The Art of Art Business

Episode Transcript:

Michael Clements  00:00

The process of entrepreneurship, I mean, it's really simple. It's like I'm only gonna generate revenue, doing creative things. So it provides a really big umbrella that you can put whatever form of creativity you want. Underneath that umbrella could be an illustrator, a designer, an actor, a dancer, poet, etc. And as long as you're focused on generating revenue in those creative fields, I consider you an entrepreneur. This

 Isotta Page  00:32

This is art is, podcast for artists, where we brainstorm the future of the art world and the creative industries.

Michael Clements  00:44

Everyone has their own path, but I found that a lot of times people overthink it. And jumping is really scary, you know, making the leap is really scary. And it's like, you want to figure out all the variables before you make the leap, like, Okay, this is how I fly, and I want to make sure that I fly really far. And then maybe the variables changing, you never leave. I mean, sometimes you just need to leap and then figure shit out, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know, like, how else to explain it. It's like you put in the work, but serendipity definitely comes into play. And those two sort of are always dancing with each other. As you go through your career, I love

Isotta Page  01:15

the idea that you have to put yourself in the situation for things to happen. And that, you know, you're never really going to be 100% ready with just

Michael Clements  01:24

putting in the work. Like, for example, I said that I'd never run a business and I didn't really have the nuts and bolts like the NBA background, or, you know, what's a SWOT analysis? Or how do you run a p&l or like these things that are like really kind of like business 101. But if you're creative, you're never exposed to that. So they're new. But again, it goes back to what did I already have that I can leverage. So I got my master's degree at American University in Washington, DC, I was living in DC back in DC at that time, and I found out that because I was an alumni that I could do an alumni audit for free of a second year MBA class. So I went back to school, basically, for free and audited an evening, second year MBA class, that was called entrepreneurship, the basics of entrepreneurship, which was the nuts and bolts of putting together like a business plan and running numbers and evaluations and stuff like that. So while I was sort of looking for that business idea, I also put myself back in school to learn how to run a business, but I didn't have a business yet, or I didn't know how I was going to make money yet. But I put myself in that situation to learn. And I think that that's also a really key thing. Again, you have to put in the work, you have to do these steps, because they cause the inertia in the universe that brings the things to you that brings the dreams alive.

Isotta Page  02:39

I think the fact that you were able to audit this MBA, it's like so cool. And it makes me think maybe even I could do that. But maybe on a more simplistic level, like what does entrepreneurship mean to you? And how should we as like, emerging artists confront that,

Michael Clements  02:54

you know, that's kind of like a word that I invented, but I know it's already out there. I really love inventing words, as an editor, and you know, like a poet and mildly dyslexic as well, I love like mashing up words, the process of entrepreneurship. I mean, it's really simple. It's like I'm only gonna generate revenue, doing creative things. So it provides a really big umbrella that you can put whatever form of creativity you want. Underneath that umbrella, you can be an illustrator, a designer, an actor, a dancer, a poet, etc. And as long as you're focused on generating revenue, in those creative fields, I consider you an entrepreneur, you can be an individual entrepreneur, one of the things I definitely encourage every artist is to set up their own entity. Even if you're a single member, artists setting up an LLC and making sure that you are not commingling your funds. If someone pays you for whatever, maybe it's a commission or you get a gig doing this. I mean, whatever it is, if it's a creative job that you've taken, it's definitely much better if you're invoicing and funneling it through your LLC or your company than as an individual. And that's really, really the first step as an entrepreneur or any entrepreneur is set up an LLC, get a separate bank account, understand what you need to do from taxes and to separate your creative business from your personal entities. And I think just that step in and of itself also provides this emotional and mental kick where you're like, Okay, I have the separation. Now, this is a thing. This is a business. Now, even if this business is like a single member LLC, that's fine. It's separate. And it creates a new the belief now that you have this baby. Now you want to nurture it, right, you have the seed, and it's sprouting and you want to nurture you want it to bear fruit, not to say that you wouldn't necessarily do that if you were so kind of commingling. He still had all just like your personal bank account and everything but there's still like a legitimacy aspect of it right? Is it a profession or is it a Bobby, and I think once you've made the decision to be 100% artists, if you are living off of your income that you generate as an artist, it is a profession, it's still a hobby, if you're kind of doing the other gig, that's not the thing you want, but that's what's paying the bills. And you're kind of like generating some revenue as an artist before, that's a hobby. So eventually, you also have to get to that point where you draw the line in the sand and say, okay, is my creativity a profession? Or is it a hobby, and it can be both, right. But I think that if you are a creative person, you're not going to be happy and fully satisfied until your income is 100% attached to your creativity. And I think that as an entrepreneur, that's the ultimate goal. And then once you get to that, there's also different levels, because there's different ways to earn money. And I think as a creative, the Holy Grail is like, you want to be able to get to the point where you're getting passive incremental revenue from the projects that you create. So it's not just, you're getting paid for the hours that you're doing. So if you're a designer, it's like, okay, you know, work for two hours on this project design, I'm charging X amount per hour. So I work this many hours, and I'm gonna get paid this, that's great. But then there's also, if I'm a designer, and I created this image, and I put it on like a stock image photo site or something like that. And now that image is earning me income while I sleep because someone and wherever purchased the rights to it and use it, like that's also a great stage. So I'm continuing that journey. As a creative, I've started my businesses, but I'm trying to move my businesses into creating more products like books or artwork, that once it's created, and it's out there, then that product can be sold. While I sleep or hanging out, you know, on a beach somewhere,

Isotta Page  06:51

I really appreciate you actually like breaking all of that down really clearly. Because it can be very difficult to understand like the entry point. And that idea of separating your finances personal from professional is just such a good place to start. I'm actually in that process right now. And it's kind of terrifying. But it's also really exciting, because I've started to depersonalized a lot of decision making from whether or not like me as an individual versus like me as a business. And it's like, well, this is objectively what I need to do as a business rather than like, oh, like I'm undecided. And I'm coming to the decision making table, very emotional, and like insecure. And it just clarifies things in a very clean way. And I know that it can be really difficult to do that. And it's hard to get resources on how to do that, if you're not based in the US or the UK, I think they can be ambiguous in terms of understanding, like taxation and all the financials, I really appreciated that clarification of like, all the different segments of running a creative business, because it can be really opaque and hard to access. But yeah, that passive income sounds great.

Michael Clements  07:58

I know, that's the Holy Grail. I mean, this is like the non sexy type of things that you just, it's like the work you just got to put in is like, Okay, I want to set up this entity, I want to have a separate creative business. And that has to be different from them me. And you know, that process has nothing to do necessarily with creativity. I mean, every entrepreneur has to go through that stage, it doesn't matter what your business is, you need to set up an entity, right? So I think as you go through that process, which is not a creative process at all, it really gets you into the mindset of, okay, this is happening, this is a thing. And like I said, once that entity is set up, it's yours. And you'll never feel the same way for a job as you will. If it's yours, right? No other person can give you a job, that intangible feeling of this is mine. And only you can give yourself that I want you to have it. I think it really then gives you the motivation to grow it and how you do like I said, how you do grow, it is up to you, you really have to understand that what do I have right now in my toolkit that I can use, and you also have to understand that it is not linear, and that the first tool that you use is probably not going to be the thing that gets you to where you're going to be. And again, going back to kind of like that billiards analogy, the cue ball, you got to just hit the cue ball, but it's going to take a couple steps maybe to just get them all into the pocket. So I think about my journey through Hong Kong that oddly enough, it was this idea of art jams, that was just a random thing that I did that actually, you know, like over a decade later became my business. I didn't move to Hong Kong to be like, I think I'm gonna, like, accidentally stumble across a paint and sip concept that in 10 years will become my profession. You know, that's not at all what I thought, right? And it's the same thing with you right now. And the listeners, what you're doing right now is not gonna be the thing in 10 years that you're doing right? Just face it. And even if it is the thing that you're doing right now, it's gonna look completely different in 10 years anyway, just because every thing changes, technology changes, and we have pandemics and things like that, that force you to change anyway, it's a journey. It's a process and know that the steps that you're taking right now in your creative journey are probably leading you along the way to something else that you can't even imagine and Fathom right now, right? But just take those steps.

 Isotta Page  10:17

I'm just wondering if you could tell us a little bit about your journey with art jams through COVID? And how you have come out, hopefully, the other side of the pandemic?

 Michael Clements  10:29

Yeah, I mean, everyone is still really in this transition foot in both worlds between what we had before and what we have now and trying to really figure out what kind of the new normal. So one of the things that happens after you take a couple leaps of faith is you start to develop a ticking guitar player that starts to develop the calluses on their fingers by playing over and over and over again. And the better you can play because it doesn't feel as painful on your fingers. You don't have the indentations because now you've developed this calluses, right? I'm not saying that, you know, to become jaded and callous, but I am saying that the more leaps of faith that you take, the more times you go to the edge and realize, Okay, I've been here before I've done this leap. And I've made it right, kind of the easier it becomes when something like a pandemic rolls in, and changes everything overnight. And that's exactly what happened. When pandemic came, we had three retail locations. So it's been like, you know, okay, now eight years since I made that leap of faith to quit my job and to go into retail, we did it eight years, and I had three locations and 26 team members, and we had bars with live painting happening in there, and it was a thing and we were shut down overnight. And it was hard. Just like with all the other businesses, you know, that were basically we're in like the restaurant bar people came in, it was a high touch retail. And we had artists that were like working with people one on one, you know, it was like the worst. And it was in spring, it was our busiest time of the year, we do so many like groups, like team building, company groups, birthday parties, kids birthday, and we were just like booked up, right. And every single one of those, I would say we probably have like 30 or 40 events, like booked over the course of the next two months, like March, April, everyone had a deposit that they paid. So not only were we now close, because the city was like you gotta close, right? But now everyone that we had at Planet event with US wants their deposit back. So we have no money coming in. And we have all these, like, my inbox is filled with Oh, really sorry, but we're going to need our deposit back. So the money is going out. So what do you do? You can give up, right? And people were like, Dude, it's the pandemic, no one's gonna care. Like if you fold your business right now you and most of the other businesses, it's okay, don't take it personally, like you didn't fail. And I'm like, I don't know, I think I'm not ready to throw in the towel. Yet, there was this thing called Zoom. You know, like, I've never heard of it before. I was like, I think people are like doing using this thing called Zoom. And I think we can do these virtual classes. And you know, one of the other things, it goes back to this lesson of you use the things that you have already. And because it was the busy season, as a business owner, I was also completely stocked up on inventory, because I know that it's the busiest time. So I have double alcohol, double Canvas double thing, I have all this stuff already. So I'm sitting on all of the stuff. So I don't necessarily have to spend more money on things, what I need to do is try to convince a lot of people now to just take our jams virtually, instead of coming into the studio. And I'm like if I can just get 40 Okay, I got 40 of these events, if I can convince like 20% of them, 30% of them to just take a chance with us, like, Look, I know, the studios close, like all your people are home now anyway, they probably need something to do. We're trying to figure out what this virtual thing is, you can swing by our studio, we'll make little doggy bags with materials. And it gives people a chance to get out of the house, they would come with their mask, and we would like stick our hand out the door and hand them the bag and like wave through the window. You know, and it works. You know, like we had a couple people were like, sure, you know, we really we understand where you are, we want to do this. So we started do these virtual classes. And it kind of bridged over into where we're able to get some grants and some PPP funding and what happened is it people liked it, right. And we saw do more and more virtual events. And I'm like, this is actually really interesting. Like this could be a completely new business model for us. And people need the paints and the brushes and the canvas and everything. So we were just doing these little doggie bags, and then we had someone be like, well, we have staff in Chicago, or we have our staff is in New York. So can you ship these, and we had never done any drop shipping. We've never done anything like that. I was like, Sure, again, say yes, jump and then learn how to go. So it was like, yeah, it was actually an event for 300 people. It was huge, right? And it completely saved us. But I'd never drop shipped anything. So I was like Sure no problem was like 300 people virtually that's like really that's a good amount of money was like a $10,000 deal or something like that. Right? So I was like yeah, and then I Googled how to drop ship, and then learn how to drop ship, right? But then it became like we were squeezing pain into like the little condiment things that they get to restaurants for like ketchup and mustard. Because in the studio we had big gallon jugs with pumps. I'm like I can't send gallon jugs I need to put them In smaller things, and my son was at a school, so I had him in the seat. He's, he was six at that time. So I have him in the studio like squeezing, you know, like working with me on like the chain gang like putting these blankets together. And one day I was eating pizza. And I realized while a pizza box is actually perfect delivery device for the paints, it's like stiff on the outside, and it fits the canvas perfectly. And by this point, we've been doing a lot of drop shipping, it's been now you know, fast forward five, six months. And we're also getting a lot of notes from customers that are saying, We love the fact that we're getting materials like the virtual class is cool. The teachers do a great job, but no one has easels where are they going to paint. So I took an exacto knife. And with the pizza box, I started like making this prototype, you know, within the pizza box, another box that would like pop up and turn into an easel that you could put your canvas in almost like a little laptop, right? And I got tape an exacto knife and I invented this prototype with like chi stains on it and everything. And one of finding the custom box maker that we went through like four or five different iterations. And we invented this, you know, the art box that also has the easel insert in it with brushes and the palettes and the paints and everything. And we decided we put fake moustache in there and made it cool little like emojis and made a really kind of Etsy, fight it you know, like as like a mystery box type of thing, right? So we invented that. And now we're like drop shipping and doing the virtual glasses. But now we have a product, which we didn't really have like a shippable product before, right? So it was like our business model was is changing as we changed. And that's really how we made it through. And you know, the pandemic, but not only made it through, but then I realized this is actually a better business model than what we had before. And that's the other big realization, you know, like, I'm always learning like, there's never a point when you're an entrepreneur or you're an artist that you know it all like every day is like a learning experience. And we moved to a warehouse where we were able it's like a we work for drop shippers, it's like a communal drop shipping places like nice there's like murals on the wall and like inspirational quotes and like a shared kitchen and and shared bathroom. And there's a shared dock. So it's really easy to get in and out. And there's like it's all dropshippers and like florists and people that do EECOM. So it's really set up for what we're doing now. So then what happens is the reverse pivot, right. So it's like we're cruising on the virtual but now no one everyone's like done, burned out with the virtual. So now we're reverse pivoting back, which is like it even was harder because I did not want to go back into retail. I was like I'm so done with retail. Right now. I don't want a bathroom to clean. Now. It was all of a sudden, we have customers all across the US. We even ship we ship to Asia, South America, Europe, like it's all of a sudden we became from local, we went to international technically like an international company. But we're mostly drop shipping all across the US. And now that people are getting back into the real world, a lot of those clients that were in different cities were like, Oh my gosh, we'd love you guys. We love the box. We love our channels, we love your mission. Your teachers were cool. But now we want to have this in our office or we want to have it in Chicago, we want to have it in LA, can you do it? And I said, Yeah, no problem. Have we ever done that? Never, never. So at first it started in New York. So I'm like I sent by DC teachers on a train up to New York to teach the class, right. And then we got requests in Chicago and LA in San Francisco on Greenwich, Connecticut, and Cincinnati. And I realized that the boxes that we invented are perfect for this because we could just drop ship them in bulk, like 20 or 30 of these to the location. And then all you need to do is find a local artists to go in and teach the class. And that's what we've been doing is like, Oh, I went out to San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, hired a couple of artists taught them how to do it. And now we have like a team in San Francisco, it's like I call them was like a sleeper cell of creativity. Right. So now we're sort of incubating art jams in different cities, from our warehouse here in DC drop shipping all the boxes and just finding local artists in those cities. I couldn't even imagine if you were to tell me two years before the pandemic, while we had these retail locations that were pumping in DC with like the if you're like, in two years, you're not gonna have a retail location. And you're going to be national pain and sip brand. And you're going to be doing events all across the US, with teachers and other cities shipping this box. I've been like, that sounds great. But how is that going to happen? You know, it was but it happened? Because that's what life brought us. And we kind of met the moment by saying yes, I mean, it's not like I said yes to everything. We also have been saying no to a lot of things. Now we know because it's like we're focusing on that we had to kind of stop doing kids parties, right? Which I'm okay with, but I do miss the kids. But we're like just focus, but that's sort of what life brought us and we ran with it. And it's completely changed our business model for the better. All I can say is that sometimes within chaos, there's opportunity and it is okay to throw in the towel when you think it's right but it's also okay to understand that chaos is going to happen, that's life, you don't know. And that you have to be prepared to sort of make those decisions and to roll with it and to change and to adapt. That's what we did. And we actually like it better than what we were doing before. Ironically, 

Isotta Page  20:15

it's such a such a cool story. I love that and sounds like you're really building such an amazing community, getting to work with local artists all across the US. That's so awesome. Congratulations.

Michael Clements  20:26

Thank you. Community is huge. And it's really, I think one of the things that is driven our champs from the beginning. And this is another really important point for creatives, and especially for entrepreneurs is asking yourself, what is your mission, have a mission? And even as individual artists, like what's the mission of your art, right? Because in our mission at our champs is to make the world a more creative place. It's a very broad mission. But I think it's a great mission. And we do that two ways, get people engaged in art, and hire artists and pay them well. So they can have a job doing something they love. And that's it. That's really how we make the world a more creative place. And the thing is, is that how you accomplish your mission will change. But if you have a mission, if you have your North Star, it will navigate you through, it will navigate you through the night, it'll navigate you through the waves and off the rocks and the challenges of the entrepreneurial journey at sea. But if you're following your North Star, you're headed in the right direction. And when we started off as a pop up thing, and then we, you know, then we were retail. And then we were virtual. And now we're kind of like hybrid. And we're, you know, we actually were building an experience in the metaverse, we have an agreement with a company that has a Metaverse, so I think it doesn't matter the vehicle, the mission remains the same, right? So we're able to take our brand and our mission into different formats. We're not beholden to a specific format. I think that's also another really important message for creators. Sometimes you become almost a prisoner to your format, right? If you ask yourself, what is my mission? And can I bring that mission across formats, you increase the likelihood of your success, because you're in multiple formats, and kind of like, all the eggs aren't in one basket, where it's like, okay, I'm a graphic designer. So I'm just going to use my craft in graphic design. But then again, you have to focus, it's like this weird chicken or egg right always wins. I think it's kind of like, you have to find the thing, the focus, but then you also have to be open enough to know that that will change. How do you stay grounded? You need the mission, right? The mission is the thing that gives you the direction, regardless of the format.

 Isotta Page  22:42

And when you're thinking about the mission, any advice on like, where to start, it goes really into the personal rather than the profession.

 Michael Clements  22:48

It's totally personal. It's like, what do you want? I mean, what do you want to change? What do you want to improve? Like, what do you want to bring into the world and as someone that is creative, took me like three decades to even understand that creativity could be a job, I think once I kind of made that leap, and I got to a point where I had a company, the mission was born out of my personal experience that so many times through my creative journey, people were like, oh, you know, like, you'll just do this for it's good exposure, you know, that people are always saying that the artists, right, like, I'll just do this will be really good exposure for you, or whatever. I'm like, Well, I can't pay my rent with exposure. Okay. I can't say to my accountant, like, can you do my taxes, it'd be really good exposure for you to do my taxes. They're like, Nope, just pay me. And it's the same thing. Like why do people always seem like they can say that to creatives, right? I kind of got a chip on my shoulder. With that. I'm like, No, when I have a business, and when I'm hiring creatives, I'm going to make sure that like we have four we do 401 K matching or employees or a W two, right? Because a lot of times employee creatives are jumping from gig to gig. They're in the gig economy. And when I was starting off, that was it, too. I was a freelance writer, I was a freelance actor as freelance everything, right? There was a W two jobs, everything I got was like 1099. And you were like kind of paycheck to paycheck and like really hustling. And I was I wasn't saving. And that's part of what I brought into my mission is that when you know, I want to start a business. And I want to treat artists how I prefer to be treated as an artist, right? I want to be w two I want to know I'm paying into Social Security, I want to know that I can save for 401k I want to know that it's flexible, that I can work on my own schedule. And my own time that if I want to work virtually, I can write like I built a business on how I would want to be treated as an artist and out of the experience that I had as a creative and how non creatives kind of taught, you know, treated me while I was you know hustling basically. So, again, it's just really, it is personal. So I think that everyone started has to look at their mission and make it based on what makes them happy. You know what they're passionate about. I wish you the best with your creative journey and everyone out there as well that's going through a creative journey. It's a process. But don't give up because the world needs more art and more creativity. Now more than ever you can find my business art jams and AR t j m z. You can find my Creator side at not for profit. That's k n o t for profit as in prophecy, art that predicts the future. And my book is called Gen exiled dispatches from an analog age. And that's it Jen exiled. So those are a bunch of things. If you want to see pictures of me and my garden because I love gardening, I'm Mike Genki three on Instagram.

 Isotta Page  25:51

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