Interview with Doug Hoppes

^^ We cover so much in our discussion with Doug. Doug made his own IP (ShadowMyths) and is very successful with it. He shares his daily routine, marketing tips, convention tips, and more.

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Hi friends, Sarah D here.
This is the transcribed conversation made via HappyScribe.
We know some people like to read more than listen and vice versa, and we will always try to provide both when we can. HappyScribe is roughly 80% accurate.

Also a huge thanks to our guest: Doug Hoppes. Check out his art!
ShadowMyths • Instagram • Twitter

Happy Art Making!
-Sarah
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Interview with Doug Transcribed Conversation

Speaker 1 (00:00)
Hey, everyone, this is Sarah and Sarah and Doug Hoppus for https://www.mindbodyartist.com/. And today we're going to be interviewing Doug, who also goes by Dougie, and he's going to tell us about making money with his personal IP. So, Doug, Doug, if you don't mind, can you tell people how they can find you online and where they can go to support you?

Speaker 2 (00:20)
Sure. Hi, guys. I'm Dougie. So I'm the creator of the Shadow Myth Systems. You can go to www. Dot shadowmyths.com. There you can learn all about my paintings. All my paintings have stories. You can also learn about my Oracle cards, my playing cards, and a lot of my cards are used for Dungeons and Dragons.

Speaker 1 (00:48)
Awesome.

Speaker 2 (00:48)
That's pretty much everything funnels right into there.

Speaker 1 (00:51)
Awesome. So it's funny, on my Patreon, I've been talking about how much I've been chatting with you because I'm currently building my own brand and you've gone and done that before. And in my opinion, you're quite successful.

Speaker 2 (01:07)
I do.

Speaker 1 (01:08)
No problem. Yeah. It's like looking at your sales numbers. It's like a big time goal for me to be where you're at. So I'm really excited to be able to do this chat today to see how you're making money with your own IP because that's super hard to do and it takes a while to get into. So I guess really quick, just to start off, I'd love to know how you schedule out your days.

Speaker 2 (01:37)
Okay. All right. Reality is I would love to do this full time. I can't. So what happens is during the daytime, I write software for a neuroscience company, and I also have a wife and three dogs. We do Agility. I also do a bunch of other stuff. And of course, I've got my art business. It's one of the things where my wife and all my friends are like, you work too much. It's not that I work too much. What I do is I work in my art with the way I do my stuff, and this is how I do it. So the only way you're going to create your own IP is you've got to block out time to do it. Now, usually when I tell beginning artists, they're always like, well, yeah, I'm going to paint and draw all the time. It's like, well, yeah, the problem about it is if you want your own IP and you want to make money, you're going to be doing your painting and drawing probably 30% to 40% of the time and about 60% to 70% of the time. It's all marketing and selling your work. Otherwise, you can paint and draw all the time and nobody buys it, then you're not going to make enough money at it.

Speaker 2 (02:49)
So a normal day for me looks like I wake up. I generally wake up around 500. I start work around 600. I work from six to four every day, Monday through Friday at my day job. And from four to six, I hang out four to six to four to seven. I hang out with my wife dogs, do dinner and everything like that, and then generally about 630 to probably around 930. I do my painting and drawing on the weekends, about two to three weekends, about two weekends a month on average. I usually do a convention. Some months are bad where I'm doing like five shows in a row, but other months where I do like one or two shows, but it comes out to be about 22 shows a year. I also during lunchtime, I tend to do like, shipping of my orders at lunchtime, sending emails and stuff like that. So far, I haven't talked to anybody. Any of the art. The way I do my art is if I'm watching TV, I have my sketchbook. So I'm just sitting there sketching in my sketchbook while I watch TV, if I put my easel in my living room so that during the daytime when I'm upstairs working, I don't see my wife.

Speaker 2 (04:05)
But during the night I can paint downstairs and I can still talk to her, watch TV and paint at the same time. So for me, when I'm traveling, I usually interpret it between when I'm driving, I'll drive and I'll be thinking about projects. When I get to the hotel, I'll be thinking about little different things. So it's not about creating these blocks of time. What it is is about creating interspersing the things you have to do within what you normally would do.

Speaker 1 (04:35)
That's an awesome answer because it's so hard to schedule out the days in order to actually make like you have to cut out the time to work on the IP. And I really like how you've inter dispersed it throughout your normal day or what most people would consider to be a normal day. So it's like you're still pretty much have the nine to five typically, but you're like six to four and then you work around that, which I think would be go ahead. Oh, I think that's a really good advice, especially someone who's starting out and who might need to have a day job. And they're feeling like the day job is preventing them from even starting this endeavor. And it's like you definitely can start your own IP and still have a day job.

Speaker 2 (05:23)
Yeah, well, that's the thing. So many people you read on the Internet, everybody is like, okay, I block out 1 hour a day. It's like, no, I don't block out 1 hour a day, but I got ten minutes here go. You know what? I'm going to do a quick little doodle. Like, right before this, I had about half an hour. I'm like, okay, you know what? I transferred one of my drawings to my Cintiq and I started just doing the value shift on. It took me about 40 minutes, but rather than doing something else. So what I usually do is I'll say okay, I've got about 20 I usually work somewhere between 20 to 40 hours a week on my business every week. Some weeks I may work like 10 hours, and I'll make up to have 30 hours the next week. So people go, you have to work on every day. It's like, no, you don't. You just have to have a set amount of time that you work over a long period of time. And if you don't make the hours one week, you just make up the next week like, okay, I know next week I'm traveling a lot.

Speaker 2 (06:19)
You know what? I can make up that ten or 15 hours I don't do this week with next week. This way you've got time for your friends, your family and everything like that. It's not healthy just working all the time.

Speaker 1 (06:31)
Yeah, for sure. And I like how you still like you're managing to go and spend time with your family, spent time with the dogs, spend time with your friends, and you're still kind of doing this. Actually, your time management skills have always been very impressive to me. About how much time, actually, would you describe kind of your marketing techniques?

Speaker 2 (06:56)
Okay, so let's think of this way. The way you think in terms of marketing, it really is based on return on investment. So what you do is you get a lot of people go, okay, you know what? I make a ton of money going to I make money going to conventions. That's all I'm going to do. But think about it this way. You go to a convention, you're going to like a lot of the conventions I have to do. I have to travel. So I didn't do Comiccons. And actually, I'll talk about that in a second. But when I go to conventions, I've got to take into account the time I'm away from home. So that's personal family time where I don't get to see my wife and my dogs. But it's also food, travel costs, all the costs and everything like that. All the cost that go along with it. And your time, the fact that you're gone for like three to four days depending upon what type of shows you are. But the other thing about it is it's also about depending upon I know a lot of people just go and do Comiccons only.

Speaker 2 (07:59)
The problem about it is that you don't have diversification. So everything from what I do in terms of marketing is all based on lots and lots of different avenues. Think of this way. So I do say conventions. I could be like, everybody just do Comiccons, like, well, okay. And that's okay. But I actually do Comiccons, tattoo conventions, gaming conventions, oddity shows, Christmas shows, Christmas craft fairs, maybe an art show outside. So it's about interspersing time. But more importantly, it's about doing different types of shows. The reason why you want to do different types of shows is because having different types of shows means you've got a different audience. So when I first created my Shadow Miss decks only for writers. But then at a gaming show, I found out DND people wanted them. Then I did a Body Mind Spirit show, and I found that people wanted those Oracle cards. Now I'm looking at potential therapy shows where I go and sell the work of therapy. So even though you're doing one show for selling your one thing, I've got like seven different types of shows, which means I've got seven different types of customers.

Speaker 2 (09:15)
And that expands out, say Comiccons go down, buying tattoos go up, say oddities go down. Maybe a therapy or one of the other ones go up. So you're kind of like, think about it, like diversifying your stock now doing a show like that, doing the conventions, that's for me, the biggest bang for the buck. So like I said, I did about 85K in sales last year when I was doing only Comic Con, I was only doing like 30 to 40K because everybody wanted fan arts. At the Comic Con, I'm like, okay, this is not sustainable model. And we can talk about this too, but it's about looking at your failures and evaluating what works and what doesn't work and don't keep doing the same thing over and over again. So I was only doing, say, 35,000 on the Comic Con. Like, okay, that's okay. But there's got to be something better. So that's why I try some of the other shows. A lot of these shows are better. So I start shifting different types of shows. Now, outside of that, I just started last year, started doing online sales. So my online sales in 2019 was like $39, and it was awful.

Speaker 2 (10:31)
But then I signed up for some online program for Kara Bunton, who does this great Etsy workshop thing. And what happened was she helped me grab my shop. So for the pandemic year, I did about 9500 on Etsy, and I only did about 4000 on Amazon. I still haven't figured out how to break that Amazon barrier, but then I did. But this year I'm probably around no. Last year, I did about 17,000 on Etsy and about another four or 5000. So Etsy is growing up every year. I figure in about five years, based on the way it's going, it should hit about 30 or 40. Because the way online works is it's based on long term. You've got to get all the reviews, you've got to get all the sales to build. So the search engines find you when people are looking for things, and that increases your sales. So buddy of mine, they do very well after about four or five years. So it takes about five years to really start doing pretty well. So like I said, this year, last year, I did about 16,000 on Etsy. I think about in about four years.

Speaker 2 (11:39)
Four or five years from now, I should be here about 50, and I just haven't figured out Amazon yet. So I'm still struggling with that one.

Speaker 1 (11:46)
But still, that's a great point. What are you saying, Sarah?

Speaker 3 (11:49)
I was going to say, this is Sarah Ford jumping in. It's just like I had a similar experience when I went online, because when the pandemic happened, I wasn't able to do conventions anymore. But I was gearing up to kind of cut back on cons because I was just getting kind of sick of the slog and the grind of just doing shows. And I was like, well, I kind of just want to not do this anymore. So my 2020 plan was that I was going to do like a third of the shows that I normally do and try to build up my online presence, right? So I set up a new store, and I set up a private group, and I started doing all this stuff, and then it was like, that's all you can do. And it turned out like it was killer for me. I just hit the home run with it. And my sales were so good online, and it was just a market. I mean, it was because I had built up the audience over time at conventions. I had the people following me, but it was such a relief. And now it's like cons are optional for me now.

Speaker 2 (12:49)
That's the thing. I haven't built up my so I don't have really much of a following. My work is distinguished. But the thing about it is it doesn't fit traditional fantasy work. It doesn't fit traditional. If it's digital, everybody wants the really high detailed stuff. It's just my work is not one of those people go, oh, this is great. They think it's Horn. So there's a very small niche of people. And those niches do not follow me online, but they give me a lot of money. It shows. So I'm like, all right.

Speaker 3 (13:31)
So you have, like, the Impulse People. And then if you want to do more online, it's like, how do you convert them?

Speaker 2 (13:38)
This is my special trick for converting them online. So I have the Impulse people. And I told her about this trick. This works out beautifully. So what you do is I sell Eleven by 17 prints for $20 at the show. So a healthy profit margin. The thing about it is that people will buy because it provides me two things. You know how everybody does the standard, everybody does the standard when I do for the price of two. And so on, people that shows, they always, well, if I get two or three, does it get a discount? I'm like, no, I'm sorry, you don't. It's like, oh, really? It says, yeah, but I explain why and I tell them it's like, look, online. My Eleven X 17s are 40 apiece at the show, their 20s. You're getting 50% off at the show. You're not paying sales tax. And you're not paying dripping. So online, two prints are $95 at the show, they're $40. Invariably, everybody buys more than two prints. They'll buy somewhere between two to six prints. The beauty about it is that when they go and do the orders online, they will always buy eleven by 17 at the dollar price point because also mentioned at the shows that what happens is, oh, this is only like you only seen like 20 or 30 of my 120 paintings and they all have stories.

Speaker 2 (15:04)
So they all go to my site and they find some more they want. But nobody wants to buy an eleven X 14 at the $20 because it doesn't match the size of the eleven by 17 that they bought at the show. So I can always tell when I have shows. All my online sales for after shows are always the eleven X 17th. During Christmas time, they were eleven by 14th because I didn't have any shows at that time.

Speaker 3 (15:29)
So when they're buying gifts for people, they're buying the Littler ones, but when they're getting it from themselves, they want it to match when they got the show.

Speaker 2 (15:35)
That's right. People always want something to match, which is why all my oil paintings all have exactly the same frame. So I do mine from pictureframes.com and I get one particular frame and all my paintings have exactly that frame. They fit in nine by twelve and 18 X 24. I have a lot of customers. What they'll do is they'll buy two to five of my paintings, but now they all have exactly the same frame, so it automatically fits in their house.

Speaker 3 (16:03)
So how much of those frames do you stock ahead of time in case they go off?

Speaker 2 (16:07)
I stock 20 of the 18 by 20 fours and about 20 of the eight X ten s. And I usually sell look at this way. A nine X twelve painting with the wooden frame comes out to be $420 and it's $900 for the 18 X 24. And I keep them at those prices because of the a certain price brackets people have. And we can talk about that price bracket thing. But yeah, that sounds very interesting to me. The last six years of my 113 paintings, I have 14 left.

Speaker 1 (16:47)
That's nice. That's great.

Speaker 2 (16:51)
Yeah. I have a lot of people, especially tattoo people, buy the stuff. But I keep my painting prices at those prices because when you're selling your work, there are certain barriers people hit. There's the $20 barrier, $50, 100, 500,000, $5,000 above. You can have exactly the same painting. And if you charge somebody $900, they will be more inclined to buy that than if you charge them $1,050. You don't like the word.

Speaker 3 (17:22)
It's interesting to me that you had the 100 and then the $500, because that's the price point that I'm currently sitting right in the middle of.

(17:29)
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:34)
For the longest time mine was 400. I like the 400 range, 400, 420, close enough to the 500. You're not giving it away. But the beauty about it is and you're making a pretty decent profit out. Those are my paintings. The nine X twelve are the ones I sell the most because that's in most people's budgets. The 900. I do offer the payment plans, which does help number of the sales. So if you have high price items, having a payment plan really helps moving those items.

Speaker 3 (18:06)
How do you do that? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:07)
Do you offer payment plans?

Speaker 2 (18:08)
It shows, absolutely. So the way it works, when I'm doing a payment plan, it shows. So a $900 painting. I don't do payment plans for the small ones, but on a $900 painting, I do $300 down with $100 a month the way I do it. So that shows the way I do it. What they do is they give me $300. They take the painting then. And then what we do is they sit there and they will text me, okay, you need to text me this number. You said bought this painting and text me the number. So they'll text me. So I have their number. And then you just let me know which day of the month you would like to do your payment plan. Then what I do is I set up Venmo or PayPal or whatever one they like. Or some people have actually written out pre written out checks, and I deposit the checks at certain times, and then at that time I write it on my calendar. In that time, I send them a little request for the money for. So it's $300 down with $100 a month.

Speaker 3 (19:10)
Has this ever backfired?

Speaker 2 (19:13)
No. The reason why it hasn't backfired is simple. People are not going to steal your painting because if they do that, they no longer see your painting. You see the fact that they stole your painting.

Speaker 3 (19:31)
You have so much more faith in humanity than I do.

Speaker 2 (19:35)
In the end, it's a painting. It really is just a painting. I do somewhere between 25 to 35 paintings a year. It's one of the 25 to 35 paintings I've done.

Speaker 1 (19:51)
I think that's interesting because that is a good point. You are taking that risk, but at the same time, you're like, yeah, it's one out of 30. So if most people aren't going to be assholes and steal your work, and if one person does, you're like, okay, one person was terrible, but all these other people are good. And we go on. But in the meantime, you're enjoying higher sales because you're offering this payment plan and I'm offering a lot more people.

Speaker 2 (20:18)
And the other thing I also tell people is, and I do tell them says, like, look, I have quite a number of people. What they do is because the paintings are within their price range, they will come by and they'll be like, do you have this painting? Like, I'm sorry, that's the last show show body. I had one guy, he missed three of my paintings in a row at three different shows. It was a tattoo vendor. Like, right before the show started. He's like, I love this painting. He picks it up, and I'm showing him the back of the story, and I'm holding it, and I feel it moving out of my hand. I'm like, oh, no, I've already missed three of your paintings. This one is going home with me now.

Speaker 1 (21:00)
That's awesome. That's great.

Speaker 2 (21:02)
My favorite story is I had this one large painting, and a customer came up and I tell the shows, like, look, this is not a marketing thing, but if you're interested in original, you probably should make decisions soon. Somebody may come up. They always say, oh, yeah, I'll be back. Like, okay, I had some guy show up on a Friday, then a Saturday and Saturday night. He comes back, finally looks at my paintings, like five or 10ft, standing back from my booth looking at the piece. And I'm like, all right, how's it going? Stuff like that. This other guy comes up, he looks at the painting while this guy stand back looking at it. He looks at the painting, it's like, yeah, all right, I'll take it, pulled it right off the wall, and the guy is just looking at it's like, oh, you can see his body just sink down. I'm like, I told you.

Speaker 3 (22:03)
This is the benefit of making one of a kind or unique pieces, because I sell really fancy hair bows, and they're all one of a kind. And it's the same thing. I'll do an auction or I'll do an event or whatever, and somebody will say, I was going to bid, and I didn't bid because I didn't set my alarm or whatever. And I'll never have that boat now, right?

Speaker 2 (22:24)
Well, that's the other thing. When I'm doing my pieces, I do random black and white shapes. Things come out of shapes. So outside of the texture and the general palette, none of my paintings exhibit pretty much the same thing. They all look vastly different. And I do that because so that one person when they buy something, nobody is going to get that. I asked a couple, Will you paint that again? Like, no, it's not fair to my customer who bought that, because they're buying that unique idea and don't do the same idea over and over again.

Speaker 3 (22:58)
We're like our best friends because that's the thing that I love the most is, like, once you make it and it's out there. Okay, so here's something that's interesting. Have you ever done a series as, like, have you ever done, like, a collection and sold it as a unit?

Speaker 2 (23:15)
I did once years ago. Not. I used to be a Gallery landscape painter, but I also was really into surrealism and abstract shapes. I did this set of paintings called Sisyphus, and what essentially is a geometric guy with a geometric ball, and it was bright Greens, bright yellows and bright Blues. He's pushing up. And I did all three paintings. One of the guys at the office I worked at and I sold him like $200 piece. They're watercolor pieces. They're 16 by 20 watercolor pieces. And I sold at my office and was like, all three would be 600. It was dirt cheap. It was back early in my career. But, yeah, he bought all three. And I still go to his office. When I saw his office, probably like 1520 years later, he still had him in his office. I'm like, hey, you still have my painting to go. I love these things. Like, oh, thanks. But outside that I don't do series. The closest thing I do is lately I was doing a number of things with Ravens because I like painting Ravens and they sell well. I'm going to start doing Wolves and other things because people keep asking me about them.

Speaker 2 (24:26)
All right? So if I get some random shape Wolves turned out to them, I will add them into the mix. So I will add what people's suggestions are. I won't do the painting, but people love certain topics. People like, one of my paintings called Lacking Wisdom has a barn owl on it. All these people who love barnells got barnells sitting on a skull. All these people who love barnells. That painting.

Speaker 1 (24:53)
All right, that makes sense. It's one of the things that I'm going to try and do a little bit. Not like go whole hog into it, but I'm going to try and make sure that some of my creatures have a relatable animal base.

Speaker 3 (25:08)
Yeah. So someone looks at it and says, oh, that's like a Wolf, but it's cooler.

Speaker 1 (25:13)
Exactly.

Speaker 3 (25:14)
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:14)
Or like, oh, that's like a sort of a leopard, but it's an alien leopard.

Speaker 2 (25:19)
It's hard doing that because Ian McKay knows that IMC in Mackay, you have this thing where you can submit animals and stuff like that for potential movies. So I sent a bunch of creature designs to him, and he made the best comment. He was kind of like, these are interesting, but they're too abstract, which means that I understand back then, I'm like, I don't get it, but now I understand it more. It's because people need something connect. They look at some creature, whatever need something connect with the creature. So you'll notice that a lot of my creature designs are actually all these different animals meld together. 1 may have, like the eyes of a rhino and the head of a porcupine, stuff like that, but they want something that they can actually connect up to. Otherwise, what you end up with is generic. You end up with a generic. All right, think of this way. Do you see a picture of a kitten having already a certain emotional context with it? Do you have a picture of a Fox? You have an emotional context that goes along with those. If you see just a generic random creature, like fancy creature you normally see, you don't have that emotional context that you would have when you see recognizable animals.

Speaker 3 (26:51)
This is making me realize why people's favorite Pokemon are the ones that everyone likes, because they're the ones that people see a creature in, like, the EVs are all like, cute little Kitty Bunny. And that's why people gravitate towards them, because they're like, oh, my God, it's so cute.

Speaker 2 (27:12)
We got the emotional context built into them to like them.

Speaker 3 (27:16)
And that's why you look at some Pokemon and you're like, that's like a tea kettle, right? Yeah, whatever. Or you look at it and you're like, I don't even know what that's supposed to be.

Speaker 2 (27:26)
Which means you got nothing to them.

Speaker 3 (27:28)
Right. And that's why people don't attach themselves to those weird ones.

Speaker 2 (27:31)
That's right. And this is also why people sell fan art. And they do a great job selling fan art at conventions.

Speaker 3 (27:39)
Because it's derivative but emotionally connected.

Speaker 2 (27:42)
Because they've already listened to the movies, they've already done the stuff. They've already created a connection to that particular character.

Speaker 3 (27:50)
I don't know if you guys can hear me typing, but I'm literally taking notes.

Speaker 2 (27:53)
No, I can't hear you typing.

Speaker 3 (27:54)
I can't hear you typing.

Speaker 1 (27:55)
And that's great. You're taking notes.

Speaker 2 (27:58)
But what they've done is they've created a so that's why when you do Marvel, all these other things, people go and fan are huge. The problem about doing your IP and this is the thing, sir, you've got to deal with with your IP. The problem about doing IP, the hardest part is you have to create the connection or yourself. You don't have a large company or you don't have anybody else creating connection. Like, your IP would be an IP. That would be gangbusters, would be somebody who does. I've got a story of cat and battle armor.

Speaker 1 (28:35)
Yeah, people would love that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:37)
Like that Kickstarter I backed recently. It's just Cats and DND. It's DND class cats. He killed it. Right.

Speaker 2 (28:46)
Because you've already got connections for D and D. You've already got connections. They've built that emotional feeling already into them.

Speaker 1 (28:56)
Yeah. Actually, that's a great segue whenever you're done saying this, but I love to talk about you use Story so much in your world. I'd love to know how you use that for, like, marketing and to build the world connection.

Speaker 2 (29:14)
Okay, so let's talk about Story. Many people cry, and I like the fact that I make people cry. Matter of fact, I'm going to start doing tissues. My wife says I got to start doing tissue boxes at shows.

Speaker 3 (29:27)
You should.

Speaker 2 (29:31)
It ends up about every show I usually have one to three people cheer up. About every three shows, I usually have somebody cry. And about every five shows, I usually actually have somebody bawling. My paintings are not about. They're not horror. What I do is I create emotional work but they're also not the norm either. So you guys ever listen to Alice Cooper?

Speaker 1 (30:04)
I have. Okay.

Speaker 2 (30:07)
Alice Cooper is one of my favorite artists, and he's got the best songs. And the reason why he's got the best songs is he talks about the most weirdest, darkest things and everything like that. They're not dark the way he sings about them, because what he does, he's got this great song called Only Women Bleed, which is about abuse and everything like that. And he's got one called Dead Babies by and stuff like that. They're horrible things. He creates such an emotional context at their base that they're not horrible. So when I'm creating stories, one of my biggest stories that people nowadays, people love and they love the painting, it's this woman with a Raven above. It's the one in the photograph. It's called Escape. Escape is all about the fact that people go. People tell you you shouldn't have to never run away, stand firm, and stuff like that, in their opinion, is like, you know what? It's okay to escape. You just can't do it all the time, but it's okay to run away. It's okay to not have to stand up all the time. People identify with that type of stuff. I've got another painting called Unwanted, where you've got this one guy against a tree, and you got three other people over there, looks like they're laughing, having fun.

Speaker 2 (31:24)
And it's about how people go and you try to fit yourself in these groups of these people that don't want you. You think they want you, but they don't. They don't invite you to dinner. They don't hang out with you. They don't do anything. You're kind of like, standby. But you know what? There's groups out there who do want you. You will find you've got to be strong enough to actually look for groups who do want you. And once you go to find those groups, you're going to be much happier. The paintings, all my stories are by some negative, bad thing that people encounter in their lives. Most of the time, it's got, like, a little positive spin. And I always say, these are uplifting. They may look dark, but they're actually moral uplifting stories. They're about, yes, this is bad, but you know what? That's okay. You don't have a ton of friends. Who cares if you don't have a ton of friends? If your friends you have are really good, that's all that matters. So by doing stories like that, what I've done is I've created connections with people, and everybody comes to my booth, and there's always one particular painting they love.

Speaker 2 (32:33)
They go look at the paint, and then they read the story, and they're like, crap. That's me. I got one called Unforgiven that almost every guy picks up. It's all about the fact that it looks like this worry you slumped over, and it's like, yeah, we all make mistakes. You're going to screw up. But you know what? If you don't learn to forgive yourself at that time, you're never going to be able to go past that moment. You're going to be stuck there and everybody's like, yeah, because you can see in their eyes that, I mean, I've done it. They've done the same thing. They haven't moved past that point. And they're always forever rethinking and reliving. That one point. My stories that are dark, they're kind of uplifting, too. They're like, yeah, but, you know, it's okay that you're not perfect or it's okay that you don't have a ton of friends or a ton of money or anything like that. Just be yourself. You'll be a lot happier that way.

Speaker 1 (33:25)
Yeah. I love the fact that you have so much story involved in your brand and the subject matter that you work with. It's really easy to connect with your paintings. I think it's simple.

Speaker 2 (33:41)
Yeah, that's the thing. As I said, with fandom and everything like that, they recreate the stories. If you create the stories. The art of selling is all about creating a connection and providing something they can use.

Speaker 3 (33:59)
I can even relate this to my post reference work, because the packs that I sell that sell well are the packs where it's a very clear archetype. Like, it's a very clear character because I sell themed packs. So if I do like the badass character that's wearing the sunglasses and flipping you off and smoking a cigarette and stomping his boots, someone's going to look at that and be like, oh, my God, I got the character for this. And then they buy the pack.

Speaker 2 (34:26)
Well, that's the thing. Yeah. I'm looking at doing stickers, and I was talking to some people. I'm like, I'll do exactly the same thing. This is the Badass Woman pack. This is the Dark Raven pack. People will say, oh, I love this one. This is the demon crawling out of the ground pack. Everybody's got their own particular thing. They're like, oh, and they'll buy that pack.

Speaker 1 (34:55)
Do we lose you guys? I thought we lost you for a second.

Speaker 2 (35:03)
Yes. The stories are very important. If you want to make sales, you've got to create connections to the customers. Otherwise you're just going to be like everybody else.

Speaker 1 (35:12)
That's such a good point. That's where I'm going to now. That's my goal.

Speaker 3 (35:16)
I'm already attached to half of your characters.

Speaker 1 (35:20)
That's good. I just got to do it more.

Speaker 3 (35:27)
I'll just be an early adopter, that's all.

Speaker 2 (35:30)
Sarah, remember, this is one of the other things I was telling you about with your characters. Give them names.

Speaker 1 (35:36)
Yeah, I have to make them relatable. I did the scientist characters, and I gave them all names and stuff, but I need to expand that out into other things.

Speaker 2 (35:45)
Give them names, give them personalities.

Speaker 3 (35:47)
I see the ones that I'm attached to are the scientist characters. I'm not that attached to the Sharks, even though I bought a picture from you of one of them, but I'm Super attached to what's her face with the big eyes.

Speaker 1 (36:02)
Tacklers.

Speaker 3 (36:03)
He's like one of my favorites. I'm a mechanic guy that like, God, I'm so bad because I don't remember their names. Obviously, you need to say their names more. Morty the mechanic. Yeah. And that old lady with the eyebrows.

Speaker 1 (36:20)
Oh, yes. Burcoon.

Speaker 2 (36:23)
Once you start giving names, you start giving personalities and stuff like that. Then you start creating stories for them. With my newest playing card deck, I've got a bunch of people going to the insane asylum. I've got 14 characters where I'm going to flush out and write a story for each one of their experience in the insane asylum. So it's kind of like people will start identifying with those stories.

Speaker 1 (36:48)
Yes. And you're going to have 14 different pathways that they can go, which is going to be right. Really cool. What I think I was thinking is sometimes because a lot of my characters are like animals, so I'm thinking, like, there's some nature documentaries that you watch, and they do kind of they're like, oh, this is, I don't know, Bart the Bear, and he's going to go and do this and that. And they make the story with the animal documentaries. And I think I need to go that route inject more story into, like, even if they're a character that can't speak.

Speaker 2 (37:25)
It doesn't matter whether they can speak or not. Look at your dogs. Look at all the behaviors. You can tell which dog each dog has their own little behavior, attitudes and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (37:36)
That's a good point.

Speaker 2 (37:38)
They just have mannerisms that they know that they're known for.

Speaker 1 (37:45)
Yeah. That actually is a really good point, because I could be like this painting or this image is of this specific creature. Not like just, oh, this is a generic creature that this is a Wolf. This is this specific Wolf and go with that.

Speaker 3 (38:03)
Yes. And this is this specific Wolf story and this specific Wolf history.

Speaker 2 (38:10)
People identify with it.

Speaker 1 (38:12)
That's a brilliant idea. Oh, so before I forget, the other thing that we were chatting about, I have so many questions. It's so good.

Speaker 3 (38:21)
Just so you know, Doug, this is how all of these go, right?

Speaker 1 (38:24)
Yeah. But one of the things I wanted to get in is so you make an image, a painting, and then you use that in multiple different products.

Speaker 2 (38:36)
Yes. We always talk about that. One way it works is yes. In terms of efficiency, I don't have that much time. So whenever I create a piece, it has to do so what people do is they create an image. They go, I'm going to just slap this image on a like, well, when they create an image, they're going to say, I'm going to just slap this image on a cup in a phone case. And that's my area. No, that's not what it means. What I try to do is you create different products that are a function of that image. Okay? So create one, paint the original. So I'll sell that the original. I'll sell prints of it. People can't afford the original traditional stuff everybody has so far. Then what I did was I took the paintings and I created because, remember, they're semi abstract enough. What I did was create a card deck. Card deck was initially used for writing ideas, for prompts. Then what I found was then I found people using them as Oracle cards and DND cards. Like, fine. Now I've got the image that can be used as cards and originals and prints.

Speaker 2 (40:05)
That's still not quite good enough. So I realized also then that great. You know what? I can write some stories. I'm going to put these images inside of my books now rather than just do a traditional art book, what everybody does, you take back to the idea of creating stories with individual characters or your creatures. Right now, I don't create an art book. What I'm doing is I'm creating a storybook for John the Bear. This is John's the story of John the Bear. And you're going to create a whole bunch of these little stories. Now you've got the painting, the print, the cards and the book. So you can sell the cards, help write the book. Now you can use the cards for Dungeons and Dragons, like your games with the creatures. Same thing with my creatures. My creatures are used in my books for characters in my books. They're also used as gaming cards for Dungeons Dragons because everybody goes and memorized the monster manual. So you can come up with your own creature when you come up with your own race description. Now you can sell that pack going, oh, these are creatures you can use for your books and your writing.

Speaker 2 (41:22)
Oh, then what you do is you take the same image and say, you know what, let's make a game out of it. And I'm going to use the same image inside of my game rather than just putting the image on different things. Of course, I'm looking at booting stickers and I put them on playing cards, but I just didn't put the images on. I used one deck of monsters on one playing card and using the other deck of paintings on another playing card. I could have just put them on the playing card. Now that would have been what everybody else does. However, you're getting a download. They get a downloadable book which has the creature descriptions and a little bit about the story of the playing card. So now they've got something creates a story with the playing cards. So it's about taking one image, using it across a lot of different ideas as opposed to just putting on something. But you're using for a lot of different use types. That means at any given image. So say I do an image do one painting. So the painting you sell the painting 18 X 24, you sell for $900.

Speaker 2 (42:25)
Great. Then you sell, say, 100 prints of it at we'll say the $40 prints. So actually probably say you sell $1,000. I'm probably not that safe. Popular ones, probably around two or 300, say 300. So now you got $900 plus 300 times 40 is going to be 300 times $40,000.

Speaker 3 (42:56)
Don't ask me $13,000.

Speaker 2 (43:00)
Then you've got your painting inside of the card deck, one of 35 cars. You saw a bunch of those. So maybe that adds another $20,000 onto it. So you've taken one image that you could have just done, only $900, and you potentially made it 2030, $40,000 off that one particular image. You do that a bunch of times now. You've got over years now you've got all these different ones, one image, and it's about making efficient use of your time.

Speaker 1 (43:32)
I love that. That's definitely one of my goals.

Speaker 3 (43:34)
I'm sitting here like, can I sell would people buy pictures of hair bows?

Speaker 2 (43:41)
How do you sell pictures of hair bows?

Speaker 3 (43:43)
No, I'm saying would they would someone buy, like, if you can't get the bow because it got sold?

Speaker 2 (43:48)
No, probably not.

Speaker 3 (43:49)
What would people buy, like collector cards?

Speaker 2 (43:53)
This is what you do. So what you do is you create a you know how you've got all those sticker books for Barbie and everything like that? Create a sticker book of hair bows or little magnet type things. And people can use those hair bows in with their other products.

Speaker 3 (44:12)
See, I made enamel pins that are shaped like bows.

Speaker 1 (44:15)
You can do that.

Speaker 2 (44:16)
Too, because if you do a sticker book with all those little bows that you put Peel it's like those gummy type stickers when you Peel them off and put them down and stuff like that, now they can reuse them. Now you can go sell them to people like who do American Doll and a bunch of other stuff going, hey, you want some fancy bows for your little American dolls and stuff like that? Or you take your bows and create miniatures out of them. Now you can sell and add your bows to all the people who are doing from American Dolls and all the other doll product lines. So now you've got a totally different product line of you got people who love miniatures. Totally different. It's about expanding your market, not about who you currently bases, but who else could potentially use your stuff.

Speaker 3 (45:07)
Think about that.

Speaker 1 (45:09)
Also, if you're taking notes and I've talked to Doug and taken a bunch of notes, at some point, Sarah, we can hook back up and brainstorm have our own little I do this every time I talk to Doug. I'll have a brainstorming session with another artist I know. And I'm like, all right, I just talked to Doug. We have to figure some stuff out.

Speaker 2 (45:35)
If you want your business to do well, it's all about diversification and then coming up with, you don't want to come up with something that's totally, vastly different. People will not buy products that are vastly different. People will buy products that are similar to something they have that has a different twist to it because we're going back to that.

Speaker 1 (45:59)
You need the connection.

Speaker 2 (46:02)
The connection.

Speaker 1 (46:03)
Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (46:06)
It's not the connection. They're going to walk by.

Speaker 1 (46:08)
Right. You need something. Yeah. You need the emotional link. Yes, that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (46:15)
What I'm saying about the hair bows with the dolls. Kidding. People love dolls. The doll collector market is huge. You can do hair bows with dolls. You'd be like, working all the time.

Speaker 3 (46:26)
I am working all the time.

Speaker 1 (46:30)
You're going to need assistance.

Speaker 2 (46:33)
There's a whole team.

Speaker 3 (46:34)
Yeah, I've been thinking about because I don't think I can manufacture my bows, but I probably could get very small versions of them manufactured.

Speaker 2 (46:46)
Marketing for dolls and collectors and everything like that. Yeah. People will totally love that. There's a huge market for that out there.

Speaker 1 (46:56)
And then, of course, if they found you, you could be like, yeah, you like this doll size bow for your dolls. But do you know I also make people sized bows.

Speaker 3 (47:04)
You and your doll could have matching bow.

Speaker 2 (47:07)
That's what you do is what you do is you sell packs. Your pack would have the doll size in there and the human size in there.

Speaker 3 (47:21)
Yeah. I used to do pet bows and matching human bows. I haven't done that. So cute.

Speaker 2 (47:29)
Matter of fact, this is the family Bowsette.

Speaker 3 (47:33)
Yes. The dog, the doll.

Speaker 2 (47:37)
You dog the doll. The girl or the guy who wants to bow for their hair. And then, of course, you add a bow tie into it.

Speaker 3 (47:46)
Everybody's covered.

Speaker 1 (47:47)
Yeah, everyone is.

Speaker 3 (47:50)
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:50)
I like the family pack idea. All right. I'm looking at the list of stuff I wanted to ask you anywhere.

Speaker 3 (48:04)
Awesome.

Speaker 1 (48:04)
So you mentioned previously that you're selling hundreds of prints, and you also said that you work with a local print shop. So could you talk about finding a place to get yourself printed?

Speaker 2 (48:17)
So everybody always goes through society, six imprints and a bunch of other stuff online. But what you're going to find actually is where they do it themselves. But the thing about it is, at any given show, I move somewhere between probably one to 400 prints per show. I don't have a lot of time. I can't do another 100 to 400 prints every Queen shows. If the shows are back to back, I don't have time to do it because to make my prints stand out, I add a backing board. I put the story on the back. There's a lot of work. So I have to get my prints out locally printed. The beauty about it is what you want to do is you want to establish local relationships. Because if I need a set of prints, I can't order it online. But if there's a problem with the print or coloring or something like that, you may not have time to get the print sent over to you from the online. Basically, what you can do is you can go and find a local printer. But what you have to do is you got to go in there and explain the situation.

Speaker 2 (49:34)
So, like, when I went there, I said, look, I'm an artist. I saw conventions. This is about how much I do. I eat about one to 300 prints per show. I typically do this many shows. So I'm establishing an idea that they're going to do a lot of printing for me. Of course, I have online and everything like that. They probably did about maybe $15,000 15,000 prints for me. As one of my printer says, it looks like we're printing money for you again today. Yes, you are printing money. Right. But the beauty about it is because I've been with them for two or three years, and they've gotten a lot of business from me. You also get special treatment. Yes.

Speaker 3 (50:24)
You get perks if you don't mind rushing stuff for you. If you come in last minute, they'll fit it in.

Speaker 2 (50:32)
That's right. I will have plenty of times where when I'm doing my show, I'm like, look, I'm going to be at the show. I got to leave on Wednesday night or Wednesday or Thursday night. So say, I leave Wednesday night, I leave Wednesday night. I give them a heads up. I'll be at the show. I'll leave Wednesday night. I'll send my order in first thing Monday morning. I need about 300 prints this way. Is there a way I can get them by the end of Monday? And they're like, absolutely not a problem. Or say, hey, we've got this job, or I need a roof or something. They'll rush through a proof really quick because they know that I buy a lot of I order a lot. But the thing about it is it's not only the prints I order for them, I also go and when I made cards from my booth and cards for my mailers, like, yeah, I could get cheaper like that. You know what? I've already got a relationship with them. Don't mind paying a little extra just to give them the work, because I don't want them to go out of business.

Speaker 2 (51:37)
Not like my job is keeping them in business, but I don't want them to go out of business. So I make sure that all my printing needs are handled through them. I don't do any of my.

Speaker 3 (51:46)
Yeah, you've got a relationship and you're maintaining it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:50)
So the way you do it is what you do is you go find and this is what I did. I looked up all the local printers around me, all of them. I stopped in, showed them what I currently have. I, like in printing, walked in, says, okay, what type of paper do we need? What type of paper? What type of price can you give me on this stuff like that? This is about the quantity I'm looking at. And then eventually I found one that I like, okay, you know what? We'll do some sample runs with you, see how this works out. And then, like I said, I found the one printer of all the areas, and they're about 20 minutes from my house. So it works out really great. I prefer working with local versus just doing the Internet. It's just easy for my state of mind that I know I can get these prints ready before show getting supplies for backing boards. That's a little stressful because of the way the Internet is right now, but shipping is right now. But outside of that, prints themselves are easy.

Speaker 1 (52:54)
I like that idea. Like, I don't do a ton of volume, but if I ever start doing larger volume, like, how you're doing? I definitely think I'm going to go and see about the local shops near me. But also, you mentioned that you work with an accountant. That's like another person who has a business relationship. Can you talk about that?

Speaker 3 (53:12)
Well, I just got one of those. It's amazing.

Speaker 2 (53:17)
It is amazing. So this is the other thing I do, right? Because I travel a lot. What I do is I create an Excel spreadsheet. In the spreadsheet, I've got my sales for my monthly sales breakdowns online versus at shows and stuff like that. I got all of my expenses right before my accountant. There are so many things I was not taking account of. Like driving to the post office. My account is like, oh, yeah, you're going to record that? What you're recording everything. So I record everything now, but I also don't wait until the end of the year. So I have this Excel Street. I constantly update it every day.

Speaker 3 (54:02)
This is how I live.

Speaker 2 (54:04)
Literally. It's like, oh, look, 03:00 go into the post office, come back, I send an email out to the people. So whoever just ordered my order. So thank you very much. Any problems, let me know. I went to my Excel spreadsheet. All right. Drive to post office.

Speaker 3 (54:17)
3 miles to the post office.

Speaker 2 (54:19)
Post office, one 2122. Here's this sign. Here's the thing, the mileage and everything like that. So I do that constantly. So at the end, every time I buy something online, I record all those. So at the end of the year, I don't really have to do anything. I just take my spreadsheet, I send it off to my accountant, and then they take care of everything.

Speaker 3 (54:42)
I've got one step ahead of this now. I just send them the credit card statement, and they categorize everything for me.

Speaker 2 (54:50)
Oh, I got tons of stuff that aren't on the credit card, though.

Speaker 3 (54:53)
Okay. Like cash stuff.

Speaker 2 (54:55)
Yeah. You got cash that shows a bunch of other stuff.

(54:57)
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:57)
Okay. See, almost everything I'm doing is online right now. So at the end of the month, they get my coffee statement, my Patreon statement, my bank account, my credit card, and then they just do it for me.

Speaker 2 (55:08)
Wow. But you have to track the mileage and give that to them.

Speaker 3 (55:11)
I do have to track mileage, but I'm not going anywhere right now.

(55:15)
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:18)
That'S the thing. Yeah, well, I track mileage. Plus you go to the bank deposit checks. Guess what? It gets tracked.

Speaker 3 (55:26)
Mine might be like, go to Joanne's and pick up ribbon.

Speaker 2 (55:29)
Same thing. Exactly the same thing. All that stuff. So my accountant was really good. And then, of course, she explained to me all the things in the house I can deduct and stuff like that. And then she also gave me warnings. It's like, yeah, you know what? You can technically deduct your Internet costs and everything like that. But the problem. But it is it's too hard to separate what is Internet versus for personal versus business. Don't do it. Okay. So having accounts really nice. Outside of an accountant, I have Sets Polanski, who's my attorney. Whenever I have a contract with, I work with a company. Whenever I'm doing freelance work or anything like that. Every so often, if it's kind of funky or if I got Seth helped me set up my trademarks and everything like that, I have Seth take care of everything for me.

Speaker 1 (56:25)
That's awesome.

Speaker 3 (56:26)
Having people is excellent.

Speaker 1 (56:28)
Yeah. If I ever going to do trademarks and stuff like that, I need to talk to Seth.

Speaker 2 (56:33)
Yeah, Seth is great. Like I said, he set up my Shadow trademark and everything like that. He manages all that for me. He set up some of my initial contracts when I worked with Funimation and some of the other people he reviews some of the things. I don't do much of freelance work anymore because I'm too busy with my business. But, yeah, we tend to do more. But nowadays, mainly a question here and there about. And then, of course, I've got an LLC set up and everything like that, but it's having somebody that helps you with all the other stuff.

Speaker 3 (57:07)
This is so exciting. This is what I'm doing right now.

Speaker 2 (57:12)
This is great.

Speaker 3 (57:14)
I just formed my LLC in January.

Speaker 2 (57:16)
Actually doing this for ten years. What you have to do is if you work in different States, certain States require you to have a presence, like Indiana. If you're an LLC, Indiana requires you to have a presence in Indiana, which means I have to pay a holding company for an address up there so that you can do cons there. Otherwise, you can do cons or you're not an LLC. But if you are an LLC, you have to have presence.

Speaker 3 (57:45)
Interesting. I don't have any desire to go back to cons right now, but if I do, I will look into that.

Speaker 1 (57:54)
That's interesting. I did not know about that. I didn't even know that was possible to have.

Speaker 3 (58:05)
Having had to deal with the multiple different States and their crazy sales tax requirements, I should have known that there's going to be some bullshit with this.

Speaker 2 (58:16)
There's different types that go along with that. And then also the big important part of the LLC is we have records of all the money coming in and out. So I don't just automatically transfer, you know, how your bank account, you just transfer one account to another?

Speaker 3 (58:37)
Yeah, not so much anymore. I'm running Payroll.

Speaker 2 (58:43)
It's amazing, all the complexities, but it offers your productions you need.

Speaker 3 (58:48)
Yeah. I'm excited about Payroll because now I'm going to be getting a paycheck. It's like a regular amount of money that's going to come into my account. It's going to be easier for me to budget. And then hopefully at the end of the year, there's a whole bunch of money sitting left in the business and I can give myself a nice bonus.

Speaker 1 (59:08)
Nice. That sounds awesome. Well, I think that is actually all my questions that I had written down.

Speaker 2 (59:16)
What is it? Excellent.

Speaker 3 (59:18)
Yeah. Have you missed anything that you think is important about IP branding? I have a couple of questions. So what do you do for, like, marketing? What's the social media sites you're most into? How do you judge that? Tell me about your marketing and your social media presence.

Speaker 2 (59:38)
All right. I don't have a ton of friends. I don't have a ton of followers. If I post something on Facebook, almost nobody responds. And I tell people how many people are so focused on these, like, things. It doesn't matter. It really doesn't. I will do one painting and I show it on Facebook and I get like two or three people liking it. I may show it on Instagram and I may be like 30 people liking I may show it on Reddit in Reddit subgroup. I may have like 6000 people like it. I showed that painting a year prior to this. I had like maybe 48 people or 50 people like it. So many people are focused in all this stuff. It really doesn't matter to anything. So everything changes. So I don't have really much social marketing thing. But what I have found starting to work better for me is unsigned. Eddie started doing a little blog thing. He was talking about segmenting mailing lists, and I start doing that and I've realized that my mailing list opens are getting better percentages. And the reason why they're getting higher percentages is because I only have like 700 some odd people on my mailing list.

Speaker 2 (01:01:21)
But I'm not sending out a one mail to all 700 people. What I'm doing is my mailing list now has when you sign up on my website. My mailing list newsletter now has segmented. I've got the collectors. I've got people who just want to read the stories. I've got people who are Oracle readers and DND gamers. Now when I'm sending out the emails, I'm sending it only to those particular people. Those particular people in my percentage are from like eight or 10% to about 20% to 30%. Now, most people are like me. You got this massive following every time you post everything, everybody comments, all your stuff, you're well liked and everything like that and stuff like that. I don't have that and that's okay. So I have to best use what I can. What I found for me works best is mailing list where I can send them targeted information. Prior to looking at my mailing list, I was thinking it wasn't doing anything. But I realized I did about 3000, $4,000 on sales for people using the coupons from my mailing list. So obviously if I had only 700 people doing it, you just did 30.

Speaker 2 (01:02:42)
00, 40. 00 with only 700 people doing it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:44)
700 dedicated people who are looking forward to seeing that email, that direct connection to people.

Speaker 1 (01:02:55)
Right. And I'm looking at your newsletter, sign up right now and you literally have like a who are you thing and they can pick off what they are like Arter, print, collector, Dungeon, Dragons, gamer.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08)
What I do is I send Pacific stories to those people. Okay, for the DND part, hey, here's a spell card. This is the story I wrote in a campaign about how you can use spell card. Here's ideas for you. This is a story. Ok, here's a long story. Here's three cards, and here's a little bit of a story I wrote using these three cards. They show them how to use the products. I also don't use marketing in terms of those meals that go out to those people. For that particular one, I don't use the marketing. It's more just information and low bomb go, hey, if you want to go in and use the coupon, go for the site and use the coupon. But that's all I do for the marketing. So it's not like your traditional email list is blasting. People going, hey, buy this old stuff and everything like that.

Speaker 3 (01:03:50)
It's not like generic spamming. It's specific information for a specific event. That's how I use my mailing list, too. I don't send mail just to send mail marketing. People will say, oh, you got to email everybody once a week so your brand stays like, no, that's not my brand. My brand is like, guys, I'm having an event and I want you to know about it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15)
That's the thing. So that's where my market, what I found for me works best is Reddit. Overall, even then, I don't make many sales on Reddit. Maybe a handful of sales once in a while. But that's about it. I get almost no exposure on Instagram. I get almost no exposure on Facebook. I get almost no exposure on Twitter. That's okay. Everybody is so focused on all these things going. I've got to build these crazy number of people think it this way. If I go into a common convention and there's 100,000 people at the convention, I know that people like my work would be about 10,000 people. So that means at most I don't care if there's 1000 people there. At most I can do 1%, which would be 10,000 people or 10% would be 1000 people. However, if I go to, say, a tattoo show and there's only maybe 10,000 people, but I know at a tattoo show only 10%, there's probably going to be like 40% or 50%, like a tattoo show. So even though there's less people at the tattoo show, the percentage is higher, which means I have a higher number of dedicated people showing up.

Speaker 3 (01:05:39)
Yeah. It's more of your people.

Speaker 2 (01:05:42)
That's the important part. Everybody just blindly goes out and gets all these followers and everything like that. No, it's about finding the people who are interested in what you do.

Speaker 3 (01:05:53)
Yeah. Because that's when my art really took off is when I made my little private Facebook group and I started inviting people into this special place we had to kind of know about out. It was like you had to get in. Right. And then it was like, oh, these are my in crew. These are the people who really want to be there because there's literally no other reason to be in that group other than to buy my art. If you're there, that's why you're there.

Speaker 2 (01:06:22)
Right. I tried a Facebook group for a while and it didn't work out because I didn't have the right group. Yeah. I haven't found the niche of what I want to say inside the group and I don't have time to maintain a Facebook group also.

Speaker 1 (01:06:36)
Yeah. That's another thing. It's like you're doing so many conventions in live shows.

Speaker 3 (01:06:42)
Yeah, that's too much too where your time is.

Speaker 1 (01:06:46)
But Doug, if you don't mind. So you just mentioned how you don't have a big following online and can you run through the roughly, like your sales number so people can know that you can be successful without.

Speaker 3 (01:06:58)
Yes. This is so important without the Twitter following, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:07:02)
Alright, so look at this way. I've got let's see. So on Twitter, I've got maybe 200 followers on Facebook. I have about 700 friends and I've got a couple of hundred followers. Overall, I don't have a lot of Instagram. I think I have like maybe five or 600 followers at conventions. I do about 85,000 a year this year. My projected income should be for conventions alone should be about $110,000 online. Last year was about 22,000. I'm figuring this year my numbers right now should be around 30, 35,000. I got two Kickstarters going on. I figured Kickstarter last year would be about 20,000. I think this year I've got one Kickstarter going right now. I have total of three Kickstarters for some new books. I think it'll be about 20,000 for this year, too. I said Kickstarter is one of those very much. You have to have followers and friends to share your stuff. Quickstart is one of the few platforms where you do have to have a lot of followers. That really helps. If you don't, you'll make minimal amount. And let's see. Yeah, those are my primary income sources right now for this year. So I think this year, last year was 120,000.

Speaker 2 (01:08:30)
Overall, I think this year I should hit about 150, maybe 160.

Speaker 1 (01:08:36)
Things go, well, I just think that's awesome because you're 100 and 2160 thousand dollars and you get like three likes on a painting online.

Speaker 3 (01:08:47)
Yes. People need to know that. That's why I wanted to talk about this, because you don't have to be chasing that. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:09:00)
You're wasting your time. Look how many people did Instagram, and then they changed the algorithms or Facebook pages, they changed the algorithm, and everybody just fell apart. It's like, no, people are spending too much of their time focusing on the wrong things. I always tell people, it's like, look, the basics is they say, well, how do you get popular? It's like simple. You just be so successful, you can't be ignored. Just be worried. You can't be ignored. And when people come to a show and they're sitting there going around to walk from the show, everybody sees my wall the way my booth looks. When my big oil paintings can't ignore me, they're like, oh, they go and read the stories. They cry and they're like, oh, well, we'll be back. I'm like, I know we will be. Yeah, I know. Why do you know? Simple. You've read the story is connected with you. You will be thinking about that story and that painting while you're walking around. You'll be back. They do. 90% of them do come back. You got to create work that is good. You can't be ignored and you got to create that connection and you've got to find out where you can sell the work.

Speaker 2 (01:10:18)
That was a Gallery landscape painter. I was doing traditional Gallery work and stuff like that. I was making like probably two or $5,000 a year. That was a great year. And I lost half of it to the Gallery.

Speaker 3 (01:10:30)
Right. Part of me is so happy. That was my original pursuit plan. I was going to be a Gallery artist. That was fine.

Speaker 2 (01:10:42)
But you know what? Like I said, it's the best decision I ever made. My wife, we moved in North Carolina, and I couldn't get into galleries and stuff like that. My wife and I was talking to my wife, I'm like, yeah, I'm not getting into galleries, but I love landscapes. My wife's like, no, you don't. I love monsters. You like landscapes. So because every time I did two or three paintings to the Gallery, I would then paint this really weird surrealistic painting or a monster painting or something like this. That's what you should be doing. And I was like, you know, what you're right. I'm not getting into galleries. It doesn't really matter. I'm not making that much money in it. And I did that for probably five or six years. And I did my very first Comic Con convention. I had a couple of skull paintings there. I sold $800 in Prince. I'm like, this is amazing. I sold out.

Speaker 3 (01:11:32)
They're like, bangers. This is great.

Speaker 2 (01:11:37)
In a one day Comic Con, like a one afternoon ComicCon, sold 40 prints. That was amazing. Then I did another Comic Con. After that, I did small little hotel room Comic Con, like $2,200 in sales. I'm like, oh, there's something here.

Speaker 3 (01:12:01)
You said you did like 20 something shows or whatever. And I'm thinking there was one year I did 14, and that was the year that I decided I didn't want to keep doing this.

Speaker 2 (01:12:10)
I have friends who do, like 40 so much shows a year. I do not know how they do that.

Speaker 3 (01:12:14)
It's just like everyone's got a threshold. And I hit mine. Yeah, I hit mine at 14. And I said, okay, next year. No. And the next year was 2020, so I did none.

Speaker 1 (01:12:28)
Yeah. This year I have three. And I'm like, oh, man, that's going to be tough. I do eventually want to do more and more shows, but I think I have to.

Speaker 3 (01:12:40)
You'll get better at it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:41)
Yeah, you'll get better at it. I have to do it. The only way you can earn it is you actually have to do it.

Speaker 3 (01:12:47)
So you'll get old, grizzly, seasoned Con girl. At some point do many more. Hopefully I'll be some with you and just hang out for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:13:00)
I love these shows. There's so much fun.

Speaker 3 (01:13:03)
I do like the experience. It's the planning traveling part that I struggle with now.

Speaker 2 (01:13:13)
Traveling is particularly tough. On average, I will drive somewhere between eight to 10 hours for a show, sometimes up to 17 hours.

Speaker 1 (01:13:21)
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:13:22)
Because you're bringing a lot of big physical art.

Speaker 2 (01:13:24)
That's the thing.

Speaker 1 (01:13:25)
Do you ever fly or only drive?

Speaker 3 (01:13:29)
The set up is too big.

Speaker 2 (01:13:35)
Pro panels. I have four panels that go 14ft tall. I've got six bins of prints because I've got backing boards. I've got six bins of prints. I've got two bins of cards, playing cards or regular cards. And then I got like five only about eight or nine oil paintings in the frames. So it takes up about two thirds of my minivan. Later on, I will consider that there's a couple of shows where I'm considering using shipping containers. When I get close to retirement, which is about nine years from now, what I'll be doing is when I do Sanu Comicons and stuff like that, what I'll do is a shipping container. I think cost me one of the guys at the tattoo contraction he mentioned dues in shipping containers. It cost me about $2,000 round trip, so it'd be $2,000 in shipping. And San Diego Comic Con would probably cost me about seven. So between shipping containers, everything like that about eight or $9,000. But my best show so far is about $12,000. And by that time, nine years from now, it should be my best shows. I'm hoping to hit around 20, so I'll pay $9,000 if I can get like $20 to $30,000 for the show.

Speaker 3 (01:15:02)
Yeah. I used to sell plays, which were big physical space takers. So if I would fly to a Con, I would just FedEx a bag of, like a FedEx of giant box. It wasn't that heavy because it was big. Yeah, it's not that heavy. So it wasn't ever that expensive, but I would ship myself this like four by four by four block of vacuum sealed plushies.

Speaker 2 (01:15:31)
Absolutely. So those work out really well because the shipping cost is minimal compared to how much, but it's all back to return on investment. How much do you think you can make at a show and based on how much you sell? So typically I will spend about $1300 as show, and I will typically leave per show. I generally do per show is about five to $1,010. That makes it worth it for me.

Speaker 3 (01:16:04)
Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:16:09)
Well, do you have any more questions?

Speaker 3 (01:16:11)
Sarah man, I don't know. This has been super fun.

Speaker 1 (01:16:18)
It's so good to talk to Doug. When you volunteered to come on, I was like, oh, yes, we need to talk about.

Speaker 3 (01:16:27)
It'S all really important stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:16:29)
Well, she has all these people. It's like she didn't ask me. I'm going to ask her.

Speaker 3 (01:16:36)
Hey, that's a whole other thing. Sometimes you just got to ask for stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:16:40)
So many people are so afraid they won't ask for things. That was a long time ago. I always ask questions. I don't care how I look or anything like that. I always ask questions. If I want something, I always ask for it. Well, except for if it's a girl I was interested in, then I'm wicked shy about that.

Speaker 1 (01:17:01)
The funny thing is, too, you mentioned I was asking people. And when you mentioned that you wanted to come, I was like, why did I not think to ask Doug? I was like, oh, of course he would be perfect for this. But it's funny because so many people are like, oh, I can't ask because she didn't ask me. And for me, when you mentioned it, I was like, wow, I can't believe I had that oversight. So you might ask the question and the person could do what I just did and be like, yes, of course you can. Come on, you're perfect. We were just talking before the show. It's like the heater in my house broke. I got coveted, my dog got sick. It's like I didn't think to ask.

Speaker 2 (01:17:44)
The thing is right, it's always important to always ask if you don't know something or you want to be on something, I ask it's like, that's how I got some somebody asked me one time. What force you to get a lot of work done? Well, simple. I put myself in situations that I can't get out of. I had a show one time where they wanted to be part of this show. Didn't have enough paintings for the show. I still signed up for it, asked, Can I be in it? And they go, yes. Then I go, Great. Now I commit myself. Now I've asked for it. Now I'm going to commit myself. Now I have to do the work to make sure it gets done for the show.

Speaker 1 (01:18:26)
Con has been good for that. For me, it's DragonCon last year, yeah. I was like, oh, it's never going to happen. It's never going to happen. And then it's going to happen. And I was like, I have to get my act together.

Speaker 2 (01:18:40)
It's it's amazing how that's a pressure if you've got a reasonable amount of time, it's amazing how clear you think, because what you do when you get that situation, what happens is you get a very focused idea of going, okay, these are the bare minimums I need to get for this particular show or I'm going to lose this amount of money. Fine. But you get the bare minimum and you figure it helps you lay out this plan. Now you have a deadline. Now you have to know what you want to do with the thing. Now you can lay out this deadline to do it that way. It really helps your efficiency. You're not procrastinating near as much as you think you'd want to. Like, right now. Right now, I have three nine X twelve. Two shows coming up in February. They probably won't buy the nine by twelve shows, but I've got tattoo shows in March. They will buy all my nine by twelve, which means I need to produce at least ten or 15 more nine by twelve and have them drive before mid March.

(01:19:56)
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:19:59)
Otherwise I go to the show, I don't have small ones to sell, which means my income won't be near as high.

Speaker 3 (01:20:06)
Which means that I lose money for the show that I could have had money for because everything's online now and because I'm setting my own schedule and running my own events, it's like, okay, I got to have an event every quarter, which means I have to have enough bows for an event every quarter. So it's like, there's your deadline. Theoretically, I have Anime Boston in May, but because they haven't asked for any money and they haven't told us they're having the event, I've basically stopped prepping for Anime Boston because my next Bo event is like, in two weeks. So I've just dropped all my anime boss and prep, and I'm just focused on getting ready for this next event.

Speaker 2 (01:20:46)
Having that deadline event you have to get the stuff for and realize if you don't get the stuff for it, you're not going to make near as much money doing it. And the purpose of doing the event is to make sales as much as fun, hanging out with people like that. When I go and do a show, a lot of times after I go and hang out with everybody during the show and we do dinner and everything like that, I will then go to the bar and everybody's like, oh, you bar relaxing. It's like, no, I'm actually at the bar working. What I do is I bring my Cintiq and I draw at the bar. The reason why I draw at the bar, this at a show is because this is prior to covet. But once we're back normal, I'll start doing it again. But the reason why I do it is because while I'm drawing the Ice Inquiry at the bar, there's always people coming up asking me what I'm doing. I will have a pile of cards there, and I will talk to them, hanging out, having a beer, doing my drawing, and talking to them about the show the next day.

Speaker 2 (01:21:42)
They will always stop by my booth.

Speaker 3 (01:21:48)
Yeah. I mean, I definitely have done that stuff at Cons, too, because the social aspect of it is like, part of people will say, oh, yeah, we're having a thing. You want to come hang out? And I'll be like, sure. And I'll go up there, and then people will be like, who's this person? And then I'm introducing myself and I'm talking about what I do, and then they think I'm cool.

Speaker 2 (01:22:07)
Yeah. So for me, sitting at the bar, having a drink and working on a piece is like the best Advertisement for people to come look for me the next day.

Speaker 1 (01:22:18)
And I got to do that when Cons happen again.

Speaker 3 (01:22:21)
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:22:25)
That is most genius. All right. I think I'm out of questions. Is there anything we missed? Did you have something that you wanted to talk about that we didn't hit?

Speaker 2 (01:22:40)
Yeah. I always say this at the very end of all my interviews. It's pretty simple.

Speaker 1 (01:22:46)
I'd love to hear. All right.

Speaker 2 (01:22:50)
Because we were talking about the Facebook and all the other stuff. And like I said, I have a handful of friends, like, close friends and stuff like that that I physically see. But I usually always say that people it's kind of like everybody always like, for ours, they always say, you should be working this amount of time. Like I said, I work a lot, but I intersperse all this stuff. I don't do huge chunks all the time. You should be working all the time if you want to do this. And I always tell us, like, look, 56, I'll be dead in about 25 years, probably. So I'm focusing on my own product line because, yes, I will die one day, which is not a problem. My wife tells me, look, one day you're going to be in the hospital or you're going to be very sick. And the people who are going to visit. You are not going to be those people who are doing likes on your Facebook page. Those are going to be your friends. They're going to be the ones you're hanging out with, talking, doing stupid things with. That's the people you should definitely focus on.

Speaker 2 (01:23:55)
So like I said, it's fine. I got a deadline. I'll do my deadlines and stuff like that. But I still make time to go out, hang out with some of my friends and go to lunch and stuff like that. When I'm doing cons, I've got a couple of friends who are like, yeah, I'm setting up. All right, time to go grab lunch or go, let's go grab dinner, grab a beer or something like that for a little while. Those personal friends you make, they're the ones who are going to contact you or text you when you're in the hospital. So, like that check about you and your physical friends, you guys, your house. Are those the ones going to go to the hospital and check you out? Like, none of this Facebook everybody's so focused on social media and all this. None of that really matters. Like I said, I don't have huge social media followings or any of that other stuff. I still do. Well, tell me, look at me. The professional artists you see in book covers and everything like that that have almost no social media presence. They're doing just fine. It's not people make this, like this big thing that everybody has to be doing.

Speaker 2 (01:25:00)
This has to be social media. You'll never survive. That's all crap.

Speaker 3 (01:25:06)
It's so true.

Speaker 1 (01:25:07)
I mean, like, you even just earlier on, you said your sales numbers so you're kind of proof that you don't need a huge social media following to be successful. Especially you're successful as an independent IP artist, too. So there's, like, an extra layer of that of difficulty that you've achieved.

Speaker 2 (01:25:29)
And if I get sick, I know my buddy Jim and some of the other guys are going to stop by the hospital and going, Dougie, dude, stop by and see me. My friends will do that. I don't focus on social media and all the other stuff. I focus more on my connections.

Speaker 1 (01:25:46)
I like that. I think I need to adopt that a little bit more.

Speaker 3 (01:25:50)
Yes, sir. Let's hang out. Yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 (01:25:54)
More hanging out. Okay. Well, I mean, that was awesome. And I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us tonight. I thought the tips were just amazing. What were you saying?

Speaker 2 (01:26:11)
I said thanks. Yeah, you got to be on any time because I love talking.

Speaker 1 (01:26:16)
We'll definitely have you on again for sure. Definitely. For sure. Thank you so much, everyone. Listening to Doug talk about his brand shadowness, and we'll be back again with more content the first and 15th of every month. So thank you all. Make good art and have a good night. All right, bye.

❤️
Sarah, Sarah, and Doug


Discussed by Sarah Dahlinger, Sarah Forde, Doug Hoppes