Turning your passion into profit with Miriam Schulman

Today’s episode of the podcast is an interview with Miriam Schulman who is an artist, author and founder of The Inspiration Place and The Artists Incubator Coaching Program where she helps artists develop their skills, tap into their creativity, and grow thriving art businesses. We talk all about how you can market yourself and turning your passion into profit! KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST You don’t need thousands of clients – you need to sell to the high end of the market.Start with your goal/destination in mind.You need to have a signature style to be able to market yourself.Cheaper does not mean it is easier to sell! People are looking for value.The 5-part Passion to Profit framework:Production – making sure you have the capacity to produce assetsPricing – how much will you charge and will it work?Prospecting – start telling everyone who you are and what you do and own it!Promotion – getting prospects and getting salesProductivity – your system for making it all workThe first part of promotion is to get attention, the second part is getting sales through building relationships.Write down your goals – when you imagine, you use the creative part of your brain and when you write it down it uses the logical side of your brain.Setting goals enables you to be more realistic.We have to help our team manage their time as well – we need to know when they are working on projects. THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE… Just because something is cheaper, does not mean it is easier to market and sell! HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS ·An introduction to Miriam 04:29Finding your market 17:355-Part Passion to Profit Framework 18:41Setting goals for your business 30:38Taking your business online 37:07Miriam’s new book 41:20 CHECK MIRIAM OUT: WebsiteFacebookInstagramThe Inspiration Place Transcript Firstly, I'd like to start by wishing you a very, very Merry Christmas. Now, and I'm a little bit late. It was a couple of days ago, but I wanted to take the chance to hope that you had a lovely, lovely time with your family and friends. And you got to celebrate, you got to take time off. You've got to relax and you've got to remember what all this hard work all year round was for. So I'm really hoping that you've had a lovely, lovely break. And also, if you are listening to this at the time it comes out, then I hope you've got exciting plans for new year. Have to say I'm not big new year fan if I'm honest. We tend to stay at home with a bottle of fares or seven and yeah, just watch a bit of TV.Just, it's not really my thing. It's not really my thing. Then my husband did try and convince me that we should go to LA this year for like four days, which I quickly assured him I was not up to doing because I'm very tired. Okay. So before I get started today's interview, which is awesome. It's with Miriam who is so much fun and talks about lots of good things, including her five step passion to profit framework.Teresa: I want to just give you a heads up of something that might be happening soon. I have been going through the process of a rebrand, and also looking at my names of everything, not my name, my name stays the same, but as in the name of my membership, and my podcast and all these other good things, and they are changing, I'm not ready at this point just to share yet what it's going to be.Teresa: With such a seconds of I've changed my podcast name. The first time it was Social Media Marketing Made Simple. Then I realized it was way too much more about marketing than just social media. So I changed it to Marketing That Converts. And now I'm realizing that it's way more about just marketing.Teresa: Because the time that I've gone on in my business, as I'm like seven plus years into my business, I realized that I can obviously talk and support in lots of other areas than I currently, you know, than I did. So it's going through another little tweak and a change, which I'm very excited about. I hope you'll love.Teresa: It's coming soon, but I just want you to keep an eye out for us, keep an eye on my socials and things, and you'll find it as it starts to happen, but I just wants to give you a heads up. Okay. So like I said, we talked today to the lovely Miriam. Now Miriam is the founder of Inspiration Place The Artists Incubator Coaching Program where she helps artists from amateur to professionals to develop their skills, tap into their creativity and grow thriving art businesses.Teresa: She's also an artist herself and an author. And basically today, we talk about how you can market yourself and how you can turn your passion into profit. Because now I don't know about you and we talked about this on the podcast, but lots of people think, you know, struggling artists, like that's the name.Teresa: And actually she talks more about just the fact of her being artists talks about having an online business and how to really sort of stand firm in the fact of what you do and who you are and your personality. So I think there's loads you're going to get from this episode. So without further ado here is the lovely Miriam.Teresa: Okay, welcome to this week's podcast. The very lovely Miriam Schulman. Miriam how are you doing?Miriam: Good. Thank you so much for having me.Teresa: My pleasure. I am really excited to have you on. I'm really excited to share with my listeners your story and how you got to kind of what you're doing now because it's something that's quite close to my heart in terms of doing your passion and doing something that you absolutely love. So I always start exactly the same way. I'm sure it bored listeners to death, but I don't mix it up a bit, but can you start by introducing yourself and tell us how you got to do what you're doing now?Miriam: Okay. So I'm in my fifties. So like the let's, let's get the short version of the life story journey.Miriam: Uh, so I am an artist and what I primarily do is I help other people who either want to reconnect with that creativity. Cause they haven't, they either, they always wanted to paint and never got around to it. They used to be creative in college. So I help those people. And I also, for the past few years, been helping other emerging artists make a full-time living from their art.Teresa: Okay.Miriam: Okay, so here's the journey part? In a shortest version possible. So I haven't always been an artist. Like most people like my audience, I took the longer path. I did the practical route first I worked on wall street and after 9/11 happened, I decided I was no longer going to do that just as I'm sure there's many people now during the pandemic who are taking stock of what they're doing in their life.Miriam: Um, people who were laid off and maybe don't want to go back to what they were doing before. So that was my experience after 9/11, is that I was not going to go back to the world to finance. And that's when I committed myself to becoming an artist.Teresa: So can I just touch on that bit? Because obviously that is, that is a huge, huge event that took place. And life-changing for the world almost. Um, were you in wall street at that point? During 9/11 or so were you physically very close to where it all happened?Miriam: Well, that's a really good question. And what most people don't remember is there was another bombing of the world trade center in 93. And I was working in the world trade center at that time.Miriam: And I, we were working my office faced directly the tower that where the bomb went off and in my office, everyone kept working. And that vision of seeing the terrorism happen in the building next to ours, while my office stayed working that stuck with me. So that when 9/11 happened, If you recall, there was 20 minutes between when the two planes hit and the second tower, they did not rush to evacuate that, they were not evacuating that.Miriam: So it was that culture that you keep working, even though there's a terrorist attack going on right next door, um, so even though I was not working in the world trade center during 9/11, I had been so close to that world and it was so close to what, who I, it could have been me. So it was so close to that.Miriam: Um, that was a very frightening, kind of like a PTSD moment for me when, when I saw, um, 9/11, it was like brought me right back to that first bombing.Teresa: Yeah. And you're right, like, what kind of world do we live in where something like that happens. And yet we just keep working. Like that, would you say it like that?Teresa: It's like, well, that's insane. Who does that? But kind...Miriam: For the record, I didn't keep working. Like I, okay. So when the...