THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Lori Siebert:
I feel like those kinds of connections with others is really one of the key things in propelling your career.
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 arts. And now your host, Miriam Schulman.
Well hello, passion maker. This is Miriam Schulman, your curator of inspiration. And you’re listening to episode number 163 of The Inspiration Place podcast. I am so grateful that you’re here. Today, we’re talking all about commercial art. In this episode, you’ll discover what artists should include when creating a portfolio to show agents, how artists make money in the world of art licensing and how to pivot in your career, depending on how you and the world change.
Today’s guest opened her own design firm just three years out of college. Her firm, Olika Studios has developed branding and design programs for influential clients, such as Target, Bath & Body Works, Nickelodeon and Universal Studios. She now works with several top manufacturers in the gift and home decor industry. Her client list includes DEMDACO, Creative Co-Op, Studio M, LANG, and many more. Her licensed products have been sold through many key retailers and many small gift shops throughout the United States and Canada. She’s also the co-founder of ArtBizJam and ArtBizJam Abundance, which provide helpful business tips and networking opportunities for women artists. Please welcome to The Inspiration Place. Lori Siebert. Hello, Lori, and welcome to the show.
Lori Siebert:
Hello. I’m so happy to be here. I’m so glad you asked me. I’m honored.
Miriam Schulman:
Well, thank you.
Lori Siebert:
You’re a powerhouse. So I mean really-
Miriam Schulman:
Aww, thank you so much.
Lori Siebert:
… I was honored when you reached out, thank you so much.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, I feel the same way about you. I mean, I’ve known about you for years. My daughter had one of your calendars when she… she’s 23 now, but I remember she had one of your friendship calendars from back when you first started. But you have such a distinct style. I know you say you’re a chameleon, but your hand is so recognizable, you’re-
Lori Siebert:
Really? People say that I’m like, “Really? I guess.”
Miriam Schulman:
You only have one daughter. Do you have more than one child?
Lori Siebert:
Yes. We have a son and a daughter. And my son’s a mechanical engineer.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, cool. I feel like it’s related the scie… people say it’s different sides of the brain, but I don’t believe that. I think they’re both [crosstalk 00:02:55].
Lori Siebert:
Oh, he’s very creative. Oh yeah, totally.
Miriam Schulman:
So I have a sister and people always say, we look exactly alike and we can’t see it. But that’s how I think it is a lot of times with our art. We’re too close to it that we see the differences but other people are like, “No, it’s the same style.”
Lori Siebert:
I think you’re right because friends will go into a store and they’ll see something and they’ll say, “I knew you did that.” They knew right away. It’s usually pretty happy art. I do pretty happy art, but there’s a lot of stuff I’ve done that if you saw it, there’s stuff I’ve done that you would never guess I did it because I was designing to a certain aesthetic.
Miriam Schulman:
Interesting.
Lori Siebert:
So, yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
But I bet it’s fun for you sometimes to do something that’s not …
Lori Siebert:
Well, it’s usually aesthetic I still like, because I really like clean, modern. I like that look, I just don’t often do it myself, but I like to get the chance to once in a while.
Miriam Schulman:
So one of the reasons I wanted to get you on soon is we had on Ronnie Walter and she listed you as an example of a conceptual artist in the art licensing world. And I said, “Oh yeah, yeah, she would be a perfect person for the show.” So I’m so excited we get to complete that and have you here.
Lori Siebert:
Well, Ronnie’s wonderful and thanks to Ronnie. I’ll have to give her a little thank you for that.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes, for sure. Okay. So I thought the best place to get started since this is The Inspiration Place, is to ask you how you get inspired.
Lori Siebert:
Well, that isn’t hard for me because ever since I was a little kid, I’m just constantly curious, I’m looking at other designers, other artists, I get inspired by a grit on the ground while I’m walking the streetscape, graffiti. I pretty much find inspiration everywhere I go. So I’m never short on that. And I’m really, really inspired by nature. So I’m constantly taking pictures of flowers and I pull over on the side of the road a lot and I whip out my scissors and cut things and I put them in a notebook to press them because I use those for stencils. So yeah, inspiration is never hard for me. And also I have to do a lot of trend research for what I do in art licensing. So that’s reason why I’m just always looking and always trying to stay up on what’s current and what’s going on.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, that’s wonderful. One of the questions I wanted to ask you, which maybe we’ll jump ahead to that is when you’re working with… So you basically have an agency, and you represent yourself within that agency, you don’t have an agent.
Lori Siebert:
I did have an agent for over 15 years. Okay. And I left my agent a little over a year ago. So yes, I’m now representing myself and I’m also representing our daughter who works for us. She’s amazing. And she’s very talented. So we work together, now I’m showing both of our work.
Miriam Schulman:
I did see Kenzie’s work on your website. And I do want to ask you some questions about how you work with your daughter. So we’ll put a pin on that idea. So you initially started a graphic design firm. Do you still do that work in your company?
Lori Siebert:
Well, graphic design is always part of anything that I do because you’re always doing branding and pattern development. A lot of the things that happen in graphic design are also part of anything that I do. But what I don’t do any longer is I used to do a lot of collateral material like designing brochures and all those kinds of things. And then we moved into doing signage and environmental graphics. So I pretty much touched on every area that a graphic designer can touch upon. And all of those things weave their way into what I do, but I’ve been focused more on art licensing for the last, like I said, over 15 years.
Miriam Schulman:
So you feel that a lot of your background as a graphic designer informs your work now, is that right?
Lori Siebert:
Absolutely. Absolutely, because what I was taught in school is to get my graphic design degree was really problem solving and how to come up with systems and how to communicate. And all of that comes into play pretty much every area that I work in. So it was a really good base. So initially, I started working with like you mentioned, Target and Nickelodeon, and for those kinds of companies, I was doing more brochure work or some ads, but it was more collateral stuff. For Target though, we would do style guides for them, seasonal style guides and what that comprise was we would create all of the graphics and the prints and patterns and the typography and the color palette for a season, put that all into a document that they can then give to their manufacturers in soft and hard goods. So they’re all working from the same kit or parts when they’re designing product for the store. So that there’s a real unity throughout everything that they put on the shelves.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. Now, one thing that I wanted to understand, you’re very well known and you have a lot of hot, well known clients. When I speak to artists, some of them really cringe when talking about commissions. My understanding though, is even with the work you do, sometimes it does take that form where they come to you and say, “Hey, design a line of mugs for me.” Do you feel that’s a commission work, or you mostly go into your students and say, “Okay, I’m going to imagine this conceptual line and sell it.” Does that question make sense?
Lori Siebert:
Yes, absolutely.
Miriam Schulman:
What portion of your work is where you get to just dream and come up with your designs and what portion would it be where you feel it’s more like a work for hire and it almost a commission style job?
Lori Siebert:
I would say early on when I first started into licensing, I didn’t really have a client base, so then I was just creating collections based on what I like to draw or paint or what I felt would sell. But as I’ve gone through the last 15 years, and I think also because of my background as a graphic designer and how I like to work then, I liked working very closely with each of my clients and really getting an understanding of who their clients are and what their brand stands for, and what their mission is. So more over the last several years, I’ve really been more interested in forming partnerships with my clients.
And what I mean by that is I become a bit of a chameleon and one client, one manufacturer, they may stand for something that’s very simple and clean and they have a certain client base that’s attracted to that. So whatever I would design for that manufacturer would have that aesthetic. Versus another manufacturer might be more boho and they’re looking for something that’s crazy and colorful. And so I would design to that. So I think my background has really helped in that because sometimes artists that license have a particular look that they’re known for and that’s their brand.
But my brand is more about… I use the word chameleon a lot because I’m able to respond to, if a manufacturer gives me what their trends are for a certain season, I’m able to respond to those trends and create art that would work back to those. So a good portion of what I’m doing anymore is that work, but I don’t to use work for hire because work for hire means something different in the way that you get paid. It’s all still licensed and royalty base, but it is a hybrid of me bringing a little of me to the table, but also responding to a need or a want or a hole that my manufacturer needs to fill.
Miriam Schulman:
Do you enjoy having those constraints? I mean, for me personally, I feel my creativity loves constraints.
Lori Siebert:
I like a mix of both. I, for so many years was so used to responding to a design brief and having parameters on the project and working to those parameters. That’s really comfortable for me, but I also, especially lately since I’ve… getting older, I really find that I’m wanting to create art, more and more of it just comes from me and stuff that I want to paint or I want to draw, or… So I’m finding that the balance is shifting again for me, where I’m wanting to go back, maybe to doing more of the work that just comes from my heart, but that’s not to say I still don’t do the work that I work with my partners on, the partner companies I work with. And I certainly love a good design brief because I love to just have a certain project outlined to a degree where it does have a little fence around it. So you’re just working within that fence and then trying to find a way to be really creative with those parameters.
Miriam Schulman:
I mean, I think that the challenges that you host on Instagram, and we will also talk about that in a moment. Big part of that is offering people who follow you… So it’s Lori?
Lori Siebert:
Lorisiebert.studio.
Miriam Schulman:
Perfect. Okay. @Lorisiebert.studio, which we will link in the show notes. Lori often does challenges. One of the ones I most recently saw was a color combo challenge that she ran with a recent guest on the podcast, Este MacLeod. Even that is offering a parameter for people to follow. So it’s not like, “Hey, what do you guys feel like painting today and we’ll look at it.” You’re saying, “Paint in these two color combos.” So I always find that interesting that there’s some constraint or theme around it. And how do you push it and how do people express themselves around having a constraint?
Lori Siebert:
Yeah, that’s one of the reasons why I love doing the challenges even for myself, because I can certainly come up with a direction of where I wanna take my art. And a lot of times I’ll just create my own trend boards or my own image boards for something I want to explore. But what I really love about the challenges is it’s pushed even myself to explore things that I may not have, like this recent color challenge. I have my colors that I always gravitate towards and I tend to use all of them.
So this challenge limiting it to two colors for each image was really fun and eyeopening for me to explore that. And I think a lot of people felt that way as well. It got them out of their comfort zone and it’s all about play and exploration because I think when you’re doing that, you are growing and you’re seeing things, things might occur during the process of making new art that will weave their way into the work that you start making. So I’m a big believer in practice, practice, practice, and play, play play, because that’s where I think the magic happens.
Miriam Schulman:
How did you and Este come up with the color combos? Did you come up with it yourself? And then the collaboration was just that you were both promoting it on Instagram or did you discuss it?
Lori Siebert:
Well, I think I reached out to Este maybe a year ago about co-hosting and then she reached out to me again this year and wanted to do it. So we toyed, we went back and forth on what themes we might want to do, and she suggested color. And so again, that list was a back and forth, but I have to give most of the credit to Este for really thoughtfully thinking through the colors and naming them all. And so I think the list was pretty brilliant and very inspiring. I did have input, but I really give most of the credit to Este on that.
Miriam Schulman:
Is some really beautiful color combinations and many that I wouldn’t have thought to put together.
Lori Siebert:
Yeah. I feel the same. Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
I didn’t participate online, but just in my studio, I did some private things in my journal for fun. Oh, I’m so sorry to interrupt this juicy conversation, but I just wanted to let you know, if you’re a big fan of what we talk about on the podcast every week, you absolutely can’t miss my free ebook called The Artist Profit Plan. I talk about the five things you must do to sell more art plus some of the things that are time wasters, and I’m giving this ebook to you at the very, very, very low price of absolutely free. So head on over to schulmanart.com/profit and download this awesome resource. Now back to the show.
Okay. So I promised we would circle back to the pricing models. It’s called our licensing, but licensing is really just one of the models, right?
Lori Siebert:
Right.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. Why don’t you explain that for our listeners?
Lori Siebert:
Okay. So you can work on a work for hire basis where basically you are paid a certain amount for an image or for whatever work you’re doing, but the rights and the ownership of that work is owned by whoever is paying you, and they’re paying you a fee. You can also work on a fee basis. And this is what I did a lot as a graphic designer, where again, you are doing the work for a fee, but you may be able to negotiate the usage rights. So they may pay a fee and it might be on one time usage for a card, but you still have the rights to license that work to other people or do other things with that work.
And then licensing is when you are getting a percentage of what is sold. And that percentage typically ranges between three and 8%. There’s a lot of things you need to negotiate when you’re talking about a licensing agreement. You want the term of how long they’re licensing for, what product types they’re using it for? If it’s just for the US, or if it’s international. If you Google licensing contracts, I’m sure you’ll be able to find just a basic contract that would outline all the terms that you would want to put into a licensing agreement when you work with a manufacturer.
Miriam Schulman:
If an artist’s listening, once it gets started, let’s assume they know they need a portfolio to send to an agent. What do you suggest belongs in that portfolio?
Lori Siebert:
That is an easy one because I’ve done it for a while and I actually have a PDF. I’m not sure if it’s in my links, but I can probably pull that together for you. That outlines all the different themes that the manufacturers are looking for all the time. So there’s every day, holiday, coastal, baby, kitchen, well, kitchen is included under every day. So in every day, you’re doing art that is evergreen and they can put it on product at any time of year. So it could be inspirational, florals, quotes, things like that. Things about home or family. Those are everyday themes.
Holiday, the biggest holiday of all in art licensing is Christmas. So anything that’s Christmas themed and they’re always looking for typically botanicals, snowmen, Santas, all the themes that are tried and true and happen every year. And when you just go into a store and look around, you’ll see what those themes are. So those are the themes to put your twist on and put into your portfolio.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. I have a question about that. So the way you’re saying it, we don’t have to have all those themes, right? We could pick maybe one, two or three that were special because I’m sure there’s artists who maybe they’re the Christmas artist or they’re the-
Lori Siebert:
Exactly, exactly.
Miriam Schulman:
… cute cat artist. Okay.
Lori Siebert:
Yeah. And I’m really glad you said that because yeah, you should pick and concentrate on the themes that really speak to you. If you do inspirational and that’s what you love, or you do florals, do a lot of that because that’s who you are. That’s authentic. That’ll make you happy when you’re are creating that art. I do know an artist who does licensing, who all only does Christmas and she does a ton of it every year in all different themes. And she’s really good at it.
Miriam Schulman:
What’s her name so we can share her name?
Lori Siebert:
Diane Shade [Bit 00:21:22]. Yeah. And she does a lot of fabric and just all kinds of product that are all Christmas oriented. Typically, what I’ll do for a show when I go to the gift show and those happen in January and July in Atlanta, and there I go to show all the manufacturers, the new work that we’ve done.
I develop what’s called a lookbook. And in that lookbook, I’m showing all of the new collections that I want to share with them. And each collection is comprised of four main images that could be used for wall decor or a big image on the top of a box or something like that. And then six to eight patterns that compliment those main images. And it’s really important to have that kit of parts, because you’re going to get the most flexibility and the more stability to license it to multiple people if they have all those pieces and parts to work with. So that’s important.
So in a lookbook, I might have maybe two, three Christmas collections, maybe two every day, and then I might do one or two coastal because coastal is also… that’s a big theme for several of the manufacturers that I work with. So in the coastal theme, it’s what you would think of, it’s shells and fish and palm trees. And then you even have to think, is it east coast or is it west coast? And so you can do lighthouses and crabs and go down that route. And again, thinking about what fits with what you love, maybe where you live and what you love to draw.
Miriam Schulman:
Right, because there’s a big difference between the Palm Beach coastal with flamingos and the Cape Cod coastal.
Lori Siebert:
Absolutely.
Miriam Schulman:
And I’m sure California has its own thing too.
Lori Siebert:
Yes. Yes. So a lot of times I find with coastal, they want more of a general, they just want palm trees seem to be pretty general, shells seem to be pretty general. But then I do get asked for crabs and sea horses or mermaids, things like that too.
Miriam Schulman:
Let’s talk about how you create the art. So I know a lot of artists are using the computer now. We’re about the same age. I’m not quite using the computer yet. What is your process for hand painting and then also incorporating the computer into your layered work?
Lori Siebert:
So that was a big lesson that I learned early on that I had to correct pretty quickly because it bit me in the butt. So in licensing, you wanna have the most flexibility in your art as possible. So initially, when I did the first land calendar years ago, I painted the images all in one image. So just like I would a canvas. So I had the background and everything, everything was in one image. Well, the problem with that is when they want to put it on mugs or journals or other types of products, everything has to be cut out and resized and layered in different ways. So I ended up not getting a lot of additional products made because they did not have that flexibility.
So now what we do is I paint or draw all of the icons individually, all of the background separate, and then everything gets composed in the computer so that it can be recolored if need be, resized if need be, it just makes it really, really flexible for any format that they want to put the art on. So I had to learn that one the hard way.
And the other thing to keep in mind is you want to work all the icons. I normally do everything so that one individual icon might be eight inches or larger because you also want to be able… If a shower curtain company wants to license your work, it’s going really big. So you want to have the best resolution for it to go large. So you can’t really work teen tiny either because that will also limit the possibilities for you to license your work.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s really good advice. You’re dropping so much knowledge. I’m sure my listeners are taking lots of notes right now.
Lori Siebert:
Well, good.
Miriam Schulman:
I understand that you work with your daughter Kenzie. She has her own line as well. How much does she get involved with the work that you do though? What does that look like?
Lori Siebert:
Very much so, because I don’t do the computer work myself. Jeremy works for us. He’s worked for us for over 15 years. So either Kenzie or Jeremy will take what I paint and draw and do the digital work with my art direction. But then Kenzie, over the last maybe year and a half has also been creating a lot of her own work. So at the January show, she’s going to have her own lookbook with her own collections. Actually a lot of the manufacturers we work with now already ask for her, they want Kenzie to do collections for them because they like how fresh her work is.
She’s going to probably be pursuing licensing in a bigger way, whereas I’m maybe backing a little away from licensing and not doing as much of it because I want to pursue doing more fine art and I want to paint large canvases and post retreats and things that I’ve wanted to do for a long time.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. You hinted at that at the beginning. So that brings us to the next question, which is your pivots, depending on how both the world has changed and the stages in your journey. So you’ve already shared with us a lot of pivots that you made so far. So you had the purely graphic design, the pivot to art licensing. And now this sounds like another pivot. Is that how you see it as well?
Lori Siebert:
Yeah. I feel we pivoted maybe every seven years. I drive my husband crazy in that, not so much with art licensing, we’ve stuck with that one for over 15 years. But even when we were doing graphic design, we went first doing it with mostly business to business, banks and corporations. And then I decided I wanted to really go after people like Bath & Body Works and Target and companies that I really wanted to work with.
And then we did a stint in environmental graphics for a few years. And that’s when we did all the signage for Universal Studios in the superhero island, tried that realized very quickly that wasn’t where I wanted to be. We got through the several really great projects, but yeah, that wasn’t where I wanted to stay forever. And then we realized that we were always an illustration based design firm, even all the design projects we were doing always had an illustration bent to them.
So I found out about our licensing and we started attending… Well, first we went to the licensing show and then we went to Surtex. The shows have changed a lot now, they’re very different than they were then. So I don’t really attend shows. Most of my work is done face to face or I find new clients just by reaching out through email or social media or things like that. There are still shows happening like Blue Print and there are some others, but yeah, I really don’t attend those.
So we did did the shows. We ended up finding an agent. So I’ve had two agents along the way. The second one I was with about 13 years. So then in licensing, I feel like there have been little pivots even within that. Like I explained earlier where it started out just showing whatever we did, whatever we created and more it became, because of my love of working directly with clients, we seem to do a lot more of that and that’s our approach to working with a lot of people. And I like to send an email to one of my manufacturer and saying, “What trends are you looking for right now? Is there anything you would like us to work on or take a look at?” And I usually get an answer and I find that the placement, when we work that way is better because then I’m filling a need that they have.
And it also works where they’ll just see something that we’re doing on Instagram or whatever. This happened during one of the challenges I did last February, it was the 28 feathered friends. And I sent that work from the challenge off to one of the manufacturers I work with and they did a whole collection with those pieces and it wasn’t something they were looking for, but I knew it was something that would work with their aesthetic. So I sent it off to them and they loved it.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s great. So when will that collection be available? Because I know there’s a long lead time between when you have a design.
Lori Siebert:
I’ve seen the samples. I just did a video for them to introduce it to their sales team. And it’ll probably be launched in January, I’m thinking, or maybe even in November.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. We’ll have to-
Lori Siebert:
So soon.
Miriam Schulman:
We’ll keep our eye out for that. All right. I think this is one of the last questions. How has retail shifted because of COVID?
Lori Siebert:
Oh my gosh, that’s a very big question. And it has shifted in a multitude of ways. When COVID and the lockdown first happened, a lot of licensing and the companies that I work with put everything on hold. So everything was pretty much on pause. A lot of the manufacturers that I work with, they work with both big retailers, but also a lot of small mom and pop stores. And people were not in stores and they were not shopping. So a lot of retailers went out of business. It was just a really, really hard time.
So lot of the manufacturers that I work with, if they did not have a direct to consumer online business before, they started one and, or were ramping up pretty quickly because they felt that was going to be a very important part of their business, not walking away from anything that they had done before, but out of necessity, the direct to consumer portion was happening with many of the people I work with.
The other complications in licensing have to do with getting product made and shipped because most of the products, a good portion are made in China or in other countries. And especially in China, it’s been really, really hard to get product. The container loads, the cost of container loads has more than quadrupled. So the companies I’m working with are looking at costs for goods that are skyrocketing, and they’re not even able to get the products when they need them. So there are a lot, a lot of challenges that are facing a lot of the manufacturers and they’re all looking for ways to do business in different ways because we have to, I mean, everybody did during COVID.
I mean, I started filming an online course during COVID because I’d been teaching Live and several of my friends said, “You need to teach online.” And that seemed really daunting to me. And it was a little more than I expected it to be, to actually go through the process of doing that. But I’m glad I did because now I know how to do it. And so that’s something that I maybe have down in my list for things to do going down the road.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, that sounds great. I did read recently in the New York times, how, even what you talked about with China has affected the publishing industry. Any books that are printed in color is normally done in China. And they were saying exactly what you did, that shipping containers are $23,000 to ship a container. And it used to be-
Lori Siebert:
Four.
Miriam Schulman:
Right. Exactly. Something like four or 5,000. In this article, they were talking about this woman whose book is sold out, which sounds like a good thing, except it’s not because you want to keep selling when people want it and they can’t, because they just don’t have it produced.
Lori Siebert:
Right. Right.
Miriam Schulman:
It’s a real problem. All right. Let’s get to the fun stuff. I can’t wait to hear about what retreats in person you have planned for next year? And I know it’s not on your website yet, so how do we find out about it if we… Okay. You’re going to tell us about it and you’re gonna tell us how we can be the first to know.
Lori Siebert:
Okay. Well, I just came back from one in Glastonbury, Connecticut, which was amazing. So for next year, I’m teaching at Art and soul in Portland, in March, and then I’ll be hosting my own retreats. I’m doing two of them at a beautiful venue in Kentucky called Richwood on the River. And those are May 9th through 12th and October 17th through the 20th. And then I’m hosting another one in France in September. I hosted one in France in 2019. That was magical. It was so great. So we’re going back to the same location in September next year.
So everything will be on my website. I’m working on that as we speak. I wanted to wait to promote all of this until I did the Glastonbury one. Out of respect for my friend, I didn’t want to be promoting mine until I did hers. So we’re working on that. So if they go to my website, it’s just lorisiebert.com and it’s S-I-E-B-E-R-T. The information will be there, hopefully in the next couple of weeks, but in the meantime, they can sign up for my newsletter on my website, which I would love for you to do, because everything about the challenges that we do and the retreats, and we also put out once a week, we call it Four Fabulous Finds, I think is what we call it. So every Friday, Kenzie and I put a newsletter together where we pick four really interesting things that are inspiring us. It could be an artist or a book or whatever, and that goes out every Friday. And a lot of people really love those and they’ve discovered a lot of new artists to follow through that. So that’s really fun.
Miriam Schulman:
Just go to schulmanart.com/163, or you can just hop on over to lorisiebert.com either way. All right, don’t forget to check out my free ebook called The Artist Profit Plan. We’re going to dive deep, go beyond the starving artist mindset to uncover what’s really sabotaging your success. So warning major aha moments happen. To grab your copy, head on over to schulmanart.com/profit and download it today. All righty, Lori, do you have any last words for my listeners before we call this podcast complete?
Lori Siebert:
Well, two things I wanted to mention. One, I’m going to be doing challenges on Instagram every other month. So I’ll have another one in November and I’m co-hosting that with Jennifer Orkin Lewis and Michelle Allen, and we always have judges and prizes. So look for that. But then also I’m currently doing the Peptober challenge and I posted a couple days ago, just some words of wisdom, I guess. There are things that I’ve learned along the way after a fairly long career.
But the top thing that I put down in that post was that, I find it so important to reach out to other people that inspire you or that you admire. If you live near them, take them to lunch and just pick their brain or send them a kind email and request a Zoom chat, or make a little mastermind group where you meet once a month or once every couple weeks and you check in with one another and you become accountability partners for each other and support one another in what goals that you want to accomplish because I feel like those kinds of connections with others is really one of the key things in propelling your career. Because artists are very, very kind and very sharing and it’s a wonderful community. I just wouldn’t be afraid to reach out to people and say, “Hey, can we just have a chat, ask questions and make relationships?”
Miriam Schulman:
I love that. I found throughout my career, the more that I’ve shared, the more I’ve gotten back. And I don’t want to characterize as so many artists, but there’s some artists who feel competitive and they have that scarcity mindset. And the more abundant you can be about all these things, about sharing what you know, the more you’ll get back. So I love that you pointed that out to make connections and have collaborations. So thank you for being here today and inspiring us. I just loved having you on the show.
Lori Siebert:
Well, thank you.
Miriam Schulman:
If you enjoyed today’s episode, make sure you hit that plus sign in the podcast app. It used to be follow, it’s now this little tiny plus, make sure you hit that. If you’re feeling extra generous, please leave me a review on Apple Podcast. It helps others find the show. It’s a great way to help other artists and share that abundance. And if you pop your Instagram handle at the end of the review, I’ll even give you a shout out over on my IG stories. Okay, my friend, thank you so much for being with me here today. I’ll see you the same time, same place next week. Stay inspired.
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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