Transcription
Welcome back to another episode of the Six Figure Creative podcast. I am your host, Brian Hood, and if this is your first time joining us, this is a show all about how we can monetize our passions as creatives without selling our souls, giving up, and going back to corporate life or working a day job somewhere. I just celebrated my 5,000th day of unemployment recently this month, and I'm hoping to help any of our listeners get to their 5,000-plus days of unemployment. That's my goal for you—where you're self-employed, working for yourself.
Our guest today is no different. She took a different path than most people we've talked to on the podcast because most people we talk to are freelancers. Usually, that's because the easiest way to monetize your skills as a creative is through working for clients, creating art for clients. Whether you're a music producer helping bands produce music, whether you're a photographer taking photos of your clients, whether you're a videographer taking videos for corporate clients or wedding videos, or whatever you do, usually you can monetize your skills the fastest way through just directly offering services.
Well, our guest today, Kat Co-Collette, has done none of that. She skipped the freelance game altogether, and she went straight to something that I think is the end game for most freelancers, and that is something called scalable income, where you're taking your creative skills and passions and using it to create something one time that gets monetized over and over and over and over again, hopefully until you die, and then maybe even far past that. She has mastered that. Just five episodes ago, we had James Victoria on the show, and his art has been displayed, or is currently displayed, in the Louvre. Well, our guest today, Kat Co-Collette, is much different. She has art that's displayed in places that I think is probably a little more accessible for people—places that most of us have been at least a few times. Her art is displayed in stores like Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, Nordstrom, Home Goods, and Barnes & Noble. These are all stores that, at least here in America, are like household names, and her designs are in all of these stores, which is impressive to me, and she does it through something called a licensing model.
So if you're doing any sort of art creation where you're creating assets, this is the episode for you because she has mastered this. In my opinion—I don't think she even did the math on this, but I did the math live on the show—she has made as much as a half a million dollars per hour with her art. That's all I'm going to say about the show, is we dive into the deep, deep weeds of how do you get started in licensing, specifically as a designer, but this really applies to anyone trying to do any sort of licensing deal as a creative. So this episode, again, we talk through how she has done that, how she's achieved the half a million dollar per hour mark as a creative, which is utterly insane but is achievable for her, and you might have a fraction of the success, but it's still—I'll take five thousand dollars an hour; maybe not half a million, but five thousand dollars an hour is pretty cool to me. But anyways, this episode we talked through everything from how she got started, how you can get started as a designer, how do you get clients, how do you get placed in these stores, how do you get an agent if you want one, how do you build your personal brand, so all of this can all work together. This episode's all got this chock-full of great stuff from Kat Co-Collette.
So without further delay, here's my interview with Kat.
Kat, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Yeah, I'm happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
I want to start at a place that I usually don't start interviews, and this is a place that I feel like is good for your story because there's a really overused quote from Stephen Covey that says, "Begin with the end in mind," and I would love for you to talk about—before we even get into what you're doing and how you're doing it, because I've already gone over a lot of your story in the intro—you're one of the unique people that I found has built your business around your life and not your life around your business, which I think most freelancers are the other way around, where they set up their entire lives—from where they live to what they're doing from day to day—all based on what they need to do for their clients. And because of your unique business and what you're doing, you've actually set it up to where you have so much freedom in your life to do all these extraordinary things, and I'd love to talk about what your lifestyle looks like because you are what some people would call like a digital nomad, and you have so many cool things you're doing. I'd love to just talk a bit about what this business you've created has allowed you to do.
Oh yeah, so my one of my biggest priorities is just autonomy. I want to be able to do what I want to do when I want to do it, and so that's how I structured my business is to give me the opportunity to do those things. So the way I live my life now, I don't like doing a lot of meetings, so I really have meetings on my calendar because I just don't work with clients that request that. I travel 24/7 full-time. That's a really important thing in my life, so I want to make sure that the way that I run my business and my day-to-day is able to fit that in. So yeah, I've been a full-time nomad, living out of a suitcase for about seven years now, so yeah, all over the world, lots of different experiences, and as long as I have a good Wi-Fi connection, I can pretty much do my job from anywhere, so just working on my laptop as I go.
Yeah, I was looking at your Instagram earlier before this interview started, and you were in—you were like hiking through Switzerland just a couple of weeks ago. You've got a cold now, which you told me about. I was like, "What? That came from your—from being in the Swiss Alps?" You were in Spain not too long ago doing a wonderful workshop, like a painting workshop. You use the travel as an inspiration for your art that you create, and I feel like that if you were not able to do this lifestyle, it could be more difficult for you to keep up the amount of creativity that you're putting out because you put out a lot of art, like more than most people. You are prolific in your art creation, and from what I've seen, it seems like that the travel that you do and all the things that you're seeing and experiences you're having help with the art creation.
Oh, absolutely. I mean, some of my best sellers in my portfolio came directly from inspiration I had while I was traveling. In 2016, 2015, I went down to Peru to hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, and of course, there's alpacas and llamas, you know, all over the place. I probably had like 200 photos on my camera roll on my phone of just llamas and alpacas, and so I water-watercolored this series of alpacas, and that was my best seller for about two and a half years because it just—I put that in my portfolio right at the beginning of that big alpaca trend we saw in 2016, 2017. Um, yeah, I was in the Vatican last summer, and right before I hosted a retreat in France, I spent a few weeks in Italy beforehand, photographed a lot of works of art from the Vatican, turned those into color palettes that were inspirations for some new pieces. I created a lot of stuff from nature, a lot of inspiration from museums I visit around the world, and it all just gets added into my art portfolio. So not only is it a licensing portfolio for betting at Target or Urban Outfitters, it's also kind of a snapshot of my travels around the world.
I've seen that in the art that I've seen from you. I see like you have different collections from like a tropical collection, and that was from your time in—in places like Southeast Asia where you're around the tropical environment. And in the art I see when I'm looking at your portfolio, I feel like there's some story or some location attached to some of that art, and I just love that you've—not only have you built a life that I think a lot of people would likely envy, but you found a way to tie it back to business, so that—I don't know if you can do this or not, this is not a—she's not a CPA, I'm not a CPA, but I imagine you can write off some of your trips from a business perspective because it is an inspiration for the art you create that you're directly monetizing.
Yeah, absolutely. My CPA has given me permission to—uh, you know, we go through all the write-offs, and he's like, "Yep, this can be written off." No, you can't write off coffee at a coffee shop, but yes, you can write off travel in some situations. So yeah. And I'm not an artist per se; like the creativity I have is all in music production and audio and—and now more in content creation, this podcast and things like that. Even I, like, I can get stifled in my creativity just sitting at home all day every day, like everyone has been doing for the past couple of years with COVID. When it hit, and even you, you likely had to hunker down in one spot for a long time during the COVID years. My wife and I were excited; we're just a couple of weeks away from leaving for our trip to Bali for the fall, and we don't have a return for that. And part of the goal for that trip is to just be re-inspired and—and just have new experiences and inspire me to create more content and just—I just change the energy in the environment that I'm in in order to help my business grow.
So I'd love to jump into the actual business model behind what you're doing because I think that's very unique compared to most people that interview on this podcast, with the exception of Lisa Condon. We had her on the show, and part of her business model—back on episode 187—part of her business model was licensing, and she does other things too, where she's actually producing the merchandise herself that her artist printed on. You've decided not to do that, but I'd love for you to just give our audience the big picture of what the business model is behind licensing because that seems to be the bulk of what you've been doing the last five, six years.
Yeah, for sure. So I'll just—I'll just use an example. I'll do a watercolor of some tropical palm leaves, and I'll scan it into my computer, clean it up in Photoshop, and then it becomes a digital file, and some company—let's say Target, Urban Outfitters, ModCloth—will be interested in that design, and they'll ask to license it, and then what I'll do is I'll just send them the design, and then we'll negotiate terms on the contract. So we'll all get a royalty based off of everything that sells. So yeah, those palm leaves that I painted could turn into bedding or wallpaper or apparel—dresses, skirts, anything—and then I get a percentage of profits from sales. So yeah, it's a great business model because it means that I don't have to have the responsibility of inventory, that financial risk. You know, I tried inventory when I was first getting started, and I immediately just lost all the money because I'm not—I'm not great at sales, but I am great at creating things that are going to sell well. So what I've done is I've found out—um, a good compromise for this, it's—I can create things that have massive sales power, even though I'm not a great saleswoman myself. I can partner with brands that are great at that, and so I create something—um, that can get licensed out on a product and then hand it off to a company that actually turns it into a product and sells it to their own audience.
To give a specific example, you were—you were backpacking Peru, you painted this wonderful thing with—I think you said llamas on it or something like that—that became one of your best sellers for a couple of years. Give us an example of like, where did that design go? How to become a bestseller? Like, what does that look like from a business perspective?
Oh yeah, so I'll do one. I did this sunshine; it was actually my—my sister-in-law was about to have a baby, and she wanted me to do her baby shower invites, and I'm like, "Oh yeah, great." This was a couple of summers ago. Her daughter's name is Aurora. And I did this like sunshine and this kind of celestial theme. I love that name; it's beautiful. Yeah, and then I was like, "You know what? I did the sunshine for these, you know, baby shower invites," and I was like, "I'm gonna go ahead and throw that in my licensing portfolio and just throw it at the wall, see what sticks." And sure enough, that became my best-selling design for about two years running. I mean, it's still like way up there. And so it's just a simple illustration I did on my iPad on the drawing app Procreate. It's a really simple sunshine, kind of this like retro color palette, and it struck at a great time because retro-inspired 60s, 70s motifs are just all the rage right now. That one single design I did has turned into wallpaper, bedding—like duvet covers. Target picked it up for art prints; it's even sold as car fresheners, wool-hooked throw pillows. I mean, it's on rugs; it's all over the place right now, and it was just this one simple design I did. And you know, one caveat I want to mention here is I create a lot—a lot of new designs. I mean, the new design is probably like—oh gosh, depending on the week, maybe like seven new designs a week. I can be pretty prolific with that, but not everything is going to be a massive seller. It's kind of that 80/20 rule: 20% of my art licensing portfolio earns me about 80% of my art licensing income. So for me, with our licensing—the strategy is just numbers; it's create as much content as I possibly can, as many new designs, and it's a numbers game. The more I create, the better chances that a few of those are going to become really strong sellers.
Yeah, are you willing to talk numbers at all with—like you said, as a bestseller for a couple of years—like it took you how long to make the design, and then do you know how much it's brought in over the years as far as that one design goes?
So when I was first getting started, I did a quote by Shakespeare; it was "Though she be belittled, she is fierce," and I did it with calligraphy and flowers around it. And this was in 2015, I think 2014, 2015, when that kind of motif—like pretty calligraphy with floral reeds—was everywhere; everybody was buying it. And so that one design earned me about 75% of my income for my first two and a half, three years of our licensing, which means that one design pulled in probably close to $250,000. That's not every design; that was my first big break. And that, again, was over the course of several years, but it really goes to show that there—there can definitely be money in licensing if you really hit the jackpot with a—with a good design.
And how long did it take you to make that one design? You remember?
Oh, god, less than an hour. Here's the worst part: I didn't even come up with it! It was my cousin's wife wanted to—it's always baby-related. She wanted to decorate her nursery, and that was her favorite quote from Shakespeare. I think it was Midsummer Night's Dream. She art-directed the whole thing. She was like, "I like calligraphy, and I like flowers," and I was like, "I do a lot of calligraphy, I do a lot of flowers; let's go ahead and combine that." And I sent her the original, and same thing: I was just on a whim; I scanned it in before I mailed it to her, and I put it in my art licensing portfolio when it just blew up. So yeah, I was just like, "Thank you so much for the inspiration for that piece that, you know, bought my ability to make this into my livelihood."
And just for anyone not following along, like, she made this design one time, and if it took you less than an hour—I'm just estimating here because you didn't give me a specific time—but it earned you somewhere between $300,000 and $800,000 per hour of work. That's one of the strong benefits of this model is if you create a hit; it is a disproportionate earnings per hour that most freelancers—if you're a freelance designer right now—most freelancers have no ability even to be in the universe of hundreds of thousands per hour unless you're in this sort of model because it is more scalable. That's one of the biggest benefits of this business model behind licensing. And again, it's not every design, but yeah, a few of those designs can be just absolute jackpots.
Yep. And again, that's why you need to be prolific with it because, like you said, the 80/20 principle—the 80/20 principle, for those who don't know—Pareto's principle; we've talked about on the podcast a few times. If you just search 80/20 in our backlog, usually in most cases—in nature, in business, in life, and wherever you are—80% of your income will come from 20% of the stuff you've actually done to produce the income. So for her, 80% of her income comes from 20% of her art. And likewise, the other way of looking at it is 80% of what you do is either really wasted time or just really inefficient time, and it only produces 20% of the income. So now you're just being more efficient with your time and not wasting time. That's basically the gist of it. Go back and listen to our backlog if you want to hear more about that. So that's kind of the benefits of the licensing model; that's some of the like the big picture of it. But how do we get started in this because I'd love to know more about—like if someone listening right now is kind of the position you were in years ago—were you working at an agency? You were directly trading your hours for dollars; you're playing basically what everyone in a job does where you're stuck to a desk. Fast forward, I guess post-COVID era, maybe you're not stuck to a desk, but you're stuck at home because you are working set hours for your agency or for your day job. What do you do to get started? Like, what are the prerequisites to move into this sort of model for someone in 2022 and beyond?
I'll just give you an example of what actually worked for me, so my actual journey. So in 2014, I was working at an agency; I was a designer at a branding agency in Kansas City. And one thing I really loved doing was coming home from work and painting. So I would come home from work every day and get out my watercolors or my gouache or acrylics and then just paint something. And I wasn't painting to make money at the time; I was just painting as some sort of creative outlet from doing logos all day or designing websites. Like, as much as I love doing that, it's nice to get back into the fine arts. And yeah, I kind of got to this point where I was posting my paintings on Instagram, and I didn't have a huge following; it was maybe a couple hundred people, mostly friends and family. And I was posting the paintings I was doing to Instagram, and my following began to just kind of organically grow to people that I didn't know that were following me because of my artwork. And yeah, those people were asking if they could purchase the originals or get art prints. And it had never even occurred to me to monetize my artwork before. I went to school to be a designer; I'm a designer now; this is my career trajectory as a designer, and finer didn't really fit into it. But sure enough, you know, people were asking me on Instagram if they could buy the originals. So I was doing all this research: How do I price my originals? How do I ship them? How do I market them? How do I make art prints? Like, all of the logistics involved with that—how to—and it was just—it was kind of overwhelming. You know, I was working 40 hours a week; I didn't feel like I had a lot of time to dedicate to setting up the side business. And that's what led me to Society6, which is a print-on-demand website. The only reason I knew about Society6 was because that's where I bought my phone cases.
If you're not familiar with Society6, it's an online platform where you can go and buy art prints, coffee mugs, wallpaper, tapestries, bedding—many, many home decor products, fashion and whatnot—and they're all designed by artists from around the world. And so what happens is anyone can start a shop on Society6, upload their designs, set their margins, and then that design becomes live on that website, and someone can purchase—let's just say a sticker or a coffee mug with that artwork on it—and then you'll get a percentage of sales. We actually have a big like shelf with two doors that are—it looks really cool—that my wife ordered on there. So yeah, we've actually used it before. We probably have one of your designs on like pillows in our house or duvet covers or something because I'm not the designer of this house; the interior decorator, my wife is, and she's a fan of yours. So I think that there probably is something in this house of yours on there. But continue the story, Society6, continue. Sorry.
Oh, that'd be great. Those are great. Um, yeah, so I started—I'm uploading my designs to Society6, and then I drove that Instagram traffic to Society6, and I was like, "If you want to buy art prints of this acrylic donut painting, here's where you can go do that." It actually blew up faster than I thought it would. I remember my first sale was—was a phone case and a shower curtain; it was in the same purchase, and it was the first time that I ever realized that someone would actually pay money for something that I painted. It was just—um, it's kind of this limiting belief I had about fine artists can't make money; you're a starving artist, and that's if you pursue fine arts, that's what's gonna happen. And I realized, "Oh god, maybe that's not the case; maybe people actually do want to purchase this artwork after all. I bought phone cases from that website, so why wouldn't someone buy one of my designs?" So within three months of having my work on Society6, I was making enough to pay my rent in Kansas City, and within six months I was making more on Society6 than I was at my full-time job as a designer. So yeah, the writing on the wall was there, and I really saw that potential. And that was just one print-on-demand website; there's a lot out there. And so what I started doing was a shotgun approach: Let's find as many different print-on-demand websites as possible, upload all of my work, and then see what really begins to take off. Most of them didn't work out, but some of them did. Redbubble was another one that did really well for me; Mixtiles is one. So there's, you know, there's a lot of different print-on-demand websites, but yeah, a few of them did really well. So what happened there is that kind of afforded me the opportunity to, one, leave my job, which was sad; I did love my job, but ultimately I wanted to dedicate my time to this new opportunity that really—I didn't see any ceiling on it; there were no restrictions; I could really push this as much as I want to take it. So I left my job, focused on print-on-demand entirely, and what happened is because I was so successful with these print-on-demand websites, my artwork was all over the internet; my name was associated with everything. I kept my signature, which is very legible—Kat Coq—C-A-T-C-O-Q—on all of these pieces, so that if a brand or a company or an individual bought one of my items, they could easily Google me, find my Society6 shop, and then buy more things. So yeah, it wasn't very long before actual big-brand consumer companies began reaching out to me because of the success I'd had online through print-on-demand. So Urban Outfitters was my first one. I was actually going through security at LAX, about to—um, get on a flight to Tokyo, and I got this email on my phone from Urban Outfitters; was a buyer there that wanted to license one of my designs, and I just completely freaked out. I don't know if I screamed, but I did have to do an additional screening with security, so I probably did something.
It's always good to get a burst of massive energy when you're going through the security line at LAX. They're already eyeing you suspiciously, and then all of a sudden you get tense and you're really excited; your eyes are darting around, and all of a sudden you're getting pulled aside for additional screening randomly, obviously, right?
I mean, I—I was clapping and I was jumping also, but I was super excited. It was my first big licensing deal. And so yeah, I spent that whole flight to Tokyo just like on the notes section of my iPhone just revising my—my response. I was just like, "Oh yeah, I do licensing deals all the time, so blah, blah, blah." I'm like, "Nope, delete that." Um, yeah, and so that was my first big break. And then once I got to have that brand association with Urban Outfitters, a lot of others just kind of fell into place—like Target came after that, Home Goods, TJ Maxx, Bed Bath & Beyond, Nordstrom. And so that really kind of had a snowball effect. So yeah, it all started with print-on-demand.
Let's unpack this a little bit because I don't want this to sound like—uh, you know, I put it on Society6, fast forward, yadda, yadda, yadda—the Seinfeld thing—and then I'm—I've got it; I'm in Target and everywhere, and everyone knows my name. So I—I want to dissect this a bit for anyone that's like, "Well, that sounds easy," because it's not easy, but there's also like some steps that you're doing. I'm gonna unpack what I've noticed here from my research on you, from what you've said, and what I did before this interview. So step one is: First, be good at what you do. You're good at what you do, and if you're bad at what you do, it's gonna be harder for you; all this other stuff to work. So step one: Be good. But beyond that, like you were sharing all of this stuff without hopes of monetization and big dreams of money, money, money in your—in your eyes. You're just doing this on social media in your spare time; like all the stuff you're creating for fun, the art you're making for friends, the art you're making for your friends' baby showers or whatever they are; you're making when you're sad, when you're happy, when you're traveling, when you're stuck at home bored—like all this art you're creating, you're sharing as you're creating it. And that's the running theme we seem to have; we had Peggy Dean on the show—I think she's the one actually recommended we reach out to you, Kat. We've had James Martin on the show; all of these people are doing the same thing in the design world where they're sharing their art as they're creating it, and they're not holding it close to their chest, scared to release it to the world where no one will ever see it. The faster you get away from the fear of just sitting around holding your art, the better off you're going to be in the long term because you're going to get more feedback from people; you're going to see what resonates with people; you're going to learn from all of the engagement you're getting on social media. And then you started to get questions from people naturally asking, "Where do I buy this?" Now you mentioned like you never had any desire to monetize this or hopes to monetize this because the phrase is a starving artist because if you want to go into the arts, you're going to be broke. So Kat, you put things on Society6. How large was your social following at the time? Do you remember the size of it at—
The time, like, was it massive? Was it moderate? It was under 500 people. So honestly, I want to go back to what you just said; you really hit the nail on the head there. I made myself incredibly open to opportunities. So everything I was doing, I didn't really know where it was going to go, but I knew that I wanted it to go somewhere. And so I was like, okay, how do I optimize for whatever potential this could take?
And so, like, one thing I did is I had my contact information on all social media, on my Society6 shop. So if someone found one of my paintings on Society6, it wouldn't be hard to contact me. My email address was right there, even what I mentioned earlier of getting involved with as many print-on-demand websites as I could. I mean, that was that was really boring; that takes a lot of time. You sit there, and you wait for uploads; you type in keyword tags. Like, it's not fun. Uploading is just one of the most boring things about my job, but it's necessary. It's one of those things where you've got to put yourself out there.
Going back to that first post I made on Instagram, I think it was these donuts that I painted in acrylic. I was terrified to post that picture on Instagram because I felt like an imposter. I'm a designer, you know, like I'm about to be an art director at my job, like if I get this promotion, like I don't go home and paint donuts; that's like not what art directors do. And I had this this extreme limiting belief about what, what if people think this is a shitty painting? That was terrifying. And then I got to this point where I was like, you know what, I'm gonna post this painting on Instagram and just see what happens. And it—I had like two glasses of wine, and I'm like, here we go. It was it was really terrifying to put myself out there like that, but what I learned is no one really cares; like no one's judging you for putting, you know, a half-finished painting or, you know, a drawing that doesn't look absolutely perfect. Everyone's more concerned about themselves rather than what everybody else is doing. And that was a big moment for me.
So sometimes I get asked, what is my best advice for aspiring artists? And my best advice is just like to put yourself out there and get started with it. Because I mean, I've been painting since since I can remember; I was painting in college; I painted after I graduated, and I just never shared that publicly with anyone. It was something I always held close to my chest. And as soon as I started putting it out there, opportunities started arising. So it's something that I kind of glossed over earlier, but that was a big moment for me, was actually sharing my artwork publicly and getting past that fear of judgment.
There's a quote that I love that my wife has hanging on her office, on a wall behind me, and it says, "To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing." And for anyone right now struggling to put stuff out in the world because they're afraid of criticism, it's inevitable. Like, I'm sure, Cat, as successful as you are, as great as your work is, someone has criticized your work somewhere. The worst part is that's the stuff that sticks in our brain; that's the stuff we remember. You don't remember all the wonderful comments you get on social media; it's that one [__] who says the mean thing to you that you're like, oh, that really hurt. So it's inevitable; like, if you want to become something, if you want to be something, you have to put out in the world and face the criticism head-on, instead of just sitting back, holding it in, not releasing your art into the world. And the result of that is just you become nothing if you refuse to face fear like that. So just something worth pointing out, and something that you had to overcome, and I'm glad that you kind of reflected on that because so much of our audience is still kind of struggling with that side of things, where they're still holding back.
It doesn't even matter if it's your work; it could be something as simple as like content marketing. Like, you coming on this podcast, Cat, is a form of content marketing. Like, you come on the show as part of your marketing strategy. I would imagine that's what I would be doing—other podcasts for—but you could just as easily avoid doing this stuff for the same fear. So it's not all art. Sometimes when growing our businesses, we still have to overcome these fears that hold us back from facing things because we're afraid of either looking dumb or saying something stupid or or coming across as not as smart. And like, you had a cold right now—you have a cold right now—and you could have easily said like you had to reschedule a couple times; you could easily cancel or whatever because you're like, I don't want to show up with like maybe lower energy than normal because I'm sick and I might cough. You know, like these are all things that could hold normal people back, and you said, you know what, I'm just going to do it anyways. Maybe I'll have to cough off camera for a second; maybe I'll have to take a break every 10 minutes, but but then you realize, like, I talk for like four minutes straight when I'm dissecting something, so you have plenty of room for your voice to kind of recuperate. You know, but let's continue on this conversation because I want to talk about marketing yourself and attracting partners to you, because you you talked about your first partner was Urban Outfitters, a household name here in America as far as clothing and home good storage, because they've kind of shifted to home goods now that I think about what their inventory has. And I imagine you don't just create great art and then all of a sudden those brands start contacting you out of nowhere; like there's a few things that people like that look for before they start to reach out to you, because this person came to you. So talk about what do these licensing partners look for and people they want to license artwork from.
So one thing that's really important right now that a lot of brands are looking for is for the artist story. So a lot of brands, you'll see—you've probably started seeing this trend already; it started about a year and a half, two years ago—a lot of brands would be featuring artists instead of just promoting the product. Um, maybe it's like in a store; they'll have like a little placard, and we'll be like, "Meet the artist behind the design." That's something that's really surging right now, and a lot of my partners and licensors are actively looking for that; so associating a personality with the design. So it's not just this generic flower pattern that gets printed on coffee mugs; it's, oh, this flower pattern was inspired by this alpine hike I did in Switzerland, and I photographed these mountain flowers, and then I incorporated them into this new pattern. That's kind of what's trending right now for licensors trying to attract new artists and new designs. So that's something that's been really successful for me because a lot of my designs, like we mentioned earlier, have this connotation of some experience I had around the world, some trip I did, um, some insight I had while I was traveling that turned into this piece of artwork that's now licensed out.
And another thing I want to mention is in 2018 I actually signed on with a licensing agency. So prior to that, I was doing everything on my own. So every contract I would be reviewing it, negotiating terms, trying to, you know, squeeze as much out as I possibly could, which is exhausting. You know, it's like I am good at contract negotiations compared to probably most creatives, but I don't necessarily enjoy it. Um, and then also keeping track of what's being licensed; that was something that was really bogging down my my day-to-day. It's like, okay, I have this design of pine trees licensed exclusively through this brand for two years, only on tapestries. So I could have it printed on anything except tapestries for the next two years. And it was just it was just confusing and overwhelming. So that's one of the reasons I wanted to sign on with an agency because they all of a sudden handle all of the negotiations, the business, and the organization. And then it really just comes down to me at this point of creating designs that I think are going to be on trend and be strong sellers.
Prior to having an agent, I was doing it all on my own. I tried outreach with new clients; like I signed up for LinkedIn Premium; I was messaging buyers at Nordstrom, at Target; I like created these little mailers with information about me and samples, and it got zero returns. Like I mentioned earlier, I'm not good at sales; I'm not good at reaching out and getting something out of it; I'm not good at cold calls. I'm good at other things, but that's not one of them. And so every opportunity I had with licensing prior to hiring an agency to represent me was because they reached out to me. Again, I tried reaching out, but I failed every single time. So I just made myself very available; I've spent a lot of time on social media, posting new pieces of artwork, talking about the stories behind those designs, photographing product samples, and really just trying to put myself out there and become available as much as possible. And then since I signed on with an agency in 2018, they go out on my behalf now, and they're looking actively for partnerships; they're talking to Target; they're pitching new work of mine, and I can just sit back, create new designs, and do what I'm actually good at, which is creating designs that are going to be strong sellers. So yeah, finding those partnerships has been really really helpful for my brand and my growth. It's hard to do everything on your own.
So one thing that's really worked for me is partnering with people that are going to do it better than I could. I tried inventory when I was first getting started, and I just—I mean, it was just like flushing money down the toilet. I purchased coffee mugs and tote bags, and I paid for screen-printed posters, and I tried selling them on my website; I tried selling them at like craft shows that I went to, and it was just a waste of time and money; like it wasn't it wasn't my strength; I wasn't talking to my audience; like it was just wasn't working out. And so I was like, okay, well, I know that these are good designs, but I'm not good at actually selling them, so let's find someone that's going to be good at the sales part. And I've kind of, you know, implemented that idea in many parts of my business. I wasn't good at outreach to clients; okay, I'll work with an agent, and then they can do that on my behalf. I wasn't good at sales, so I'll work with brands that already have that audience built in, and they're known for selling to customers. Even with like my my tax stuff, like my finances, it's—I don't want to handle my taxes on my own; many people hire a CPA for that, including me. So it's it's that idea just applied to many different aspects of my business so that I can focus on what I am uniquely good at.
And this goes back to what we were talking about at the very beginning this interview where I talked about, "Begin with the end in mind," that Stephen Covey quote that gets overused everywhere because it's a great quote. Some of these decisions you're making that are really important decisions—to go with an agency or not, to handle it all yourself, to use inventory or not, to let the licensing people handle all of that—these are all decisions that everyone has a different answer, and everyone has different goals in their lives. But everything you were making as far as your decisions were based on the kind of lifestyle you wanted. And if you had decided to have a big print shop where you had screen printers and you had inventory with warehousing and you had your own online store and you did all these things yourself, well, now you're tied down to a specific location; now you've got a staff that all answered to you; like now you can't travel the world; you can't be in Bali for three months; you can't be in in Chiang Mai, Thailand for five months out of the year; you can't go to the Swiss Alps and get a cold and come back to this podcast with a sniffly nose; you can't do all these things that you that you're getting to do now. But you've made decisions along the way that help with that. You could be probably earning more than you are; you could have a bigger business, and you could grow bigger and better, but that's not your goal at the end of the day. Again, your business serves your life; your life does not serve your business. And that's the big takeaway, I think, when I look at your business is how well you shaped that and prioritized that the right way.
Going back to a couple things here that I wanted to bring back up from stuff you said earlier was you first built kind of a social following, just posting your work like as you go, and you're great at what you do, which is part of the reason you were able to grow, but also you were selling stuff and proving that your art does sell on Society6 and Redbubble and the other ones that you mentioned. Only then did you attract, I believe, the first brand deal, and eventually you attracted the agency. But I believe from something you said before, these brands don't want to just have your designs on their stuff; they're like promoting artists. And I saw on your social media page—that's not like a boomer—I saw on your Instagram, on your social media page—someone saw on your Instagram—you had just been picked up in Sam's Club, which for those in America, it's like one of the biggest stores in America, like Costco for those who are familiar with Costco, of like a lunch collection or something of like these cool bags or whatever like with your art on it, but it had your face on the thing; like it was like your face as an artist was on the display in Sam's Club. And I don't want to put words in your mouth or misunderstand the system, so I want to make sure I'm right here, but all of these brands seem to be partnering with artists that already have a personal brand. Is that right or wrong?
That's largely correct. Like I mentioned earlier, a lot of brands right now are looking for that personal connection, that personal touch to who created the design behind the product. And so part of the contract with Sam's Club was they want social media posts from me promoting the collection, a store visit if I can—I like was actually back in the state, so I made that happen—to go actually into the store, do an Instagram Live of me in the store, being like, hey, here I am in Sam's Club; here's my new lunch boxes. And so that's that's something that they're actively looking for is promotion not just on their end; they're not just relying on their sales, but they want the artists, the designers behind those pieces to be um, promoting them as well. And that's really what what makes it a little bit more special for them in terms of like, "Meet the artist." You know, I have a little bio there on the website; it shows—it talks about the inspiration behind those pieces. So this new bedding that I have in Target right now, it was like an acrylic sunshine kind of sunset thing I had done when I was in Bali. The sunsets in Bali are beautiful; you're gonna have a great time when you get there, by the way. Will you board to it? Yeah. So I talked about um, the inspiration behind that; I was living there, you know, I used to go there during February to March, April every year and get really inspired by um, the beautiful sunsets, the ocean, the nature, jungle. That was something that I I kind of wrote about in the description of that art piece, so that now when you go to the Target website and you look at that particular bedding, not only does it describe like, this is 100% cotton and all, you know, like the the technical logistics of it, it also is talks about the inspiration that I, the artist, had when I created that piece. And then that makes it a little bit more special for customers when they want to purchase that.
It's so funny that you're putting in the contract, or they're putting in the contract that you must show up in the store and like go online with it, but it's funny to me because like this is stuff that I would want to do anyways as an artist, is like, I am contractually obligated to humble brag about my work being on display. And it's like I looked at your Instagram; that was like a very engaged post; like I had a lot of likes, a lot of comments, the stuff where you're promoting that. And again, that's the stuff you would likely do anyways, especially if you're physically in the states and you're able to do that. So I feel like we should talk about negotiations a bit because the contract negotiations—a lot of this hinges on good contracts and good negotiations and good rates and things like that. And I was watching one of your talks that you did at a conference, and you talked about the contract negotiations, and you said that when you were early on you kind of just got taken advantage of because you didn't know better, or in some cases you were like asking for way too much because you had no no idea what the business model was like, and it kind of made you look inexperienced, you know. And eventually you've kind of learned how it should look like. What is a good contract? And you talked about negotiations, like adding certain things in, and you don't really care if you get those, but it's at least showing when you're trying to get the rate up—that you're licensing, like your royalty percentage up to a percentage that you want—you're willing to give up these other things because you don't necessarily care about those. Can you just talk about negotiating contracts with these bigger brands, what to expect, what to look at?
Yeah, I mean, it was definitely a learning curve for me because I didn't go to school to learn business contracts or licensing contracts. I hate contracts personally; oh god, they're awful. It's a necessary evil, I know, but um, yeah, the negotiations—that was something that I was like, okay, first and foremost, when I was starting out, I was thinking, okay, negotiations are just about that royalty rate, so I want to get the highest percentage possible. By the way, for licensing—it's in-store licensing—it can range from like 2.5 to maybe 10 or 11. So you're not making, you know, 50, 70, which is what I was asking for at the beginning, for sure. And then, you know, it's just no email response back because like, clearly this woman has no idea what she's talking about—licensing. But yeah, so once I kind of understood, okay, these are the normal licensing rates, this is what I should be kind of asking for, I realized that I could also ask for other things in the contract that would benefit me, and they wouldn't be hard for the company to say yes to. So like, for example, I would ask for product samples. So if I'm negotiating with Target or Urban Outfitters for something, I would ask for them to ship me products, and I would always say, so I can photograph and promote on social media—promote the collaboration. It's not just for me to have selfishly; it's for me to continue promoting this collaboration, so it's a win-win for both of us. And that's easy for the client to do; they would always say yes. One thing I would also add into my negotiations was my copyright or my signature has to be visible on every single product that gets printed without exception. And so that's one that not a lot of artists know to ask for, but that's that was so important for me, especially at the beginning, because that's how I got that brand recognition and really built up my brand. Other things I asked for would be like social media shout-outs. So if the company that I was in contract negotiations with had a big social media audience, then I would try to leverage that; I'd be like, okay, I want you in the first month of this new collaboration to do at least three social media posts where you tag me in the first two lines of the caption—don't bury it at the bottom—you know, like little things like that you can add in. I asked for features in their email newsletter, features on the home page. Yeah, a lot of these things that were easy things for the companies to say yes to, and that also gave me more bargaining chips, also. So it's like if they couldn't do something—if they already had their social posts, you know, figured out for the next month and a half and they had to say no to that—then that gave me more leverage to ask for a higher royalty percentage. So my advice for anyone going into licensing contract negotiations is you can be really creative with what you ask for, and look for things that is easy for that company to say yes to, and that can benefit you massively. And so that's kind of where I was when I was first getting started with it, and now there's things baked in too where companies are doing the same right back at me at this point. So like the social media thing—go to Sam's Club, do an Instagram Live, talk about these lunch boxes—artist Q&A videos are something a lot of companies are wanting right now. So for a lot of new collaborations I do, part of the contract is that I have to film a video of myself talking about what inspired the collaboration, what inspired these designs, and then post it to my YouTube channel or post it on, you know, an Instagram Reel or something like that and share with them. And again, that's that's a win-win for me because, you know, okay, it's annoying to have to do an Instagram Live; like no one likes doing those, but um, it's really beneficial; it's good for marketing; it helps get my name out and get my brand out there, and it's something that the client is asking for that I can easily say yes to.
You know, while we're talking about contracts, something I want to point out real quick is when I was first getting started with contracts, I got lucky—I didn't know this, so I'm gonna share this now—if you're going to be licensing out your intellectual property, whether it's a song you wrote or design you created or, you know, a script you wrote, make sure that that contract includes that you own the intellectual property; you own the copyright to that; you're never transferring the copyright; you always retain that. And so luckily my first few contracts, they had that in there, but I didn't know to look for it. It wasn't until later when I was like actually getting better contracts and it was doing a lot of research on contract red flags and I was like, oh wow, I didn't even know that I should be looking for that, but apparently that's the most important thing in a contract for licensing is that you always always own that copyright; you're just temporarily leasing out your intellectual property based on the terms of that contract. And that's really important. If you happen to license out the grand slam design—the the one that brought in a quarter million dollars for you over those years—if you transfer the copyright, you no longer can collect any royalties from that, is that right? Like it's theirs now, right?
And it wouldn't even be licensing at that point. I mean, when you transfer your copyright, that's called a buyout, so you no longer have any rights over that design. And just to be clear, in contracts you also have exclusivity and non-exclusivity, and exclusivity means that that company is the only company that can license this design based off of the stipulations; like you don't give just full exclusivity; you put terms on there, like only for one year or two years, only in North America, only on these particular products. You know, you can really stipulate what that exclusivity means, but you can license things exclusively and then still own the copyright to that piece. That's great.
So just to go back a little bit because I feel like so much of this entire business model hinges on this, and I don't I don't want to sweep this under the rug or like ignore this and not give it the amount of time it deserves; it just keeps coming back to personal brand. Like everything you do comes back to personal brand, and you've built a really good one for yourself, and you're doing a couple things I think are really smart; you're building a snowball, or you can call it a flywheel or whatever you want. And just to point this out to people that maybe didn't catch this: you have your social media following; you also have an email list. I don't know if that's a big part of what you do or not, but I know my my wife was like, "I just got an email from Kat today," so like I was like, okay, so she obviously has an email list that she's utilizing in some way, shape, or form. Is that a big part of what you're doing as well, or is it mostly just social media?
Oh man, email is huge. I prioritize email over any social media because that's something that I actually have equity over; like no one can take that away from me; no one can take those emails away from me, whereas my Instagram account could get shut down tomorrow for some arbitrary reason, and I have no control over that. So we actually had Peggy Dean on the podcast back in episode 201, which was back in May, and she said the same thing. She's got an Instagram following of like a quarter million people at this point, I think—don't quote me on that—but she has a mailing list of 60 or 70,000 people, and she says that is by far more valuable than her social following. To me, it's just minutiae at this point because at the end of the day, you've built a brand for yourself; it doesn't matter if it's on social media; it doesn't matter if it's on email. I would always prefer email personally, myself; I don't really play big on social media; I do the email thing for sure. But you do this really cool thing that's the firewall effect, that is when you get a client that has a large following, you get them to post about you, which grows your following, your personal brand, and then you use that same personal brand in contract negotiations to help promote your partners. So for every partner you get, your brand gets bigger, and then you have more clout to use in your contract negotiations. I have a screenshot here from your website that says, "My artwork has gotten my licensing partners featured by New York Post, Teen Vogue, Good Housekeeping, HGTV, Ellen, Hilary Duff"—all these big brands or media companies or whatever are featuring the people that are licensing your work. And part of that, I would have to imagine, comes from this big social following that you've gotten. So when you can help your partners win, now they're more attracted to you. And so when you are just another designer on Society6 and you have no social following, you're basically a commodity at that point; it's he or she who has the best design probably wins. But with you—I don't mean this with any disrespect—but you don't necessarily have to have the most groundbreaking, amazing design. Yes, it helps, but the personal brand helps elevate any designs you have above everyone else. And I feel like anyone listening—like the artist's brain is like, I don't want to do social; I don't want to build a brand; I don't want to have an email list; I don't want to do all these things—and they fail to realize how important it is to your overall career and your overall income ability and your ability to attract an agent, which has been huge for you. This whole snowball has hinged on the personal brand, which is email list, social media—whatever your your pick your poison—but at the end of the day, that's the thing that this all hinges on.
That's really well put; that's exactly it. I mean, I'm not the best artist out there by any means; I'm one of the top sellers on Society6 and other print-on-demand websites not because I'm the most talented artist, but because I've…
Leveraged that with marketing in the right way to attract an audience and boost those sales. You know, I did this recent collaboration with another print-on-demand company called Contrado, and they do luxury goods—you have silk, leather, and one of the pieces that they wanted to license was a pattern I made out of daisies. Daisies are really on trend right now; it's going back to those like kind of 60s, 70s motifs. And they chose this daisy pattern.
There are so many better daisy illustrations out there by other artists that they easily could have used, but that's not all they cared about. They cared about one: the quality of the artwork—what she knows is good; there's better ones out there—but one thing they also cared about was: does she have a large audience on social media that's active and engaged? And I do. Um, I have an email list; I have, you know, a following on YouTube. All of these things are what that company is looking for. It's not necessarily the best design; it's the whole branding package. And they want to work with, yeah, artists and designers that also are really keyed in with a strong audience that can help promote that product or that brand or that collaboration.
I think you said before we even got in the interview, you've said it multiple times during this interview: You said, "I am bad at sales." That may or may not be true; I don't know. I've never heard you try to sell something or sell yourself or whatever your art or whatever. But at the end of the day, if you have a large enough following, a big enough personal brand, you don't have to sell; you attract people to you. So at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how good you are at selling; you've built a big enough brand, a big enough following, a big enough name for yourself, and you have a good enough portfolio of work, a good enough body of work to where people are now attracted to you. You don't have to sell anymore. Now you're just cherry-picking the deals and the licensing deals that you want, and it's a completely different game that you're playing versus a freelancer who refuses to build their personal brand, and now it's all based on sales, quality of their work, and differentiating themselves from the person down the road who's offering the exact same thing.
Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, that's that's that's really nail on the head there. Is there anything else we're missing in this business model that people need to know about? Are they negatives or things they should watch out for or anything?
Oh, you get a lot of rejections. So it's like, you know, this this whole interview, I'm like, oh, it's all, you know, flowers and sunshine. No, it's a lot of a lot of failures all along the way. So going back to that 80/20 rule, I applied that with prospecting as well for my business. So I spent 80 percent of my time doing things that I know are going to make money for my business: creating designs, working on my email newsletter to, you know, promote classes that I have on Skillshare. And then 20 is prospecting. So 20 is mostly wasted time, but every once in a while, I get something good out of it. So 20 percent is me looking for other opportunities, other ways to expand my brand.
One thing that's really important to me is diversifying my income, and my god, COVID was a perfect example of why that was so important. I lost 50 percent of my licensing income from in-store sales when COVID started, March 2020. That took about a year to build back up, and so it was devastating to have 50 percent of my in-store or licensing income just completely annihilated. But what also happened at that time is I have a diversified income stream. I also have classes on Skillshare, which is an online education platform where you can go, and you can watch classes—mine are how to watercolor, how to get into art licensing, how to promote yourself on social media, how to get into surface design. It's the things that I wish I would have known seven years ago when I was first getting started.
But yeah, going back to the diversification, so the pandemic started, I lost 50 percent of my licensing income, but everyone was stuck at home, and guess what everybody was doing? They were getting on Skillshare and watching classes. 2020 was a great year for anyone with education businesses. I just remember that side of my business with with this brand blew up in 2020, and it was out of nowhere. And so like things were great, you know, it didn't necessarily sustain itself throughout the exact same level the year after, but the good thing is like the income sources that were down from 2020 came up in 2021 and 2022. So it's kind of like you said, diversifying your income streams, and you do that by using that 20 percent of your time as like—I wouldn't say wasting—but testing new things, being willing to try and fail, and and face failure as we talked about before. If you want to avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing. You're the antithesis of that; you try all the things within, you know, a nice amount of time; it wasn't taking up 80 percent of your time trying a bunch of crap. You spend most of your time on the things you know work, and then you have a small amount of time you devote to pushing new envelopes, to building new income streams, to trying stuff that you're not sure about, but you damn it if you're going to try it, you know.
Yeah, an online education was a perfect example of that. Like, I didn't want to do a class; like I would be terrible at that. But uh, Society6 reached out, and they were like, "Hey, we want one of our top-selling artists to do a class on Skillshare. Can you teach a class?" Basically inviting competitors also uploading designs through Society6. And at the time, Society6 was my biggest income provider, and if they asked me to do anything, I would say yes because I mean they were they were paying my bills; they were paying my lifestyle. And so yeah, I partnered up with Skillshare; they flew me out to New York; I built the class; I just showed up, talked about everything I knew about art licensing through Society6, and their editing team chopped it up, turned it into a phenomenal class. And then I was just thinking, okay, this is a one-and-done kind of thing; this is—I'll put together a class, you know, as a favorite of Society6. I mean, they paid me, but it was also like it's not like I wanted to do—I was like, okay, I'm gonna do it because they're asking, but I would never do that on my own. But then what happened is that class actually—it was it was a really popular class; it did really well. I grew this huge following on on Skillshare, and I realized that I didn't hate it like I thought I would. Just hate having to be in front of the camera and teaching; I would be so nervous and not know what to say, but it was actually was fine; it was fun. And so I was like, okay, maybe I'll put together a class on my own now and just see what happens. I already have this built-in audience on Skillshare now because of that one class I did with Society6, and now I mean that's a huge part of my brand. I've got 24 classes on Skillshare, all teaching the things that I wish I would have known when I was first getting started, and I loved doing it, and I never would have ever pursued that avenue if I weren't, you know, seizing new opportunities as they came, even the ones that I wasn't really that excited about doing.
So I was nervous about it; like the first time I spoke on the main stage at an entrepreneur conference, I was absolutely terrified. Um, but then I did it, and it wasn't that bad; I actually kind of enjoyed it. Now I get to do those all the time, and you kind of learn what you like and what you don't like by actually experiencing it. For me, that's been so integral in my business; it's doing a lot of these things that pushes me out of my comfort zone have turned into something where it's something I actually love doing and is a really viable income for me.
I follow a YouTuber—I'm blanking on his name right now—but he's a productivity YouTuber, and he has classes on Skillshare, and he's also pretty open about income and where it all comes from and what he how he monetizes different things, and I'm always interested in that stuff as a business owner. And he's talked about his numbers behind what he earned from Skillshare, and it's like tens of thousands of like high tens of thousands, almost six figures a month just from Skillshare. And I'm looking at—you've got 87,000 students on Skillshare—so like I can kind of deduce roughly probably how much you're earning from that, and it is a substantial amount of money from that alternative income stream that you set up. And this all goes back to a couple different things that we've mentioned throughout this episode: one is your ability to try new things that you're willing to that most people are unwilling to do; two is the following you've built up to get the credibility to even have Society6 and Skillshare or whatever put your course out there; and then the third thing is just being open to these sorts of assets you're creating one time that then can be repeatably monetized over time. And you—I think you're the first guest I've had on here that I don't see trading dollars for hours anywhere because everything you're doing is scalable income, and scalable just means you create it once and you can sell it forever. And in our world, in the creative world, where most of us are freelancers, that is a rare thing, so it's great to see that you have done this amongst a bunch of different areas.
So as we wrap this up, like where where do you want people to go to connect with you or learn from you? I know you've got the Skillshare classes that have different things; like what would be the most relevant place for people to go?
Yeah, my website; it's catch.com—catcoq—and there you can have links to everything. So you can find all of my classes, Instagram, contact information, all of that, see my new licensing collaborations on my blog. Yeah, website is just like one and done; you'll find everything. So catcoq.com. It's funny you just mentioned the recurring revenue thing; that's such an important part of my business, and we didn't even talk about it. Everything I do in my business is not a one-and-done kind of monetization; it's something that's going to earn money for years to come. So those alpacas that I painted in 2015 or 2016, whenever I was in Peru, those are still earning me money today. It's great because it just kind of snowballs and it builds and builds, and every year it just it gets larger and larger because the more pieces I have in my portfolio, the more classes I have on Skillshare, it just grows from there. So I no longer trade my time for money, which is what I used to do. Every decision I make in my business is: Is this something that I can leverage for years to come?
That's wonderful, and I'm pretty sure my wife has joined your Procreate for Beginners course on Skillshare, so you've gotten some money from from our family on there as well, which is great. So I definitely highly encourage anyone to go just browse through courses on there, see if any are a fit for you, and obviously go to her website as well. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Kat.
Oh, thanks, Brian. This has been a great convo.