THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Miriam Schulman: This trips up so many artists, they think there’s only one magic formula, one perfect step by step roadmap, and if they don’t know it, they should not even start. And that belief keeps them researching, taking courses, consuming content instead of actually doing the thing. It’s better to just try something, even if you’re wrong, because you’ll learn faster.
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: Hello, it’s Miriam Schulman here and welcome to the Inspiration Place podcast.
Miriam Schulman: Today we’re talking all about taming artist overwhelm. Feeling overwhelmed This podcast episode is for you. So I want to just start off by sharing a personal story when I have felt overwhelmed. And even though from the outside it looked like everything was going great. So a few years ago I had a I think one this was I know want to say it was pre-pandemic, but not totally sure. I had an artist membership site and it was called the Inspired Insiders Club, and by any outside standard, it was doing well. It was bringing in actually $40,000 a year. So it was successful in that sense. People loved it. They stayed. They were paying me every month to learn from me. Some people even paid me in advance for the full year. But here was the truth for me, it was too much I was creating art for the membership that I didn’t necessarily want to sell because I was teaching art that they wanted to learn. At the same time, I was coaching artists on the business of art. I was also selling my original art, and I had some other online classes too, like watercolor portraits. So that meant I really had three businesses. Three I had my online class business and a membership. I had an artist coaching program that was business number two, and I was a fine artist.
Miriam Schulman: That was business number three. Three businesses producing art for the membership, managing the coaching, marketing my personal artwork. And as you can imagine, I was exhausted. I felt pulled in too many directions and like I was just on this hamster wheel. It was really, really tough. And so I made the difficult decision to close my insect club, even though that was giving up $40,000, because I knew that I could make that money back doing the other work. So pumpkin, planning my business, letting go of the things that drained me the most, and focusing on what lit me up the most. Now here’s what I’ve noticed. Not just with myself, but with other artists, is that if you want to get to the top of a mountain, you have to pick your mountain. So I could have been successful in any of those three things. Just as a fine artist like, would I help my clients do just with my membership site, just with my online classes, our online art classes, or just with coaching? But because I was doing all these things, I was never getting to the top of the mountain. It was like I was going up the trail and then going up this trail over here. And that is not how you get to the top of the mountain. You have to pick one mountain, pick one mountain.
Miriam Schulman: So I see a lot of artists doing this too. You’ll get to the top a lot fast if you choose one path and stay on it. If you keep jumping to a new trail every time the path gets steep, or anytime somebody says, hey, look over here, you can do surface design, you can do illustration, you can do digital art, you can do photography. Let’s make some pottery. Now let’s show some things. So if you do that every time, you’re not going to make progress. You’ll never make it to the top of the summit. Or worse, if you’re trying to climb two mountains at the same time, you’re going to burn yourself out before you reach the top of either one. So like I said, that’s why I made the scary decision to let go of my membership site, even though it’s profitable, because I knew I could not scale more than one mountain at the same time. I chose one mountain, one path I had focused, I had clarity and honestly a lot more joy in my work now. And that’s also why I have really put my own artistic practice on the back burner, because right now I feel so called to help other artists, and I want to do the best job of it as I absolutely can. It’s kind of like I’m their artist business coaching mama, and I want to give them the best that I can of that.
Miriam Schulman: Now I want to talk about what this means for you. All right. So first of all, what happened to me being pulled in different directions. And by the way, I’ll explain what happened with that. I actually had to refund money because there were people who had paid me for the full year. So we prorated what I was, what I owed them. I gave people their money back if they had paid for the full year and I ended it, and I haven’t looked back on that, I’m really glad that I stopped it. Now, the thing about artists, you have to understand is that it’s kind of like being a doctor. So there’s many different kinds of doctors. There are internists, there are surgeons. But even among the surgeons, there are heart surgeons, there are plastic surgeons. And you have to focus on the one thing. You cannot rise in your field trying to be more than one kind of doctor. So even within the illustrators and I’m going to have, I think after this episode, Vanessa is coming to talk about illustration. And if we’ve already published that episode, we’ll make sure that we’ve linked to it. And she talks about even among art illustration, you still have to like choose a niche, a niche down into it, because art directors are looking for you to focus on that one thing.
Miriam Schulman: So even among that. So I see artists who think they can be a fine artist and an illustrator and do surface design and do something else. It is really hard. Now there are artists, and I do work with them who have climbed the top of a mountain. So let’s say they climbed the top of the illustration mountain, and now they want to also add in fine art. That’s different. So you’ve climbed the top of the mountain and now you’re ready to climb a second mountain, but you just can’t do them all at the same time. All right. I’m going to break down the seven reasons why most artists are suffering with overwhelm. So you can see if you are one of these are to blame for your problems. Number one, we kind of already hinted at it and that is too many conflicting streams of income. A lot of artists are trying to sell original art, take commissions, run a membership site, teach classes, teach online classes, sell prints. And I don’t know, maybe you’re even juggling an Etsy or spoon flower shop or whatever. And each one of those has an audience, a pricing strategy, marketing task. And again, it’s like trying to climb several mountains at the same time.
Miriam Schulman: You’ll burn out before you reach any of them. Hey, us creative entrepreneurs, especially artists. Do you ever feel like you’ve wandered off the trail? Maybe you’re lost in the woods without a signal, unsure of which way to go next. I’m Miriam Schulman, author of Artpreneur and host of the Inspiration Place podcast. For over 25 years I’ve been a professional artist, and also the compass that helps artists and creative entrepreneurs find their way. Choosing one clear path and finally reaching the summit. Here’s what I know. When you’re lost, you don’t need more random advice. You need a compass. Something that shows you the way forward. That’s why I created the free Artpreneur bootcamp in just three days. You’ll get your trail map and your compass, so you’ll find your way back to the path and move forward to your goals with confidence. You will replace hesitation with momentum, fear with courage, and pressure with joy. Rediscovering why you fell in love with making art in the first place. And best of all, you’ll leave feeling inspired again, believing in your vision and your ability to bring it to life. Join me for free over at SchulmanArt.com/bootcamp. That’s SchulmanArt.com/bootcamp. Your trail map, your compass, and your path to the summit are waiting. Number two conflicting, confusing advice. Now this is when you are listening to a lot of podcasts and thank you for listening to mine.
Miriam Schulman: But maybe you hear one and they say, Be on Instagram, be on Pinterest TikTok. Oh, now try YouTube. Also email, do art fairs, do LinkedIn, and every expert swears their way is the only way. And it’s the secret. And that can leave artists spinning, asking, am I even doing the right thing and then trying to do all these different things? So the first thing is about picking one income stream. The second thing is not to have too many marketing channels. So I only use my podcast and YouTube and kind of Instagram. When I was a fine artist and focused almost exclusively on that, I did not have a podcast, I did not have a YouTube channel, and social media was just in its infancy. So really, you can thrive as an artist without using any of these social media platforms? None of them. The one thing, though, that you’ll hear me talk about over and over again is email marketing. The other thing you’ll hear me talking about is physical mail. Those things have always worked and they still work. They’re like cockroaches. Very hard to kill, very hard to get rid of. Still around? Still working. I talk more about that inside my upcoming boot camp. If you haven’t signed up for that, you want to make sure you do SchulmanArt.com/bootcamp. Reason number three why you’re overwhelmed.
Miriam Schulman: You believe low priced art is easier to sell. But here’s the thing. Low priced work requires a lot of volume in order to sell enough to make a living. A lot of artists do this. They underpriced their art, and they focus on things thinking cheaper sells faster or it’s easier to store. But the result is you have to make and market way more pieces just to hit your income goal. And by the way, collectors don’t even want small pieces. They want big pieces that will make a big impact. And you want to be in the business of selling art, not storing art. So make big pieces. That doesn’t matter if you’re in sculpture or in painting or photography, bigger is easier to sell. The little counterintuitive, but it works. You’ve heard me, perhaps talked about furniture analogies. It’s much easier to sell a sofa, even though it’s five $10,000, than it is to sell an end table. People want things that make a big impact. Number four reason why you’re overwhelmed. Treating social media like a sales catalog. Creating captions every day for sale DM but not actually building relationships or growing your email list. That hamster wheel of content creation is going to eat up a lot of energy, with very little to show for it. The artists I coach are making their sales by sending out emails. Emails? Yeah, you can make some sales on Instagram, but it’s going to overwhelm you and exhaust you a lot faster. Reason number five you’re overwhelmed. Avoiding the scary stuff by doing fake work. What is fake work? You know what I mean.
Miriam Schulman: Organizing your studio, tweaking your website fonts. Binge watching other artists on Instagram because it feels safer than raising your prices or actually reaching out to collectors. Now, it may feel like work, but it doesn’t move the needle. And I would even say that people in my program sometimes procrastinate by watching the two minute training videos. So I tell them, you only need to watch one training video a week one. It’s much more important to put what you learned into action than watching more training videos. Number six. Belief that there’s a right way to start this trips up so many artists. They think there’s only one magic formula, one perfect step by step roadmap. And if they don’t know it, they should not even start. And that belief keeps them researching, taking courses, consuming content instead of actually doing the thing I call it across the learning. And the problem with podcast learning is that you reach the point where you find one way to do it, but you then research and then you get conflicting advice, and now you don’t know what to do at all. So I like to think of it as it’s better to just try something, even if you’re wrong, because you’ll learn faster. It’s kind of like when you. Well, I live here in New York City, and sometimes when I’m going to a new place in the city and I emerge out of the subway, I don’t really know which direction to go, and I may not be sure who to ask, and I will find out if I’m going in the wrong direction a lot faster if I just start walking.
Miriam Schulman: We’ve all had that experience, right? If you use GPS on your phone, you know, in my walking in the right direction. Oh, no. Okay, let me turn around. Go the other way. So it’s on a waste of time to go ten steps in the wrong direction. What’s a waste of time is standing in one place spinning. So you want to put one foot in front of the other, not marching in place, but one foot in front of the other, making forward progress. Hey creatives, what if your art isn’t just something you make, but part of something bigger? Because here’s the truth. Your creativity is sacred. It’s how you express your soul and serve others. Because when fear, rejection, or confusion creep in, it’s easy to lose sight of why you started creating in the first place. That’s why I created the free Artpreneur bootcamp to help you overcome fear, build resilience, and learn practical business skills without losing that spiritual connection that fuels your art. I’m Miriam Schulman. I’m author of the book Artpreneur, and I’m host of the Inspiration Place podcast. For over 25 years, I’ve helped artists just like you connect their creativity to their life’s purpose and build thriving art businesses around it. So join me for free at SchulmanArt.com/bootcamp. It’s time to honor your calling, share your gifts, and grow the art business you were meant to have. That’s SchulmanArt.com/bootcamp. Finally, our last reason. Reason number seven is not knowing what to prioritize.
Miriam Schulman: This is the classic spinning in circles feeling. Everything feels urgent. Everything feels so important. So what happens? Nothing actually gets finished. That reminds me of Tabitha. One of the incubator members changed her name, of course, who recently shared. I have so many ideas and things I’m supposed to be doing, but I don’t know what to focus on first. She’s an abstract painter who works primarily on canvas, and when she first joined us, she was completely overwhelmed. Her exact words my brain feels like it’s spinning in circles. I have so many ideas and things I’m supposed to be doing, and I don’t know what to focus on, and it feels like tightness in my chest and I just can’t do anything. And hey, Tabitha and anyone else who feels that way, I see you and I hear you. And she’s not lazy. None of you were lazy. Her days were packed, but not productive. She jumped from starting new paintings to tweaking her website to answering random Instagram DMs, scrambling to post something every day because she thought she had to keep up. Yet, despite all that effort. She admitted she had nothing to show for it and she wasn’t selling at the level she wanted, because why? Most of her pieces were under $100 because she believed cheaper would sell faster, but $100 each. If you want to make $50,000 a year, that’s a lot of paintings. That’s a lot of paintings you have to sell. What would that be? Would that be 500 paintings to get to and see how many zeroes that is? I don’t know if it’s 500. I think it’s 500.
Miriam Schulman: That’s a lot. So that belief that kept her churning out small, low priced art that barely covered her supplies. And on top of that, she’d spent hours researching what other artists were doing on Instagram or maybe rearranging our studio. This is the classic busy work because, in her words, everything feels equally urgent. Then I just freeze and I don’t finish anything. So that’s why I tell artists to do the rock, pebbles and sand. I’ve done a whole podcast episode on this, so we’re going to link to it, but I’m going to tell you about it because really, you guys can’t hear this too many times. It’s important. So this is a Stephen Covey concept. It comes from the his book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. So what I want you to do is imagine you have a glass jar and you have three things to fill it with big rocks, pebbles, and sand. The rocks are your most important high value priorities, the things that actually will make you money as an artist. Maybe that’s finishing a commission. The pebbles are mid-level tasks, useful but not urgent. And the sand, the sand, or all the tiny stuff that can fill up your time but doesn’t really move the needle. Yeah, scrolling Instagram, but even just tweaking your website fonts, reorganizing your studio for the fourth time. If you’re a photographer, maybe doing your Lightroom settings, things like that. And here’s the kicker if you pour sand into that jar first, you’re going to have no room for the rocks. If you put it in all your pebbles first, you’re still going to have no rooms for your rocks. Put the big rocks in first.
Miriam Schulman: Then fill the space with pebbles. And finally you can fill the rest with sand. That’s all those low stakes activities that feel like work but don’t actually create sails or momentum. Not when Tabitha realized that her jar was mostly sand. Things that kept her busy but not productive. She committed to choosing one rock every day, and that one decision alone was enough to lift the overwhelm she had been carrying for months. She realized her problem wasn’t actually a lack of time, it was a lack of focus. So she made one decision instead of scattering her energy across dozens of tiny tasks. She’d focus on one rock, finishing a larger painting for a collector who had already expressed interest in it, and setting aside time to email her existing contacts. Rather than posting or commenting on social media. So by the end of that session, she said, just by choosing that one priority feels like a weight was lifted off my shoulders. And that’s what happens when artists stop spinning and get clarity. You move from scattered and exhausted to focused and productive. All right, my friends. So let me close on this. You’re not lazy. You’re not broken. You just need clarity and focus. And that’s exactly what you’ll get inside my Artpreneur boot camp. We’ll do it over three days. It’s not all day and an hour a day. You’re going to get exactly what you needed. Clarity, focus and commitment. Come join me SchulmanArt.com/bootcamp. All right, my friend. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. I’ll see you the same time, same place next week. Until next time, 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 at @SchulmanArt and of course, on SchulmanArt.com/bootcamp.
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