AP 1157: How Do I Create Social Media Content While Working on My Craft?

Pat Flynn:
What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to episode 1157 of Ask at 2.0. You're about to listen to a coaching call between myself and an entrepreneur just like you. Today's a special one because we're talking to Genevieve Leavold who is actually an artist. The cool thing about this conversation is she's an artist, she's a painter, she paints these beautiful paintings, but unfortunately she also needs to go out there and sell her paintings. She wants to use social media, but it's a little bit hard for her because when she's painting, she needs to be fully invested into her paintings, but then social media likes to see these things happen at the same time. So how do we balance content creation versus the art creation? That's what we're talking about with Genevieve today.

So make sure to sit back, relax, listen in. I'm sure there's going to be something in here for you that you can relate to. What we came up with was brilliant and it was a team effort, so make sure you stick around and listen to that. Here we go.

Genevieve, welcome to AskPat 2.0. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Genevieve Leavold:
Hi, thank you for having me. It's really exciting to be on the podcast.

Pat:
I'm very thankful for you. I think we should start out by learning a little bit about you first. So Genevieve, why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and what it is that you do?

Genevieve:
So my name's Genevieve Leavold and I'm a abstract painter from the UK. I have a studio based in Serbia, in Belgrade, and I've been painting for, well, I think as an artist all my life, but professionally since 2014.

Pat:
That's so cool. I know that you guys are in this lockdown again. There's a lot of things going on in the world right now. What are you doing right now with your extra time? I'm sure more paintings and whatnot, right?

Genevieve:
Well, it's interesting actually because I'm based between the UK and Serbia. So I'm actually in Belgrade at the moment, but it's an interesting challenge because normally I sell work in the UK. So my supply chain is slightly disrupted at the moment. And exhibitions have obviously been canceled so more time in the studio for sure and more time doing jigsaw puzzles. I do like jigsaw puzzles.

Pat:
I love jigsaw puzzles. They're fun. Actually, if you can enlighten us, what is the business model? I'd love to know how that all works. So you make a painting, what happens to it and how do you thrive as a business owner?

Genevieve:
It's an interesting question because I think it's changed a lot over the last few years actually, as the gallery model has changed. So there are more ... I'm an independent artist, so I prefer to represent myself rather than have 50 percent taken by a gallery. So I make work, I have a collector list who I email work to. I would normally have exhibitions and art fairs for meeting new clients and collectors and sharing a whole body of work at once. Since this year or last year even - I can't believe it's been 12 months. Obviously I also have Instagram and all of those online things, but normally it would have been primarily selling through face to face. So it's changed a lot in 12 months. It's been a big change.

Pat:
Well, that's cool. It's just really exciting to know that you have a collector list, so an email list that you send out to when you can create something new. That's really neat and I think more artists definitely need to do that. That's excellent. So what's going on? How can I help you? What's on your mind?

Genevieve:
My question is about the balance between creative time and promotional marketing time. I've noticed more and more, because of the moving online a lot more and having to spend more time thinking about creating content to talk to people online, it impacts my creative process. Because the two, though I do love the social media side of things and I love introducing people to my backstage and to the studio ... but actually I can't work creatively when there's people present. I'm interested in trying to find a way to create balance between those two things. Allow people into the studio, but not get lost in that, if that makes sense.

Pat:
When you say allow people into the studio, what does that mean exactly?

Genevieve:
So on my Instagram feed, I quite often do stories where I show the process of a painting. So I'll bring people into stretching the canvas, priming the canvas, setting up the palette, the plates, the paints and everything. I love doing that, but I think the pressure to create more content means that sometimes I end up doing more of that than I do actually completing bodies of work that require a level of concentration that just - I can't.

Pat:
Because then you have to make sure the camera angle's right as you're painting, for example. It's like, "Well, it's screwing with my outlet and my creativity because I have to focus on this other thing at the same time."

Genevieve:
Yeah, yeah. Exactly that.

Pat:
Okay. So interestingly enough, I know a few other artists who are actually doing some things online. One thing that they've done to combat this is they've separated them a little bit. I think this is a great question in terms of balance, but not necessarily having everything happen knowing that somebody is watching it all come together and you have to talk people through it and there's a lot of interruptions and stuff. But essentially, you just create the art. You do what you do and then you come in later when it's time to market and promote. You can add a voiceover and you can talk about the work. It's just a camera set up as you're doing something and maybe there's a way to have a couple cameras so you have a couple of angles.

One of them maybe is a time-lapsed one, which is often a very fun thing to watch later and would only be cool after the fact. So you can concentrate on everything you have, just make it easy, set up something so that you can then let it be. Then later - take that and creatively somehow turn it into content and something useful for those who want to watch and follow along. That way, your creative mind is still in your creative mind when you want to create, but then your marketing mind comes into play after you create, if that makes sense. The example that I want to use is there's a guy, Clay Claim I think his name is on YouTube. He does clay. My kids and I, we watch him and we actually bought hundreds of dollars worth of clay after watching. Because Kai, my daughter, who's very creative and artsy, she just wanted to go full on.

We've still been doing it. It's definitely been a great investment, but I noticed his videos. They're all voiceover videos. I think it's the same. He can't talk while doing the work. He has to work first, but he has an overhead view of him doing the clay and stuff. What we're watching is all of that, but his thoughts afterwards. We noticed it sometimes. He was like, "Oh yeah. This piece right here, I remember doing this and it was actually very difficult. You'll see here, how I'm trying to put these two pieces together." Versus in real time, it's actually a lot slower if you do it in real time, even skip over and just get to the good parts and concentration afterwards. How is this sitting with you? Is this something that you might be able to experiment with and try, or is this sort of like, I don't know?

Genevieve:
No, no. It's really interesting actually. One of the things that I find really interesting is that other people would want to watch that, because I think there's something about feeling maybe fraudulent about creating something and then doing a narration over the top of it. But actually that's lovely to hear that that is something that you'd really engage with and find interesting. I suppose I get into the mindset where I feel like it has to be 100 percent real and it has to be me right now doing the thing I'm doing. I hadn't really considered that I could almost ... Also, probably add more value to it by creating a narrative based on what I'm seeing myself do as well.

Pat:
It could turn into this beautiful story actually that could only be structured after you have that creativity then used for this portion of it. You have your creative mind use for the actual piece. Then now you have your creative mind focused fully on this versus a division of that focus. I think a lot of us have been conditioned to watch art in real time, like with Bob Ross. He's talking and he's telling this beautiful story, but he's done that millions of times. He knows how to keep a person engaged who's watching and he just has this crazy style. We all love Bob obviously, but I think that there is actually the case to be made that you can't provide the best value if you were to try to do both at the same time.

Genevieve:
That's what it feels like actually. I feel like I'm compromising both in fact.

Pat:
Both sides. Cool. So tell me if you were to do this, let's just run a pretend exercise. Your next piece, how might you set it up? Let's just walk through it so we can imagine it together.

Genevieve:
Yeah, okay. So I like the idea of having the camera. I have got a couple of different cameras that I can use. The other slight issue is that quite often I paint on the floor. So I like what you were saying about this guy having a camera above, as well as the camera to the side. I also really love video editing, so I'd probably quite enjoy the creative process of creating something new from it.

Pat:
There you go. That's perfect.

Genevieve:
I think it's actually hearing somebody else from the other side of it, because I think that the difficulty is getting into your own thoughts about creation. Sometimes you forget that there are things that you assume about the creative process that other people might not see or know and actually would engage with. So I suppose I could take more time to consider the pallets and the way that I mix the paints as well. Maybe do a whole walkthrough of the process, whereas I tend to stick to just a little snippet of me painting or talking whilst I'm in the studio.

Pat:
I have some additional thoughts that perhaps could help you with creating the visuals at the end, because I know that you would probably care as much as about the video visual as you do with your actual artwork on canvas. So number one, this idea of having music behind it, that's something that would be very difficult to do live, especially to match the music to the emotion that you want to offer on video. So just again, another essentially color that you could add to the video would be through music. That would be really amazing to draw the emotion out and actually create the momentum that you want with the piece that ... You can purposefully choose the music to represent how you felt while painting this. Maybe it's more of a, I don't know, angry piece or something, more aggressive-looking. Then you can have music to support that.

That's something that would be very difficult to do on the fly while painting live. So that's one idea. Then another idea I had is ... I got this idea, I got to give credit to where credit is due. His name is Ali Abdal and he is a YouTuber, millions of subscribers. He and I developed a relationship together and he had a video come out recently, a short one, but it was a great tip. He said, "All of us, we need to create what's called a B roll library." So B roll is just video, no voice, of just things. Things that you do, things that you are involved with. In my case, it might be me sitting on the couch swiping an iPad, or me typing on the keyboard, or me adjusting the lights in my office. Seemingly random things that when I'm editing a video later, I can add in underneath my voice.

Genevieve:
Yeah, I see.

Pat:
So I can imagine some really nice ... Maybe you hire a videographer one day just to come in and go, "Okay, just take as many videos of me just doing anything." So maybe there's a closeup photo of you dipping the paint brush in the water. That doesn't have to be specifically from the painting that is in the final video. It's just a matter of connecting those things together and then turning it into this almost documentary style approach, which is a completely different flavor than just holding the camera in one hand and then painting with the other one, which sometimes I'm sure it feels like that. You'd be able to be more present with each part of it.

Genevieve:
Yeah, definitely. I really like that idea actually, creating B roll clips to create a narrative I suppose, around the work and around the piece and make it more fun.

Pat:
Totally. That's really cool. So I want to know more about, let's say you have this edited video and it's beautiful. Tell me what you do with it.

Genevieve:
So this is another aspect actually that I am learning about, which is where to share and how to share and how much to share. I primarily use Instagram. That's where people find me.

Pat:
Perfect platform for you. Where can we find you by the way? Tell us all where to go.

Genevieve:
So my Instagram handle is just my name. So it's @GenevieveLeavold. My website is GenevieveLeavold.com. I'm hoping this year to start YouTube as well, because I really enjoy YouTube, personally. I love watching other artists create work, create tutorials, and more defined classroom things, a bit more Bob Ross I suppose. So I think I'd like to use that platform a bit more as well with videos for sure.

Pat:
You have a very visual thing going on. I think YouTube would be a great platform, especially the longer form stuff that's a little bit more, maybe doctored and edited and flavored in that way. But on Instagram, tell me a little bit about what you do, you think.

Genevieve:
I'm a little bit inconsistent, I'll be honest, because I get caught up in ... I tend to share a lot of work that's for sale, obviously. It does work for me. Instagram has always worked really well as a sales platform actually, because I think it's a nice way to connect with the backstory of an artist and then you see more of their work. I was trying to offer pieces at different price points. There's a brilliant initiative that was set up at the beginning of the lockdown in the UK by an artist called The Artist Support Pledge, which is a wonderful thing where it's based on a hashtag, which is very clever in order for artists to sell work. So I've been using that a lot. It was amazing. This guy, really, really incredible, set this thing up and it just went - skyrocketed. I also share images, videos occasionally. Ad hoc videos of a piece that I'm working on, or an idea that's come into my head, or a new project, but I would like to be a little bit more consistent with the types of content that I'm sharing, and using stories a bit more effectively I think.

Pat:
Stories are fun too. The cool thing about if you do YouTube, you can also make IGTV, longer form videos that you can just pop into there as well to get the full story if you will. But I think if we imagine the workflow, you set up the cameras and you have them ready. They're just on and then you do your work and you're fully 100 percent in your creative mind. You're in the flow and then we get to see the whole process. Then you take the video and you edit some five, 10 minute, three minute - It doesn't matter how long it is, just whatever you feel. It becomes this beautiful package. On Instagram obviously, the videos are only a minute on the regular feed and only 15 seconds on the TikTok or Reel type thing or the stories.

What's really cool is you'll have this three, five, 10 minute thing that you can take certain moments of. You can actually extract just that moment. If that's a moment you want to just share about within this much larger whole, that allows you to almost talk about the same piece four or five different times in multiple different ways. So that's called repurposing content, taking the one main thing and then turning it into much more smaller pieces that you can have some fun with. Perhaps somebody would resonate with the backstory part where you talk about the reason why you're painting this and what inspired you for it. Or perhaps the part in the middle where you talk about a special technique that you used, makes it really interesting and seem even more rare as a piece. Or maybe how you feel after it's finished becomes another section. So people can, in chunks, see the entire process, resonate with one or more of those particular things. Or on YouTube, find you, or watch the whole thing on Instagram TV. Essentially, one piece becomes a whole week's worth of content.

Genevieve:
Yeah. That's a really great idea. I hadn't thought of that at all.

Pat:
There's a woman, her name is or her Instagram handle is Red something. Red ... or I can't remember exactly her name. But she's this very amazing artist from Asia. When she's doing her work, she'll show really close up photos of something to start. You're just like, what is that? Or she'll talk about the medium. She did this one piece of Jackie Chan, but it was done using chopsticks that were hanging on fishing line. Based on the spacing of them and the density of them, you zoom out and it's his face. It's like this 20 foot tall piece and it was really neat. But the way she started that was she was just like, "Hey, I'm exploring chopsticks." There was just a pile of chopsticks. She's like, "I'm exploring this for my next medium."

So now we're just curious. What are you doing? What's this about? Then she showed how she was tying them together to another one. It was just a photo. She's like, "considering densities of this to show different lights and darks in my paint, in my art." We have no idea what it's going to become. So by the time we see it at the end and it's just this final piece, we've already actually gotten a story along the way as we were in her head with her. It's just mind blowing when you're like, how do you know how to do that? It's just unreal. So just some inspiration for you to see maybe there's other ways that you can tie in, even before a piece is started, how a person can start to begin to feel they're a part of this with you.

Genevieve:
I like that idea. I've read Superfans and I really enjoyed it.

Pat:
Thank you. Thank you.

Genevieve:
I really like that idea of taking people on a journey with your work and with your process, and the idea of engaging people in the work as well with asking questions, which is something I've yet to try greatly. I like hearing the stories about that woman for that reason.

Pat:
Instagram, because you know how to use it, is a great platform for interaction. You can go live and maybe this is a few hours or a day before you actually go into your mindset of painting. Just be like, "Hey guys, I'm about to paint this picture. Here's the inspiration for it. Do you have any questions for me?" You're probably going to get people asking you questions like, what inspires you or what kind of paint are you ... Anything. You just go live for 20 minutes, 30 minutes and that becomes a 24 hour story if you let it replay. Anybody who then comes in and finds you is going to be interested and get even that - like you said, they get a sense of you in the process. It makes people feel more connected.

I would imagine that this could lead to more sales. To go back to the business aspect of it, now they're a part of the story. It's not just there's a story behind the painting, it's they were actually a part of it now because they were there in the beginning when it all started. Maybe they're hearing you midway through struggling a little bit. Maybe they're hearing this burst of inspiration from you in another part. There's so many cool things you can do. Instagram is a great platform for just quick connections. When you say people's names, their mind is blown. Especially -

Genevieve:
Really?

Pat:
Oh my gosh. I once read in a Dale Carnegie book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, there was a chapter specifically about this. It's the most beautiful sound to a person is their own name. So when you're live and you just see people commenting, mention their names. They're going to feel like they're connected with you. There could be some really cool things that can happen as a result of that.

Genevieve:
That's really nice actually. I have a very strong memory for people. This is an interesting thing about being on social media, is that I pretty much know most of my collectors by name. I know which piece they bought or pieces they saw.

Pat:
That's cool.

Genevieve:
I know bits of stories. Every year I do a project actually, where I connect actual artworks with actual stories from people. It's only for collectors and I'm just working through the project at the moment, but I'd never really thought about doing that perhaps on a broader scale, because it's quite intimate I suppose.

Pat:
If I'm watching your lives for the first time, I just got introduced to you and then you recognize somebody who comes on who's one of your collectors, and you start talking to them like you're friends and you say, "Hey, how was that piece I got for you? I hope it's inspiring you and it's in your home." I, as a new person am like, "Oh my gosh. You interact with your customers?" I'm that much more intrigued and excited as an outsider coming in. That would be cool because this is a platform for you to continue to connect with those who you've already had built a relationship with, plus showcase that kind of understanding of relationship with your customer with new people, who would then likely feel very excited to become a customer and know that you are caring about them and it's not just about the business.

Genevieve:
That's nice. I always thought it might be the other way, it would intimidate people if you call out their names.

Pat:
Obviously if you're like, "Hey Jim, what are you doing here?" That's obviously going to be a little intimidating. But if you're just like, "Hey, welcome Jim. Thanks for coming into the collector circle. This is where we talk about the art that I do and what inspires it. I'm so thankful that you're here. We were just talking with Romy who bought one of my pieces two years ago. I was just checking up on it to see how she was doing." Oh my gosh. I'm in. This is a community that I want to be a part of.

Genevieve:
That's really nice.

Pat:
Cool. So Genevieve, we talked about a lot of things today. Anything else? We covered a lot of ground and I think there are a lot of good ideas. What's your big takeaway from today, do you think?

Genevieve:
So I think my big takeaway is really thinking about who I'm talking to and being a bit more aware actually from the other perspectives. It's really great to talk to you, to hear somebody from the other side of the studio who - you interact with artists yourself so you've got a really good insight into that. So my biggest takeaway is to be a bit bolder with my video interactions. Two, I really like the idea of doing narrated videos. I like the idea of creating them as their own art form in a way. I'm going to do a bit more of that as well.

Pat:
Cool. Well, I'm very excited. One more time Genevieve, if you could spell it out for us just so we know where to go, Instagram and your website.

Genevieve:
So Instagram is @GenevieveLeavold. Then my website is the same, but www.GenevieveLeavold.com.

Pat:
Cool. Well, thank you Genevieve. We appreciate you. Keep doing what you're doing. I can't wait to visit the Instagram and I'm sure everybody else is as well so we can get a sense of the kind of art that you do. I'm looking forward to seeing some of these things implemented. So good luck to you and thanks again for being with us and sharing.

Genevieve:
Thank you. Thanks for having me and for your insights. It's really helpful.

Pat:
Absolutely.

All right. I hope you enjoyed that coaching call with Genevieve Leavold. Again, all the notes are on the show notes page on the website at AskPat.com for this episode. Genevieve, thank you so much for coming in. I'm looking forward to chatting with you again in the future to see how you've implemented these things, and now how we've helped you set these cameras up, and leave them be so that you can fully focus on the art that you are creating. Thank you again and thank you, the listener, for coming in and listening all the way through. I appreciate you so much. If you want to get coached here on AskPat, just like Genevieve did today, all you have to do is go to AskPat.com and there's a button on that page to click to apply to be on the show. Now, I cannot select everybody, but it's true that I'm not going to select you unless you actually apply.

So do that because we're always looking for new stories, new people to help here and coach on the show. It's one of my favorite things to do.

As always, make sure you hit subscribe because we often bring people back. I plan on bringing Genevieve back in the future. Stick around because later this month you're actually going to hear somebody who was once on the show before coming back in a Where Are They Now? episode, which used to be just at the end of the year we would share this. But actually, we're sharing them at the end of every month now. So make sure you don't miss that. Hit subscribe. Thank you so much, I appreciate you. Again, AskPat.com if you want to apply. Also, you can check out our other shows in our archive there too.

Thanks so much, take care, I appreciate you, and as always, Team Flynn for the win. Peace.