THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Miriam Schulman:
Well, hello there. This is your host artist Miriam Schulman. And you’re listening to episode number 92 of The Inspiration Place podcast. I am so thrilled that you’re here. Today we’re talking all about financial fears and how they could be holding you back. In this episode, you’re going to discover how to cure the disease of under earning, five financial fears that might be holding you back, and why owning your own desire is the very first step.
Today’s guest started her first housekeeping business at age 13, cleaning houses for $5 an hour. She became one of the few women in the world to manage her own hedge fund. She’s also mentored and advised some of the highest earning men on the planet. On the road from housekeeper to hedge fund manager, today’s guest cracked the code on how women can earn more. She’s retired from the billionaire boys club and now brings everything she knows about making money to the girl’s team. It starts by dissolving the five female fears that undermine women’s earnings. And she’s going to tell us about them today.
I also want my boys to pay attention as well, because I feel that many of these apply to you too. Now she’s about to launch an amazing podcast exclusively for women. It’s called How to Make More Money and it’s going to be a must listen for every woman who wants to cure the female under earning disease. Please welcome to The Inspiration Place Kelly Hollingsworth. Well, hey there Kelly. Welcome to the show.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Hi Miriam. I’m so excited to be here.
Miriam Schulman:
This is so awesome. So you were telling me your husband says we’re twins.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Yes. He was listening to the episode that you did, I think it’s your episode 46 on leaving the golden handcuffs to become an artist and just getting sucked into that hedge fund whirlwind. And when is it going to spit you out? I don’t know. The money is so amazing. I lived exactly the same life. It was exactly the same.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. And then you realize how much you’re also spending to maintain that lifestyle too. Did you feel that way?
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Oh, I was pretty frugal. I was pretty good at that. Yeah. I had some strategies that I don’t know if I would readily show them today. I’ll tell you one. It’s kind of funny. I was this hayseed from North Idaho. I went to New York. I’m working in the hedge fund industry. I did not fit in. When people would say, “We’re going to the country for the weekend.” I didn’t even know they meant they were going to The Hamptons. I thought, “The country, where is that?” So one time I said, “I’m going to the country too.” And somebody looked at me and said, “What are you talking about? You don’t even know, where are you going?” And I said, “Montana.” And they said, “Honey, that’s not the country. That is the frontier.”
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, I had a similar experience, which I haven’t practiced the story as much as it sounds like you have. But I got some schooling about why going down to the Jersey shore was not fitting in. The traders gave me a hard time and I was like, “What do you mean you’re going to the Jersey shore?” I was like, “Well, because I’m from New Jersey. It’s what Jersey girls do? I don’t know.”
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Exactly. I was trying to fit in with these people. And I had no idea how to do it. So I went to Saks and I bought myself a mink coat. I had $100 black dress from Ann Taylor and a mink coat. And I wore it everywhere. And when I had that coat on, I felt like I came to play. I have arrived. And I think that created an energy for me. I don’t like to tell that story because these days I wouldn’t buy a mink coat. I was so clueless then, I would wear it to vegan restaurants. Just clueless. Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
I thought Ann Taylor was having arrived as well. My first suit was like from Strawberries. Do you remember that place? It’s basically the Kmart of suits.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Right. What did it cost?
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, who knows? Like $30. I don’t know, and it looked it. I just didn’t get it. It had shoulder pads, it was extremely sexy, and it was very inappropriate. So then Ann Taylor, I felt like I had arrived with Ann Taylor. I was just a silly, I just didn’t think I was silly. I want to hear about your first business that you started when you were 13, because I was particularly intrigued by your brilliant copywriting that you used when you were pitching people for your services.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
You and I have so much in common. We both grew up in poverty without a dad. I think you said your dad died when you were five. Mine just disappeared. So my mother delivered newspapers to support me and my two sisters. And she also was trying to get a college degree. So she’d get up at 3:00 in the morning, go run the newspaper out 365 days a year. And she would go to school all day. And she was very stressed out. So the only thing that would make her happy was when the house was clean.
When she was able, before my dad left for example, we had a Girl Scout troop, it was actually brownies. And she would teach us all. Here’s how you wring out a washrag so it won’t smell mildew. Here’s how you make hospital corners. Nobody liked to come to our brownies meeting. I think she was the leader for one year and then they didn’t want her to be the leader anymore. But I learned how to clean a house like no one else knows how to clean a house. So when I needed money, I was 13 years old. I took a little bucket and all my cleaning supplies over to the fancy side of our neighborhood, back to the golf course instead of to the freeway. And I would go over to the fancy side of the neighborhood and I would knock on doors. And I would tell people about my mother teaching me and the other girls in my brownie troop how to clean house. And then I would say, “She’s divorced now. Our dad is nowhere to be seen. Me cleaning the house is the only thing that helps my mom relax and gives her a smile. So I do it all the time. I know where dirty odors hide.”
She would point out a corner and she’d say, “Look at that dirt. Do you see that dirt in that corner? That’s what makes your house smell dirty.” So I would explain to them, “I’ve been cleaning my mom’s house this way and it makes her smile, and it makes her happy. And I can do the same thing for you. And when I’m done, it won’t just look clean. It will smell clean for the entire week until I come back to clean it again. Because there won’t be any little dirt that can hide where people can smell if your house smells dirty. It will smell clean every time they walk in.”
And they would smile and nod, and it went on for way too long. And if they didn’t hire me, they would say, “Well, we don’t need to hire you. But I think that Bob and Linda across the street, they need to hire you. So go talk to them.” I got clients. I had clients that way for $5 an hour, cleaning their houses. And that’s what I used anytime I needed money.
Miriam Schulman:
Which I want to point out was a lot of money when you and I were 13. Because I think you’re about the same age as me. So that was a lot of money. Like babysitting was what, $2 an hour if you were lucky, right?
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Yes, I was high ticket even then.
Miriam Schulman:
Love it. So I had stumbled upon Kelly on a podcast that I don’t even normally listen to. I was just like, “This looks good. I’m going to listen to this.” And what she had to say completely blew my mind, which is why I’m so excited for today’s episode. Because I know that my audience needs to hear this. And even though Kelly, you say that you’re mostly going to be talking about this in terms that women are more susceptible to a lot of these issues that we’re diving into today. That some men fall victim to it as well, just not as really. Would you agree with that?
Kelly Hollingsworth:
I call the fears that we’re going to discuss the five female fears. And it recently occurred to me that I have been in an odd position of being a mentor and an advisor to some of the highest earning men on the planet. And also to my female friends who under earn. So I have developed the impression that men don’t suffer from these fears.
Miriam Schulman:
No, just the highest earning men don’t suffer from these fears. Exactly.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
It could be the case that there are men outside that small group who do suffer from them.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. So I’ve heard you say under earning for men and women are two sides of the same coin. Let’s talk about that.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
When men under earn, it is because they think they know more than they do. And when women under earn, it is because they think they know less than they do. And this is why at any given level of employment or entrepreneurship, what you will inevitably see is men who are earning above their pay grade and women who are earning below their pay grade.
I think it was ZipRecruiter conducted a study and it said men will apply for jobs when they know 60 to 80% of what the job requires. They have 60 to 80% of the skills, or the credentials, or whatever. Women will not apply unless they have 100% or more.
Miriam Schulman:
Wow. Interesting. So having been in the hedge fund, I know that they were even trading on bets at least at my hedge fund. Well my hedge fund, Kelly knows but not everybody knows, my hedge fund famously went under. They were trading millions of dollars on securities that they had no business doing. And they didn’t seem to have a problem with it. But because it’s like you said, they didn’t feel they needed to know everything about it. And sometimes that worked out for them and this time it didn’t. So now we’re going to talk about cockroaches.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Oh good.
Miriam Schulman:
Now the cockroaches just so you know have nothing to do with Kelly’s housekeeping.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Definitely not. No, definitely not.
Miriam Schulman:
So talk to me about why opportunities are like cockroaches. I love this expression.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Well as you said in the intro, I started a hedge fund. I think there are about, I don’t know, five women in the world who’ve ever managed a hedge fund. I remember somebody asking me, “What do you do?” And I said, “I manage a hedge fund.” And they said, “Well whose hedge fund is it?” And I said, “It’s mine.” They said, “What are you talking about? You can’t just start a hedge fund.” And I said, “Well yeah, you can. I did.”
Miriam Schulman:
You’re such a baller.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Thank you. I was working at what’s called a fund of hedge funds. And we would allocate money to other hedge fund managers. We had a mandate in our firm that we wouldn’t invest with a manager unless he had this much hundreds of millions of dollars under management. What we knew though is that the more money a fund is managing, the less successful it will be. And I thought, well that’s ridiculous. Why don’t we go find the guys who are managing nothing who are really talented and give them money?
So I started a joint venture with my firm. I went out to find the best trading talent that I could find. I found the single most gifted S&P trader that I’ve seen before or since. And for your audience who doesn’t know what that means, you just bet if the stock market’s going up or if it’s going down. I convinced him to let me start a hedge fund around his talent. And he said, “Okay, I’ll trade your money. And whoever else you can get to invest in this thing.” I took all the money I had plus $250,000 borrowed on credit cards at less than 2% interest. And I started a fund. I made money the first month, I made money a second month. He was trading the money and I was just watching the profits pile up. Pretty soon, people around me were saying, “Wow, this thing is actually making money. Can I get in on it? Can I get in on it?”
I would tell them the story of how I started the fund. Just like I would tell the story of when I was a housekeeper. That’s how I got clients, just telling stories. So I’d tell the story about how I discovered this trader, how I started the fund. People would invest. And pretty soon, I was raking in the money. I was living down in the Virgin Islands. I was living at the beach. I was paying 4% in taxes. And then I decided this is it. I’ve made it. I’m going to pursue my artist dream. I’m going to move back to North Idaho. And I’m going to live off the money that this fund is kicking out for me. And I’m going to write novels. And my S&P trader called me and said, “I don’t want to trade other people’s money anymore. I want to go back to just trading for myself.” And suddenly I had no income.
I let the business go. I sent all the investors’ money home. And I was sitting in this house that didn’t have a heating system, and I had no income. And I was wondering, what am I going to do now? And I look back on that, and I realized that I was just in classic victim mode. I was thinking this guy is the only reason I have this fund. And it was just wrong. I went out searching for someone like him, and I found him. And if I found one, I could find another one. Because opportunities are like cockroaches. Where there’s one, there’s two. Where there’s two, there’s four.
And I think this is such a powerful concept for your audience. Because as artists, we tend to think, “Well, one person liked my novel. One person liked my painting.” But if there’s one, there’s two. If there’s two, there’s four. So you just have to know and trust and believe that there is more there. If one person loved it and if it resonated with one person, it will be true with lots and lots of people behind that one person.
Miriam Schulman:
I love the way you put that Kelly. And the other thing I just want to highlight, and it’s how storytelling leads to sales. How important your stories, whether you’re talking about selling your services as a housekeeper or convincing people to invest a lot of money in an opportunity that could go very wrong. That you were using stories both ways. And what artists need to do is use those stories to sell their art as well. So I’m really glad you brought that up. Why does how a woman feel about money and her role and earning it accurately predict how much money she’ll earn?
Kelly Hollingsworth:
I love that you asked me that question because I’ve been thinking about you and your audience all weekend. And with words, I’m going to give you an example with my form of art. And then I’ll try to extrapolate it to your larger audience.
When you are feeling a certain way about yourself, when you’re in what I call a high vibe mode. And I’m not into the woo, really. When you think a thought about yourself or anything else that you’re generating or anything else that you’re producing, that thought is a sentence that runs through your brain that generates an emotional response in your body. And what is an emotion? It is literally a vibration. This is why when we’re experiencing unpleasant emotions, we like to do things like, binge on mashed potatoes. If you picture a crystal wine glass and you tap it, if the glass is empty, it will cause the glass to vibrate. But if you fill the glass with mashed potatoes and you tap it, you’ll just get a thud. So when our bodies are vibrating with a certain type of vibrational energy that we don’t experience as pleasant, it’s a negative emotion. We will try to fill our body with something because we don’t want to feel those vibrations. We want to dull them.
So when you’re in a high vibe state, what you are doing is thinking thoughts about yourself and what you are producing, the art that you’re working on. That creates a certain energy, a certain vibrational frequency that I think attaches to the words that you write.
In my work with women who want to make more money, one of the things we do is we look at the copy they write whether it’s an email to an investor, something to post on Facebook, an ad, a podcast episode, whatever it is. And I’m always looking for the under earning thoughts that generated those words. I can feel them in the words when I read the words. So I think that the words have a residue on them when they’re written from an under earning place.
Miriam Schulman:
I completely agree. And for many of the same reasons you do. It’s when you’re coming from a place of low confidence. “Do you like it? What do you think of my art?” You’re posting on social media. “What do you think?” That’s so lame. “What do you think of it?” That’s coming from a low energy, low confidence place. Rather than, “Look at this that I just made.” You could feel the difference in the energy, not, “What do you think?” But, “Look at this.” People can feel that. What is going to sell art, really sell anything is the confidence and communicating confidently. So the more you can communicate with confidence, the more easily you’ll sell no matter what it is. And that’s why what Kelly is saying, how you feel about money, how you feel about yourself, and how you feel about what you’re making is going to show up and will impact your results.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Yes, absolutely. And I think it applies not to just the communication part of it, but actually in the creation part. There’s an energy about yourself when you’re creating that informs what you create. There’s bravery, there’s courage. You’re doing things that other people won’t do. And if you’re not feeling that way about yourself when you’re creating, you’re holding back.
I have a series of novels that I’ve been working on for a long time. And they kept getting stuck. They kept getting stuck in my brain. And finally I realized, “Here’s where I’m holding back. My characters always want to get into bed with each other, and I don’t want to let them because I’m afraid to let them go there.” I finally realized I’m just going to have to publish a series of steamy novels for smart women. I have to have a little more courage than that.
So I think with art especially, whatever it is that you’re hiding from because you’re feeling unconfident, that will impair your art and it will impair the way you describe your art to others.
Miriam Schulman:
I had a painting mentor, watercolor mentor Mel Stabin. He used to tell us that the big difference between amateur artists and thriving professional artists is amateur artists, they’re afraid to be bold. And thriving artists are afraid that they’re not being bold enough. And that’s true like you said, not just with the art. He was talking specifically with art. But I also see it Kelly with my students, with their marketing. They might be bold in their art, but then they’re afraid to talk about their art in the boldest way possible. And what I’ve been pushing them is not to be afraid to be bold, but afraid of not being bold enough. That’s the energy they need to push into.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
I love it. Art is truly a business in that respect. Because that’s what every business owner needs to do. But artists need to do it more than anyone because we all sort of understand what certain products do in the market.
With art, often the artist is our guide to educating us what the meaning of it is. And if you’re not being bold about that and being really forthright about what it means, you’re not helping people into the journey of experiencing the art and really loving it and understanding it.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s really well said. By the way, if you want to turn your passion for art into profits but you’re lacking a solid strategy or a winning mindset, I can help you. Of course I have a program that helps with that called the Artist Incubator. But if you’re not sure if you’re ready for that program yet, you can take my quiz to learn the next best steps for you. This quiz is based on my experience of working with artists inside my Artist Incubator program. And the results are highly personalized. If you want to take it, go to schulmanart.com/quiz. It only takes a few minutes.
And you know what? I’d love to hear your results. So after you’ve taken it, please tag me @schulmanart on Instagram, or send me a direct message and let me know what your results are. I can’t wait to hear from you. Now back to the show. Why do you say that reasonableness is the real glass ceiling holding back woman?
Kelly Hollingsworth:
It is so pervasive when I first start working with women on their income goals and how they’re going to hit them. They say, “Well, this is what I want to make.” And I say, “Really? If 10 times that amount just dropped out of the sky and landed on your desk, you wouldn’t be thrilled?” “Well of course I’d be thrilled, but I just want to be reasonable.”
So when you decide this is where it is, I’m being reasonable. It’s less than I want, but this is reasonable. Your brain, it’s like putting a governor on a sports card. You can’t go any faster than what your brain thinks is reasonable. I never would have believed as a 13 year old housekeeper, but I totally believe it now. It is so much easier to earn a lot of money than it is to earn a little bit of money. So if you’re thinking I want to be reasonable about the amount of money that I earn, you’re basically just saying I would like a really difficult financial road in front of me. That’s what reasonableness means.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. That brings us to number one. I love these five things that Kelly has for us. And what I love even more is your car analogies.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Commercial success as an artist is like taking your car for a road trip. You are driving towards artistic success. Meaning not just recognition for your art, but also you’re getting paid for your art. And what is the first thing you need to do when you’re going on a road trip? You have to get in the car. What happens with so many artists is they’ve bought the car. They’ve paid for the lessons, they paid for the supplies, they paid for the classes. They’ve gone to art school. They’ve devoted weekends, and evenings, and years to perfecting their art and their skill as artists. And it’s all right there. But when it comes time to getting in the car that takes them towards commercial success, towards money. What happens is they don’t want anyone to know that they want money in exchange for art.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh my gosh. Do you know how many times I interview people for my artist incubator? And I asked them, “If I could wave a magic wand, what is your art career going to look like?” And they cannot tell me how much money they want. They say things like, I want very vague things. “I want recognition.” That’s what they’ll say. “I want recognition. I want Instagram followers.” I says, “Yeah, but we’re talking about making a living from this. So how much money do you want?” They don’t want to tell me, like it’s a dirty subject.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Completely. Rooms full of women. I will ask that same question. “What do you want to make?” “Well, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.” And I’ll say, “Well, if I’m writing checks, how big do you want your check to be? Would you be delighted with 100,000?” “Yes, I would.” “Would you be delighted with 500,000?” “Well, yeah.” “How about a million?” They’re even more delighted.
So they want the money. They have no problem with money just flowing to me. And they want to put their work out into the world and help people with it, whatever it is they do. What they are really uncomfortable with doing is connecting those two things. And they are inherently connected, just like in commerce it’s a coin. You get money on one side of the coin and you provide art on the other side of the coin. That’s the only sustainable model there is. Unless you can find a benefactor. But it’s much easier to just create art that other people want in their lives and that they’re willing to pay money for it. And then you don’t have to have a third party in there.
Miriam Schulman:
So owning their desire. This is the one thing that stood out for me as being a mostly female problem. Because I really feel that at a young age, socially boys and men are allowed to talk about how much money they want to make. And I think that we train girls not to. And I feel like it’s part of that sexual repression too. We’re not allowed to want sex. We’re not allowed to want money. So taking ownership of wanting money is something that we as women sometimes have a problem with.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Yeah. It’s foreign to my experience. Always admitted, you’re saying I would use the word admit, right?
Miriam Schulman:
Right.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Yeah. I’m admitting that I want it. I was very transparent. I want to make money. I’m going to make money. And it felt very foreign to me when I started working with women that this would come up. I’d be like, “What is happening here?” But I saw that they feared communicating that they wanted money in exchange for what they did.
Miriam Schulman:
I don’t know how much of it has to do with our backgrounds. Because for me Kelly, it was like well, when I first started working. If I’m going to do something for money, it better be as much money as possible. That was my attitude. I think I remember hearing that you had a similar thought. Like okay, I’m going to be a tax attorney or something.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
I was a pharmacy major. Somebody said, “Well, tax attorneys make 900 an hour.” And I thought I don’t even know what that is. But if that’s what they make, that’s what I’m going to do. So I studied accounting and law.
Miriam Schulman:
I was an engineering student and I found out well actually, you don’t make much money in engineering. The real money is over in Wall Street. I was like okay, sign me up. I had debts to pay back. I had student loans to pay back. I had no shame. And I started off, I was making more money than my husband my very first year.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
This is something that people who are creatively minded, the artists of the world don’t think about. Be your own benefactor. If you can make $900 an hour, you don’t have to work very many hours to have a lovely studio, and all the supplies, and classes, and lessons that you want. And that was always in the back of my mind. I never wanted to work all the time. I wanted every hour that I worked to pay off in spades so that I could do the things I wanted to do.
Miriam Schulman:
But it’s okay to want money for your artwork. That’s the point when I’m talking to people and they say they just want recognition. I was like, “Well, you don’t really need me for that. Being popular and making money are two different paths.”
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Yes.
Miriam Schulman:
You can have both, but popularity doesn’t mean you’ll be making money.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Right. For the artists of the world. For everyone but especially the artists. I think it’s important to notice that people love spending money on art.
Miriam Schulman:
They do.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
They do.
Miriam Schulman:
They do.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
They want the prestige of a big price tag.
Miriam Schulman:
Myself and my clients, we’re all selling lots of art right now. Art sales have not stopped during this whole coronavirus pandemic. People are buying art and spending good money on art. It’s really a myth that you’re going to starve as an artist. If you have an attitude of a starving artist, you will starve for sure. Because you will find evidence of that and make it true for yourself, but it doesn’t have to be that way. All right, let’s move on to number two. Walk us through it.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
If you overcome your fear of desire. That means you’re readily acknowledging, “Yes. I want money in exchange for art.” That puts you in the driver’s seat of the car. The next thing you have to do is engage your brain in that process. In the car analogy, it is the equivalent of actually putting the car into drive.
So what a lot of people do in their business, particularly creatively minded people is they’re like a little kid standing on the driver’s seat of mom and dad’s car. And they’re pretending they’re driving the car. But the car isn’t in drive and it is going nowhere. And the engagement that happens in a car as you put the transmission in drive. In your business, the engagement is I am mentally engaged in the idea of being a working artist.
What I see so often in disengaged people, disengaged entrepreneurs is I just want to be present for someone else or something else. I hear it a lot with working moms. I just want to be present for my children.
What that means is it sounds lovely. It’s the loveliest sounding thought in the world, but it’s so damaging. Because if you are the parent who wants to be present, what that means is when a child is in the room, I am mentally occupied only on that child. Even if the child is doing something else and not thinking about me at all.
So we have begun to insist on a level of empty-headedness in the parents of the world. And I see it even now. I love to watch Mad Men. And if you go back to the fifties and sixties. When children were in the room, parents were thinking about other things. But now when children are in the room, everybody’s eyes are on the child. We are all being present for the child.
When we demand that kind of mental engagement in the role of parenthood, essentially what we’re doing is taking a mental backseat in our business. Our brains aren’t great multi-taskers. If we’re engaged in one thing, we cannot be engaged in another thing. It’s like having your car in reverse and thinking you can go forward. I’m not saying that you should, that anyone should ignore their children or whatever it else else it is that they want to be ‘present’ for. But I am saying that it’s a lovely way of saying I’m really not going to put my business in drive and go somewhere.
Miriam Schulman:
Now I’m going to jump in here because I have two grown children. And Kelly, you don’t have children, right? Yeah. So I know that I’m going to feel more comfortable helping you out with this part.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Thank you.
Miriam Schulman:
So first of all, your kids don’t care if you’re engaged with them or not. Let me tell you, my children are 22. And one of them is going to be turning 20 soon. As long as you’re in the next room, they don’t care how miserable you are. They really don’t want you paying attention to them. I think it’s that whole attachment parenting. So you may not have been aware of this because you hadn’t been raising kids the last 20 years. It had moved from the Dr. Spock school of parenting, which was very much a hands off approach. Let kids build resilience. And it moved to this Dr. Brazelton, which was all about wear the kid in a sling. And you have to be constantly breastfeeding, constantly thinking about your kids. That whole attachment parenting that I think has kind of invaded the last generation. And it may also be because we have less kids than we used to. Or women who have given up a career to raise the kids. Well, now they better come out perfectly.
So I feel it’s more like kids are more like pancakes. If you flip them too fast and you pay too much attention, actually it’s not to their advantage. It’s to their detriment. You know what I’m talking about with pancakes. Right? [crosstalk 00:33:45] and unusually the first one doesn’t come out as good as the second one.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
I’ll tell that to my older sister.
Miriam Schulman:
Well, too much attention is not always a good thing is the point. That’s not like we’ve ruined our first child. So number two mommy guilt, right?
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Yes. It can be other things too, though. For example, if your art is currently a side hustle and you’re engaged in employment, it can be just too much mental energy devoted to your employer on the evenings or the weekends. It’s when your brain is engaged elsewhere because you’re thinking I need to be present for that thing. It’s not necessarily parenthood, but that’s where it comes up a lot.
Miriam Schulman:
All right, let’s move on to number three.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
This one, I’m really loving that we’re having this conversation for your audience of artists. Because I had never considered this angle before. Once you’re in the car and the car is in drive, we’re not playing around anymore. We’re actually going to go on this road trip to entrepreneurial success. What do you have to do then? You have to raise the garage door, and you have to take your foot off the brake. And why do so many people hesitate to do that?
I was thinking that it’s women because they fear being seen. What women say is, “I need to lose 20 pounds. I need to get the Botox. I need to get that facelift. I don’t look good enough to go out and participate in commerce.” So the third fear that keeps people from making money is called the fear of visibility. But I can totally see that with your audience, it goes well beyond your personal appearance. And it extends to the appearance of the work you’ve created.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. Because once you put it out there, it’s open for rejection.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
There’s that vulnerability of does it look good enough? Is it aesthetically pleasing enough?
Miriam Schulman:
And then some of the excuses I’ll hear, which may not even be the real reason. It could just be the fear of rejection. They’ll say, “I don’t want to put it on the internet because somebody might steal it. Steal the image.” Which is a problem. But it’s not like it should stop you from, you know yeah. You could get bitten by a shark. It doesn’t mean you never go in the ocean. Yeah. People can steal and they have steal, and there is ways of going after them. But people will come up with all kinds of reasons why they don’t want to put their stuff out there. When really, it comes down to a fear of rejection.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Well, the best thing you can have as an artist is people who want to copy your work.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s true.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
If they want to do that, that means you’ve arrived. Every working artist who is successful is going to experience that. So you should welcome that. The fact that they’re copying it means you’re creating something that people find important or pleasing.
Miriam Schulman:
They’re going to copy it anyway, too. So unless you just want to hide away and never sell anything and not just pretend to be an artist … I’m not saying, by the way, I know I have a lot of listeners who paint for fun. There’s nothing wrong with painting for fun. But if you want to make a living as an artist, you have to be willing to put it out there. And you have to be willing to risk being rejected. You have to be willing to risk people copying you. That’s part of the trade off. Coca-Cola didn’t say, “Somebody copied me. I can’t sell any more soda.”
Kelly Hollingsworth:
I really like to avoid using the word risk around any business endeavor.
Miriam Schulman:
Tell us more.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Our brains are taught entrepreneurship is risky. Business is risky. And I tell my clients all the time if you tell your brain this is a risky endeavor we’re going into, it is going to push back. Your brain is designed to do one thing primarily and it’s to keep you alive. So this whole idea of it’s going to be risky. You have to be comfortable with risk. You just have to take the risk. Feel the fear and do it anyway. It’s nonsense. It shuts you down. There is nothing risky about entrepreneurship. And here’s why.
Human nature is human nature. People want what they want. Everyone wants beauty in their lives. Everyone wants to feel meaning. Everyone wants to experience that happy ending. Everyone wants to own a beautiful thing and have it be a part of their life.
That’s human nature, and it is not going away. So there is nothing risky about fulfilling that very human need in exchange for money. You are going to make money all day long if you do that. It’s like selling hamburgers to people who just came off Survivor after 30 days of Survivor. If you’re the dude with a hamburger stand there, you’re going to make money. People want hamburgers, and they’re going to buy them. It’s lemonade at the Mojave Desert. If you’re selling beautiful works of art, it is a certainty that people will want to buy them. There’s nothing risky about that.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. And right now with people staying home, I think that’s one of the reasons why the art sales have actually gone up the last few months for me and many of my friends and my clients. We have experienced a real surge in art sales. People are home, and they want beauty, and they want luxury. I think you had mentioned earlier, Kelly, how people want to spend a lot of money for art.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
I do. Look at the bare wall behind me.
Miriam Schulman:
I can help with that.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Yes, exactly. Something needs to be done here.
Miriam Schulman:
Fear of visibility? Is that the way you put number three? Okay. Fear of confrontation. Number four, tell us more.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
This comes up in my business a lot. I coach women who are subject matter experts in whatever field that they’re in. And when you’re an expert, you’re coming out to the world and you’re saying, “This is what I know to be true that cuts against conventional wisdom. And this is what you all know, need to know to be more successful, have an easier life, a better experience, whatever it is your expertise creates for people.” So what women say to me is, “I don’t want to show up as an expert because someone might confront me.”
I was working with the tax lawyer who wasn’t making a great deal of money. And I went to her website and I saw she had all these articles written about taxation by her mentor. She wasn’t putting her own words and her own opinions onto the site. And ultimately, what she said about that was, :Well if I say what I think, people might confront me.”
So I could easily see this coming up with your audience in that if you put a price on a certain work, people might confront you about the price. If you are particularly bold, I’m thinking of that artist, what was his name? Mapplethorpe?
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Who had the very controversial pieces that I think even the Supreme Court got involved with. So if you’re doing something particularly bold or shocking-
Miriam Schulman:
Really great art is very confrontational. I mean if you go through art history, the art that was popular with the establishment, and you can’t even remember who painted the naked Venus with the angels flying overhead, right? Versus Manet’s painting a prostitute lying there, where there was her black maid serving her the flower.
So the art that is very confrontational, and what’s hard is putting yourself out there in painting in the way that you want to paint. Where I see this showing up the most frequently across the board. So whether these are my art students who are just starting out. Actually, I see it more with them than I do people who have confidence in their art. They’re afraid to move beyond the art that they’re creating in the classroom where it’s paint this, paint that, step-by-step. And they’ll be painting in the style of their teacher. And they’re afraid to create their own style of art. So that’s where I see it coming up the most for artists. Not stepping into their own style and their own voice, and their own vision.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Yes. I completely agree. I see that in all different areas of entrepreneurship. And probably overcoming the fear of confrontation is nowhere near as important as it is with an artist.
Miriam Schulman:
Perfect. Okay. So now we’re down to number five. So take us home. What’s number five?
Kelly Hollingsworth:
It’s fear of equality. Once you overcome the fear of confrontation, you actually put your foot on the gas and you get out there, and you start doing things in your business and selling your art. And with fear of equality, the question is how fast are you going to go? Are you going to lay on the gas and just go deep into the thing it is you’re doing that the world wants to reward you for with recognition and money? Or are you going to hang back?
And the reason people hang back is because of a thought that goes so and so comes first. And it may not be a person. It could be a job. It could be a status. I definitely experienced this as an attorney when I was practicing law. I was never providing legal advice. I was just giving business coaching to people. And they’re like, “Oh yeah, Kelly’s my attorney. She helps me with my business.” But they didn’t know really that I was coaching them. They just thought, “She’s my lawyer. This is what lawyers do.”
And I was reluctant to lose the label of lawyer to be a coach. My legal practice comes first because that’s something that everybody respects and understands. And I think it happens with an identity. This identity comes first. It can happen with a career. My husband’s career comes before my art. I see creative women holding back in a lot of different areas because they need to do certain things to advance their businesses. But they say, “Well, my kid’s tuition. My husband’s laid off. Or my husband’s on a 50% paycheck right now because of the quarantine. So the thing that I need to do can’t come first. It’s necessarily secondary to all these other things.”
So fear of equality happens whenever we’re thinking something or someone else comes first. And that also sounds lovely. But what it necessarily also means, the unspoken uglier side of that is, “My stuff comes behind everything else.” And that’s what a lot of artists think, but they simply do not say.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. And the way I see this showing up, just to be completely blunt about it with women is, and I think I did hear you say this. That you don’t want to pass your husband in the car. You don’t want to earn more because, “That might affect the marriage. I don’t want to emasculate him.” It sounds so backwards when we say it out loud, but that is really what is going on. And the reason this one is not just a female fear. I know I’ve heard from some male entrepreneurs who realized that they had earning blocks when they hit their parents’ ceiling. Like when they realized that they were going to make more than their father. “Well he worked so hard and I’m not working hard at all. How can I be making more money than he is?”
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Yeah, that is interesting. This has been a very valuable interview for me to participate in because I’m seeing that what I thought were the five female fears are just five financial fears for everybody who’s not Paul Tudor Jones.
Miriam Schulman:
Right. John Meriwether, Paul Tudor Jones. I love it. Okay. So to wrap this all up, Kelly has a podcast coming up. How can they get on the list so they find out when that first episode drops Kelly?
Kelly Hollingsworth:
There’s a link and we’ll put it in the show notes. I am really enamored with female financial empowerment. So if you’re a woman who wants to listen to my show, you can get on the launch list. We can put the link in the notes. And one lucky lady is going to win a nice Louis Vuitton bag. That’s what I coveted as a poor girl cleaning rich people’s houses. I just wanted one of those nice bags, and so I give them away to women I encounter in business.
Miriam Schulman:
Beautiful. Okay, so we’ll make sure that link goes in the show notes. So should be coming out in June 2020, is that right?
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Yes.
Miriam Schulman:
All right. Okay, so we’re going to include the links to all these places, how you can work with Kelly in the show notes, which you will be able to find at schulmanart.com/92. All right Kelly, do you have any last words for my listeners before we call this podcast complete?
Kelly Hollingsworth:
It’s important for artists to consider that prices always rise when demand is higher than supply. What I see a lot of artists doing is creating art rather than promoting the art they’ve created. And that creates a higher supply than demand.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, preach. I have one client in mind. I’m not going to say her name right now, but you’re listening. You know who you are. There’s probably a lot of people who this applies to.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Create amazing pieces, and create fewer of them, and promote them.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes, thanks for being with me here today.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
I loved being here. Thank you for having me.
Miriam Schulman:
If you really want to ramp up your art business but you don’t know where to start, or maybe you’re already a seasoned pro, but you’re still struggling because you don’t know what to do next. I suggest you find out what the next best steps are for you. So here’s what you can do next. If you haven’t done so already, go to schulmanart.com/quiz. Take it. And remember, if you’re not quite ready to go full time in your art business, this quiz will tell you. That’s what took us so long to create it, because the results will really help people in a personalized way. It only takes a few moments. And if you already took the quiz and you got results, I want you to look for an email for me. I’m going to invite you to the next steps, what to do now that you’ve gotten your results. And I will be giving you your marching orders.
Kelly Hollingsworth:
Okay, so we’ve got lots more coming your way. This summer on The Inspiration Place, we’re welcoming Gretchen Rubin, Tanya Geisler, and Michelle Martello. And trust me, you’re not going to want to miss a single one of these powerhouses. To make sure you don’t miss a single thing, hit the subscribe or follow button on your podcast app. And if you’re feeling extra generous, please leave me a review on Apple Podcasts to tell us what you love most about the show. Here’s how. Search for The Inspiration Place. Scroll down. You’ll see ratings and reviews. Hit five stars and write a review. And most importantly, don’t forget to hit the send button. And by the way, if you pop your Instagram handle at the end of the review, I’ll even give you a shout up over on my IG stories. All right guys, thanks so much for being with me here today. I’ll see you the same place, same time next week. Make it a great one.
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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