How To Price Art To Sell

How To Price Art To Sell

Image of painted lines on the ground, including the word "zone"

Here’s a tricky topic- how to price art to sell. You might think, I’m not selling as much as I would like, and I feel like I need to cut my prices.

The issue is not that you need to cut your prices. The issue is you need to market to people who understand the value of what they’re getting. There are three things that make a sale happen- right product, right person, right time.

Notice the price doesn’t actually enter into that.

So, who is the right person?

Who is your ideal client? Remember we only ever sell to ideal clients. I do. Clients are the ones who need you. They know they need you. They can pay you. It might be a stretch, but they can pay you and they share your value system. Not all of your values necessarily, but some.

They know they need you, right? What are they looking at? What are they Google searching? What are they talking to their friends about? So, you don’t want somebody who’s never bought art before- you want somebody who’s like, Oh, I need a new piece for this spot.

So, who is that person? Is it someone in real estate staging? Is it someone who’s just moved into a big house? Is it someone who just wants to give little pieces of art to their friends? So, figure out who’s the person. What’s happening that they need your thing, and then have the right thing.

I might even suggest you raise your prices. It’s a great differentiator. And you know how you are even with your own things. When you’re like, Oh yeah, you know, I paid 30 bucks for this thing. It’s whatever. As opposed to, oh no, I paid $3,000 for this thing. It’s super important to me. I love this thing, it has value to me.

That’s my suggestion- make this offer. You’re probably just not offering it to the right people. That’s all. So, take a minute to think about who that right person actually is.

We spend a lot of time on that in Sam’s Pro Club. So, if that’s something you’re thinking about or want to talk to me about, it’s never too late to join Sam’s Pro Club.

I would experiment with maybe tripling your prices. Most of you could afford to 10x your prices. Most of you could afford to put a zero on the end of whatever it is you’re charging right now. Charge a lot and then offer a money back guarantee. You know you’re going to over-deliver.

The Groan Zone

The Groan Zone

Image of painted lines on the ground, including the word "zone"

Let’s talk about The Groan Zone.

There’s a time in every project where the bottom falls out. The beginning is so great because it’s got so much enthusiasm, and even if you’re scared of it, even if you’re doing something that makes you nervous, there’s a lot of energy there.

And when you get to the end, you don’t want to hide. When things get to the end it looks like it might really be real. And then you distract yourself sometimes, but most of the time there’s a real push to the end, like, Oh, I’m almost done. Oh, this could be great. And getting it out in the world and sharing it with other people is so exciting.

But this middle, this Groan Zone…

Groan Zone is a phrase that I learned from my friend, Sam Kaner, up in the Bay area. He’s got a business called Communities at Work and they do consensus work and organizational diagnostics- if you’ve got a problem in your group or office, he will come in and figure out what it is.

He gave two meetings about trying to achieve consensus when you’ve got two or more opposing points of view, and you’re just at that point in the meeting where you’re like, well, we’re just never going to agree. This is never going to work out. There is no compromise. There is no way out of this. We’re just doomed. We’re deadlocked.

It’s terrible, like all the energy has gone, and all the will to find a solution has gone.

And he says this is the point of magic. This is the point of transformation. If you can hold people in the space, through the Groan Zone, they’re breaths away from finding the solution that’s really going to move them forward.

So, I want to encourage you in that as well. If you’ve got a project that you got to the middle of and quit (or are in the middle of and want to quit), I want you to take the opportunity to go deeper into the work. What is really there for you? Where are you being asked to grow? Where are you being called forward? Where are you being pushed? Also, what other elements can you bring in? This is a great time to bring in a buddy system or an accountability system, or to sign up for a workshop or a class, or get a mentor, or join Sam’s Pro Club.

Invest a little more so that you can reconnect with your energy around the project. Sam’s Pro Club, which you may or may not know, is sort of my higher-end industry circle mentorship group for creative entrepreneurs, but it’s also true for the people in Turn Your Wisdom Into Workshops (we’ve had record enrollment in that workshop). It is so fun and so exciting, and people are doing such amazing things. We’re about to head into session three. Those of you who teach workshops may know… all right, and not even workshops… the third of anything can sometimes get a little weird- the third rehearsal, the third date, the third meeting, the third session

I think it’s, again, because of that Groan Zone thing, like the initial hulu has worn off and now we’re actually into the work of it. Now we’re running up against the barriers that we’ve run up against before. Our old patterns are kicking back in. It’s just the lack of charm on number three.

So, if you’ve taken classes with me, you’ll know that I will often start out the third session by saying, look, if you are feeling discouraged, discombobulated, disillusioned, disenchanted, disenfranchised, or just kind of grumpy about the whole thing, that that’s completely normal. That’s a completely predictable stage in organizational growth and in your own personal growth.

The Groan Zone

Create A Winter Goal-Setting Community

I sent an email this week that talked about how it’s going to be a long winter. I don’t care how you slice it. I don’t care what happens. It’s going to be a long winter and it can also be a joyful and productive winter, if you take time to do the work that you love… to do the work that you were designed to do. Do the work that feeds you, that nourishes you. It’s not the kind of work that takes energy from you, it’s work that gives you energy, that replenishes you, that lights you up.

It might be artistic work and it might not be artistic work. Lots of highly creative people are not the least bit artistic. And frankly, there are some artists who aren’t really all that creative. Creativity has to do with problem solving. It has to do with creating something new. It has to do with innovative problem solving.

So, wherever it is that you get called forward; wherever you’re always interested. If you see a book about it, you’re going to buy it. If you see something on TV about it, you’re going to watch it. If somebody brings it up in conversation, you immediately love that person and want to talk to them more.

That’s one of the qualities of highly creative people, is they actually have multiple zones of creative genius. There’s a lot of things that we can get lost in. So, you can do a little discernment for yourself about, do you want to just pick one? Do you want to have several? And where do you want to be? You know, if you’re going to commit time to it (and please. commit time to it) move it from the yes, should get there someday. Oh yeah, I really want to do that. Oh, that’s it’s in the spare room, I should really take a look at that.

Put it in your calendar. If you’re going to write every morning, then write every morning and put it in your calendar. If you’re going to spend two hours every Saturday afternoon, if you’re going to go for a walk every day, whatever it is, put it in your calendar and get some commitment around it.

And the best way to get commitment around it, of course, is to get some community around it. I can tell myself all day long that I’m going to do XYZ or I’m going to draw, or I’m going to write, or I’m going to do whatever. But if I tell you I’m going to do it, if I know that you are meeting me, that we’re going to do it together, that we’re both going to be there Saturday afternoon… well then, I’ll for sure be there. Right?

So, think about the work that you want to engage in this winter. Where do you want to get to? Like, oh, I’d really like to be able to play Somewhere Over The Rainbow on the ukulele by Christmas. I’d really like to have perfected my pastry technique. I’d really liked to have learned how to tie that fly or code that app or understand this. Whatever it is that you’re into, or where you want to get to… commit the time to it, put it in your calendar and better yet get some community around it.

And of course, the best way for people to stay highly involved in community around something is to pay for it. It doesn’t even have to be very much money, but to say, okay, we’re gonna have a Sunday afternoon writing group from 12 to 3. At 12 o’clock, we’re going to get on zoom. We’re going to check in with each other. How’s everybody doing? I’m going to turn off our cameras and microphones. We’re going to write for two hours. We’re going to check back in and say, how did it go?

That puts time on the calendar. We all do it, and I’m going to charge 50 bucks a month. I’ll get 10 people and 50 bucks a month is enough to notice… like if I paid 50 bucks a month for something, I’d be like, oh, well I kind of want to skip it, but I paid 50 bucks for it. I might as well be there.

You know…50 bucks, 10 people, that’s an extra 500 bucks a month. That’s fun. And you don’t have to keep it. You can give it away. You can donate it. You can share it and have a big party. You can do whatever you want with it, but scheduling that time and charging some money for it professionalizes it, makes it more of a thing and helps keep people from flaking out. And now all of a sudden, you’re creating an environment in which people are achieving the things they really want to get done.

What Would You Like To Share With The World?

What Would You Like To Share With The World?

What would you like to share with the world? What do you wish other people knew? Here’s the thing- people want to pay you. People want to give you money. People want to hire you. They like you already. We like to do business with people we like.

This is one of the things about being a highly creative person- you’re so good at so many things that you don’t notice how good you are, and the things that come to you most easily, you really dismiss. You think, well that’s nothing, everybody can do that.

So all these talents and skills that you have that you completely dismiss? You dismiss them because you feel like you didn’t earn them. I don’t know how I do that. I just do that. I just know how, I don’t know why. You dismissed them because you don’t have a degree in it. You haven’t formally studied it.

It was a year ago that it dawned on me.

I’ve never taken a writing workshop. I don’t know what they teach people when they teach writing. I never bothered to take a writing workshop. I just wrote. I was like, Oh, maybe I should check that out sometime. I wonder what they do in there. It was years before I thought of myself as a real writer.

I still kind of don’t think of myself as a real writer, the three/eight (depending on how you’re counting) published books, I wrote a really successful musical. I don’t know how much more “real” a writer gets, but there you have it.

So, you don’t think it’s worth anything, cause you don’t even know how you know how to do it. It’s an unconscious competence, right? You dismiss it cause you don’t have a degree in it. You think, oh, other people must know more about that than me. You dismiss it cause you think nobody else would be interested in it. Like, well, I know I love learning about organic gardening, or I love past life regressions, or I love this, but I don’t know that anybody else cares about that.

Oh, believe me, they will totally care about it. I was just looking the top courses on LinkedIn Learning (which is a huge e-learning platform) are on communication. People don’t know how to talk. They don’t know how to empathize. They don’t know how to be kind and authoritative at the same time. They don’t know how to claim and use their power in their office or in their family.

There’s a lot of things that you guys know about how the world works and how people work that you could be teaching. Get registered for the 24 Painful Mistakes to avoid when creating an online webinar. What I learned the hard way.

There was a great preview call I did last Saturday- I had a thousand people register for that call. A thousand. I’ve never had a thousand people register for anything. And people really showed up and then they bought. People are enrolling in this course a lot, because it’s really what everybody needs right now.

You have an opportunity to teach softer skills, you know, like empathy, relationships, courage. And you certainly have opportunities to teach hard skills- how to quilt like this, how to do this technique, Excel pivot tables…I don’t know, whatever.

That’s what I want you to do. Ask yourself, what would you like to share with the world? What do you wish other people knew. So, whether you do it by joining the Turner wisdom and online workshops class or not (of course I want you there if you want to be there!) but even if you’re not going to take that class, I want you to think about that. How can I just claim my authority a little bit more?

For me, the phrase that really helps is the phrase “I know what I know”.

I won a really big marketing award my first year in business, which was crazy because I didn’t know anything about marketing. I turned out as sort of a marketing savant, and then people were asking me to speak or give a workshop on marketing. And I was like, I don’t know… who am I to talk about that? I don’t know anything about that. And I thought, well, but I know what I know. And the fact that I wasn’t trained in it and just kind of went with my gut and things were against the rules… I didn’t know it was supposed to be hard. So I just did it the way it made sense to me, and it turns out that was really innovative and continues to be innovative. I’m actually speaking at a conference again next month about this very thing.

So remember… “I know what I know”. And it doesn’t matter how.

Your Network Is Your Net Worth

Your Network Is Your Net Worth

The thing that I wanted to talk to you guys about today is relationships. We were talking the other week about a growth mindset, and what a major indicator that is to success. Reminder: a growth mindset is looking at mistakes as learning, understanding that there’s going to be failure and mistakes, and even welcoming the opportunity and thinking of yourself as a lifelong learner.

So that’s one major indicator for success. The other one is your network. And how pleased with myself was I, when I was typing into the title, Your Network Is Your Net Worth. I was like, Oh, that’s good. Somebody should write that book. But it’s true.

You may have heard the often quoted “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with” from Jim Rohn. So, think of the five people you hang out with most. You are probably right in the middle in terms of weight, income, energy level, optimism, earning potential…all the things. Some of that stuff is genetically preset. There’s some stuff we can’t really change. But at least 50%, if not more, we can change. So, if you want to change your weight, your energy level, your income, your positivity, your spiritual journey, your whatever, you might need to start hanging out with four different people. Which doesn’t mean we get rid of our old friends, of course not.

My friend, Shasta Nelson is a friendship expert. She’s written three or four books on friendship. And one of the things she said that really struck me was- we replace about 50% of our friends every seven years. So, it is a natural cycle in friendship for people to sort of cycle in and out of your life.

It’s okay. You’re not meant to bring everybody with you on every step of the entire journey. People are with you for a while, and then they peel off and may come back. There’s just nothing more valuable than having a network of people (and network is such an awful word), but having connections with people who like you, respect you, will support you, that you can go to ask questions, sell things to people who are fans/friends.

And let me be clear for the entrepreneurs: your friends are not your clients. Maybe one or two of your friends might want it or might be interested in being a client, but mostly your friends are not your clients. Your family is not your clients. They’re not in your life to be your clients.

They’re not going to appreciate your work. They don’t care anymore than you care what they do when they go into their office. But, your friends are a great bridge to clients. The friends of your friends, the colleagues of your friends, the families of your friends: those people make great clients.

So if you have people who will refer you, who will recommend you, who will speak up for you, then you have something really worthwhile.

How To Be Good At Anything

How To Be Good At Anything

This is sort of a funny talking topic for highly creative people, because highly creative people are good at a lot of things. That’s one of the characteristics of the highly creative person is we’ve got a lot of interests.

We have a lot of talents and skills. We are easily bored. We’re very adept and we’re used to picking things up very quickly, which means that we often end up with a really “patchwork quilt” resume. A lot of half-finished projects, and sort of that feeling of “Jack of all trades, master of none”.

I just want to underline again: having brilliant ideas all the time, being good at a lot of things, is not a character defect. And it’s something that people who aren’t highly creative people have trouble understanding, because they’re not good at a lot of things. So, it’s confusing to them. It’s like, well just pick something. And you’re like, well, I can’t pick something. I love all the things.

So I want to suggest a couple of things.

1. Be good at a lot of things.

One of the ways to be good at anything is to be good at a lot of things, because when you are doing a lot of things, you are continuing to engage your brain in new ways. You’re wearing down new neural pathways between you and new information. You’ve experienced yourself in a new way.

2. Look for transferable skills.

When you are good at a lot of things, you’re good because of probably three or four drivers within your intellect and personality. So, look at the way in which you are good at things. For example, what is it that engages you? What is it that moves you forward? What is it that allows you to learn and pick things up quickly?

Is it your sensitivity? Is it your curiosity? Is it your drive? Is it your passion? Is it your taste buds? The way you do one thing is the way you do everything. So, the way I go about organizing my sock drawer is exactly the same way I go about running my six or seven figure business. Same with you, the way in which you go about cleaning the kitchen is very much the way in which you go about making a painting. And if it’s not, take a look at that because you could probably make one or the other a lot happier and more flowy for you.

This is the other answer for those of you who have a real patchwork-quilt resume and feel like, Oh, I’m not really good at anything. I’m kind of unemployable. I got it- I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say I’ve had over a hundred jobs. I delivered flowers. I was a barista, an executive assistant, I produced radio dramas, I was a whitewater river guide. I was this children’s birthday clown. Like you name it? I did it. I did all the things and, what I didn’t know was that I was preparing myself to do this job. I was amassing a lot of skills and talents and insights into different worlds that prepared me to have this job. And again, the things that made me good at one thing made me good at all the things.

So, look for the umbrella. Stop telling yourself, Oh, none of this goes together. Oh, I’m a mess. Oh, I’m Jack of all trades master of none. Not true. You have been mastering whatever that umbrella skill is. And when you start telling people that umbrella skill, they will totally respect you.

3. Continue to cultivate and lean into that beginner’s mind.

We know a beginner’s mind is when you don’t even know what you don’t know. Somebody says, pick this up and move it over here. You’d go, Okay. I’ll pick it up and move it over. Somebody says, do this this way. You say sure. You don’t have the voice that says, I’ve always learned to do it this way, or I think I’ll have a better experience if I do it my way. No, with a beginner’s mind you say sure. I will. We do that until we have enough experience to be able to make our own decisions.

Maintaining that beginner’s mind really is about cultivating an ego-less state. Where we don’t think we know best, and we don’t have advice or suggestions or criticisms, we’re just doing it the way we were told to do it. I always feel like I never did any one thing enough to really get good at it or really understand it.

4. Learn to tolerate being bad at things.

This is one of the tricky parts for highly creative people, because you’re so good at so many things. And you are used to picking things up really quickly and being good at things right away.

You don’t develop much in the way of patience and tolerance for your own shortcomings. There’s the moment you fall in love with your art, your craft, your whatever. And there’s this really great time at the beginning when you’re super enthusiastic, when you have beginner’s mind. And then there’s this really long middle part where you have the discernment to know what is good and how you want it to be, but you do not have the talents and skills to execute it.

The slog, that’s the part that separates the women from the girls, the men from the boys, the artists from the non-artists.

You have to be able to tolerate being bad at something until you are good at it.

You have to put in the hours. You are being called forward to mature past the idea of perfectionism. You were being called forward to mature past the idea that it matters whether or not you fail. You were being called forward to mature past the point of fear into the point of exploration. That’s what you’ve been called for.

So, how to be good at anything? Do a lot of things. Look for the transferable skills, maintain beginner’s mind and relate to beginner’s mind, and learn to tolerate being bad at things. Notice your multiplicity of gifts. You, too, are a surprise box. You have so many talents and skills, and you are such a gift to the world. Think about how you can share your gifts with the world today.