THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Jen Lehner: When I signed in to TikTok and I saw the call to action for us, they are literally changing our laws. This is the thing that blows my mind, the irony of this, that you have an adversary. Another government who is not a democracy, who does not practice free speech. If they want to completely brainwash a culture, which when you see these riots with these little buzz slogans that are inaccurate coming from TikTok if they want to make a country unstable, that’s such an easy way to do it.
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: Uh.
Miriam Schulman: How are you, my friend?
Jen Lehner: I am doing well. How about you?
Miriam Schulman: Good. So the first Kvetch and Kvell actually went live today.
Jen Lehner: Oh, great. Okay. Well, then I’ll do mine too.
Miriam Schulman: So remember the pods I told you about?
Jen Lehner: The pause?
Miriam Schulman: Pods. P-O-D-S.
Jen Lehner: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Miriam Schulman: They love them. And so right now I’m in the middle of a boot camp launch. Today is my cart close. And this is like the main reason now people are signing up for this program is the accountability pods.
Jen Lehner Then I have to do it.
Miriam Schulman: Right. This is not even my my Cvell, by the way. This is just like a bonus Cvell because that’s what we were talking about last time.
Jen Lehner: Bring it. Right. Okay. Note to self pods. Do it. Yes.
Miriam Schulman: Okay. All right. I think all my other Kvetches and Kvells all have to do with Amazon. So you want to start since mine all have to do with Amazon?
Jen Lehner: Yeah, I’ll start with my. It’s a big major Kvetch. Okay?
Miriam Schulman: I can’t wait.
Jen Lehner: And it’s it’s about TikTok and and I really want to share this with the world. So I know you have a large listening audience, so, um, I’m just going to I’m going to tell you what I think. So I report the news every morning about social media and AI and uh, digital marketing and that sort of thing on my Amazon Alexa flash briefing. And so I’ve been keeping up quite a bit with this whole TikTok getting shut down business, right? And there are so many millions of entrepreneurs, online entrepreneurs who are freaking out because of this. And the fact that, you know, the rug is going to be pulled out from under them, and they’ve built this audience on TikTok and nowhere else.
Miriam Schulman: Do you feel sorry for them? Because I don’t. I mean like, I wrote about this like two years ago in my book.
Jen Lehner: But you know what? Here’s the people I feel sorry for is that, like a lot of the people who got successful over there got successful by accident. I mean, there’s 89 year old women who just started talking about their dead husband, and all of a sudden they caught fire. And people want merch and they didn’t go into it. And so, they built an audience. So, so for those people, they don’t know marketing. They don’t know that you’re supposed to grab an email, you know, and how important it is to to build your own email list. So whatever. It’s not even about that necessarily. Here’s the part that really has me fired up is that, well, first of all, I want everybody to know if you have built an audience on TikTok and you are participating in the very fruitful TikTok economy that is TikTok shops, you can do that now on YouTube. Youtube now has YouTube shops, and they’re really good and it’s a good time to get over there. So go ahead, take your shop over there.
Miriam Schulman: Okay, wait. That is very important for my artists because there’s a graph that I throw up that sounds like I just vomited. There’s a graph that I put up on my slide deck every time I do a masterclass that tells you what the ROI, the return on investment is for every single kind of advertising platform. And video already outperforms social media. So the fact that you can do video and sell your art, there is really something that I just want artists to pay attention to. Absolutely. Not just artists, because this is like what I’m saying is true not just of artists. It’s true of anybody in business. It’s like the bottom of the barrel for return on investment is television, then radio, then social media. It’s like—
Jen Lehner: Yeah. And you’ve been, you’ve been beating that drum where other people have not, but you’ve been pointing that out. And it’s really a relief to a lot of people to hear.
Miriam Schulman: Yes, yes, yes. Because they burn themselves out trying to create all this content. Okay. So but what is your Kvetch? Because so far we have a Cvell is with the YouTube.
Jen Lehner: No, but I had to throw that in there. This is what I want to say is that TikTok is incredibly dangerous, and I want you to understand that this is coming from a person who isn’t, who is, who poo poos, that kind of stuff, who says it’s a global economy? Who says you have to at some point let go and you gotta let go of the reins because, you know, we’re global, the internet, all of that. But TikTok is different. And this is why and I’ve been studying this and it’s taken me—I haven’t, I didn’t come out with this strong feeling right out of the gate as this story has been progressing. My thought was like, I don’t, to be honest, I’ve surrendered my I’ve surrendered so much to social media and and the internet in terms of privacy. Right? Like I open up my phone and facial recognition, for crying out loud, right? Like we’re all getting our email addresses stolen on a daily basis, like, this is the world that we live in. So it’s like it’s hard to really sort of like batten down the hatches because we’re all opened up.
But—and I used to think like I was so, the Chinese figure out that I like, you know, Little Blue Thing is my favorite little dance song. Okay. So they figure out, you know, that I like to watch vegan cooking videos. I don’t really care. It’s. And that’s what a lot of people say. That is not what this is about, okay. Tiktok is owned by the Chinese. The Chinese are our adversaries. Call them our enemies. Call them whatever you want. They are our adversaries. Okay. Number one. Number two, it is a propaganda machine like no others. And I had this conversation with my kids and they said, “But, mom, Instagram Reels is the same thing”. No, it’s not because it is not owned by our adversaries, like our political adversaries. Our adversaries in the world, people who want to do us harm, people we could go to war with. So I’m not trying to get political. But I wanted to tell you this mind blowing thing, okay? If you notice before TikTok, legislation was passed that said TikTok has to sell to a US based entity. That’s where it stands now. Okay, they didn’t ban it, but they’re like, “You better sell to somebody in the United States”. Okay? Right before that happened, what do you think you saw when you logged in? And did you, uh, you may or may not have seen it. When you logged into TikTok, do you remember what you saw the first screen you saw, Miriam?
Miriam Schulman: No, I don’t use TikTok.
Jen Lehner: Okay, perfect. That’s right. You don’t use TikTok. But I’ll tell you what you saw. You saw a screen that said contact your lawmaker and tell them you don’t want TikTok to be banned. And then in the algorithm, when you log into TikTok, there’s like a million videos, just one after the other, like, you know. Yeah. People power, us against them. You know, they can’t ban TikTok. We are the TikTokers. And it was this very like felt like this really pure grassroots movement. No, think about and this is the thing that blows my mind, the irony of this, that you have an adversary. Okay. Our enemy, the Chinese. I shouldn’t say enemy, but the Chinese people. Another government who is not a democracy, who does not practice free speech, telling us, our young people specifically, to contact their lawmakers to tell them no. And they made it real easy with hashtags and links directly to their local legislators. And the legislators were and the Senate and all the people were completely overwhelmed by all of this stuff that was coming their way. And like I say, I rest my case like—And by the way, in China, they don’t let their people see the same things that we see.
So anything, if they want to completely brainwash a culture, which PS when you see these slogans and riots and, you know, whatever, a lot of these things are happening with these little buzz slogans that are inaccurate, and they’re coming from TikTok if they want to, if they want to make a country unstable, that’s such an easy way to do it. Yes, Instagram has do it. Yes, we know that that it happened on Facebook, you know, in 2016 when all the Russian bots, we know that that happened. But there at least was an earnest effort on the part of well, maybe not earnest enough, but there was an effort, um, to try and quell that and to stop that. But if the originator of the platform, you know what I mean? Like, they themselves are the people who control what you see. And we all know that TikTok has the strongest algorithm. For those of you watching and listening who are on TikTok, you know that it serves you up exactly what you want to see more than Instagram Reels, more than any of them. They have the most powerful algorithm. So I told you it was a major Kvetch and that I was going to get fired up.
Miriam Schulman: So I mean what logically follows and I’m going to say this without saying it. So in other words, if they wanted to encourage students to protest about certain causes, they could be feeding them that as well, because they know what that’s doing to the US election right now, like those types of issues, like if they want to shut down exams and step all over our educational system, like they have incentive and ways to do that. Is that is that what the logical conclusion is here?
Jen Lehner: 1,000%.
Miriam Schulman: Okay, which we’re not even going to get into either you either you know or you don’t know what we’re talking about. And let’s just leave it at that.
Jen Lehner: They know that and it’s not, it’s, it’s it is a certain demographic that gets like 95% of their news from TikTok, not social media. Tiktok. Therefore, whatever it is, if we want the young people in the United States to believe that the aliens are invading. Right? And that, you know, it’s a real thing, they could do that. They could literally put together videos, push up all those alien invader people who say they’ve been abducted by aliens. Right? It sounds so ridiculous, but if TikTok chose to make all of that information rise up in the news feed of a huge portion of our population, and we’re all watching it for an hour and two hours a day the way that we used to watch television. Then, of course that—so I really held on to my opinion on this for years. I really did not come out with a strong opinion, but it was when I signed in to TikTok. And I saw the call to action for us, they are literally changing our laws. It is frightening. And I was like, oh, then I had this humongous, like, you know, light bulb moment. And I will say, you know, just because even when they sell it to the United States, it’s still—depending on who they sell it to. I mean, money is, cash is king around here, you know, so it’s like they might sell it to people in the United States and who aren’t so good. But somehow it just feels better if if a country who was against us doesn’t own it. Mhm. All right. Okay. That’s my Kvetch.
My Kvell is right here on my face. These are my Ray-Ban Meta glasses.
Miriam Schulman: Wait, can I tell you just five minutes ago, I was seriously looking at your glasses and saying I want them.
Jen Lehner: Okay, well.
Miriam Schulman: Explain. They’re beautiful.
Jen Lehner: I wish I had an affiliate link. Let me tell you, these are—because I’m about to hype these like you have never heard.
Miriam Schulman: And let me just describe it. For the blind people who cannot see us right now, they’re kind of like that very, very hip, rectangular, look like dark. Um, not like, is that what Mel Robbins wears?
Jen Lehner: Yeah, they’re like Mel Robbins.
Miriam Schulman: Okay, fine. But you’re not copying her. Let’s just be clear. That’s just what.
Jen Lehner: These styles are actually classic wayfarers. So anybody who’s ever seen Wayfare, Ray-Ban, Wayfarers, that’s what they are. So they’re shaped like a Wayfare. They’re black. Mine are black. They have brown. They have other colors. But let me tell you why. These are the perfect glasses. Number one, they are the Ray-Ban meta smart glasses. This means they do very cool things. Okay, so, uh, if I press this button at the top, it will take a still photo. If I press it and hold it, it will take a video. So, Miriam, when I do this, you’re going to see a little white light. Did you see that? And then I’m going to press it and hold it. And now I am videotaping.
Miriam Schulman: You’re so cool, Jen.
Jen Lehner: Okay, so let me—I’m going to click that and turn that off now. There’s that. So. So anybody who’s listening, not watching, it’s a pretty obvious white light. They did that so people would know ideally that their picture was being taken or the video. But to be honest, I could just do my hair like this and you wouldn’t have any idea. And the reason I know that is because when I went to LA, I would never use these for nefarious purposes. However, when I was in LA and you’re seeing all these stars, you know, left and right, you don’t want to be a nerd and pull out your and goofy and pull out your phone. So I was just in stealth mode. Um, every time I would see, oh, Valerie Bertinelli click, click, you know, and and just just take a quick, a quick picture. Okay?
Miriam Schulman: So I will be watching out for those glasses in my locker room at the gym.
Jen Lehner: Well, God forbid someone should do that. But, you know, someone will. You know, some idiot will use them for those purposes. But that is not why they’re the perfect glasses, actually. So I was kayaking this past, um, Mother’s Day weekend, and, um, you know, your hands are busy with the, um, with the paddle, so I’ll. So watch my glasses now, Miriam. So I’m going to say, hey, meta, take video.
Miriam Schulman: Do you see? Oh yes. It started, it started taking the video.
Jen Lehner: And so and I do the same. I could do the same thing just talking to it. I can also say, hey, wake word. I don’t want to say it because it’ll do it. Hey wake word. Um, call Jake mobile, that’s my son and it will automatically call him. And I can talk to him through the glasses. And I don’t have to wear AirPods. Okay, so this is incredible. And the sound quality is so good. No one around you can hear the—
Miriam Schulman: So it’s on the earpiece?
Jen Lehner: I don’t know where it is. I don’t know if they put it somewhere. Yeah. Somewhere on the stem on the side. But it’s not like it’s built in. I don’t it’s not bone conduction because someone said oh it must be bone conduction. It’s not bone conduction. It’s just their mics built in in the perfect spot. I don’t know where, but I can hear perfectly and no one around me can hear. And that same thing goes for my audiobooks. For my. I wore them on the plane ride all day yesterday. No one on either side of me could hear me. I was watching a movie on my phone. So your books, your podcasts, your phone conversations, all of that, and it’s voice activated. Now, what they just added in two weeks ago is AI so now I can say if I’m at a museum. Hey Meta, what am I looking about looking at? And uh Meta will tell me what I’m looking at
Miriam Schulman: But because you’re geotagged or whatever, they know where you are.
Jen Lehner: Well, no, no, no, not geotag. It can see what I’m seeing.
Miriam Schulman: What? Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Hello. My job.
Jen Lehner So I’ll say, if I’m standing in front of the Mona Lisa. Uh, Hey Meta tell me more about this. And I just woke it up, and it’s going to start talking. Hey Meta, cancel.
Miriam Schulman: But basically, it’s the frame. So you can go to any eye doctor and put your prescription in there, because I have, like, I have stigmatism up the wazoo in my eyes.
Jen Lehner: Okay. That brings me to my next point that this is why they are the perfect glasses weight.
Miriam Schulman: They auto adjust. Are these the ones we heard about in that CES conference? Remember we heard about that that Google eyeglasses that self. No, no, you don’t remember that?
Jen Lehner: I don’t remember that.
Miriam Schulman: When we’re in Las Vegas?
Jen Lehner: These are, as you’re looking at me, they’re perfectly clear, like regular glasses. Okay. But they’re also the ones that I got are also transitional. So when I go outside, they turn into sunglasses. Right. These cool green lenses, very nice green. And they’re a matte black on the frames then they’re also progressive. So from here up, yes, you could get your prescriptions in here. At this point I just wear readers, so but I did get a light magnification up above. So just to summarize. Okay, these replace your AirPods. These replace your sunglasses. They’re sunglasses and readers and regular glasses all in one. So none of this up and down on and off stuff that drives me nuts. I normally have like a pair of readers on my head and, like, sunglasses on my face or vice versa. You know, that’s how I spend the day. Now, I don’t have to do that anymore. They are they are basically ChatGPT on your face. They are, um, you they’re just everything, like, they’re the coolest things. And now that I’ve had them for a couple of months and I’ve, I’ve like, they keep a good battery charge. You know, they last a while. It’s everything about them. They’re comfortable, they’re lightweight. I they have perfected these. I actually bought them back in 2020 during Covid. But at that time they would only record video and take pictures. And at the time I was like, what am I going to do with the 30-second video?
Miriam Schulman: Right, right. Oh you naive child, grasshopper. What is that expression? You know, my naive grasshopper.
Jen Lehner: Right. Now they’re, I can do a one minute video. And then the last thing that I’ll say is that it integrates seamlessly with an app on your phone. So when you take a picture or video, it just goes straight to the the app that you have on your phone and into your photo roll. And that wraps up my Kvetch and Kvell for today.
Miriam Schulman:Miriam Schulman: I love it, thank you, Jen. So everything that I have now is about Amazon. Should I start with the Kvetch and that so we can end on a Kvell?
Jen Lehner: Yeah, I think we should.
Miriam Schulman: And I just want to remind people Kvetch is basically Yiddish for complaining and Kvell is Yiddish for like praising, I guess.
Jen Lehner: Praising, yes.
Miriam Schulman: Being excited, celebrating.
Jen Lehner: It’s gushing.
Miriam Schulman: And it’s a lot with Yiddish—it’s gushing, perfect. It also has like onomatopoeia. So words tend to kind of sound like what they mean. Yeah. Kvetch. You know, it’s like ugh. Kvell, kvell!
Jen Lehner: If you’re watching you can’t see all the, the sign language that went with that.
Miriam Schulman: Well you can imagine, right? Talk with my hands okay. All right. So Mercury in retrograde was not kind to me. So what happened. First of all my kitty spilled water on my laptop. So one keyboard later that’s just a mini kvetch. But the big thing that happened during Mercury in retrograde is I got this email from Amazon saying that they’re disabling my account because I had too many returns in the UK which I’ve never used, Jen. Just in case you’re wondering. Right. Never used it. And at first when I got the email, I thought it was like a phishing email, so of course, I ignored it. You know, it’s like, don’t respond to this email type of email. Like, don’t call customer service. They won’t know what you’re talking about. You know, it was like—it looked fake. But then, I got locked out of Amazon. Finally, I’m through customer service. They’re able to get me back in. But yes, my account was still shut down. I couldn’t buy anything. They if I bought anything, they automatically canceled it. I couldn’t comment on anyone’s live streams. And what had happened was like like a couple of weeks ago, I got approved for an influencer account.
So I’ve been working on that. The whole thing was such a kvetch. I finally got the account back because I couldn’t take it anymore. When I was away for the weekend, I got my laptop back, but my LastPass wasn’t on it, so I didn’t know my password for Amazon Business. I only had the password for the Amazon account that didn’t work. But you know how that works, it’s like, not right. I was like, “I can’t take this anymore.” I said to my husband, “You’re going to have to wait while I sit on customer service.”
So I was on customer service in the US. They said, “The only way you can get it back is you have to log on to the UK site and work with them.” I legitimately was on there for over an hour, and the guy felt so sorry for me because he says, “Oh yeah, this is a mistake. You have no orders with us.” I was like, “Yeah.” He’s like, “I’ll file the paperwork.” And I’m crossing my fingers. Finally, I got it back. So that was my huge Kvetch.
Jen Lehner: Well, congratulations. I’m glad it has a happy ending. They don’t always have.
Miriam Schulman: No, when it first happened, I wasn’t fazed by it. It wasn’t until like a week later when I realized how inconvenienced I was. You don’t realize how dependent you become on some of these technologies until they get taken away. It was like “Oh yeah, my Eucerin Cream subscription”, which, by the way, in case you guys heard my Cream Gate episode, is a $9.99 cream that I actually use. So yeah, I was very upset about that. In the beginning, I was like, “h, big deal. It’ll just get fixed. This is a glitch, who cares?” But then a week later, I realized, “No, this isn’t being fixed unless I do something about it.”
Jen Lehner: I’m having a similar issue with Google My Business. Literally, every single day it says, “We’ve removed your content.” But my content is not breaking any laws. They’re removing all the content I’ve ever put up. We religiously posted on Google My Business every day, which, by the way, is a good practice for everyone. I don’t know why they’re doing that, but anyway, it’s going to be a nightmare. We’ve already spent hours on it and we’ll spend hours more, I’m sure.
Miriam Schulman: I mean, these things happen. You know, I’ve been in business a long time. I’ve had my Instagram account shut down and got it back. I had my eBay account shut down when I was selling art on eBay and got it back. For Instagram, it was a hack. For eBay, I actually did something naughty, which is why I got shut down.
Jen Lehner: Well now, we have to know what it is.
Miriam Schulman: Oh, I was selling, um, do you remember Webkinz, the stuffed animals? Yeah. So I was drawing pictures of Webkinz to sell, like little cute watercolor sketches. There’s nothing wrong with that—this is for my artists. There’s nothing wrong with creating a watercolor sketch of whatever you want. The problem is if you use a brand name in your listing to sell it, right? Then that is like trademark infringement or something like that. I forget what the exact word is, but you can’t use names like Chanel or Coke. So that’s what it was.
Jen Lehner: It’s not that naughty, but I get it.
Miriam Schulman: Well, it was.
Jen Lehner: Also I think it’s fun to think about you doing watercolor of Webkinz and selling them on eBay.
Miriam Schulman: I think I’ve come a long way, baby. I mean, that’s back when I didn’t realize that cheap wasn’t easier to sell. Okay, so let’s talk about the Kvell. One of the things I did when I hit my 300th podcast episode was give away Amazon gift cards. This could also be why my account got shut down. According to my team, they read on Reddit—therefore it’s true—that buying gift cards on Amazon can trigger these things, like technical glitches. And by the way, the timing was exactly that. It literally was the next day.
Jen Lehner: Okay, I’m so glad I know that because we buy tons of Amazon gift cards.
Miriam Schulman: Yeah, I’m never doing it again.
Jen Lehner: Oh my God. Thank you.
Miriam Schulman: So anyway, we bought three $100 gift cards. What it was was to randomly award somebody who had left an honest review of my book and workbook. But the Kvell part I wanted to share is about one of the artists, and I’ll give him a shoutout—Eric Ross. He did something very clever. When he left his review, you know how you can upload a picture? It’s supposed to be a picture of you with the book or the item. So he uploaded a picture that basically advertised his art. I was like, that is so clever. The way he did it, I thought, oh, this is something all artists can do. You can do this for anything. For example, if you bought your Eucerin Cream, stick it on top of your easel and make sure you put text on it that says what the art is and what your Instagram handle is, then upload it. It’s basically like a free ad.
Jen Lehner: That is so smart.
Miriam Schulman: Yeah, I was like, wow, that was smart.
Jen Lehner: That really is smart. I have my URL on my Peloton account, and I noticed nobody else does that. But you could put your art there. You could put your art on your Peloton account as your profile picture because there are thousands of people in a live Peloton class. But I love that. So you weren’t like, “Oh, this guy’s advertising in my reviews,” you were like, “Whatever. Well, okay.”
Miriam Schulman: If he was an artist business coach hosting something, I would not be so pleased or thinking he’s so clever. You know, like.
Jen Lehner: Yeah, go find your own.
Miriam Schulman: That’s right. It’s like going into Starbucks and saying, hey, the coffee at Dunkin Donuts. It’s really good.
Jen Lehner: Yeah, but I’ve had people that do the equivalent of that.
Miriam Schulman: I know, me too.
Jen Lehner: So that makes me scratch my head.
Miriam Schulman: I know it’s like.
Jen Lehner: You see what I’m trying to do over here? I mean.
Miriam Schulman: Right.
Jen Lehner: What you’re doing is like messing me up. Exactly.
Miriam Schulman: Okay, so my other Kvell is that I’ve been approved for an Amazon Influencer account, and I opened my Amazon storefront. I’ve got a bunch of stuff on there, but what I’m most excited about is doing Amazon Lives.
I did a practice one. We’re not actually starting it until June. I know we’re recording this in May, but I think this goes live in June. So if you’re listening, there should be some real ones up, and you can go to SchulmanArt.com/Store to see what we’ve set up.
For me, yes, of course, I’m not going to turn down affiliate income from Amazon. But what you’re going to see is this is a great way for me to sell my book. It’s basically like Facebook Lives were before. So, when you’re watching somebody, what happens is they have a carousel running. You see the live, and as you talk about each thing, you have to have your assistant, or you can do it all yourself, but I really recommend you use a VA like Jen would tell you to do. Your assistant in the background can highlight the products.
So in the carousel, for the first one I’m doing, it’s all about planning. So I have my planner pad, the markers that I use, the tabs that I bought. But of course, in every carousel, just like Eric Ross…
Jen Lehner: Let me interrupt on the far left,that vertical column is what your carousel is, right?
Miriam Schulman: That is the carousel. So they can search through the carousel. But as you talk about products, you have an assistant will highlight it. But then once it’s done while you’re live, the recording will show it.
Jen Lehner: Oh, nice. I’m actually going to go watch this and buy every single one of these because I love and I’ll never do it. But every time I see your planners in the way that you organize yourself, and your thoughts, it’s so appealing.
Miriam Schulman: So the one I have up here is not a real one; I wasn’t really trying that hard to be entertaining or to do anything because it was my practice one. I’m going to do it all over again. But by the time the listeners are tuning in, they’ll get to see it live.
You see how I have my book and Artpreneur workbook. So listen to all the different possibilities you could have here. Let me just show you some ones that I’ve planned so you can get an idea of the potential for this.
I don’t think you can see upcoming live streams for someone else, so let me just stop sharing and tell you what I’m doing. I’m doing one live stream all about my podcasting equipment. Another live stream will be all about selling art online, linking up all the equipment I use to photograph, edit, and launch my online classes. Another live stream will be about how to package prints.
It’s basically the same kind of content that in the past I would have done on Facebook Live for free. And yes, maybe I would have given them a PDF with all these things linked on it.
But here I have a greater opportunity not only to earn more affiliate income but also to build my audience. I have a friend who does decor, and they tell me they get hundreds of thousands of people tuning in live because Amazon has blown up even bigger than they thought it would. They’re pushing it out into the feed, and people are tuning in like crazy. Just think about all the potential this has.
Let’s say I could invite a decorator influencer to my channel. We could talk about art and decorating. Maybe they have a decorating book, and I have my art book. We could have some decor items in the carousel. Maybe I can invite Tracy Otsuka to the podcast because she has a book. We could include that book in the carousel along with some tools she uses to help keep her focus, like a timer or a desk planner. There’s so much potential here for content creation.
For those of you listening who are artists and are scratching your heads, wondering how this works for you, well, duh, I don’t mean to say, I’m gonna have to edit that out.
Jen Lehner: Why? Is it like offensive to say duh?
Miriam Schulman: Is it?
Jen Lehner: No, I don’t think so.
Miriam Schulman: I don’t know. All right. Fine, I won’t edit it out. But like you could do watercolor demos and talk about the supplies. So when I was teaching online art classes, I always would have a live stream about what supplies I use. That was one of the best ways I used to get people to join my class, and not everything has to be live. You can have like little prerecorded snippets. We’re going to be using StreamYard to broadcast on to Amazon. So and that is what I used in that little demo you saw over there.
Jen Lehner: Question about building your audience. How can you build your audience like your email list?
Miriam Schulman: Yeah, you can put you can put a QR code or a URL on the screen. You can’t put it into the chat. They don’t let you. They will delete any comment that is a URL. So even people who are following you can’t come in and say, hey, I’m—
Jen Lehner: Is that a loophole they allow, the QR code, or is that a way that people are getting around it and then eventually they’re going to get busted?
Miriam Schulman: No, no. They allow that. The people I follow who have like 300,000 whatever people showing up live, they use the QR codes and the on the screen, you can say like they want you to build your audience, because when you build your audience, as long as you’re continuing bringing it back to Amazon, they just don’t—
Jen Lehner: So you could put like inspirationplace.net or .com or whatever you are on the screen. Correct?
Miriam Schulman: Correct.
Jen Lehner: [inaudible]
Miriam Schulman: It can’t be a clickable URL in the chat. And there’s a chat running when you’re live. So I can put on the screen, you know, okay, I’m teaching you this is all the equipment you need to build your online art class. Okay, well, I have a free giveaway for you, by the way, anyone listening who wants that the online art class checklist. Yeah, it’s SchulmanArt.com/tech.
Jen Lehner: T-E-C-H
Miriam Schulman: T-EC-H. So I could put something like that on the screen. I can even go directly to a sales page, like Oh, and I have this mini course on building an online class. Here’s the URL, so I could put that on there too. But I rather gather their email address and build the relationship. for sure.
Jen Lehner: For sure. Love this. Love, love, love.
Miriam Schulman: Isn’t that great? Like. Yeah. So I was like, uh. That’s why I wouldn’t let you cancel today. That’s like, I’ve been waiting to tell you about all this.
Jen Lehner: Okay. I’m so glad that I didn’t. Okay, guys, this is so fun as always.
Miriam Schulman: Thank you, Jen for that. All right. So that’s it for now. I’ll see you the same time, same place next week. Until then, stay inspired. Bye for now.
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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