put the name on a piece of paper and make it happen!” But the thing I want to point out is that, yes, you put the name on the piece of paper, but you also took inspired action to help make that happen. Drew put himself in the right place, so it wasn’t you put a name on a piece of paper and then the person showed up at the grocery store. Right?
Maria Brophy:
Although, we actually had that happen once.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, you did? Okay. I love it. And it didn’t happen by staying home.
Maria Brophy:
There’s this amazing business man and we’ve been following his work for a long time, his name’s Mr. Harriman. And we didn’t even know that he moved his laboratory to our little town where we live. And one day, Drew was in line at the grocery store waiting for a juice. It was one of those natural foods places, and lo and behold, this man was standing right behind him in line. And they actually had met before, so he recognized Drew, but it started somewhat of a friendship. So, yeah. It’s pretty amazing how those things do work.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay, so that was a really good question to dive into. The next one, I’m betting you’re going to give this woman similar advice because it sounds like she’s focusing mostly online, this is from Reny. Here’s what Reny says, “Here is where I am right now. I don’t know if it’s…” So, Reny says she hasn’t been active online for several months, so she’s not shown up in the search engines the way she used to be. “I no longer want to rely on places like Etsy and move everything to my website. I’ve been getting requests from there now, but it’s trickling in. I’m afraid of making this permanent.” So, I’m trying to tease the question out of here. I think the question is whether to use your own website or to rely on marketplaces like Etsy.
Maria Brophy:
I think a combination of the two. You don’t want to totally rely on something like Etsy or any other online platform that you don’t have control over because when it changes or if it ever goes out of business, which has happened before, then you lose everything.
Maria Brophy:
The other downside to totally relying on Etsy or another platform is you usually don’t get the names of the buyers. Actually, you do get the names of the buyers, I don’t-
Miriam Schulman:
You do on Etsy, you don’t on places like Fine Art American, Imagecon, the print-on-demand sites don’t share the customer information, but Etsy does. But Etsy actually has some very restrictive language in there that, if you follow the rules, they really don’t want you treating them as your customers.
Maria Brophy:
Right. They don’t want you emailing them and sending them newsletters and stuff like that, and email is the best way to stay in touch with your customers, it’s the best way to grow your customer base if you’re doing it right. And that’s a whole nother conversation, but I like the idea of keeping a website. I know these days, it’s really tough getting traffic to your website. It’s really tough because you’re competing against Amazon, which is so hard to do. And Etsy, and all these other websites. The best thing that you can do is to build up your newsletter list, your personal connection with every single buyer and every single interested person, maybe they haven’t bought yet but they’re interested, and nurture that list.
Miriam Schulman:
So, you’re gathering these email also in these in-person events, correct?
Maria Brophy:
Absolutely, and you don’t want to miss out on that opportunity to ask people. I’m going to say this, it’s work.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Maria Brophy:
Without a doubt, it’s work, it’s an effort, it’s something you have to remember to do. One thing that I got in the habit of doing is I bring a clipboard, and on the clipboard is a piece of paper with lines, and it says, “Name, Email address, City, State,” because I like to know where they are, where they’re located on the map, and I ask people to fill it in if they want to keep in touch. And a lot of people do because you capture them in the moment when they’re looking at your work and they’ve just had a conversation with you and they feel connected with you, and if they’re excited about what you’re doing, they’re going to want to be on your list.
Miriam Schulman:
I completely agree. Actually, I don’t have a master list. What I do is I create postcards that look very similar to the kind that you would see inside a magazine that says, “Yes! I want to subscribe to your list.” And then I have them fill out their name, their email, and then their address on that. And I just like that a little bit better than having a master list because people sometimes don’t want to add their name where other people can see it. And then, it gives me an opportunity to also write notes on the card, and I can hand them the card to fill out if I’m processing a sale or something like that. So, that’s what I like to do, but definitely try to gather up every email address I can during those times for sure.
Maria Brophy:
I love that postcard idea, that’s brilliant.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, you can steal it.
Maria Brophy:
I’m going to.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Maria Brophy:
I’m going to write about that in my next book. I’ll give you credit.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay, all right. Can you say, “Artist Miriam Schulman says…” I just basically model it after the kind you see in the magazine. You put the logo on top, and it also makes it a different experience for them that they don’t feel like you’re taking from them, if that makes sense. It’s like you’re giving them something and they’re filling it out.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
So, it’s a different feeling.
Miriam Schulman:
All right, great, so let’s move along. This question comes from Megan, we’re changing gears a little bit. She wants to know, what kind of marketing PR do you do for Drew, meaning do you send out press releases, reach out to magazines for articles, or that sort of thing?
Maria Brophy:
Yes-
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Maria Brophy:
Yes, and yes. I do that. And again, that’s a lot of effort too. But, the thing is some people don’t realize, it’s not that hard to get a magazine or a newspaper to write about you. If you have something going on, they’re actually looking for things to write about. They’re always looking for information, and you’re not asking for a favor when you say, “Hey, I’ve got this event coming up, why don’t you write a little something about it?” You’re giving them material. They’re looking for material. The one thing that I think that artists need to keep in mind, if you do have an event coming up, let’s say it’s an art exhibit and you want the local papers to write about it. Get a little creative and try to find a hook that connects your exhibit with the community.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Maria Brophy:
So that the newspaper has a reason to write about it, rather than… they’re not going to write about it from the standpoint of advertising it, but they will write about it from the standpoint of how it fits in with what they normally write about. So, for example, we’ve recently had… Drew’s art is in a museum exhibit this summer in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Miriam Schulman:
Congratulations.
Maria Brophy:
Thank you, it’s literally a dream come true, a long time coming. We live in San Clemente, California. The museum exhibit is in South Carolina. We got the local newspaper here where we live, in our hometown in San Clemente, to write about it, and the hook was, “San Clemente artist is shipping nearly 100 pieces of art from San Clemente to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for this huge exhibit, taking a piece of southern California and exhibiting it in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.” So, that was the hook and that’s how we tied this community newspaper in with what we were doing, and they ended up putting him on the cover of the newspaper.
Miriam Schulman:
Wow. That’s amazing because I honestly don’t think I would have thought of that. I would have just been like, “Okay, what are the Myrtle Beach papers?” And it’s so interesting that you realize that that was an angle to actually keep your buyers in your area aware of how he’s getting this national exposure across the country.
Maria Brophy:
Right. There’s an artist that I work with named Lori Lejeune, she’s on the East Coast somewhere near Atlanta, Georgia. And she does these amazing art installations of birds in flight, and it consists of a number of paintings on round canvases. And I recently recommended to her that she contact any magazine that features flying. Let’s say it’s an airplane magazine, an airline magazine, or a magazine that focuses on birds. Anything that has to do with flying, because one of her installations is titled, “The Art of Flight.” Something like that. So, it’s a perfect tie-in. Even though it’s birds, it ties into any kind of flight.
Miriam Schulman:
So, did that get picked up? Or you’re not sure yet?
Maria Brophy:
She’s working on it, we just had that conversation two weeks ago, but I have no doubt it will because even magazines, like beautiful printed magazines, they love to have something artsy in their magazines, something beautiful, something colorful or edgy or sophisticated. It doesn’t even matter what kind of art you’re doing.
Miriam Schulman:
What about reaching out to bloggers, is that still a thing? To get placed in, that used to be the big thing, to get featured in one of these hot blogs.
Maria Brophy:
I think it’s definitely worth it. If it’s a big-name blogger and they have a huge following, absolutely.
Miriam Schulman:
Or paying to have them posted on their Instagram? Now, that’s replacing getting featured in a blog, it’s just paying them to post a picture. Not that I’ve tried this, but it’s something that’s come up recently with a friend of mine who sells quilts that she was thinking about reaching out to influencers to post that on their decorating sites, on their decorating Instagram feeds. Is that a technique you’ve tried?
Maria Brophy:
I have not tried paying anyone to do that, no. I know of a couple different artists that actually painted something for a very big name with a big following, and then gave it to them as a gift, and the gift back was an Instagram post.
Miriam Schulman:
Wow.
Maria Brophy:
Just last week… gosh, I can’t remember who the artist was now. Somebody I follow on Facebook, I just can’t remember who it was, did a painting of Ashley Longshore.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, she’s somebody we had on the podcast Episode 1. I interviewed Ashley.
Maria Brophy:
The artist that did the painting of Ashley Longshore?
Miriam Schulman:
No, Ashley Longshore.
Maria Brophy:
Oh, Ashley Longshore, okay. I love Ashley Longshore so much, so this artist did a painting of Ashley Longshore and Ashley Longshore just posted it on her Instagram.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, that’s great. That’s really good exposure because she has, what, 100,000 followers on Instagram.
Maria Brophy:
Yes. That’s great exposure.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. Terrific.
Maria Brophy:
There’s a thing you could do if you wanted to. I would say only do that if you feel really passionate about someone and what they’re doing.
Miriam Schulman:
Right, and don’t do it just because you think you’ll get posted, because they may not post it and now you’ve given them art, so you have to really want to give them artwork.
Maria Brophy:
It has to come from the heart for sure.
Miriam Schulman:
Exactly. Right. You have to be okay with giving them artwork and nothing happening.
Miriam Schulman:
Terrific, I have another question, this one comes from Lisa Cunningham, and Lisa wants to know, what percentage of commission work do you rely on in your business, and by the way, just to reiterate. So, Maria represents her husband, so whenever we say “your business” is your business, and Drew is the artist. Percentage of commission work do you rely on in your business, and what percentage of sales are organic? And she also added, “I find myself marketing more for commission work rather than for my other work.”
Maria Brophy:
Commissions absolutely make up a majority of our sales, yes. And if I were to come up with a percentage of it, I would say, gosh, 75% is commissioned work. And included in that 75% would be licensed work, and the only reason I include that in there is because a lot of times, the art that we license falls under the bucket of commission because it’s created specifically for someone to use for a specific purpose.
Miriam Schulman:
Right, for a campaign.
Maria Brophy:
Yes. Product line.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes. All right, that’s great to know. Obviously, when I was doing portraits, then it was also 75% of my artworks sold was commission work, and a lot of times it’s still happens even without commissions because “I like your…” whatever it is. “Your peacock, your giraffe, but do you paint it smaller? Can you paint it bigger?” I hear that quite a lot and that usually leads to commission sales and even commissions, I call them commission but people want custom-size prints, it really falls under the umbrella of something that’s custom art or commission art.
Maria Brophy:
Yes.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay, so, now this one is for Roxanne, and you can answer it with both… so what she wants to know, do you have a hard time leaving work behind when you go on vacation or take time off? So, I’d love to hear that answered both from your perspective of marketing, are you still tethered to your smartphone and emails? And also Drew, when he takes time off, is he still creating or does he give himself a creative break?
Maria Brophy:
Well, it’s hard to answer that question because, a lot of times, our vacations are also business.
Miriam Schulman:
Mm-hmm. Like Myrtle Beach, you went for them…
Maria Brophy:
We went for the museum exhibit.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Maria Brophy:
We drove from California all the way to South Carolina.
Miriam Schulman:
Wow.
Maria Brophy:
But along the way, we took about seven days to get there, and we did a lot of fun stuff along the way, so we were vacationing. I didn’t do hardly any work that week, I have to say hardly any because I did have a few little things I had to take care of a couple times. But then, when we were in Myrtle Beach, we worked our tails off because the museum exhibit, it was a lot of hands-on work, just being there and leading tours and talking to people, and we also painted a mural when we were there. And when I say we, it was really Drew with me helping a little bit.
Miriam Schulman:
Mm-hmm.
Maria Brophy:
But he does all the painting and the creating in that way, and I handle everything else.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Maria Brophy:
So, if we’re going to create videos of something, I’m doing all that. I’m designing it, I’m deciding how it’s going to go, I’m getting it done. If we’re going to figure out… sometimes, we’ll decide to go on vacation and we’ll say, “Okay, we really want to turn it into a business trip, how can we make this vacation a business trip?” And then, that’s my art. My art is figuring out how to make money everywhere we go. So, one year, we wanted to go to Australia for a month, and I decided that I was going to set up a little painting tour for Drew up and down the coast.
Miriam Schulman:
Wow.
Maria Brophy:
So, I contacted all these surf shops up and down the East Coast of Australia, and we did a little painting tour up and down and, in between, had a good time.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s awesome. I love that you did that.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay, I think we have room for one more question before we wrap up, and I think this is a good question to end on. So, Annie wants to know, what’s a good way to get started? So, what advice would you have, Maria, for someone who’s just starting out as a professional artist.
Maria Brophy:
My advice is to get out and press the flesh. Here’s what I think every artist should do, is in the beginning, decide to do a series of works.
Miriam Schulman:
Mm-hmm.
Maria Brophy:
Focus on that one series. If it takes you six months, if it takes you twelve months, and a series can be anywhere from 8 to 20 works of a similar theme with a meaning behind it, and the meaning doesn’t have to be deep or philosophical, but it can be whatever you want it to be. As you’re creating this series, find a way to exhibit it in your local area so that it’s not complicated to get there, so that it’s easy to set up and transport and so forth, and set up an exhibit, plan for it in advance, advertise it to everybody that you know. Through that process, you will learn an amazing amount of information about yourself, about your work, about what people think of your work, you will develop skills that you need in business as well as your art, and you will connect with people who want more of your work and opportunities will open up for you.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s great advice. And do you have any last thoughts before we end, Maria, to call this episode complete?
Maria Brophy:
Yes. Regardless of what you want to do with your art, regardless of the kind of art you do, get very, very clear on what you want. Get very clear on what you want from your art career and from your life, and with that clarity, write it down. Even if you have no idea how you’re going to do it, when you know what you want and you write it down on a piece of paper and you think about it, and you think about it every day, ideas will come to you. Inspired ideas will hit you. And when you get those inspired ideas, then you take inspired action. Take action right away, soon as you come up with an idea and you say, “Whoa, that’s a crazy idea.” Take action on it immediately. Every decision you make is going to either lead you closer to that vision of what you want for yourself, or it’s going to take you further away from it. So, just keep that in mind.
Miriam Schulman:
I love that. Thank you so much, Maria, for spending this time. You’ve been so inspiring.
Maria Brophy:
I hope some of that was helpful.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, I think it was great. I mean, a lot of these questions are things that people ask over and over again, that’s pretty much what they want… “Is that good?” And “How do I get started?” And, yeah.
Maria Brophy:
“How do I get started?” Is the hardest one. What do you tell people?
Miriam Schulman:
Well, that’s why I punted. I usually tell them that the best place to start is to host an open studio, because what they’re talking about is just selling their art and just to put it out there and invite everyone they know to come look at it. I think that’s the easiest thing. But I really liked what you said about creating a series. I know that’s something that I definitely did in the beginning, is I would create a collection, and that’s something that I still do and I’m sure Drew also does is have an idea of a collection that you’re creating and keep that presentation in mind. So, whether that presentation is a solo show or online or whatever that is, that your collection or your series tells a story and it expresses an idea that you want to explore. So, I liked that advice.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah, well, just because people get so confused and they’re trying to do 20 things at once, and you can’t. You have to just do one thing and be patient, patient, patient. There’s no fast track.
Miriam Schulman:
No.
Maria Brophy:
I wish there was, and if there was I’d definitely be doing it and telling people to do it, but there isn’t.
Miriam Schulman:
The best thing to be successful is you just never give up.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
The only reason why we’re still standing here, 15 years later is we didn’t give up when things got tough.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah, and things are always tough. Things are tough for me right now, I mean, we just took months of focusing on this museum exhibit, which you don’t really get paid to do.
Miriam Schulman:
Right.
Maria Brophy:
But it’s months of work, so we basically took a couple of months without pay, kind of. I mean, we were making a little bit of money, but pretty much we had to… so, now I’m at ground zero like, “Shit, I got to get money in the door fast,” and because I hadn’t been… the second you let your foot off the gas of marketing, sales, and all that stuff, the funnel dries up. You know what I mean?
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. I’m trying to… express to you before we started recording was a lot of my bread and butter now is the online classes, but even with that, what I was doing was creating these timed launches where this is when this class starts, and this is when you can sign up and now you can’t sign up anymore. And those were both exhausting and also created a lot of peaks and valley in my income, so now what I’m trying to do is create some evergreen system so that I can have some recurring cash flow without always knocking myself out.
Maria Brophy:
Right.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Maria Brophy:
Well, yeah, I don’t really like that method that people do. The course opens, and you’ve got 48 hours to sign up. I understand why people do it, but I don’t know, it’s just gimmicky.
Miriam Schulman:
It is but it isn’t. I mean, if you think about your own buying behavior, how many things have you seen on Amazon or Instagram where you just save for later?
Maria Brophy:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
And you never went back and bought it. And the reason why is because if there’s no urgency, you’re not going to. And people say, “Oh, that sounds nice, but I’ll do it when I have more time.”
Maria Brophy:
Right.
Miriam Schulman:
And time is all of our scarcest resource. So, you have to say, “Well, you can’t do it when you have more time. You either do it now or don’t do it.”
Maria Brophy:
Right. Well, true.
Miriam Schulman:
So, unfortunately, you have to do it that way. And what I like to say is, I’m also doing it for their benefit. I mean, I’m not just saying this, I truly believe this, that it’s helpful to them if I am helping a group of people who are going through that journey together.
Maria Brophy:
Mm-hmm.
Miriam Schulman:
And not having people coming in at different times, so it helps the community if I’m supporting them within a Facebook community, form stronger bonds and everyone’s on the same page, and even though I keep that-
Maria Brophy:
That’s a good reason to do it.
Miriam Schulman:
Absolutely. And it’s like a college course. A college course, you can’t enter the college course in the middle of October. You have to start September whatever it is, after Labor Day.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
So, it just helps their learning process, to do it that way.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah, god, that gives me such a good idea. Well, one of our big projects that we’re working on next is building online courses, teaching people how to use the Posca paint pens that Drew uses.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, okay.
Maria Brophy:
I like that idea of having semesters. I like that idea.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, I mean, even though you think it’s gimmicky, don’t knock that. I mean, if you just focus on the idea that you’re doing it for their benefit…
Maria Brophy:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
And give yourself permission to do it. Of course, it’s good for you as well, but you are doing it for their benefit, and also the other thing that I say to them, which is also true, is that you don’t want to burn your audience out with continuous promotion, so by giving them a deadline of, say, “The promoting ends on this date, the cart closes on this date.”
Maria Brophy:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
Then, you don’t have to promote it after, then. You can go back to giving them value and free content.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
So, if you keep your promotional period short, then you’re not annoying them all the time.
Maria Brophy:
What platform do you use for your classes?
Miriam Schulman:
Kajabi.
Maria Brophy:
I looked into Kajabi, they’re really expensive.
Miriam Schulman:
Well, it is. I do believe it’s the best, though, so I’m willing to invest that because it’s an investment in the experience of my students. And, actually, Maria, I do have an affiliate code that you can use if you go to schulmanart.com/kajabi, that will give you 15% off if you sign up for one of their packages.
Maria Brophy:
Another one, Teachable. What do you think of Teachable? That’s the one that I signed up for, but…
Miriam Schulman:
Well, it’s less expensive, but I’ve heard from a friend of mine whose opinion I value highly, because her day job is in the online space with companies, she said it’s just not as good. She says Kajabi is definitely superior. I just feel like, unless you have or want to have a developer as part of your ongoing team, that it makes sense to have a hands-off, tech-free solution.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
And Kajabi offers that. Now, of course, there are other options out there. Effic is one, Teachable’s another, and one of my mentors had said that he uses Kajabi and, to me, it’s like reading consumer reports and just saying, “Okay, I’m just going to go with what this person says and not spend my time researching or mucking around with something else.”
Maria Brophy:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
But it is expensive.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah, I just remember it. I haven’t looked into it in a while, but I remember it costing way more.
Miriam Schulman:
And it cost a lot of money to run my online art classes. I have to be honest, like yeah, I make a lot of money, but I spend a lot of money to run them.
Maria Brophy:
Where does most of the money go? You mean in filming it, or?
Miriam Schulman:
No, in the software expenses. So, you have an email list that’s now 10,000 people and that’s $175 a month, and then I have a shopping cart and that’s $100 a month, and then I have Kajabi, and that’s a couple hundred dollars a month, and then there’s all these other things that you don’t know that you need, but… then you have the countdown timer and that’s another $20, and there’s all these little things, but then they start to add up.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah. What’s the countdown timer?
Miriam Schulman:
Well, I have two of them. I use MotionMail app, that is one that I use for putting in emails, and then I just started using Deadline Funnel’s, which I really like, and that creates… instead of making evergreen system… so that’s something that it’s specific to the person coming in, so I can create a feeling of, “Well, I will discount this class for you for a week,” but I don’t know what week they’ve signed up for that. That promotion allows me to give them a timed promotion.
Maria Brophy:
Oh, okay.
Miriam Schulman:
So, that’s specific to them. So, that’s a little bit more complicated, but that’s another $37 a month.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah, that’s a lot. I near spend about three or $400 a month on software. Or more.
Miriam Schulman:
More? It’s at least a thousand.
Maria Brophy:
Jeez.
Miriam Schulman:
I think I’d get nauseous if I just added it up, I’d be like…
Maria Brophy:
Damn.
Miriam Schulman:
And then, I don’t have a wife like Drew does to help, so I hire somebody. So I have to pay somebody, so that’s another expense, right?
Maria Brophy:
Yeah. Well, I do get paid.
Miriam Schulman:
No, I know you do, I know you do, but I’m saying, I don’t have…
Maria Brophy:
No, I know.
Miriam Schulman:
And that’s something we didn’t talk about, but I think that’s really important for people to realize, is that nobody can do it by themselves and that you are helping your husband, but you are also supporting your own salary through that.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah, absolutely.
Miriam Schulman:
So, right. And there are plenty of husband-wife teams, and people who don’t have a spouse or partner in the business, they really need to think about how they can hire help to do that.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah. I was full-time in the insurance industry, I had a very good salary, and I left it to do this. But with me helping Drew, he was already making money as an artist, that’s what he was doing full-time when I met him, but he wasn’t making enough to cover my income until I came along and took a lot of stuff off his plate so we could increase his output.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Maria Brophy:
So then, after I came to work with him about a year later, the art sales have increased… I don’t remember how much now, it’s been a long time, but significantly enough to pay me.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Maria Brophy:
And it took a little while to get there.
Miriam Schulman:
For example, two episodes ago I had Tara… do you know Tara Reed?
Maria Brophy:
Yes, she’s a good friend of mine.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. I think that’s Episode 9. So, she was talking about how much her art output has increased since she’s gone to working with an agent. So, even though she has to give her agent half, her output has increased so much that it’s made it worth it for her. So, that’s again, you either hire help or you hire an agent or…
Maria Brophy:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
Hire an agent, but you know what I mean… with an agent and you pay an agent, or in my case, I have full-time help that helps me put together these online… doing all these software. It’s not a solo show.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah, I’m sure I’m going to have to hire somebody to help. We’re finishing up a book right now and as soon as that’s finished, we have a couple more weeks to finish that. Then, we’re moving onto the online courses and I haven’t even figured out… I’m going to look into Kajabi again because it’s been a year since I did that whole comparison thing. I’m sure I’m going to have to hire somebody because I am so bad with technical stuff, and Drew is even worse than I am. We’re both dinosaurs when it comes to technical crap, and it has to be good because we’re targeting schools. Home schools, private schools.
Miriam Schulman:
So, you’re thinking of this being more like a B-to-B rather than individual people taking the classes that you’re going to teach?
Maria Brophy:
Yeah, we’re going to do both, but I’m really focusing on the schools because we have a lot of schools that are using Drew’s art to teach their students already.
Miriam Schulman:
Really?
Maria Brophy:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
You know who you should look up? Are you familiar with Patty Palmer, Deep Space Sparkle? She sells lesson plans for elementary school artists, or teachers.
Maria Brophy:
The last thing that I heard you say is am I familiar with Patty Palmer? You are the third person in this week, that’s so weird! Why does her name keep popping up?
Miriam Schulman:
First of all, she’s making a lot selling lesson plans to elementary school art teachers, so if that’s what you’re thinking of doing, she’s who you should connect with. I don’t know her personally, but if the other people who have mentioned her name, if they can get you an introduction, she is definitely someone who you should connect with.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah, I will. That’s amazing. Her name just comes up again and again and again and again.
Miriam Schulman:
And I would see, how is she doing it too? What kind of sleuthing can you do? That’s the kind of thing where… I always thought, if you want to know how somebody does something, the fastest way to find out is to be their customer.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah, true.
Miriam Schulman:
Join her website, her membership. It’s $20 a month, just join it. See what you get, see what the software is, and you should be able to figure that out.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah. Well, and I believe there’s room for different ways of doing things. There’s not…
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, totally. I’m not saying to copy her lesson plans, no, no. Not saying that.
Maria Brophy:
I know. And I wouldn’t anyway, because we already know what ours looks like. And I checked her out briefly because her name kept coming up, and what we’re doing is completely different from what she’s doing.
Miriam Schulman:
But just what I mean is what the experience is like. So, I would buy art from artists on Etsy or Ebay, back in the dark ages, who were the top sellers, just so I can find out, “Well, how do they treat their customers? How is the art packaged? How does it arrive?”
Maria Brophy:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
And I would learn from that, “Oh, it’s in pretty tissue paper, and there’s a little note here, and there’s a little sticker. Oh, I can do that.” But it doesn’t mean I’m copying whoever.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah, right, no.
Miriam Schulman:
Good artists steal.
Maria Brophy:
And I do that. I look at what successful people are doing and I emulate a lot of it.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Maria Brophy:
I try to emulate the parts that resonate with me.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah, I definitely will check out Patty Palmer. I might take your advice and sign up for her whatever she’s got going on, I don’t know. But I’ll do that. I need to figure out how to get into schools. We can hire to go teach in schools sometimes, and it’s astounding to me how these kids are so afraid. The older they are, the more afraid they are.
Miriam Schulman:
Right, so how old are they when they developed the fear?
Maria Brophy:
So, I want to say it starts to develop in third grade, where they start worrying about what you think and it gets really bad by fifth and six grade. We really saw it a couple years ago when our son was homeschooled, and so we were asked to teach the homeschool kids one day. And so, we taught all the grades up to seventh grade. In one day, we spent an hour with each grade, and we started with the younger kids. And it was great, they weren’t afraid, they were just having fun. And then the next class would come in and they were a little bit older, and you would notice they were real tight and trying to be perfect, and it just got worse and worse. And that was when we saw it and we said, “Gosh, at some point people just get so beat down by other people’s expectations. They’re afraid to color outside the lines literally.” And so, our method of teaching has been, Drew always starts with, “The first rule is art is there are no rules.”
Miriam Schulman:
Mm-hmm.
Maria Brophy:
“And the only thing I’m going to make you do is get rid of all the white.” That’s what he always says, he goes, “I don’t care what you do, you can paint it all black for all I care. But you’re going to get rid of all the white.” And he does that to make them paint.
Miriam Schulman:
Ah. I love that.
Maria Brophy:
Because otherwise, they stay in this little, tiny…
Miriam Schulman:
Right. And they make a little icon on their… yeah.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah. So, he makes them go big and it works. We had a class of fifth and sixth graders, it was two classes so it was 50 kids. And we’re not really kid people, so it’s harder for us to walk in and do that. He kept their attention for an hour.
Miriam Schulman:
Amazing.
Maria Brophy:
And the principal was there. The principal was the one that hired us to do it. It was the second year in a row we did it with that school, and the principal said, “It’s amazing how these kids, almost 60 kids, sat still and drew and painted and had fun, and they asked questions and some of them participated.” Drew would ask the volunteers to come to the front and help him, and they threw out crazy ideas on what to draw, and one kid said, “Draw a happy taco.” And Drew was like, “All right, everybody, draw a happy taco.” And some of the funniest things came out of that. I think that the public schools are in deep need of having someone who’s not a teacher teach.
Miriam Schulman:
Mm-hmm. Interesting.
Maria Brophy:
The teachers are like, “Follow rules.”
Miriam Schulman:
I know, I was so… I don’t want to use the word angry, but when my daughter was in third grade, her teacher was really into… not her art teacher, her regular teacher was into art and wanted them to learn how to do portraits. And during the parent-teacher conference, she was saying how, “Well, Talia colored in the whites of the eyes and I wanted to tell her not to do that.” And here I am, a professional portrait artist, right? I wanted to yell at the teacher, “I always color in the whites of the eyes, what are you talking about? Nobody’s whites of their eyes are white!” But I didn’t want to be rude to her, but she had these rigid set of rules that weren’t even… they were how to make cartoon faces, not how to… nothing wrong with my daughter’s portrait.
Maria Brophy:
Right. Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
It was gray.
Maria Brophy:
It’s crazy, they shouldn’t be telling them what to do. It should be…
Miriam Schulman:
No, they shouldn’t.
Maria Brophy:
Art is like thinking outside the box, it’s like painting crazy stuff. Like this painting that I had Drew do for me. So, are you familiar with Ganesha? Well, he’s a Hindu god-
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, yeah, yeah. The elephant god.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah, and he always has this little mouse. This breaks all the rules. The mouse doesn’t surf usually, and Ganesha never holds a pineapple or wears a grass skirt, you know what I mean? Those are the things that kids should be doing, is using their imagination, and that’s how we come up with some cool stuff.
Miriam Schulman:
Totally.
Maria Brophy:
But, anyway, I love the painting behind you.
Miriam Schulman:
They’re giraffe-
Maria Brophy:
I love it.
Miriam Schulman:
Thank you, he photobombs everything. It’s actually a she. Or maybe it’s genderfluid, I don’t know.
Maria Brophy:
I think she’s genderfluid, yeah. She looks-
Miriam Schulman:
Right. Anyway, I have to go because mostly we want to turn on the air conditioning and lie in front of it.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah. Oh my god, it’s so hot in here. Thank you for having me, I really appreciate it. I hope people like it.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, well, thanks for taking the time. And I definitely hope this will be worth your while and will lead to good things for you.
Maria Brophy:
I’m sure it will.
Miriam Schulman:
But it was definitely fun getting to know you better and connecting with you.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah, thank you. Send me a link when it’s ready.
Miriam Schulman:
Absolutely.
Maria Brophy:
And then I’ll let all my people know. So, I’ll send my people [crosstalk 00:51:00].
Miriam Schulman:
Absolutely.
Maria Brophy:
I have about 7,000 on my newsletter list, so I’ll…
Miriam Schulman:
That’s good. Yeah, mine actually shrunk with the GDPR. I don’t think I have 10,000 anymore. Did you do the GDPR yet?
Maria Brophy:
Really? I haven’t done it yet, I don’t know what to do. I talked to my… I’m so bad with stuff like that. Don’t you just have to add something, like cookies to your website?
Miriam Schulman:
You know what, if you do a double opt-in, then you’re safe.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah, I think I do.
Miriam Schulman:
So, if you do that…
Maria Brophy:
Yeah, I do actually, when you sign up for my newsletter list, yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. I don’t know if you do this, you should clean your list to make sure that there aren’t people on your list who never open it because that will hurt your deliverability over time. You know that, right, or no?
Maria Brophy:
Yeah, yeah. I didn’t know that.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay, so I’ll just make something up. Let’s say you have 7,000 people on your list and your open rate is, I’m going to guess, 30, 40%.
Maria Brophy:
It’s 35%.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s great. 30%. So, what you want to do is that 70% who don’t open it, if there is a segment of your list who never opens it because it either always goes to spam or they’re the type of person who never opens their emails. We all know there’s people like that.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
Maybe it’s us, I don’t know. So, if there’s the type of person who never opens it, or they haven’t opened it in a while, and what happens is then their email system is just moving it directly to spam.
Maria Brophy:
Oh.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. You don’t want these people on your email list for two reasons. One, you’re paying for those. It could be a lot of people, it could be 2,000 people that you’re paying for. But also, the 30%… so 30% times 7,000, that’s, what, 2,000 people? The 2,000 people who want your emails, they may stop getting it if Google or Yahoo sees that, “Oh, the 70% aren’t opening it.” Does that make sense?
Maria Brophy:
Yeah, yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
The other thing that ends up happening sometimes is, for whatever reason, if they haven’t opened it in six months and suddenly they open it and they’re like, “I don’t know who Maria Brophy is. Spam.” So, you don’t want those people on your list, you want the people who are engaged and want to hear from you. So, there are things that you can do to clean your email list.
Maria Brophy:
Do you use MailChimp, or what do you use?
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. Yeah, I do.
Maria Brophy:
You can run a list or run a report that shows anyone that hasn’t opened the last 10 campaigns or the last five campaigns, right?
Miriam Schulman:
Exactly. Two star people, and a lot of times they’ll recommend you send them an email first asking them if they want to stay on your list before you unsubscribe them. So, that’s what I’ll do, I’ll send them a series of emails.
Maria Brophy:
Hmm. That’s a good idea.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, and then I unsubscribe them.
Maria Brophy:
You’re full of good information.
Miriam Schulman:
Aww.
Maria Brophy:
I should be asking you questions on a podcast. Well, let’s do it, and I think next time we do it, we’ll just have more conversation.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, for sure. Well, I might include a lot of what we just said in the podcast.
Maria Brophy:
I think you should because the things we talked about right after was some good stuff.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, I’ll just have to reorder it. I’ll just put the thank you at the end and smash it all together.
Maria Brophy:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
And then my editor will come back to me like, “Is this what you meant?” Just run it. Put some music in between the awkward pauses.
Miriam Schulman:
I definitely recommend for everyone to get her book, I definitely have it, read it, underlined it. It’s got a place of honor on my bookshelf so, besides getting your book, where else can people come to find you if they want to work with you?
Maria Brophy:
People can go to my website. It’s my name, mariabrophy.com, and there’s a lot of great articles on there. And also, I have a YouTube channel, which you can just go to YouTube and search my name Maria Brophy, and I have a lot of videos where I talk about a lot of different art business tips. And, if you want to buy my book, “Art Money Success,” you can find it at Amazon.com.
Miriam Schulman:
Awesome, so thank you so much. This has been fantastic, I’ve really enjoyed it. I’m sure my listeners will to. Thanks so much, Maria!
Maria Brophy:
Thank you!
Miriam Schulman:
Well, that’s a wrap! So, for all the links that we talked about today, and there are quite a few, you can go to my website. Go to schulmanart.com/11 for every link that we mentioned today. You’ll find there a link to purchase Maria’s book, you’ll find that Kajabi link I talked about, you’ll find other shows related to this one, and next week you’ll be in for a special treat. Next week, I’m actually going to be doing a solo mini-training, and it’s all about email, how to get people to join your email list when you’re an artist.
Miriam Schulman:
So, next week, same time, same place, see you then. Have an inspirational week!
Thank you for listening to the Inspiration Place podcast! Connect with us on Facebook at Facebook.com/schulmanart, on Instagram at @schulmanart, and of course, on schulmanart.com.
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