Pricing, Prestige & The Business Of Photography - Miriam Schulman, E115

I was told you couldn't make a living that way, and I believe them.

“When I first started out and I was selling portraits, I looked around to see what other people were charging and decided I should charge less.”

And that was a big mistake. Tell us about those years and the mistakes you made early on that you see other people making. So one of the biggest mistakes that I made myself, and I see other artists making, is the idea that cheaper is easier to sell. When really people are looking for things that are reassuringly expensive.

People associate a higher price tag with something being better.

It's not always about beauty, it's about what does owning this art, this photography, say about you as a person.

That's the key.

“I can give you some hacks today that will work.”

So one of the hacks. Okay, Mary, I'm Shulman. Welcome to the move podcast. All right. Thanks for having me, Matt. Thanks for being here. We've got a lot to go through. A lot of witches in your book, Art for Nure, which I'm going to kind of reference as we go through the conversation.

But before we do, give us an insight into you kind of a little bit of your origin story. You know, kind of dive into how you transition through various chapters in your life. But tell us a little bit about you and what we're hoping to hear from you in terms of your expertise in the next hour serve conversation.

Okay. Well, like many artists, I was not always an artist.

I was told you couldn't make a living that way, and I believed them, whoever they are, you know, parents, society.

“And so I took the practical route and I went to Wall Street because I figured, if I need to make money, where did they make money?”

Oh, over there. Okay. So I went to Wall Street. But after 9/11 happened, I quit my job and decided that was assigned from the universe, not to go back to that world. And that's when I started painting on at first on the side, because I still didn't believe I could make a living from it. And I was painting on the side and working for a gym who taught me how to sell personal training packages. And that's when I had my aha moment, because I saw that what they were teaching me could be used to sell anything, including art.

And so that was over 25 years ago, and since then, since then, I've built a six figure art business, one that I can count on year in and year out. Cool. And we're going to, like I said, the book we can't cover the entire book today, obviously, but we want to encourage everyone to go out and read it. Give us a synopsis of the book. I mean, it's almost like a snapshot of what you've learned during those formative years and what you put into practice for yourself and now for other people. But just give us a synopsis of the book and what it entails, essentially.

So, you know, 20 years of being an artist, but then other people who wanted to meet us show them how. So this started back in like 2018 is when I started the inspiration place podcast. And once I was giving voice to my story, people said, "Well, could you teach me how to make a living as an artist?" So I developed up my coaching practice, and I was getting the same result, or I still get the same result for my clients as I did for myself. And I've got in many artists over the six figure mark through my method.

So the foundation of what I teach is in the book artpreneur. What I do in there is I break down really the five biggest mistakes holding artists back, which it applies to artists in many ways. It applies to all entrepreneurs make these mistakes, but I make it very specific to artists. And then the five foundations about what you really need to focus on instead. And I do weave in a lot of these personal stories that I'll be sharing here today.

But that is the foundation of the book, the five pillars of how to build a successful business, a successful creative business. Great. Yeah. I've got the book here for those watching. What would you kind of pick out in terms of those, I'm really interested in the start of your journey as an artist. And then entrepreneur and kind of an entrepreneur. And why, why you felt that it was this myth of the starving artist was not going to be you.

And those, those first kind of avenues into making money from your art.

So one of the biggest mistakes that I made myself and I see other artists making.

“And to be perfectly honest, I'm still always having to push against this edge for myself and my own growth is the idea that cheaper is easier to sell.”

When really, people are looking for things that are reassuringly expensive. It doesn't matter if we're talking about cars, vets, babysitters, art work, coaching packages, people want they people associate a higher price tag with something being better. And so cheaper isn't all these easier to sell and sometimes that can definitely work against you if you're underpriced. So how did this, how did he come to realize this good, give us a, give us a story, I guess, of those early years, years and artists trying to kind of give things away for free and discounts and cheap.

Okay.

Did you learn through doing basically?

Yes, I did.

“So, I mean, I mean, I may not have had all the language that I have now to describe the problem.”

But when I first started out and I was selling portraits, I looked around and this is the early 2000s when I was looking around to see what other people were charging for portraits and decided I should charge less. That was a big mistake. So I arrived at a price of $300 per portrait and my first experience was going to work with a client who wanted each of her children painted and I went to her house to look through her photos.

We were going to, I was going to work with her photos to make these, this artwork. And instead of picking out just one photo for each child, she ended up choosing three.

And that's when I realized, oh, I could have charged three times as much and so that she would have done the more appropriate thing, which is choose one photo and have one portion of each child. Because I visited her house a year later, she didn't even frame all these paintings. Like, you know, she could afford to buy them, but not frame three of them because the frame or wasn't underpriced. Right. So that was that I like tripled my prices that other times that this has happened was I got sick of doing dog portraits.

So I told my assistant, oh, so tired of these dog portraits just double my prices. So she did that. And that same week I got three waters at the double price double price. And one of them came from a client who had bought it at the cheaper price. Now a lot of artists, not just artists, but people who are raising their prices, they think, oh, if I raise my price is someone's going to be mad at me. Like, as if everyone memorized their prices. And, like, we'll notice. So the client who bought it at the cheaper price and then the double price, they didn't, she didn't even say anything about the double price. They didn't notice didn't complain.

And whenever I'm encouraging my clients to raise their prices same thing, they'll have past collectors come back, buy it at the tripled price, pay more, they don't complain, which means the prices could have been even higher. Just shows, like, how underpriced we actually are. Yeah, I see that all the times, especially in the photography world, I mean, I'm not as a cognizant of the painting or the other kind of other art forms. But I imagine it's very similar because what we're offering most of the time is not a solution to a problem and I know you reference this into it in your book as well.

You argue people pay more for pleasure at a lot of the time than problem solving, which I don't always see certainly in theory were taught in marketing to solve someone's problem or solve someone's problem.

“Yeah, it's not working for us photographers slash artists because, and the problem is not a blank wall because a mirror will solve that problem, right?”

Okay, so there's no one's having a problem with getting a photography, there's not a problem. So what they really want to pay more for, it's not just the pleasure, it's also the prestige. So, of course, there is a ceiling to what people can pay or willing to pay, feel comfortable paying, but you're always going to want to pay more for something that's going to give you more pleasure in the owning and give you more prestige in owning it, which is why they can charge such exorbitant prices for, like, a broken back.

Like, do you want the photographer that's, like, you got your friend's high school, you know, your high school, his high school buddy to photograph you, or could you get Steven Masell to do it, or is there someone in between now there's going to be that person that, like,

it satisfies that self esteem and paying high prices is part of that for people.

“So, how do we create that prestige is not just about charging a high price?”

Yeah, there's, so there's a lot of things that go into it. I can give you some hacks today that will work. I mean, there's about becoming the micro celebrity in your niche, in your town, in your area. I leaned into that heavily when I was building my art career. So, it wasn't about, for me it was about getting the cool moms to commission me.

Once I got the cool mom to commission me, I was in, I was in. So, but it's true. Yes, cracked.

And then I carried around and this, what I'm talking about now, I did it then because I didn't have, we didn't really have the smartphones that we do that today.

But I actually think that if you use this technique, it works better than pulling out your phone. So, I carried around a grandma brag book. Do you know what I'm talking about? It's okay.

“All right, Matt, maybe you're too young to remember.”

But, like 20 years ago, grandma brag book was a four by six photo album. The grandma's would put pictures of their kids in. So, I would put pictures of the cool moms, portraits, their kids. They're kids, portraits. Basically, yes.

And so, when people would ask you about my art, I would just pull it out.

Like, I didn't wait for them to ask. I was like, I didn't pull it out. Oh, do you know Kim? Of course, everyone knows Kim. Here's her kids.

Look what I, look at her portrait that I just finished. I got so many commissions that way. So, I became a micro celebrity. So, one is like that self promotion angle, but it was also about getting press, local press. So, that's something that's available to everybody, no matter what type of photography you're doing.

And fast forward to now. Has that changed in any way? It didn't mean that social media obviously has a big part of it. Okay, I love these questions, and there's so many things to unpack. So, press is still the fast track.

I have one client who's a painter, not a portrait artist, does wildlife. And she got a feature in art collector magazine. It led to $9,500 in sales as well as a repeat collector who spent over $29,000 on her art. So, that's within the last few years. I have dozens of those kinds of stories.

My client Grace, she's a Canadian, but she's a diver. She does underwater photography, but then she paints her underwater photographs. And so, instead of getting into our collector magazine, she focused on like scuba ray, diver magazine. She went to where her collectors were gathering.

And told stories about her process and her art that way, but she's putting her art in front of her ideal collectors, not in front of other artists. Sorry to cut away from the episode for a minute, but I wanted to talk to you about something very quickly. Now, I spent a long time thinking that isolation was part of the deal when it came to photography. That if you were so serious about the work you did it alone.

You'd consume enough, watching off, reading off, and eventually it would all cohere into something meaningful. And it sometimes did, but mostly I was just alone with my doubts and no one to push back on them. What changed things for me wasn't a course or a workshop. It was a conversation with someone who was doing the same kind of work and cared about it in exactly the same way I did. The doubts didn't disappear, but they got a little bit smaller and I felt more okay with them.

They got named.

“That's what I'm building with the mood inside us.”

It's a place where the work is taken seriously, where you can bring your questions, and of course your hard-finished ideas, and where someone would actually engage with them. We have the ad-free extended podcast episodes with bonus content.

Because you don't have to do this alone, so the link is in the show notes, and hopefully I'll see you inside.

“When you talk about, I have so many questions around this, because I see it's such a daunting issue for a lot of,”

I mean, I talk about photographers just because I know photographers and I work with so many of them. So people who are just starting out and figuring there's this existential threat, so photography, there's existential threat to society, and recessions around the corner, and limit personal limiting beliefs. I hate the recession around the corner, in all eight years of, I've been a coach.

There has never not been a recession around the corner.

Okay, so what do you say, what are we selling? So that's what I'm getting to, is we feel like there's this sub narrative that art is this luxury. Especially things like paintings, maybe not so much photography. But if I go down the photography route and you talk about collectors, how do we go and find, you know, people that, the lot of people that collect photographs and photographs from people who that they admire or have a wonderful story behind.

Maybe it's not just about the image, it's about the artist. How do we find these collectors and how do we, how do we, what I said, recession proof against, you know, sales of art, and then luxury kind of identity of art that we feel is going to disappear, there is a recession or it seems there is a downside of serious people have personal financial issues. First of all, let's just talk about the reality.

“So the art newspaper that I think it's put out by Christie's, do you know what I'm talking about?”

Yep, yep.

So they just ran an article about how the most recent art market, I can't recall off the top of the head now,

which which fair they were talking about or which auction they were talking about. But they were worried because of the iron is real war and the recession around the corner that sales would be down and they were up. So like the data is pointing in a completely different direction and in terms of my own community of emerging artists, I have the data as well in a backup. Art sales have not slowed slow down.

So people will buy even during a recent even if there's a recession looming. So why? I mean, yeah, I mean, I totally agree with you. I'm trying to try to play devil's advocate because I'm trying to get through. I'm just saying there's the facts.

There's the data we have that just backs the top. Why is that? I'm more interested in, like, why is it? We just, it is a myth that art is a luxury, but people need that in their life. People need to have that.

People need to feel good. Feel feeling good. Yeah, they want the feeling that the art or the photography gives them. Now for people on the upper upper, it could just be the feeling they get that they can afford. X million dollar artwork.

I mean, that's a thing. But it's just like you want to surround yourself with the beauty or what?

It's not always about beauty.

It's about what does owning this art, this photography, say about you as a person. That's the key. That's the key that you have to unlock. What is the identity? So when I work with artists, I do what's called a signal excavation process.

Where we excavate their through-line, their story. And we uncover that thing about what does owning the art say about the collector. Interesting. And I can give you examples of, like, that too.

“Yeah, please go ahead. I'm doubling down on this topic, because I think it's important.”

Okay, so I just came off. I did a signal excavation session with my client who is a former physician. And she doesn't have a lot of art selling experience outside of her friends. So it was very difficult for her to articulate like what it was. You know, I said, hey, you know, why do they buy it?

And they says, well, they see me when they look at the artwork. I was like, okay, well, let's figure out what that wavelength is that makes you, you. That so, you know, she has a lot of, I mean, she sold a lot of artwork, but just because it's to her friends, she can't really tease it out herself. So when we unpacked her life, she not only was a physician,

but she was a division one athlete in college. Like, she made the, the US gymnastics team. So she's like, hi, Achiever. But then she talked about feeling like she didn't get enough credit when she was a radiologist.

Okay. And then we started to talk about when she does feel peaceful and she does feel quiet.

“And she said, in nature, and what does that feeling give her?”

Do you feel peaceful or empowered? Like, we, we ended up with that as being like the main vocabulary once we teased everything out. So by the end of this, and she paints mostly flowers. By the end of that, we can then create a narrative arc where we're saying,

your art is for that woman who always felt that she had to perform.

But now is drawn to collecting these flowers, flowers don't need to be formed, perform. And not weak little wallflowers, but these are powerful symbols. So that beauty that flowers can be beautiful and powerful. So that tension that lives in her work. We were able to articulate it in a way that her collectors now can respond to it and feel seen by her artwork.

That's very powerful collector language that she can now talk about her art. So it's not just my art is, you know, calm flowers and I enjoy being a Nick. No, nobody wants to do that. Nobody wants to hear that. And nobody wants to hear about how painting makes her calm.

Nobody buys art because of the way it makes the photographer feel or the painter feel. No, no, it's how, how do you feel? Yeah, I talk about this all the time as well. It's like this feeling of wanting to be understood. Because an artist, but as the viewer is the buyer is the collector as well.

Like, oh, you get me or that's projecting me or that's reflecting me. I see myself in this and that makes me feel seen and warm and lovely. Exactly. That's also where the uniqueness comes in.

“People always ask, how do I, how do I start, especially photography, which is about as ubiquitous as you can get?”

How do I stand out from the crowd? How do I be different? Like, you are the only one that's you and that's your difference. You've just got to find a way to to show people that to tell people that to express it. And that comes with a lot of the language that you attach with it, right?

I'd like to give another example. So I worked with someone who's a retired Navy officer and he did boxing and he does pet portraits. Which, again, lots of artists do pet portraits.

And the way his language sounded before we worked together is like, well, I loved, you know, I captured the eyes and the eyes and the most important thing.

I was like, yes, and as a police officer during your time, I bet you got very good at reading faces. So then by pulling in his biography, we were able to show how he was not just the obvious choice. But the real choice, the reason you would want him to paint your pet portrait because of the way he's able to read faces. So we were able to weave that something that made him very special and different that you wouldn't necessarily connect. Well, I connect with being an artist into his story.

I bet you see a lot of limiting beliefs. Is that like the first barrier you generally have to push down with people? Because it's such a common thing, isn't it? Yeah.

Not just the first, but that's always the challenge because, um, Matt, you can give the best advice in the world.

You're clients, the artists, you listening out there. Our brains have evolved for survival. Not goal achievement. So anytime you're giving advice, it's going to push up against something that they strongly believe. Like, yes, people won't buy my art if it's priced higher.

Our brains, it's going to feel uncomfortable and come up with all kinds of reasons why that's a terrible idea. And why that won't work for them. And the more creative you are and the smarter you are, the better you are at coming up with those reasons. And notice, I didn't say excuses because they did not feel like an excuse to you. Well, we talked about, uh, yeah, we talked about like market conditions isolation.

You'd lack of success, be a time, all of these, okay, excuses, but reasons why people don't necessarily take that next step.

“But that's why we have people like you, just quickly why we're on this subject.”

Tell us about your coaching programs and hierarchy and where people can find that.

So either the podcast or the YouTube, that's why I share lots of stuff for free or in the book, which you can't get from from the library.

But like I said, when I work with clients, we are working through those five areas. What do you need to do? But also in my coaching program, I do include a mindset element. And I actually have a mindset coach who isn't me who comes in twice a month, coach my artist through these limiting leaves. They need to hear it from somebody else besides me.

I was just going to say, there's only so much we can do if we're not professional mindset coaches or psychologists.

“And I think so much of this comes down to your mindset.”

And as soon as you kind of clear the, are able to kind of clear most of those limiting beliefs out the way, then the world is your oyster, right? That kind of open up to all of these opportunities. And more importantly, but leave you can do it because your mindset is different. But a lot of it stems back from there. Do you work with, do you work with various artists or are they all painters or what's the kind of variety? I work with all visual artists. So photographers, painters, fiber artists, sculptors, digital artists. I work with all visual artists. My book is written though to be any kind of art artist creative person.

So I've included like examples of how to make more money as a musician. So the book is written to be much broader. Yeah, let's go back to the book quickly because I'm interested to know what has changed if anything since writing that book quite three years ago, the world is moving so fast, the digital world, especially moving so fast. Can you give us an insight to, you know, what you would change if anything or if you're writing it again today, what would be different. Okay, so I'm going to talk, I want to talk about two things. One of them is the social media angle, which is changed, but in the direction I was telling it would change in in the book. So what we'll talk about that first and I don't want to lose the thread on what I absolutely would change in the book if if the publisher would say, let's do a second edition.

Okay, so the first thing is social media. My book doesn't contain a lot of tactics on social media and my publisher wasn't too happy about that and the developmental editor came to me.

They didn't come to me. They went to like, they went to Harper Collins and Harper Collins kind of said it back to me and says, you know, she's saying this, this and this, she's saying, oh, why isn't she focusing on social media? I guess she's old fashioned because she's in her 50s. And it did sting. However, I knew I was right about this. So instead of putting in more social media tactics, I doubled down on why you shouldn't be relying on it and I'm going to tell you why when I wrote the book.

“So I started writing the book in 22 back in the beginning, the average engagement rate on Instagram was 1%. In other words, one out of 100 people, not with buy your stuff, engage with your stuff that's like comment or DM, right?”

Only 1%. By the time I went to edit the chapter, it had dropped to 0.6%. So it's not even one time. We're in 26 now. The average engagement rate. Do you know what it is? I've done the one here. I know it's probably 0.1%. You're actually pretty close. So it's the average is 0.3, but that's only because sports teams have a 2% engagement rate.

They're the ones who are pulling the average up, but home to core and retail, which is where you would put art and photography. It's 0.15. That's basically one or two people out of a thousand.

So I was right about like social media is not the future of marketing and I'm not the only one saying that that's something Maria Forleo was saying when I wrote my book Ryan Dice was saying that as well. Really, the goal is to move anybody you come in contact with whether it's in person or online to your email list. So that's the first thing is what has not changed or has changed. It continued to change in the direction I was talking about.

“Do you have any questions about that? Well, so I mean, to do to use social media. Well, you have to kind of be all in for you know.”

Let's let's pause for a minute because all right, I don't know what it is now, but when I was writing the book, the average engagement rate being 0.6, I also looked up what influencers and people who are good at social media with their engagement rate was it was still only 1%.

No, however, if you're able to garner a 10,000 followers audience and you're able to actually understand what social media in my opinion should be used for and that's not to be famous and that's not to

a secengagement, but it is a one part of many marketing tools, like you said to funnel people to your own IP, your own autonomous, you know, website or your ecosystem or something.

“That's why you still, you still got to give social media attention because it's just one, I mean, you don't have to, but if you can do it well enough with decent strategy without burning yourself out, it can be a very useful marketing tool.”

You can, and that's a very big F. So I worked with a client in all of 2024 and her best month, she made $19,000 in August of 2025 and she made 90,000 that year. Her best month was the month that her Instagram was shut down. So how did people, how did she make sales? The other methods I'm talking about, so publicity and in person events and making those opportunities.

So the, if you're talking about, if you can do without burnout, but the, I'm glad, at least you said, like you want to move them to your ecosystem.

But if you're getting a, even a 24% open rate on your emails, which is considered low out of 100 people, that's 24 people who's going to see your photography, your art, whatever it is you're talking about. To get the same results on social media, you would need 6000 people. To get 24 people to engage with it. That's not by. That's just like or comment or hopefully DM. So how do we get people on email lists? So there are six ways you can get people to the email list and we're talking mostly to photographers today.

Is that right? Yeah, so the easiest way is just, this is why I tell my artists all the time, the easiest way is just to ask. So people are going to say, where can I see your art? And instead of saying, here's my Instagram handle.

“You say, oh, Matt, I would love to invite you to my next show. What's your email address?”

Got it. And I know people are thinking, but I don't have a show coming up. It's the next show with whatever it is. You're going to eventually have one. So that, that right there is the easiest way. There's other ways to, but that's the easiest one. Now when it comes to photography, the whole infrastructure of the internet rewards speed.

Post more, post faster, be first, be everywhere.

The algorithm doesn't care whether you went deep. It cares whether you showed up yesterday. And I guess that's not photography specific. Now for me, I built my work around a different bet that there are people who would rather go slowly and understand something fully than go fast and understand probably nothing. That depth is not a liability. That the work you make when you take your time is categorically different from the work you make when you're chasing the feed.

Maybe you're chasing the algorithm. Now the mood inside us is built on that same bet. It's a private community for photographers and visual artists who are serious about the slow work. We have monthly masterclasses where we actually go deep on craft and thinking we have a weekly book club monthly Q&As. We have the podcast of course, but add free with bonus content and we have direct access to me in my team. It's not another newsletter you'll forget about, not a discord server full of noise.

It's a room with a small number of serious people and a very clear and supportive focus. It's just 19 dollars a month. The link is in the show notes and I really hope I can see you inside. Okay, so let's go back to what you had changed in the book. Yeah, okay. So I wrote the book in, it came out in January of 2023. And there's a chapter in there called and brace your inner weirdo. And that's about leaning into your quirks and what's special about you.

“And back then, I think I conflated political identity with identity.”

And so I talked a little bit more about my at the time politics than I would do today. And since 2023 with October 7, my politics have changed quite a bit.

And now I know that politics is not an identity. So your identity is much more than your voting record.

“That's what I would definitely change about the book. Not because I got criticism about that, which I definitely did.”

But because it wasn't necessarily aligning myself with my core of who I am and sending out the right signals. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. You haven't mentioned, and I've, I'm Brexit to bring this up, but I feel like I have to do my audience just this and bring this up. You haven't mentioned AI and I want, I know you've talked about it on your podcast. I want to hear what you generally feel about AI, but specifically to artist how it's going to, how you believe it's going to. Or currently change our artistic world and our practices and what the future might look like. And therefore would you change anything.

Or put something like that in the book.

Yeah. I would definitely address AI. One of the reasons that I haven't written in the second book is because of AI. I was going to bring a book about marketing.

And so this is a whole year ago, and I knew I couldn't talk about marketing without talking about AI. And yet AI was changing or is changing so much on a weekly basis that I couldn't write a book that wouldn't be obsolete by the time it came out. AI can't, I'm not anti AI, I'm not a ledite, and it probably does pose more of a threat to photographers than it does to many of the artists that I coach or not photographers. So visual artists who are working in more tactile mediums probably have less to fear from what is possible with AI than a photographer does.

I still think the fundamental values stay the same with the artist and with people either by nature. I see it as an issue in some areas of photography world, but certainly in the more finite area and those kind of personal project type photography areas.

“I don't, if anything, I think it's going to become, I think AI is going to become more valuable.”

I agree with that. Yeah, what's the space?

Walk us through this whole believing oneself.

We talked about limiting beliefs. And in the book, you talk about this triad, this belief triad. Can you talk a little bit more about how I guess believing in oneself? Sometimes it can sound right, you know, just believing yourself, but because it is triad, it is so triad. So what I talk about in the book, Matt, the belief triad, there's three things.

And the triad is belief in yourself, like you said. Yeah, everyone talks about that. It's like a little bit of a chaos. Believe in your art.

But the third thing that I talk about that I never hear anyone else talk about is believe in your buyer.

So here's what that looks like. Matt, if you're going to sell me a photograph, that's $10,000. You don't only have to believe in yourself and your photography.

“You have to believe in me as the customer that I am worth it.”

If you're thinking negative thoughts about your customer in this way, like, oh, she won't pay that. She can't afford that. You know, those are like, there's a recession looming around the corner. That's not believing in your buyer. So the story I like to tell is in pretty women, are you too young to know that movie?

No, I want to say it. You see it, maybe. You see it, though, okay, all right, because everyone's okay. So she goes to her day of drive, and the mean sales people won't wait on her. And we all think we're not the mean sales people.

But sometimes we are doing that same exact thing. We're thinking, oh, she won't pay $10,000. People don't buy, pay those prices in my town, or I shouldn't be selling art right now. There's a war or a recession looming. You see how those thoughts are not believing in your buyer.

Instead of thinking thoughts, like, my art means something to these people. They, they want it, they deserve it. Now, if you're thinking that when you're trying to sell, if you're thinking about yourself,

or art is worth it, but they're sitting there wondering if they deserve, because what I'm thinking in my mind, when I'm going to make a $10,000 purchase, or $100 purchase, or $300 purchase, whatever it is, I'm not thinking, is this thing worth it. I'm thinking, do I deserve to spend money on something that I want? That's what I'm thinking about.

“And that's what people know, but he talks about that.”

No, I don't, I don't hear many people talking about that at all.

And it always, it comes back to pricing, doesn't it?

It comes back to your value and the belief of your value in that price. You know, you talk about prestige, pricing, and charm pricing, and what part of the brain should buyers be using to, you know, buy your art? And I love all that, because people don't really talk about it, but it's this, this mindset in how you portray yourself and your art that I think has to be,

has to be an integral part of your artistic pursuit, right? Yeah, so that's one of the hacks that I promised I would share with the listeners today is the difference between prestige, pricing, and charm pricing. Charm pricing seems to be the only thing people know about. So the hat is like pricing at print at 497, because it's under $500.

“That's what charm pricing is, however, that can work against you.”

So when you price something at 497, you're saying a few things to your buyer.

You're saying every dollar counts, which if they're making a luxury purchase, you don't want to be saying that to them. Like that's a Walmart strategy. Walmart says these, this package of underwear is 1497, because they know that you're looking at every penny, right?

So you want to use a rounded number. Also, numbers like 497 are processed by the logical side of the brain. Now, they've done research where they price champagne. A luxury good at $39.40 and $41. And they found that it sold the best at $40.

40, a rounded number is processed by the emotional side of the brain. Which side of the brain do you want your customer using when they're deciding whether or not to collect your art? Emotional side of the brain. Wow, that's fascinating example about a champagne.

I'm just trying to put myself in that position, which one I would choose. Might I be at $40? It feels right. It feels right. It feels right.

Yeah, and you reframe the, what was it? The, the, the, the buy won't get one free. And the, the collectors choice that you put around that type of framing.

“Why does the language matter so much with this type of thing?”

And where do we even start? Because we don't want to take a marketing degree. We don't want to, you know, may not have the, the intelligence that you do. Or the financial kind of expertise that you do with your background. Why do we even start with all of this language and these

semantics that help us market ourselves in our, in our products? You know, the thing is that even if you don't need the money for your art, why, why do all this? If you as an artist believe that your art matters. And I believe art matters and I believe our world needs art more than ever.

That's what makes marketing important. Because the better you are at marketing, the better you are at sharing your art with the world. And that's what really matters. Yeah, it is belief isn't it?

It all comes down to belief in whether you think your art has value and whether art actually matches in the first place.

If you don't think of matters, then you're just kind of pedaling an empty wheel. You also talk about this product, this problems of production and problems of audience and the production problem in the audience. Is that something else you're able to elaborate for? Yeah, so the five areas, and I'll just name them quickly, production, pricing, prospecting, promotion and productivity. We already covered price in quite a bit.

Production, though, is you're creating something that can't be priced higher because of what it is. So for example, that would be Matt, for talking about a photographer.

And you can charge a very big premium for them, or you can put your photo on a mug.

Right, that can't be priced higher. So in my world, it can look that way, but it can look like production problem would be an artist who are trying to sell greeting cards or stickers. They just can't be priced higher, so it's not so much their mindset around raising their prices, but they're selling something that feels safe to them. However, you can't build a business that way. I had an artist come to me who was making handmade greeting cards.

“And I don't remember she was asking $5 or $10 and was doesn't matter, let's say it was $5.”

And she said, "My problem is I can't find enough people who like greeting cards." I was like, "That's not your problem." I mean, you would need $10,000 customers rather than putting the same art on a canvas that you can charge $1,000 or $5,000. Now you only need 10 customers.

So that could be a production problem, but it's not just that it could also be, I've worked with artists who they're colored penciled artists.

And maybe they tell me it takes a week to do something. As I do understand that if you sold everything you made, and all you did was create these things. The most you could make was 20,000 a year. It's not a pricing problem, it's simply their capacity to create their art is limited. Now photographers don't usually have that problem.

Yeah, but certainly no digital photographers. No, no. That their problem is usually this, if I may, not curating. Every photographer that I've worked with had a curation problem. They love everything the same and it's like, "Oh, no, you're overwhelming your customers with too many options."

Do you find that too? I see that all the time.

It's the biggest, it's so difficult.

I don't know why if you're digital photographers, you have so many images. You might sit at your screen and have a thousand images to go through. And so the problem starts there. But yeah, I see that all the time. And trying to please everyone, because they've got different types of, you know, they can do this style, they do this style, and this is something about them.

That's being a target instead of a Tiffany's. For the non-American crowd, well, I'm sure the non-American crowd know what target is. But yeah, do they have target where you live? No, no, targets. I think target is purely in America.

“I think it's even made its way to Europe.”

But we all know what target is. Is it, I mean, how do you describe it? Well, I mean, like, you go to the pharmacy. You could buy, you know, lipstick at a pharmacy or you can go to Harris. And you're going to pay a lot more money.

You know, everything's going to matter on the venue. And the more specialized something is, the more they can charge. Yeah, it makes sense. Let's, um, I want to kind of move forward into present day and beyond. For the artists that's already doing a lot of this that we're already talking about.

And you've probably got many of them in your, your, your coaching container. But for those that are doing a lot of what we're talking about, but maybe plateauing. What are the kind of bottlenecks that you see a quite common at that stage? Yeah. Um, this would be very true of photographers that are kind of stuck in pricing from 10 years ago.

Like, this, oh, they think this is the sweet spot.

“I remember that happened to me with my prints.”

Like, I said, no, the sweet spot for 11, my 14 is $75. And it honestly, Matt, it wasn't until I started coaching other artists that I decided to push back on my own. Like selling stuff, I was like, well, who says that's a sweet spot. And then that, that week and I raised all of them to 100, I sold more. So like, we all have these limiting beliefs and a lot of times like our pricing can be outdated.

Like, I know my mom gets very upset if a paperback is $19. It should be $7 or something like, really, should it? So like, 50 years ago, maybe. Right, right now. Pricing, a lot of it comes down to pricing and people.

I mean, I worked with someone who is starting their own business just a few months ago. And they, they, you know, you ask them a question, what, what value would you put on, whatever it was?

What do you think your time is worth?

And it took them so long to be, I mean, I don't think they ever really answered it. It's such a difficult question to answer when you think about what value I put on every hour of my life. You know, it's not just the actual equipment. It's the time, it's the opportunity cost. It's everything that goes into it.

And it becomes a really big issue and a big problem. And then you start comparing yourself to other artists, other businesses. And it just becomes a melee of confusion. And, you know, then you turn to people like you. What should I, what should I tell me?

“And the worst thing you can do is be wishy-washy.”

I wanted to hire a photographer myself. And that guy totally sabotaged it for himself. Like, I reached out to him. I said, oh, I have a speaking engagement, blah, blah.

I said, what's your half day rate?

He said $800. But, like, somehow in the conversation, I said, I would only be doing two hours. He said, then it goes to my hourly rate. Like, the half day rate was $800, but included post-production. But the hourly rate did an include post-production.

I said, so the number is going to be between $5.5 and $800 then, right? You know, it was like, and then he ended up disappearing on me, which I knew he would because it was kind of like, he saw he was under price to himself. Like, he, because he was wishy-washy. Like he obviously didn't have the numbers ready for me.

And then I didn't want to hire him. Don't be wishy-washy, guys. Oh, is that our biggest scold not good today? Whatever that means is wishy-washy in itself. Don't be wishy-washy.

Okay, well, Mary, it's in great chat here. I want to end with a couple of other questions. Because, again, a lot of these questions are based around what I see in first person with with a lot of people I work with.

Now, if you think about someone who's never treated their art as a business,

there's so many people out there that do photography as a hobby, but are kind of like teetering on the air. Maybe you've done the odd family portrait or maybe sold the odd print or whatever it might be. What's the first thing, if they want to kind of take that step? What's the first thing they should do this week?

Set up a business banking account. That's separate from your personal bank account. I mean, I'm assuming it works the same way in Europe as it does in the US. Okay, yes. Treat it like a business from day one.

You want separate containers because it helps you both mentally. It's not just about the bookkeeping and the taxes, which it will do that too for you.

“But if everything's all mixed up, if you need to go make an investment in your business and it's mixed up with your personal finances,”

that's when you have people who say I need to ask my spouse. It's your business. Cool, great, love it. And for you personally, what are you working on at the moment that excites you most that we might be watching out for? Um, the, my biggest personal thing right now is really been my YouTube videos.

And I mean, I have a team around me that helps me with that, but creatively that's been lighting me up the most. YouTube is social media there, right? It is, but it's not technically actually considered social media. It's like the video. I mean, the real, the, let's call it the shorts.

Maybe our social media. Yeah. So why YouTube? Okay, so if you were to ask me where photographer should spend their time online. The two, the two platforms that matter the most are YouTube and LinkedIn.

LinkedIn. Oh, I don't do anything on LinkedIn. Why? Okay, LinkedIn. LinkedIn.

LinkedIn.

“It's like the, it's not about going viral.”

It's not about likes. It's about connecting with the decision makers and who's on LinkedIn. People with jobs and money. But that's the best place they could connect with. Galerists are consultants and tier designers.

The people who are making the buying decisions. That's, that's my mic drop. How about the founder? Yeah, week, week, week. LinkedIn and YouTube.

There we go. Have it guys. Good luck. Off, off you go. Good luck with that.

Now that the podcast is over. You can't ask me anymore questions. Okay. There are great chat to you. Remind us where we can find things like inspiration plays.

I just think about it all the stuff that you offer people. All right. Inspiration plays wherever you're listening to the mood podcast. And like I said, I am on YouTube. Inspiration plays.

My book art per newer. And if you don't like Amazon for whatever person who reasons. It is published by Harper Collins.

Or your library could get it for you.

And we're going to feature this book.

“I didn't tell you where we're going to feature this book on my book club.”

We're going to talk about it.

So I may reach out to you again.

“See if you want to spend 10, 20 minutes with us answering a few questions on that.”

But we'll feature that in a few months.

So excited to send that to my community and see what I think about it.

“And because I know it's going to help a lot of people.”

So thank you. All right. Thanks for having me tonight. It's just a lot of fun. Yeah, great fun, Mary. Take care.

Thanks so much for joining me. Fire it up. Go make some money. Okay.