THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Michael Schein: Friends help friends. You know, everyone says, “Oh, that person knew people. Oh, they’re well connected.” Well, if you come from a rich family, okay, but it’s possible to become well connected. You become friends with people.
Speaker 2: It’s the Inspiration Place podcast with artist Miriam Schulman. Welcome to the Inspiration Place Podcast, an art world insider podcast for artists by an artist where each week we go behind the scenes to uncover the perspiration and inspiration behind the art. And now your host, Miriam Schulman.
Miriam Schulman: Well, hey, my friend, this is Miriam Schulman, your curator of inspiration, and you’re listening to episode number 301 of the Inspiration Place podcast. I am so excited that you’re here. Today’s guest is the author of The Hype Handbook and specializes in making companies famous in their fields through, you guessed it. Please welcome to the Inspiration Place, Michael Schein. Well, hey, Michael, welcome to the show.
Michael Schein: Hey, Miriam.
Miriam Schulman: How’s that for a snappy intro?
Michael Schein: Hey, it is really great to be here. You know, I’ve been on your show before, and I dare say we have become friends since the last episode.
Miriam Schulman: Imagine that. We weren’t friends before that episode?
Michael Schein: I feel like we were friendly acquaintances.
Miriam Schulman: I think we met in person before that, no?
Michael Schein: But now we’ve, like, broken bread a bunch of times. I’ve been to your apartment. I mean, I know your husband. I mean, there’s friends, right?
Miriam Schulman: I know who you’re dating. I mean, like, you know, all kinds of stuff, right?
Michael Schein: That’s what I’m saying. I mean, you know, I thought I was fond of you, but now I think we’re like friends, you know, capital F, I love that, I think so maybe it’s one of those things where, like, I think you’re my friend, but, like, it’s, you know, I’m just your acquaintance.
Miriam Schulman: I hate when that happens.
Michael Schein: Yeah, I don’t know.
Miriam Schulman: Yes. No, we’re friends. We’re real friends. Okay. So, um, yeah, you’ve been on the podcast before, so you get like the snappier intro like other people. I just, I read the whole thing. I mostly do that, Michael, do you know why I read the whole thing in front of my guest?
Michael Schein: No.
Miriam Schulman: It’s kind of like the lawyer cutting down an argument. So when I read the entire intro, they’re not trying to sneak things into the conversation. You know what I’m saying? It’s like I say like, “Yes, he’s been here.” And if they put in the intro, “this is the website,” I read the whole thing, and then later I just go to my podcast editor, ch ch ch ch.
Michael Schein: That’s funny.
Miriam Schulman: All right, so we’re here to tell the artist how to get hype and fans and all the things. So where do you think we should start?
Michael Schein: Gosh. You know, I think when we were talking last time, we were having the conversation about how important it is not just to have followers, but to have real fans. I think so many people are trying to even now look at their numbers, and numbers are important, but they’re kind of like, “I have this many followers,” or even “I have this many people on my email list,” and that stuff’s important. But if you have people who really think of you as almost a micro-celebrity, they really look up to you. They really wait to hear from you. They’re really excited when your art comes out, whatever it is, that’s really a big deal. I mean, then you have a career in a big way.
Miriam Schulman: Yeah. And it’s like you really don’t need a lot of people to make it work then. So that that’s the myth that I’m always working to bust is so many artists think you need a huge, what I hear all the time, a huge Instagram following. Right? Um, and then it’s kind of like, well, what about TikTok? And, you know, and to me it’s like, what about it? You know, especially now with the algorithms, it’s no longer follower based anyway. So you can have a huge following and nobody even knows who you are.
Michael Schein: Yeah. No, exactly. I mean, it’s, um, you know, again, all of these things are great. They give you distribution, but you don’t really control it. You really, like you said, with the algorithm, you don’t really know how what you’re putting out there is being shown. It’s for their benefit, not for your benefit. The way that they reveal certain people’s posts and not other people’s posts.
Miriam Schulman: Well, yeah, I mean, and by their benefit, you mean Zuckerverse.
Michael Schein: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, the social media.
Miriam Schulman: The verse is whatever verse you’re on.
Michael Schein: Exactly. The companies, I mean, they have very sophisticated algorithms, as you just said. And they’re designed to get eyeballs and keep you on the page, not to help your career.
Miriam Schulman: Right? So, I see mostly cat videos in my feed, and I thought everybody saw mostly cat videos. And cat videos were popular. But no, if you’re a dog person, you see mostly puppy videos.
Michael Schein: Yeah. I don’t know what it says about me that on LinkedIn for the first time in ever, because that’s a platform I use a lot and spend a lot of time on, I kept seeing all these pop political videos, and for a while I was like, that’s the one place where I can be to not see political videos. And then a few people told me that they weren’t seeing political videos.
Miriam Schulman: It’s because you’re actually watching them.
Michael Schein: Yeah, I guess so.
Miriam Schulman: You’re stopping like it measures your attention, like you don’t even have to engage in it anymore. Well, engagement, meaning you don’t have to comment or like on it. Even if you pause long enough to watch it, they will serve you more of that, whatever that thing is.
Michael Schein: Right. So it’s it’s a it’s an interesting lesson because I thought I had lost my one haven because I don’t post politics stuff. Yeah, but I had lost my one haven from that political vitriol. But it turns out it’s precisely because I’m spending time looking at this, right?
Miriam Schulman: Because you and they know what you do other places. It’s like the big brother of 1984. Okay, so let’s help artists figure out what they can be doing instead. So I have their hype handbook right here. And like in case we forgot what you wrote about, we’re going to like flip through it and see which ones of these tactics they should be. We can get started with. And I was also.
Michael Schein: Doing some thinking. I do want to hear from this, but I was doing some thinking. I knew what we were going to be talking.
Miriam Schulman: Because I didn’t do some thinking. So I’m very happy you did it. All right. Go ahead.
Michael Schein: Just in regards to it’s all tied to kind of the idea that I call hype, this idea of getting people highly emotional so they’ll take the action that you want them to take. But underneath that, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking specifically about why some artists, online or offline or some gurus really become a big deal and others are just hustling to sell their stuff. You know, I mean, I think one is simply that it’s becoming known for one thing, right? I mean, Andy Warhol did a really good job at that. He was the king of pop art, and everything that he did followed that. Right, because he had been a commercial illustrator for years in the 50s and really successful, and I didn’t even know that until my late 30s. He hid that so well, and he was just known as this one thing, and every word that came out of his mouth, even his hair, was plastic. You know, it’s pop art, which was this idea that artificiality is important. His hair was notoriously fake. His big event that he did was called the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. He had tinfoil around his factory, so there was nothing that he did that didn’t reinforce the pop art esthetic. He was completely consistent and as a result, in the best possible way, he became a caricature, but in a good way. He became a character without complexity. And that really spreads well. So if you do a little of this and a little of that and you’re known for this and you’re known for that, okay. But if you don’t have a very, very strong through line and be very ruthless about what you’re not and getting rid of that stuff, that does hurt your ability to gain a diehard fan base.
Miriam Schulman: Okay, I love that you just said this, and my listeners are going to want to tune in again in two weeks because I talk about something very similar with our friend Ben. His book, Simply Put, he was saying, “Well, this doesn’t apply to the art you create. It applies to the messages.” And I was like, “Uh, no, no, because and it doesn’t mean we’re not saying you can’t experiment. It don’t hear me wrong. It’s you’re known for one thing at a time.”
Michael Schein: At a time. I mean, look at Bowie, who’s not a visual artist but was a singer, you know, he was known for different things, but he would be known for one thing for for years. Right?
Miriam Schulman: Or the Beatles, like, if you compare some of their earlier stuff or the to their more psychedelic stuff, it’s very different. But it wasn’t all in the same album.
Michael Schein: Taylor Swift eras, The Eras Tour, Picasso, Blue period, you know, the Cubist period, right? He didn’t mix it all together. It’s it’s um. And I saw this in my own career. I mean, we both know Michael Roderick, a friend of both of ours, and I may have mentioned this to you, but he was my co-host on a podcast called Access to Anyone for years, and the show is still around. It’s popular. It gets a good listenership. I love doing it. I made money from it because people who heard it hired us. But when the hype thing blew up, I quit and it was really hard for me to do. I gave him plenty of notice. You know, all of that. But the show is soft, meaning it’s about relationship building. It’s about it’s very gentle with its questions and the hype brand that I’m known for now is raw edged. It’s about looking at these kind of like this, this hard-nosed, realistic view of the world. So it contain multitudes just like everyone does. I have both of those sides to my personality, but in my public persona, I had to get very ruthless about what I was going to put out there. And I think the same is true for artists.
Miriam Schulman: 100%. I was working with a photographer this week, and we’re going over his website, and photographers tend to be very prolific because it’s, you know, it’s a lot faster to take a photo than it is to make a painting. And so he literally had hundreds of photographs. And at the end of the conversation, he finally he said to me, “So you mean just put my best sellers on?” I go, “Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. Don’t make somebody who’s brand new to your website, like, go through hundreds of photos. You tell them what your best stuff is.”
Michael Schein: Yeah, I agree, it’s very good advice. Yeah. And I think you understand why that turns someone from a customer or a collector into a fan. Because it’s more exciting in a way to be part of a movement, right? Like if you’re just like, “Oh, I like their pretty pictures. Their pictures are cool.” Versus “I like the pop art thing. I want to be part of this, this, this scene, this movement, this person who represents this movement.” It’s exciting and it’s digestible. And humans are not good with complexity, frankly. Yeah.
Miriam Schulman: Or making decisions. Right. So that was my biggest thing with him. I mean, I completely agree with what you just said, but in terms of like creating a fan. So if somebody has 1 or 2 of his photographs and now he starts saying, “Hey, these are my 20 best,” then I as a collector am going to think, “Well, wait a minute. Let me look at those other 18 photos.” Yeah, because now it makes it something like I could collect that where if you have hundreds and I have to sort through it to look for the best. No. Now it’s a garage sale.
Michael Schein: Yeah, exactly. Too many decisions is not a good thing. It’s why we all get. I don’t know about you, but when I go to a diner, it takes me four times the amount of time to make a decision about the meal than at, like a fancy restaurant where there’s seven things on the menu.
Miriam Schulman: Yeah, except now I, like, just have my go to. It used to be grilled cheese.
Michael Schein: That’s the way to–That’s the way to get around it right now.
Miriam Schulman: It’s avocado toast. Okay, so I just opened your book randomly and landed on making it their idea, which I think is a really good concept, especially in the way we talk to in a sales conversation and the way we present ourselves. And instead of me telling you what you said, why don’t we talk about that?
Michael Schein: Well. So I completely stole this concept and was very out there with it from Dale Carnegie that book, How to Win Friends and Influence People has a lot of good stuff in it, even to today, What’s that?
Miriam Schulman: Note to self I still haven’t read that. I better read that one.
Michael Schein: Yeah, it’s a little like 1930s goofy, but it has really good stuff in it. Uh, much better than what’s that other one, Think and Grow Rich, which is kind of nonsense. But this has stuff and and people have used it to great effect. Notably, um, Warren Buffett and Charles Manson have both used the concepts to get their way. So but the idea is that if you try to persuade somebody by saying, “This is right and you’re wrong,” we have a thing called psychological reactance. That’s the $10 term for it. But what it means is that to greater and lesser degrees, we don’t like to be pushed into a situation. So even if it’s better for us, we’ll push back. But if you can massage someone into them thinking it’s their idea, by asking questions in a strategic way and leading people, they’ll come around to where you want them to go. Sso you don’t have to have. You just can’t have the pride of it being your idea. Now, I will say that in my experience, although I’m open to other ideas, that works a lot better at the end of the sales process than in generating lots of excitement and fandom. It’s more true. How do you get them to open their wallet at the end, or make a step that they were nervous about making, but very important.
Miriam Schulman: True, but okay, so let me just give a practical tip right here. And this is something that I mentioned in my own book, Artpreneur. And that is the use of tie downs. So when you catch yourself telling somebody what to do, for example, um, instead of saying, “This art will look great in your office,” you can either say, “Don’t you think this art would look great in your office?” Yeah, 100% the question. Or if you catch yourself saying, “I think this art would look great in your office,” and you’re halfway mid-sentence and you realize you just told them something, all you have to say at the end of there is the tie down, which is, “Don’t you think?” Or “Don’t you agree?” So it’s basically any sentence you say. You can turn it into a question and you just get kind of buy-in from them on some of these questions without before you even say to them, “Would you like to buy it?” So it and even that one becomes also a question, not a yes or no, but “How would you like to pay for this?” Um, or “Would you like to pay cash or charge?” I tell my people also. So what I wrote down right after reading this, I wrote down “inception” in the margin of your book. The movie? Yeah, I know, like you don’t you love when I when people make you smarter than what you actually wrote, it’s like, yeah.
Michael Schein: Sure, tell me more, right. Because I, I certainly meant to evoke.
Miriam Schulman: Right. Of course. Right. Yeah.
Miriam Schulman: So um, though so inception is basically the movie is planting the seed in somebody else’s hat and making them think that. So this is taught throughout copywriting. The idea is just future pacing and getting them to imagine what it’s like once they already have ownership of your product. So can you imagine how this would look in your home? Can you imagine how this would look in your office? Um, I always lead them to it by first saying something like, uh, you know, when you’re when you’re in the sales conversation, this is very particular to visual art, of course. Uh, so are you imagining this in your home or your office? So I always like to give a, um, binary choice. Um, and so because if once they say no to you, it shuts it all down.
Michael Schein: Yeah. Even. Wouldn’t this look great in your office? If they’re like, no.
Miriam Schulman: Right.
Michael Schein: Then you’re in trouble.
Miriam Schulman: Exactly. That’s why I said this. This would look great in your office. Don’t you agree? Is a little softer way of getting there. But first you got to get them there. So. Yeah.
Michael Schein: Yeah. And don’t you agree does open it up to like. Well not exactly, but you know. But if you’re like this would look great in your office and.
Miriam Schulman: Then they shut. If they don’t agree it shuts them down.
Miriam Schulman: Yeah. It shuts them down completely. And then the other thing is–
Michael Schein: And no one likes being sold to. Right. Like no, people love buying stuff. I mean, people will go on shopping trips all day long, but the minute I think someone’s trying to manipulate me into a sale. I hate that. Yeah, and I think most people are like that, even though it’s all manipulation. And we all know that this strange psychology that we have, we don’t like being pressured.
Miriam Schulman: Yeah, I actually have a guilty pleasure where I like watching this couple. They decorate their homes with Amazon finds. And you know, the woman’s in front the the wife’s in front of the camera and the guy’s the husband’s in the background cooing into the microphone saying how much he loves it too. And when I think they’re being sincere and they actually bought it, like, I will end up buying things. But the minute I think, right, I sense that they’re just saying it because they want us to buy that coffee espresso machine or the vacuum cleaner and the husband saying he loves vacuuming now it’s like, really? You love to vacuum now.
Michael Schein: Yeah so that’s psychological reactance. If you were convinced by the end, I don’t know. It’s 1991 and you saw Dyson for the first time and you saw how great it was, right? But you thought that they were doing product placement in that way, even if it was good for you and better than your vacuum cleaner now, you wouldn’t do it. People are weird like that.
Miriam Schulman: And I’m very weird like that like. So like, that’s why I like I watch it and I have to see it five weeks later, still in their home before I’ll buy it. Like, you know,
Michael Schein: I think it’s probably because who knows? We’re probably evolved that way to protect ourselves from being manipulated into stuff that isn’t good for us.
Miriam Schulman: Yeah. Okay, so let’s talk about manipulating our fans. I’m just kidding. I mean, that’s really what this is, right?
Michael Schein: We’re always manipulating. But, but but I just think. We’re always walking that line the way we’re wired between we want to listen to other people because that’s how we find out about what’s good for us, but we want to protect ourselves about. I think this is a theory. I don’t know if this is true, but protect ourselves against people who are trying to do what’s good for them at your expense, and we’re probably wired to be on the lookout for the difference. That would be my assumption. I’m making this up based on other things I know about the way our brains have evolved, but it seems like a good enough theory.
Miriam Schulman: Okay. I know we talked so much in the last podcast, so we’re definitely going to link to that other one because we had some really good conversations around. So I don’t want to retread that. But like around picking fights with a movement, there was some great conversation we had around that last time.
Michael Schein: I mean, I’ll tell you one thing that I was thinking about if it’s helpful. And this is for a lot of fields, but I think it might apply to art even more so. Well, there’s this idea that we have to sell our stuff one by one by one, right? Like, the idea is if you have a big online following, you get that following person by person or your email list, or you go around and you sell your art by doing different gallery shows. And that’s sort of the myth. The people who are really good at this thing, the who, I don’t know, Who can we pick as an example? Jeff Koons, you know, whatever they make it seem like they just like they’re they’re so unique and good that their art just bubbled up to the surface in this organic way. What most people who big fan bases do is they form strategic alliances under the surface.
Miriam Schulman: Yes. That would be Ashley Longshore. And I don’t care if we talked about her the last time we’re talking about her again. She likes to perpetuate the myth that she became Insta-famous. And it’s like this one person at a time and she has this huge following. But meanwhile, if you like, just peel back the lid just a little bit. You see how much she invested in publicity, like from the get-go. And you can see that on her highlight reels, the Vogue and New York Times and all that. And for a while, she had a person on her team. Or maybe she outsourced, I don’t know which that was like media@ashleylongshore.com and she was very strategic about building up what you just said, those alliances so that people would find her through the publicity. And she became famous off Instagram to get the Insta-fame.
Michael Schein: And that’s one example. And that costs money and I think. Right. But a way to do that, that I’ve seen done and we’ve seen this in Non-art fields, but this stuff can apply is, you know, that phrase “dig your well before you’re thirsty.” But it’s like, can you make friends with people who already have big followings of art fans, and can you help them out without expecting anything in return? So that in a year when it’s time to build a big diehard fan base that you can sell anything to, you say to them, “Hey, listen, you know, it’d be really awesome if we could do a show together, a digital whatever together. Uh, you know, you can mention me to your email list because it’s a lot easier to do that five times than it is to. Sell your art one by one, 70,000 times.”
Miriam Schulman: Do you have concrete examples for how they can like a practical example of how that you can do that?
Michael Schein: Yeah, it’s a great question. I mean I certainly do for non-art. So let’s start there and then start there.
Miriam Schulman: And then I will put in the art.
Michael Schein: I mean, the obvious example is how people in a world we’re really familiar with do all the time, and that’s the course creation world. I mean, that’s just the way it’s done. There’s this idea that people are one by one, building this email list of 100,000 people. And if for those of you not familiar with that world, which is a world that helps a lot of people, the amount of times that the leaders in the field pair up and present their stuff in a joint showing or, you know, someone mentions in their email list how wonderful this guru is and this person and what they have to offer. And it’s done in a very good non-manipulative way, because it’s usually something that the first course creator doesn’t do that their audience can benefit from. But as a result, the new course creator gets to reach all those people and then months later, they do it in the opposite direction. So you’d be surprised if you’re not in that world. You certainly wouldn’t be surprised because we are in that world. How much socializing goes on offline between those people.
Miriam Schulman: Like we were just talking about being friends. Why do you think Michael’s on my podcast again? Because we’re friends, you know, it’s like, yeah.
Michael Schein: And friends help friends. You know, everyone says, “Oh, that person knew people. Oh, they’re well connected.” Well, if you come from a rich family, okay, but it’s possible to become well connected.
Miriam Schulman: That’s right, that’s right.
Michael Schein: You become friends with people.
Miriam Schulman: That’s right. And also what I always like to say. And I told my kids this for years, if the best way to be invited to the party is to host it.
Michael Schein: Great, great. That’s a great quote.
Miriam Schulman: So that’s why I host dinners. You know, if I want, I get to pick the guest list and I get to invite people and, you know, I curate the whole thing.
Michael Schein: I want to say about that, we’re so hyper focused now on online and online is important because it gives you scale. But breaking bread with someone who has a big online following without directly expecting something from them right away. I cannot emphasize how important those kind of activities are.
Miriam Schulman: Yeah. I mean, everything happens in real life. At the end of the day, even though you’re listening to this in real life is just rocket fuel for everything else. So I like, go to conferences so I can meet people in person. I go places so I can meet people in person. This is what I’ve been doing since I would say the beginning. You know, whenever I’ve pivoted, it’s always been building a community around me. But I do want to point out some things that I did to write my book that will just to give some different kinds of examples. So I was lucky enough, although lucky is the wrong word. Fortunate enough to have a lot of endorsements in my book. Almost every single one of those came from people who I had invited to my podcast, and it was very easy to turn around and say, would you endorse my book? So and I had them on my podcast long before I even had a book contract. So it wasn’t coming from, like you said, it wasn’t coming from that transactional place. I was giving value to people for a long time before I turned around and started seeing, um, before I, you know, pulled in that favor. It was. And it was easy to ask me.
Michael Schein: Yeah, that’s a great I call that positive bait. The idea that if you have something that is that’s good that adds value on its own, like a podcast. Like you don’t just do a podcast to get people on the show. You do it because it’s a good podcast, and people do listen to it and like it, and the high-quality guests make the show better, right? But it’s positive bait because everyone wants exposure. So if you can say to somebody who’s a high-quality person and we’re all high quality, but someone who can enhance one of these human pressure points, right? One of these people with followings, whatever and say, “Come on, my podcast, everyone really has has benefited, including the listener. And now your circle has grown and grown and grown in your community has grown and grown and grown.” And that again is like rocket fuel. Instead of okay, I went from 102 Instagram followers to 106 Instagram followers. You can hit all these human pressure points at the same time and create this wellspring the way you did with your book. Yeah.
Miriam Schulman: And then just to make this more practical for people who don’t want to build a podcast and don’t need to write a book and all those things, what Michael and I have been talking about, these are things you can do on a small scale by doing it locally. This is why I tell artists, join your local art association, make friends with other artists. That’s how you learn what the good opportunities are. It’s not always x, y, z. Art gallery. Sometimes you find out, “Well, actually the local junior league has this show every year in Fairfield County and everything sells like hotcakes.” This is actually a true thing. So like I mean, by the way, that show is not there anymore for people who are in Connecticut and like, “Wait, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” So this was a pre-COVID thing. But but this is how these opportunities that you find out about through community and you showing up as that kind of person that we’ve been talking about that is sharing. You will receive as much as you give. So not hoarding opportunities to for yourself.
Michael Schein: This really puts a lot of ideas in my head of things that have worked and you know. Again, we’re in New York, so obviously that’s a hub in a way other places aren’t. But every place has its hubs, right?
Miriam Schulman: Absolutely.
Michael Schein: When I switched careers about 14 years ago, my first thing that I did was I was a freelance copywriter. I did a kind of copywriting called Demand Generation Copywriting, which for those people who don’t know, it’s you’re basically for complex products like technology products. You’re creating stuff that’s simple to understand so that people will will be drawn to the company. And that led to what I’m doing today, which is marketing work. But in any case. There’s this thing in New York called the New York Tech Council, and it’s like a trade group for technology companies in New York. And they have these regular meetings. And I knew nobody. I had moved away for a long time, and I was completely disconnected from that world. So I went to a New York Tech Council event, and after it was done, I went up to the guy, Eric Grimmelmann, who ran the thing, and I said, “Look, I’ll do anything. I just want to be involved. I want to volunteer.” And they took me up on it. And I was a grown man, 35 years old, whatever, holding a clipboard, guarding the food from the other people who were in the same space. Like really stupid stuff, you know? But I did it. No one else wanted to do it. And I was not 22.
I had had a corporate job before this, and this went on for like six months. And at a certain point I heard they became fond of me. I was doing it for free. And at a certain point, Eric, the guy who ran it, um, made an announcement that they were doing a new panel series because they do everything by tracks. So I went up to him and I said, “Hey, Eric, would it be cool if I did one of those panel series? I’ll do the whole thing just on on marketing, technology, technology marketing.” And he said, “Yeah, oh no.” I said, “Can I do one panel?” And he said, “You can do the whole track.” So because I did free work for them. So I did it and then I could invite anyone I wanted onto the panel. The people I invited on that one is Richard Larimer, who is a extremely successful PR guy. Not only is he a massive contact and mentor, he’s become my extremely close personal friend, like very, very close friend. But that was game changing for me, you know, because I was at the Nexus and I could ask anyone and now I had power. So that’s a very long story. And it’s not about art, but that to your point, exactly what you’re saying.
Miriam Schulman: It doesn’t have to be about art. It’s about joining communities. And I don’t want anyone to think, “Oh, but Miriam, you’re in New York City.” So my community that I joined was not in New York City. It was in Westchester County, you know, which is not New York City. So and finding out about opportunities in Connecticut. So, in fact, if anything, sometimes I tell my artists, you know, that the fact that the closest city is New York City is actually a hindrance, not necessarily a good thing, because the art world is so huge here. Right. Exactly. It’s huge. Uh, but, you know, if you’re in any other I mean, I’ve had artists say to me, “Oh, there’s nothing in my town.” I go, “Really?” And then we, you know, I share screen and then I Google their town, you know, their city, and then the word ‘art association’. And of course, we find things like.
Michael Schein: There’s people like art no matter where they live.
Miriam Schulman: That’s right.
Michael Schein: Yeah. And they buy art even if it’s just to hang on their walls to make to beautify their [inaudible]
Miriam Schulman: That’s right.
Miriam Schulman: And not everybody can afford a Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol or whatever, you know, they can’t afford it. This is like things that are millions of dollars or like the blue chip galleries. It’s, you know, you’re starting at $15,000 for something the size of a shoebox, right?
Michael Schein: Yeah. It’s it’s these concepts hold true. And it’s almost better to be a big fish in a small pond. I’ve used a lot of cliches today, but I guess they work.
Miriam Schulman: It’s okay. Yeah, I know it helps. Yeah. Let’s talk about secret societies, because this is a really good one for artists.
Michael Schein: Yeah, I mean, this is absolutely an extension of what we’re talking about. This is the whole concept of if you can’t be invited to the party, create your own. Right. So, I was inspired. My whole thing is that I’m always looking at non-marketing marketers because a lot of times, the people who call themselves professional marketers, there are plenty of good ones. But really, the best marketers tend to not be marketers. And plus, I’m interested in a lot of weird ideas. So I looked at groups like the Freemasons, who are sort of the secret society extraordinaire. But what you’ll find, there’s all this Dan Brown Da Vinci Code stuff about how they control the world, but if you really dig into what they were, they were a drinking club for influential and powerful people where they could share ideas that could get them in trouble a long time ago and the whole it was a literal fraternity. So, you know, these people had all of this hubbub. They wore the robes and the thing and the handshakes. But at the end of the day, a Freemason could rely on another Freemason, like they had these secrets. But the secret was like, be good to your fellow man or something like that. It was the point of the secrecy was the secrecy. So if you can create and what it did really was create a tight-knit community. And you see that with actual fraternities today, whatever you think about fraternities, they put them through this hazing process and this bonding stuff, and they live together and they use weird Greek letters and, you know, this and that. And so 30 years later, a delta whatever can call up another delta whatever and say, “Hey, I’m trying to raise money. Can you help me?” So if you can create your own dinner parties and put a little pomp and circumstance around it. Have a little fun. I mean, can I talk about some of what goes on at yours?
Miriam Schulman: Absolutely. I will just edit out anything. I don’t want to go on the air.
Michael Schein: One of the cool things about your dinner parties, other than the fact that it’s in your home and it’s a warm environment and people are really nice and great and have become friends, is that you bring out mystical stuff like you have tarot cards.
Miriam Schulman: I do.
Michael Schein: Weird, esoteric exercises, and you’ve mentioned Kabbalah and things, and I think you do that just because you’re interested in it, and it’s fun. But people have gotten emotional at these things. It is not your regular business dinner. And I think that everyone in that group feels that they’re kind of part of a secret society. It doesn’t have a name to it, but I’ve gone to countless networking dinners and it’s a networking dinner, but I feel like there’s this little like club that goes on in your apartment. I don’t think anyone would turn it down if you put a name on it. And I think that creates a bond where anyone in that group would help each other. So, for example, business gets done there, it doesn’t get done at the dinner. But I know for a fact that people have called each other to do work. 100%.
Miriam Schulman: Oh, 100%. Like sometimes I got a little jealous because it’s like people are hanging out without me, but then they’re like, “Oh no, no, I signed up for her program or I’m now her. She’s now my business coach or or whatever it is.”
Michael Schein: And it happens naturally. It’s not like a push, you know.
Miriam Schulman: That’s right. Because we don’t really share URLs around the table.
Michael Schein: Not in the least.
Miriam Schulman: No. So okay, so I will tell you the secret behind the cards. And just so you know, I also do the same format when I have my mastermind group, when we meet in person in New York City and I have we do the tarot cards. So the reason why I do it is because in any gathering of people, there are always the 1 or 2 who will hog the mic.
Michael Schein: Mhm.
Miriam Schulman: And there’s the 1 or 2 people who really have a lot to say, but the mic never gets passed to them. So what I do is I give everybody an Oracle card and it’s really almost like a, um, a prompt. A talking prompt is the way it ends up working. So everybody gets a chance to to speak and be heard. And that is what makes it so special is because it’s not like you walk away with, oh my God, Mike talked the whole time, you know.
Michael Schein: Which is probably true.
Miriam Schulman: I know you are fine. No, actually there’s usually three people named Mike, so we don’t even know if I’m talking about you or somebody else. So it’s like it gives a chance for everybody to be heard and for us to hear everybody, which is how the connections are made.
Michael Schein: That’s funny. I’m thinking of one particular person who I won’t name, who was new to the group, who was quiet. And then they came around to the tarot card, and they were so insightful and not shy at all. And then they became a part of the group in a very real way, once they were opened up in that way.
Miriam Schulman: Yeah, yeah, it’s amazing how that happens.
Michael Schein: And I do think, I don’t doubt that you’ve thought of this in this way, but I do think the fact that you chose Oracle cards or tarot cards or whatever, instead of like, I don’t know, some markers. Yeah, I think that creates a vibe that does give it that special, bonded secret society feel. You know, people like Pomp and Circumstance. They like ritual. And we don’t get enough ritual. Yeah. In our world today.
Miriam Schulman: And then I set the table.
Michael Schein: Yeah. You have people sit at a certain place. There’s a certain kind of food. It’s very nice. The wine is flowing, there’s good music. It’s orchestrated but comfortable. It’s a thing. It’s an event. There’s ritual involved. And I think people cherish those dinners in a way that sometimes networking dinners are a chore, frankly.
Miriam Schulman: Hmm. Interesting. All right. I want to move this back to listeners since I can’t invite them all to dinner.
Michael Schein: Create your own dinner,
Miriam Schulman: Use the playbook that we just described. Absolutely. And it doesn’t have to be all artists. That’s the beauty of it, because you do want to be connected with artists because you find out about opportunities, but you also want to be connected with art collectors. So hence–
Michael Schein: And I think regularity matters too, right? Like if you do them here and you do them there, but if you kind of get into a rhythm, that’s when it becomes a scene or a group. That’s when people start hooking each other up.
Miriam Schulman: All right. So I also want to talk about the “mini Oprahs,” which is mentioned in the same chapter, but somehow I feel it’s like a slightly different strategy. Or is it?
Michael Schein: I mean, I used the Oprah example because she fascinates me in this way. I mean, there’s a lot of reasons she would fascinate me. But Oprah is untouchable. She comes across as everyone’s favorite person. People feel like she’s extremely poised and smart and intellectual. She made a good speech once. People said she should run for president, and I have nothing bad to say about her. And at the same time, she’s responsible for Doctor Oz, who is a charlatan. She’s responsible for Doctor Phil, who’s probably a charlatan. She used to interview neo-Nazis to get to the top, you know, of the heap. She’s responsible for Rhonda Byrne, who? There’s no scientific evidence that anything she says is true. And for some reason, whatever she’s cultivated. If you are associated with Oprah. You. Her magic rubs off on you. So there are very few people who she says a book is good and it could be the Iliad. It could be written in ancient Greek, and it becomes a best seller.
Miriam Schulman: Okay, wait, wait. Remember we started the conversation about how I use stuff that you taught in your book. So the first quote in my book is Oprah Winfrey.
[inaudible]
Miriam Schulman: But I was showing this to somebody. And then I would also like use her quote in like whatever the PDFs I give out. And, uh, my friend Felicia, who’s my business coach, who was saying, you know, Miriam, this makes it look like she endorsed your book. I was like, I kind of know that.
Michael Schein: Yeah, right.
Miriam Schulman: So one of the things that.
Michael Schein: I guess the reason I call it Mini Oprah’s is that the chance of you getting on Oprah is like saying like my business strategy is, is winning the lottery. Like, that’s a ridiculous strategy. But every field has mini Oprah’s. And the good thing about the internet.
Miriam Schulman: Every community.
Michael Schein: Every community.
Michael Schein: Yeah.
Miriam Schulman: Has a mini Oprah. So I when I talk about it in my book, I talk about you got to find out who the it girl is of the PTA.
Michael Schein: Yeah. That’s a, you know, to say it. You know.
Miriam Schulman: There’s always the cool mom.
Michael Schein: Yeah.
Miriam Schulman: And if you do portraits, you want to do her kids portrait. Because once you break into that, you got the whole town.
Michael Schein: I had a client a really long time ago, um, that he ran a business that set up dental practices. So a really brass tacks, like, comically brass tacks. Right. Dentistry. And there was one guy, and it was so long ago that I forget his name that in the niche of dental business, not even dentistry, like running the business of a dentist. He was the Oprah. He had all of the like all the videos on YouTube that were watched. He was the guy everyone looked up to. If you could get that guy to become your champion, it’s worth 100,000. Just regular Instagram followers, right? Like that person will talk, you know, like that would explode someone’s dental management business getting on his good side. So it is an extension of what we talked about. It’s when you’re making decisions of how to explode your art, the steadiness of your art sales. Once you figure out who you are or what’s your one thing that you’re known for? How much effort do you put into finding and nurturing your mini Oprahs? And I would argue a lot.
Miriam Schulman: Yeah. And, um. I was going to say, let’s bring this back full circle. But then I realized, no, that was Ben Gutmann’s interview. Um, so when you tune in in two weeks, what we’re talking about is what’s in it for the other person, in order to get in with the mini Oprah, the IT girl, the PTA, you or whoever it is in that community, you got to find out. What do they care about? Yeah. So are there philanthropic causes that they care about? Well, those are the ones that you should be donating to.
Michael Schein: Yeah, and sometimes that takes creativity. I tell this story a lot. I tell it all the time, but I’ll tell it because there’s no better story I know that emphasizes ways to do this. So I’ve mentioned David Bowie a few times. Obviously I love him, and when he was in his first big phase, he was Ziggy Stardust and he had this aura where he was very stingy about who in the press he let in because he was controlling his image. And there was this young journalist who worked for musician magazine, which was kind of a third tier music magazine, and he was young and he didn’t have a lot of, um, he didn’t have a big book or cred or whatever. And he wanted an interview with Bowie, and he wanted it to be a good interview. And so he thought, what can I give the man who has everything? What can I give Bowie? And he can’t give him a private jet or whatever was the thing. So he did some research, and he found out that Bowie was listed as a sax player on all of his liner notes, and that struck him as weird because David Bowie’s not known as a sax player.
He’s known as a singer and, you know, a songwriter and his image. And it turns out that he found out that Bowie’s first instrument was sax, and he loved playing the saxophone, and he played it on all his records, but no one ever asked him about it. And so he called Bowie’s people up and they almost hung up on him. And he said, I want to do an interview on this, on David Bowie, only about his sax playing. And they all knew what Bowie felt about his sax playing. So they gave him the interview. And then Bowie really opened up in a way he never had, and it made this guy’s career. So the point there is, what can you give the person you know? In other words, it’s not. Donating is great if you can do that. But sometimes it’s if you do a little bit of groundwork and extra work and find out what’s really important to them. Do they have a kid who’s been failing art class, you know, or math or whatever you’re good at for for months that you can help out or whatever?
Miriam Schulman: And I didn’t mean donate thousands of dollars, but I’m talking about is you can be donating your time the way you did with that other group.
Michael Schein: Wonderful point.
Miriam Schulman: Um, the way I did it was not through, um, monetary donations, but I would make very strategic silent auction donations.
Michael Schein: Yeah. That’s smart.
Miriam Schulman: Because that would be kind of like a placement of my art, and what I would do is I would donate a portrait of one child.
Michael Schein: So very smart.
Miriam Schulman: And it would never, um. What’s the word? Cannibalize my existing art sales.
Michael Schein: Well, the child thing is cool because people, I mean, this might sound very sinister, but if you can do stuff for people’s kids, they will be your friend forever.
Miriam Schulman: 100%. Well, so here’s the thing. Like I would donate the portrait to the PTA, and invariably the people who wanted to raise the most money for the PTA would be bidding on the portrait. So those were all the IT girls of town. And then now I had their kids in my portfolio, and they didn’t just have one kid. They usually had, you know, three because the third child is like the status symbol.
Michael Schein: That’s funny. I know you you have to have a little bit of disposable income to have three kids now.
Miriam Schulman: Yeah. It was the two status symbols where I was from in Westchester. One was the third child and the other was the dumpster in the driveway.
Michael Schein: Really? I’ve never heard that one.
Miriam Schulman: Oh, yeah. Because you’re renovating.
Michael Schein: That’s hilarious. That’s funny.
Miriam Schulman: You know, it’s a brand new kitchen or whatever.
Michael Schein: Yeah, that’s really funny. I mean, that’s very clever. I mean, that that that’s that’s exactly what I’m talking about. That exact principle in theory is what you did in practice. You got very creative about what do these people care about? I mean, you could buy these people a diamond necklace and it wouldn’t mean as much.
Miriam Schulman: Correct. And now… All right, so then I walk around with the grandma’s brag book. Remember that from the pre-internet age, the brag books. Okay. So it would have a painting of, you know, whatever her name was. I don’t even remember their names anymore. So like, okay, whatever. Uh oh, gosh. Doesn’t matter. Diane. I had Diane’s kids in my book, and so then people ask me what I did. I wasn’t pulling out business cards. I was pulling out a photo of Diane’s kids, and they’re like, Diane commissioned you. And look at that. Oh my gosh, I want to do that because everybody wants to copy Diane. Her real name was not Diane.
Michael Schein: That’s such a great idea. You’re basically baking in to the favor you did your work and making it spreadable.
Miriam Schulman: That’s right. Yeah. All right. This is a beautiful place to start to wrap up, but I know you have a freebie for my listeners.
Michael Schein: I do, and actually it goes really well with what we’ve been talking about. I didn’t know how well it would go. So if you go to HypeHandbook.com, so the name of the book I wrote, HypeHandbook.com. We have a cheat sheet on there, a guide called ‘How to Use a Four-Letter Word to Meet Damn Near Anyone.’ And it really is a primer, a rundown step by step on how to use the tactics that I’ve used and that we use for our clients and the stuff you’re talking about to meet pretty much anyone you want to know that can help your career. So you can go ahead and download that there for free.
Miriam Schulman: All the mini Oprahs and we will make sure to write. We will link that in the show notes. All right. Michael, do you have any last words for my listener before we call this podcast complete?
Michael Schein: I guess all I would say is I think a lot of the stuff we’re talking about today, what I frame it as is always look for things that are cheap for you, but extremely valuable for other people a lot of times, and cheap in terms of time, cheap in terms of energy, cheap in terms of money. And if you don’t have the money, use time. And if you don’t have the time, maybe you’ll use some money. But a lot of times if you stop thinking about, oh, I have to spend or do what everyone else is doing and say, what is something that comes easily to me that I have at my disposal, but is disproportionately valuable to others? There’s a huge amount of power in that. It’s a real secret weapon.
Miriam Schulman: All right, I love that. All right, my friend. So I will see you next week. Same time, same place. Until then, stay inspired.
Speaker 2: 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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