Unlocking Creativity: The Business of Art | Miriam Schulman

Hey creative, are you ready to discuss profits, the money, the ways to make it happen? The Profitable Creative Podcast is for you, the creative, how you define it. Videographers, photographers, entrepreneurs, marketing agencies, you get it. CEO of Core Group and author Christian Brim interviews industry experts, creative entrepreneurs, and professionals alike who strive to be creative and make money at the same time. Sound like you? Tune in now. It's time for profit.

Welcome to another edition of The Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. Special shout out to our one listener in Odenville, Alabama. Maybe there's a large Norse population down there. Don't know. Welcome to the show, Miriam Schulman. Of Inspiration Place. Welcome, Miriam.

Well, thanks for having me, Christian. I'm so excited to be here with you and your one listener in Alabama.

Well, I'm sure there are other listeners in Alabama, but that's the— and other listeners. Yes, yes, absolutely. I actually started doing that just on a whim, looking at the podcast download statistics and finding the one listener, like, and it's, it's funny, all the different places. Uh, it's, I only do the US. We actually get about 20 to 30% of our listeners overseas, which is strange to me, but, um, whatever. Tell me about The Inspiration Place.

Well, The Inspiration Place is my podcast, um, and as well as my platform for the, where I teach and coach. And The Inspiration Place is listen to um, in over 100 countries. So us, we also have, I think maybe only 60% of our listeners are in the US.

Okay, so what topics do you teach and discuss on?

Yeah, so we mostly focus on marketing and mindset for creative entrepreneurs. So when I first started my language, when I first started the podcast, there may have been some more episodes with creative process in it because then I was teaching online classes, but now I— it's focused just on the business side because that's my strength.

How long have you been doing it?

Uh, the podcast since 2018, being an artist since 2000, so I'm coming up at 25 years of making a living from my art.

Impressive. So what is your medium of choice?

Watercolor.

Watercolor. My daughter is an oil figurative painter. I'll give you her handle afterwards.

You can— Yeah, I can't wait to check out her art.

It's not for everybody, although I do have a whole bunch in my house.

But I hope she doesn't listen to the podcast.

Oh, she's been on the podcast.

She and I know.

So, my daughter is 28. She decided right out of college that she was going to pursue a career as an artist. And as a father and an entrepreneur, I asked a lot of questions. And her response eventually was, "I don't know, Dad. I just want to paint what I want to paint. I want to make what I want to make." And I'm like, "Fine." That's, that's as long as you understand that people won't necessarily buy it, uh, just because you make it. And so, yeah, but you know, the business aspect of the creative endeavor, whether that's painting or podcasting or video production, that's what we talk about here. And it takes both. Um, otherwise it's just a hobby.

Yeah. And by the way, by the way, I mean, what you just said is just because you make it doesn't mean people want to buy it. That's true of every business. There's so many business owners who, you know, they have an idea and okay, that's great. You know, but make sure you know you have customers for it. So artists, you're not special. You, you, you have to follow the same rules as everybody else. We all have to create things that people want. Yes. And it does not make you not a real artist.

No, but your point is very profound that it's all businesses. It's not just artists. All businesses.

I think artists like to think they're the exception because they like to think, oh, well, I'm not a real artist if I'm making what other people want. And if you go back in time, like most famous artist in the world, let's just, let's just say Michelangelo. Well, he was painting what the Pope wanted him to paint. That's what he was getting paid to do. So artists have to follow the same business rules as everybody else.

That is correct. And I will tell you from lots of experience that if you make something that is very valuable, uh, it doesn't matter. It only matters if somebody wants it. And that axiom I use, you got to sell them what they want, not what they need, is a true statement. So 25 years of earning a living as an artist. What prompted you 18 years into it to start a podcast?

Ooh, I love the reconnaissance. I love how you can invite people onto your show and ask them questions. And they will tell you. So that was what attracted me to podcasting. The year prior to starting my podcast, I had been writing columns for Professional Artist Magazine. And when I was doing that and then interviewing artists and professionals for that column, that's when I realized, oh, when you're one of the media, you can open up You don't have to pick someone's brains for coffee. You just interview them. Right. So no coffee required.

No, no, you don't. Is— do you still write?

Well, I wrote a book, Artpreneur, which was published. And my apologies for not sending it to you, but I'm happy to send it to you or your daughter. So just let me know at the end of the show and we can make sure that happens. Appreciate it. It was published in 2023 with HarperCollins. So anybody listening, yes, of course you can buy it online, but you can also get it from your library.

So then you've had a modicum of success. I self-published my book because I had to, but also because no publisher would have done it. But, you know, the fact that you have a legitimate publisher means that you are a, a, um, oh, I don't know, you've reached a certain level of, uh, success if, if someone's going to invest in you to publish a book. For sure, there are a lot of bad books, uh, out there, um, I, I've come to realize. Um, in any case, that's beside the point. So how did— why did you start focusing on the subject material of marketing?

Great question. So when I—

I know, I'm the host. That's what I do. I ask good questions.

When I first started out, I didn't have this book. And my mom also told me, you want to be an artist? Really? That is why I didn't start off as an artist. I went the practical route. And I did come from a single-parent household. My father passed away when I was 5 years old. So I didn't feel I had the luxury to do anything unless I knew I was going to make money right away. And so I thought, okay, well, if I have to make money and I have to make lots of it, where does that happen? Which led me to Wall Street. So I figured it's like, if that's the point, I'm going there. But after 9/11 happened, that was a wake-up call for me, and I knew I could not go back to that world. And at first, I did not become an artist right away. I mean, I didn't full-time because I didn't believe I could make a living. So I painted on the side. I took a job as a Pilates instructor for a large chain of gyms in the New York area, and they gave me sales training because part of their business model is selling personal training packages. So those upsells are very profitable for them. And once I got those sales training, I realized, oh, I can use these same exact techniques to sell my portraits and to sell my art.

Yes.

And then that led me down to becoming a lifelong student of studying marketing techniques. And right around 2018, when I started the podcast, writing for the column and starting the podcast, I was sharing what I knew with other artists, and people wanted to work with me as a coach.

I love that. What, what did you do in Wall Street?

Hmm. Basically, so are you into like those movies, like the Michael Lewis movies? Like Big Short, The Big Short, The Big Short.

Okay. Yes.

Okay. You remember The Big Short and the Asian guys? They were doing the computer stuff. That was me. So I was like doing computer programs for Wall Street.

Is that what you had your education in?

Well, I, I did a hodgepodge of things in college because, you know, I always had that pull of art. So I started off as an engineering major, but then I kept taking art classes and then I graduated and then I went to MIT on an engineering scholarship, but for, for AI. Yes, they had AI back in the '90s. And that is how I got hired for Wall Street, was on the back of those computer skills.

Hey listeners, are you ready to turn your passion into profit? Then grab a copy of Profit First for Creatives. Click the link in the show notes to purchase a copy. And if you're not ready to make that full commitment, you can download a free copy of the first chapter. Check it out right now. You, I can tell, are a fascinating individual only because you have contained in your brain two things that don't normally go together, although they do with more frequency than people would realize.

But they totally do. I mean, Leonardo da Vinci was a great artist and an engineer, and most scientists and engineers will tell you that science is creative. There's a lot of problem solving involved. And a lot of artists will tell you, yeah, there's a lot of problem solving involved in creating their artwork. So they absolutely go together, even though people like to tell themselves that they don't because—

Yeah, maybe it's not the inherent abilities, it's more the realized abilities that I find unique. Most people, I don't know, self-label into one or the other. But we went through an exercise last year around creativity, and we've done it a couple of different times in educating and team building with our team about unlocking that creative part. Because we're a bunch of accountants, and they tend to think of themselves in terms of spreadsheets And the idea that they have this creative reservoir that they can go to and unlock, I think is something that a lot of businesses, a lot of people just miss. I don't know. At some point, I was told I was not an artist. And even to the point when Perry Marshall labeled me, he said, well, Christian, you're an artist entrepreneur. And I actually was a little taken aback because the term artist seemed, I don't know, too woo-woo for me. Like, it just was, I'm like, I'm not an artist. Like, I don't have a beret. I don't paint anything, you know, right? The reality is that entrepreneurs, uh, rely on creativity. That's, that's, that's how they solve problems.

Yeah, it's really, when it comes down to it, the number one skill you need to succeed in business is creativity because it's the, it's not the, it's not the survival of the fittest. That's not actually what Darwin said. It's the survival of the animal that is most easily able to adapt.

Correct.

Which is creativity. So in business, it's the same thing. You always need to be able to adapt. So every time something changes, whether it's the algorithm or now we have AI or whatever it happens to be, we're always adapting to that new business environment. And businesses that succeed are the ones who are the most creative in doing that.

So the creatives that you coach or come on your show, what— so like, assuming like they're the anti-accountants, they identify as a creative and they're not— they don't think they can think in those linear analytical terms. How do you approach that as a coach?

All right. This is a great question. So I love the anti— the no, that just to buy me time to answer your question. That's why I say that.

Sorry.

Pause.

We'll pause.

Go ahead. No, it's okay.

Randy will edit it, however, make you sound wonderful and brilliant.

That's okay. I had, I had somebody on yesterday who didn't like my question. She's like, well, we really should ask them this first. And she was getting very testy. So today I was teaching my new, a new person on my team, like how we upload the transcript and how we cross things off. I was like, you see this part over here? That's not going into the podcast.

Right.

Right.

Okay.

So let me continue. Go ahead. Ask the question again. So we have a clean place.

I forgot the question. No.

Uh, it was— I did too. That's why I said ask it again.

It was a profound question, Miriam. When you work with, with creatives, the people that come to you and then may come to you on the show and they, they, uh, they're anti-accountants, right? They self-identify as a creative and they have this aversion to that linear, deductive reasoning type things. How do you help them with that?

Yeah, so that's why when you asked me at the very beginning, what do I focus with on the podcast? There's two things. Marketing. And mindset. Because they have to stop telling them stories like, I'm bad with money, or I'm bad with business. That's a terrible story to tell yourself. And it's not really even a fact. It's an opinion. So just because you think something, you have an opinion, I am blah, blah, blah, doesn't make it true, or may not make it always true. So a lot of it has to do with helping them with their mindset and to believe a new story.

Yes. I love that. I, no, just like I didn't want to be called an artist and like I had this in my head that I'm not this belief. Um, I, I see with creative entrepreneurs, self-identified, like, you know, they may be in a creative industry, but like they, they think of themselves in those terms, is they will say all the time, like, "Well, I'm just not good with numbers." As a matter of fact, I have a creative on my team, the only creative that works for me that's like a true creative, and she's our head of marketing. And we were working on a spreadsheet, right? And it was a spreadsheet I had designed. It wasn't something she had come up with. But just trying to walk her through what I had done and why I, you know, why I had done it that way and what I did with the information that, you know, the spreadsheet derived. And it's, I think the thing that clicked with her when I, because she said the exact same thing. Well, I'm just not good with spreadsheets. I'm not good with numbers. I was like, that's not true. What you need to reframe that statement. You may not have a lot of experience with it, right? You may not be comfortable with it, but that does not mean you do not have the innate capacity to understand it.

Yeah. Or tell yourself the truth. Like, the truth might be, I don't have the interest to learn this. Right. Yes.

That's true, and that's fair. Yeah. But in her role, she didn't have a choice. She had to learn it. So I said, and I think this is a great analogy, mainly because I came up with it, that accounting and finance is more akin to language than it is anything else. You know, people find out that I'm a CPA and they say, oh, well, I could never do that. I'm not good with math. And I said, well, look, the most math I use as an accountant is arithmetic. And I learned that in second grade, right? It is a language that tells the story of the business, right? And so if you reframe your brain in terms of that and like, okay, my business has a story to tell and those numbers are just a way to hear the story. It's not the only way to tell the story. It's just a way to tell the story. That, that reframe helps.

I like that.

Thank you. When you talk about marketing, because you said marketing and mindset, I'm going to, I'm going to go back to mindset first.

Okay.

And if you're not comfortable, tell me, we'll stop. You said that your father died at a young age, 5. And I'm reading between the lines that there was a scarcity mindset around money, that you came out of your childhood and home of like, I've got to make money to have that security. Is that a fair statement?

The second part is true, but the first part isn't, the scarcity mindset part. So what I came out, my biggest lesson that I had when I growing up is, is very different what that most women's social conditioning is. A lot of women's social conditioning, especially women of my mother's generation, of our parents' generation, Christian, was that you don't have to worry about money, your husband will take care of that. So growing up, um, it— where my father, who was a doctor, died tragically of cancer, leaving behind a 5-year-old and a 3-year-old, and my mother be a 27-year-old widow who then had to go back and complete her college education, that early message was very different for me. Because not that anyone was saying to me, Miriam, you need to do this or that, but my lived experience told me I'm not going to depend on, on somebody else for my financial independence, that it's up to me. So that is what had drove me And still drives me. Even when I decided I wasn't going to go back to Wall Street, I was very driven to make it work as an artist. And it was that early conditioning that made me who I am now.

I'm gonna say a statement and then you react. Entrepreneurs oftentimes start the business knowingly or unknowingly to solve some perceived lack.

Okay. And people don't agree with that? I agree with that. No, I think that's fair.

Yeah. I point out knowingly or unknowingly. Like I was very young when I started. I started my business when I was 27. I didn't have the self-awareness or understanding that maybe at a very surface level, but like really what I was trying to fix were the experiences in childhood that I didn't feel like I was in control or that I wanted to be different. Right? And I don't know that most business owners understand that's why they started their business.

Oh, so you're referring to like lack in your own life. I thought you meant like lack, like trying to solve a problem for others, like monetizing.

No, no, no, I'm talking about— so in your case, you didn't start a business immediately, but you did solve that perceived need of not depending upon anybody for your finances, right?

Yeah, I mean, I started off like, okay, I'm gonna go to Wall Street. Like, you know, let's just make sure that I'm well taken care of.

They make a lot of money over there.

Yes, yes, yes. Even the girls, you know, not quite as much as the boys, but we still— I still did well. So yeah, and when I, um, started my business, uh, was I— was I doing something for my own benefit? Um, I mean, certainly I enjoyed painting, of course, but it was, it was all the things. I also was a portrait artist, so I knew that was something that I could easily monetize.

Yes. Yes. That and landscapes, I think, are—

No, I have a lot of your— no, correct. I have a lot of successful landscape artists. I have a lot of successful abstract artists. It's not limited to portraits, but I did know I had a market for that.

Yeah, uh, that, that reminds me, I don't know what artist it was. I'm gonna say it was Rembrandt. I don't remember, but he was painting some noble woman and she said, you know, I need you to make sure that you're doing me justice. And he said, uh, madam, you don't want justice, you want mercy. Um, I don't know if that was him. But in any case, I don't know if you ran into that painting other people's portraits. Like, I got to make them a little prettier. Like, I got to—

I only did an adult once in my career, and I was not going to repeat that. Yeah, that was very— that was not my favorite. I mostly focused on children for the parents, you know, and my clients were the adults commissioning me to paint their kids.

Yes, because their kids are always going to be beautiful in their eyes.

Yeah.

Whereas you look at yourself in a portrait, it's like, I don't want to look like that. But again, you don't want justice, you want grace. So back to the mindset. I think that being aware of your money mindset, like what is motivating you, is critical in business because whatever you bring to the table— and I'm just talking about beliefs here, I'm not even talking about habits or experience, just the beliefs. Is going to affect your business. And if you don't have an understanding of it, then you're going to run into some problems. I'll give you an example. See if you ran into this one. One of the common beliefs among people is that you have to work hard to make money. Right. And which is fine. It may be true. I know lots of people that work hard that don't make money, but that's not the point. The point of this exercise is to say, okay, well, what happens if you work less? Does that mean you don't deserve to make money? If you're a professional and you get better at your craft and you therefore are quicker at it, does that mean you should be paid less? Right? So these beliefs frame your business situation in very critical ways. Can you speak to that through experience?

Yeah, so one of the ones that you brought up was, I'm not good with numbers, or I'm not good with money. And the one that I— and of course, as we've already addressed, that is something that I come up with with my clients. But one of the ones that is even more harmful is when artists tell themselves, I don't care about the money. And I tell them, well, you better care about the money, otherwise money's not going to care about you, you know, because you're going to hurt money's feelings and it will go someplace where it cares. So that, I think, is a more insidious thought that—

Do you think that they actually think that, or is that just phrasing something else that's unsaid?

You know, that's a really good question. It could be part of— it could be a defense mechanism. Like you're trying to, to what I think you're inferring. But it also ties into that whole idea, well, true artists don't care about this, and I'm a true artist, where I've already, you know, we've already said Michelangelo, not only did he paint what the Pope wanted him to do, that if you were to put his money into 2025 dollars, he was a millionaire many times over. So he very much cared about the money, you know, and he didn't say, well, I'm just going to sculpt angels over here and hope somebody buys it. No, the Pope says, uh, I want Moses. I want— I want you to paint the ceiling. He didn't say, I'm not a painter and I don't care how much you pay me because I'm only a sculptor.

He figured that shit out, right?

That's right, that's right. He said, how much? Okay, that sounds good. I need a scaffolding, you know, like, that's right.

So, no, which speaks to what you were talking about being adaptive and how critical that is, right? That's correct. I talk about in my book that, you know, the— and I'm going to send you a copy of my book, so we'll swap. So the subtitle is Redefining the Money Creativity Paradigm, because I think that there is this prevailing belief among creative types that those two things are an anathema to each other, that you can't have both, right? But I say it's not about selling your soul to do things that you don't like just to make money. It is repurposing your creativity that you do have. It's not getting rid of your creativity.

And not necessarily. So we've only talked about the example of, okay, you're painting what people want, but there's also, I have a lot of other case studies of clients who, they didn't change what they were painting at all or what they were creating at all. They just got better at marketing.

Yes. So. No, yeah, yes, yes.

So I have one artist who is from the Southwest She makes her home in both in Texas and Santa Fe. So she paints Southwestern, mostly she likes to paint Native Americans and she paints from photographs her grandfather took. And she's a woman in her 60s. So these are like her treasure trove that she turns into these paintings. So the year before she started working with me, she had made $13,400. From the sales of her artwork through galleries, through the gallery system. And after reading my book, she's like, well, I want to work with you because there's another way to do this. And in 2024, she made over $90,000 and she did not change the kind of art she created at all. So, and I have lots of stories like that. So it's not necessarily about changing the kind of art you create. It could be just you get better at marketing.

Yes. And I think for some people, not generally with business owners, but I could see this with like people that self-identify as a true artist, like my daughter, like the idea of assigning a value to your work seems somehow slimy, like, but the reality is As my daughter figured out very early, like, she prices her shit very high, and I'm proud of her for that because the value, especially when you're dealing with intangibles like services and with, you know, artistic things, the value is always set by the buyer, and the pricing actually drives the perceived value. Yes. And, and if you are, if you're cheap, that implies that you're not good.

Correct. Correct. I'm glad you brought that up. That's definitely something I talk about in my book, Artpreneur, about like Veblen goods, things where the, the, the higher the price, the more desirable it is, like a Birkin bag or an electric car. But they did do studies of wine with blind taste. Blind taste. You've heard this study. You've probably talked.

No, I mean, I've experienced it where wine is— wine is all marketing.

So they just— they took 3 bottles and they put different— told people was different prices. And the one that had the highest price tag, people said was the best tasting wine. And P.S., you know, they just made up those prices.

It was actually Ripple. I mean, it was, it was Mad Dog. So I mean, it wasn't—

yeah, nothing to, nothing to do with it. So pricing is like one way that you communicate value. But the other thing that creators have to let go of, and this is something else I talk about in Artpreneur, is the belief triad. Um, people, they tie too much of their price to their own worth and the worth of their art, but What you're putting out, Christian, is what most people— so the third part of the belief triad is there is the belief the customer has in themselves. So in order to sell, especially something, a high-end luxury good, you have to not only believe in yourself and your product, which we've all heard plenty of people say, you got to do that. But what you don't hear people say is you have to believe in your customer and you have to believe in them more than they do in themselves. Because what's going through your customer's mind when they're about to make a purchase, whether that purchase is for a $10,000 accounting service, a $10,000 painting, a $10,000 coaching package, whatever it is, they're not just looking at you and your product. They're considering whether they consider themselves worth spending $10,000 on. And if you, in your conversations with them, are thinking, trying to argue about your price and your worth and the worth of your art, and they're not thinking about that, you will lose them.

I think that's a brilliant insight because I, I've, I've said to explain this to people, obviously the, the value is determined always by the customer. They're the only ones that can. But everybody makes decisions, purchasing decisions, specifically emotionally, and then they backfill with rationalization, right? So when you see a piece of art, for instance, that evokes something in you, right? It really resonates with you and you're like, this reminds me of my childhood and this great time in my life, and I would love to have this hanging in my home. And so emotionally they bought it, right? I want it. Then the rationalization comes in around, well, is that a fair price for that? What are my alternatives? Could I spend that on something else? Or is someone going to judge me for spending that much on that painting? There's all of these complicated things that go on in a person's brain, and that's why I find pricing and marketing fascinating studies because it all deals with the human condition and it's not a science. I mean, there are scientific elements, but it's about the human condition.

Yeah, there's definitely pricing psychology and customer buying psychology. It's fascinating.

Yes. Have you read Confessions of a Pricing Man?

No, but that book sounds like a book I'd like to read.

It's a little dry. The guy is an academic, but he essentially invented the pricing industry back in the '70s. He's a European gentleman. But the insights in there were just absolutely crazy. Like, but it does speak to that psychology. It's kind of like if you, And they did that study where they were— maybe they were in Times Square, I don't know, but they had a table full of dollar bills and they were giving them away. And people were like, I don't know, what's the hitch? Like, I'm not— right, right. But that is the reality, is we don't function rationally. We think we do, but we don't, right?

That's how people— and I, when I, um, are talking about like something I'm doing for free, they're like, well, what's the catch? Well, there's no catch. If you like what you have, what's here, you can then work with me further, but there's no catch. There's no catch. I've given away 98% of what I know for free already on the podcast.

Right. You can attach whatever meaning to it that you want. I can tell you why I'm doing it for free, but that's irrelevant. There is no catch, right?

Right.

Absolutely. So I would love to send people to you to learn more about the book and your coaching and your podcast. What's the best way to do that?

Okay, well, if you like what I had to say today— and you should because it's been edited by our friend. What's her name? Randy.

Randy.

Randy.

It's been professionally polished.

Randy, thank you for making me sound so good. Okay.

And he will.

So, um, you can come to the Inspiration Place podcast. So wherever you're listening to The Profitable Creative, you can find the Inspiration Place podcast. And if you really like that, then check out my book, Artpreneur. Again, there's no catch because, you know, after the publisher takes their cut, I think I make 60 cents a book. So I don't care if you get it for free, get it for free at the library. It doesn't— I just want you to have it and read it.

Artpreneur. You know, let me ask you a question. I was gonna wrap, but I'm gonna throw this out here. I interviewed a publisher for the show, and he said that his trick is he gives his book away for free digitally.

Well, I'm not allowed—

because he knows that if they don't— well, no, I can't restrict this book.

I have a, you know, it's, it's being sold as an ebook, again by HarperCollins. So, but I really don't— I don't need people to buy the book. Like, I was paid a very, very handsome advance. I haven't earned the advance back yet. We've sold 20,000 versions of the book—

audio, ebooks, which is paperback— exceptional. Just for those listening, that for a business book, that's huge, right?

It's not a memoir by Prince Harry, so it's right, it's a business book, right? So there'll be some time before I actually get revenue from but the most important thing for me is people have it. I know that it changes lives. Yes. And I know that I, you know, most people who do end up working with me, they listen to the podcast, they listen to the book, and they just can't get enough and they want more. So I only need 1% of my audience to buy from me to make my business work.

Perfect. Listeners will have that link in the show notes, uh, or those links. I'm going to put a link to the book too. Um, if you like what you heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If you don't like what you've heard, shoot us a message and I'll get rid of Miriam. Until next time.

You'll get rid of Miriam?

Ta-ta for now.