How Jodie King Leads by Example with Honest Art, Living a Vulnerable Life, and Being Brave in Business
[00:00:00] Made Remarkable Intro: Welcome back. And thanks for tuning into the Made Remarkable podcast, hosted by Kellee Wynne. Today's guest is rebellious art biz wonder and wild woman, Jodie King. Jodie understands the importance of balancing a creative process while elevating your business. And she's here to share some clear tips on how you can start taking steps towards making your business brilliant. Kellee and Jodie agree that everything awesome happens outside of our comfort zone. Are you ready to take some risks and build a remarkable business?
Check out the show notes and transcripts for more information about Jodie exclusive promotional offers and any special links mentioned during the episode. Kellee loves connecting with listeners. So don't be shy. Reach out on social media and together let's build a community that celebrates the remarkable. If you want to be notified every time a new episode hits the airwaves, just hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you for joining us today and always remember that you are made remarkable. Now let's get to the good part. Introducing Kellee Wynne and Jodie King
[00:01:02] Kellee Wynne Conrad: Well, hello. Hello. I'm Kellee Wynne, artist, author, mentor, fiercely independent mother and wife, and the founder of a multiple six figure creative business. And I love my life, but I've been where you're at. I was slogging away at this art business thing for more than a decade. Once I finally connected with my true calling, unlock the magic of marketing and built a system that could scale, while I realize I can make an impact and make a substantial income, I'm finally running a business that I love and it makes all the.
Difference in the world. My biggest dream is to help you do the same. Let this podcast be the catalyst to your biggest success. You already have it in you because you are made remarkable.
I always miss the juiciest stuff when we just start getting on and getting to know each other. And so I'm like, I just need to start hitting record as soon as I get on with people from now on. And your assistant said something about, some sort of a summit or something that you're doing.
[00:02:02] Jodie King: Yeah. on the 1st of October. So, where I think that we're so complimentary is you you're focusing on artists and. Creativity, which is, I think, like the greatest thing we can offer the world. And so what I'm focusing on is, called the art biz and soul summit. So I'll be bringing people in that focus on creating, and then I'll be bringing people in that are focusing on the business side of it and growing the business and people who've done it really well and people in the industry and then soul.
Which is like, the funnest part for me, you know, like, energy workers and things like that. So
[00:02:45] Kellee Wynne Conrad: abundance mindset, manifesting
[00:02:49] Jodie King: All of that. And then also. There's a woman who I've taught workshops with Dr Kathleen Funk, who really focuses on Qigong and moving energy and bringing that in. And it's just so fun.
[00:03:04] Kellee Wynne Conrad: So I'm really focusing more on business as I move forward. I don't know if you've. Looked at what I do, or what made remarkable is really about. It's more about the business side of things. Creativity.
Yes. It's been an important part of the journey because we're artists and we're creatives, but I like know that this is what I'm born to do and having having that. Revelation, which is why I changed my podcast name to made remarkable, which is that we are made remarkable. You don't have to become anything.
We are already and go into our purpose and show 100 percent is who we are. And own it, which I love about what you do is that you're really into owning the irreverent, powerful, honest art, rebel inside. I just, I love that about you. So thank you. I'll never forget seeing that picture of you and your. Cute butt cheeks.
[00:04:08] Jodie King: Oh, yeah, there may have been a little tequila involved with that photo. But I was totally sober when I decided to post it. You know, and I think there is something about Artists, we turn ourselves inside out to create honest art. Right? Yeah. And it's the most vulnerable feeling ever to then put it out into the world.
And so that was kind of a nod to that.
[00:04:36] Kellee Wynne Conrad: Yeah, well, it is. It's it's. When we play safe, which is what I've been doing on and off for years now, I play safe because I do what people want. I create what I know will be well received. I know exactly. And so when it comes to that, I'm playing it safe and I'm also not making my best art.
[00:04:56] Jodie King: Right. Oh, girl, I know you're you are all of us for sure. Absolutely. Because even if I don't know if this is for you, but, you know, even when I get like, I'm creating a new collection right now, and it just looks a shit show. It just looks awful because I went into it thinking about some of the other art that I've made that I really like.
And so it's not even about emulating other artists and playing it safe in that way. It's about playing it safe with what we've already done and like, Oh, I know that sells.
[00:05:29] Kellee Wynne Conrad: Exactly. It's not even playing it safe with what we see out there in the world, but playing it safe with ourselves and what we're willing to create.
We change. So how can we create what we created before when we were a different person when we were creating that?
[00:05:47] Jodie King: Exactly. Exactly. It's like, I think back of like, Oh, my favorite. Musical artists, right? And on how their songs have evolved their work as music has evolved because they're not the same person.
And it has to be the same for us. So, yeah, that's what I've been wrestling with personally as an artist this past weekend. It's like what I left the studio on Saturday. I'm like, you're such a hack. Who do you think you are?
[00:06:15] Kellee Wynne Conrad: It's so weird how, we can do this for a couple decades and have such great sales, high accolades, publishing, whatever you name it, the list that anyone would probably be looking at saying she's made it. And yet we still sit here and we go, I don't know what the hell I'm doing.
[00:06:35] Jodie King: Oh, yeah. And, but I think I wish there were somebody out there. Not me. I'm that's why I'm doing it. I was somebody out there that was doing that same stuff so that I could go. Oh, I'm totally fine. So now I'm just keeping it real with people because I don't think you ever arrive. I think you are always striving for more.
And I don't not mean to be an asshole and not be grateful. You know, I'm where I would want it to be 5 years ago, or even, you know, 3 years ago. I'm so grateful for where I am for sure. I think it's just human nature to evolve, evolving and changing and wanting.
[00:07:16] Kellee Wynne Conrad: It's a duality of being grateful for what we have and realizing that so many people don't, but then still wanting to strive for something that we know that we're still capable of.
[00:07:27] Jodie King: Yeah. Right. Yeah. And don't you think that. There is a unique part of that. I'm willing to be 100 percent million percent wrong, but I think that there is something unique to artists and to the creative experience.
Here's what I'm saying. It's like. I can teach all the business skills in the world, and I know that shit works. Like, hard stop. It absolutely works. I'm fully confident in that. But as a creative, Every time I show up, I have to show up completely open and letting go of every, like, I can know skill set, but let just being open to whatever is new.
That's the fumbling. That's the trusting. That's the vulnerability. Yeah, you know, it's so important that we allow vulnerability as creatives and so that's where I get like, I'm a hack all those paintings that sold for thousands of, you know, the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of painting.
Right. They were all flukes.
[00:08:31] Kellee Wynne Conrad: It was just a fluke, you know. That course that I sold that, like, with a blink of an eye made tens of thousands of dollars. That was just by accident. I didn't really.
[00:08:42] Jodie King: But I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Do you think that that is unique to artists?
[00:08:47] Kellee Wynne Conrad: I think it's, it's part of that, Gay Hendricks, Hitting Our Ceiling, The Big Leap, you know that book, where it's like when you are going outside of your zone of comfort or the limit in which you believed you and you're ready to go to that next level, all, all of it comes in.
And I've been toying with the idea of vulnerability a lot more in the last year because I didn't think I had. I'm not a vulnerable person. I don't have a whole lot of like, whatever. It's not that big of a deal. Nothing makes me feel uncomfortable until I really understood what vulnerability was. And it wasn't really about, you know, telling your sob story.
So other people will see who you are, which is total BS vulnerability. Right? Right. Right. Vulnerability is just an awareness in yourself when you're like, totally out of your comfort zone. Yeah. Yeah. And then you have nothing but to face yourself, like the shadow sides of yourself, the light sides of yourself, the part of you that's just like, you know, you can't hide from yourself.
[00:09:48] Jodie King: Exactly. I love that you said that it's, it goes beyond allowing ourselves to be seen. It, it, it goes to willing to look at. Ourselves 1st, look at all of this stuff 1st. So I love that you, you mentioned that. Yeah, and it's key to our creativity. It's absolutely key to it
[00:10:09] Kellee Wynne Conrad: to our, our creativity and our growth as humans.
But honestly, if we were to stay the same, then what's the point? So, I mean, I think that that is that getting into that vulnerable state of creativity of pushing past of. I mean, you could even look at it as never satisfied with where you are, but it's not that you're not satisfied. It's that you're not willing to let it be the status quo.
Right?
[00:10:31] Jodie King: Absolutely. And I get bored easily. I get bored with myself. I get bored.
[00:10:38] Kellee Wynne Conrad: If I get that one, I'm like, how could we shake things up today? Let's break down the business, rebuild it up. My husband's always like, what are you doing? I'm like, I know I'm supposed to focus, but that is not my nature.
I'm a creative.
[00:10:53] Jodie King: I know. I know. And let's just burn the mother effer down. And then I'm lucky. Yeah. I've got. People that are, uh, wiser in terms of that around me, like, okay, I can understand how you feel that way today, but what if we just took a different approach? Yes.
[00:11:12] Kellee Wynne Conrad: One thing that helps for me is that I now have other people relying on me in the first decade of my business.
Mostly it was just, what do I feel like doing? How am I going to reach my goals? You know, I'm, I haven't quite made it yet, so I guess I can take a lot of risk, but you do get to a point where you start to see success and you know that even if you lost it all, you know, those you've all that learning that you've done all those principles.
And I guess that goes with creativity and life in general, you know, what to do to keep it going. But you also get to the point where people start relying on you. Maybe you have a mortgage to pay. Maybe you have a staff to pay. Maybe, you know, like I've promised to take care of my family, you know? So it's like, okay, I can't just burn it down today.
I really can't.
[00:11:57] Jodie King: Yeah. Yeah. The longer you go, the harder it is to be able to burn it all down. And I don't often feel like it, but, you know, there's occasionally sometimes, or this thought, I just want to do something a little different. I don't do that.
[00:12:09] Kellee Wynne Conrad: Well, and then that goes into the whole understanding how business works and systems that you put into place and support that you get so that you can take a break and do something completely different while the other things are still working.
[00:12:21] Jodie King: Well, absolutely. And you bring up a really good point because businesses, especially as artists, you know, all businesses go through cycles and if you can anticipate.
And understand that there will be a cycle and that's doesn't mean you quit. It just means that, you know, maybe you reconfigure or you regroup or you restructure or something like that. Like, to your point earlier about balancing creativity and. The business side and creativity, you know, what I was doing to balance that 3 years ago.
It looks a lot different than what I'm doing now. So, you know, several years ago I was able to say, okay, in the morning, um, until let's say two, I'm going to work on the business side of my business and then from two o'clock on, then I'm going to head into the studio, into my creative space, and then I'm going to create then.
So that gave me, at least for my ADD brain, it gave me some structure to work within that felt really safe and comfortable. And I was taking care of both sides and that felt really good. But then as the business grew, two o'clock came and there is still. A ton of stuff that needed, you know, calls to be, you know, all kinds of stuff that needed to be done at 2 o'clock.
And then I had to restructure it. So, again, you know, what works before doesn't work now. So, I had to restructure it to where. My creativity is now blocked into days, and I try to stay pretty consistent, but during the days of the week, but it's not always the case. Like, usually my creative days are Mondays and Fridays.
Which is great because then I can believe in Saturday and Sunday. Yeah. If I choose, right? Right. So then I've got Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday as my creative days. That makes. You know, I'd load up Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, that makes a pretty heavy load for business stuff, but that was working for me, but that doesn't always happen.
Like today that we're recording this, it's a Monday, right? So this is not considered a creative day, but I will be doing something creative later today. So anyway, that's, that's what worked for me. But I also want to say, this is important that you may have seen this Kellee. Did you see that? Somebody had done a study on all of these different creatives from writers to, Mozart, you know, musicians to Picasso, like all different forms of creativity.
Uhhuh , and they did a study on when they were most productive creatively and. I love seeing it because it was all over the place. So 1, uh, creative might wake up and from the time they wake up until, you know, lunchtime, they were just in their studio, or they were writing music. And then another person would be, they didn't.
Start creating until 10 PM and they were the middle of the night people. Right. So what works for one is not going to work for the other, but it is important to find out what works for us. And I am really fortunate. My kids are grown. They're gone. I'm single. I live alone. I can set my schedule however I want it.
And that is really, that is awesome. And that's not the same, you know, for everyone.
[00:16:00] Kellee Wynne Conrad: Right. Sometimes we do have to take advantage of the half hour and squeeze it in between whatever we need to do, but I am in that phase too. And I do find that most of the clients I work with are. Midlife or later, most of them don't have young kids, you know, and I know those challenges cause I put it off when my kids were young, but there is a certain sense of freedom in this age and having grown kids and having, you know, freedom to make your own choices and the freedom of just having your own business, which is still something that, you know, years into it.
And I'm just like, wow, wow. I get to do this. I have to do it. And it's hard to tell, but also, wow. Like. Young me, young Kellee would have never guessed that I'd be like, you know, making more than my husband does, you know,
[00:16:52] Jodie King: or getting to be an artist as a living, like as a profession,
[00:16:57] Kellee Wynne Conrad: As a profession. Right, exactly. I mean, it was my dream since I was young, but I just didn't know how to connect the dots. And sometimes it's just trial and error. I feel like everyone now has such greater access to resources than we did when we were like pushing up through, you know, like, When we're in the new frontier of social media and whatnot, trying to figure it all out.
And now here they are, like the, the path is almost made for them.
[00:17:25] Jodie King: Yeah. Well, and I didn't grow up wanting to be an artist. I didn't grow up with any, I grew up dancing from the time I was three years old until I was 11. So that was, I think my creative outlet, although I didn't think of it in that way, but it for sure was.
So I didn't pick up a paintbrush till I was 35. And by that point I had been, I had had a lot of successful entrepreneurial things and, had run companies and.
[00:17:50] Kellee Wynne Conrad: Well, let's talk about that. I would love for you to kind of like tell that little bit of that history for those, that maybe don't know you very well.
I mean, you're living under a rock if you don't know who Jodie King is.
[00:18:03] Jodie King: No, you're not. None the less. None the less. Yeah, no, I, I was not that kid that, that loved creating or painting or whatever. I was that kid until third grade, when I had an art teacher, uh, yeah, we were at, in our art class and we were sitting at one of those long cafeteria tables and the art teacher put a clump of clay in front of each of us and told us that we were going to be forming mushrooms.
And then we were going to get to paint them and then fireman the kiln, and we would get to see them in a couple of weeks. And so it was, it was very exciting. And so we got our clay and I formed my mushroom, but I had some extra clay leftover and so I rolled them into little balls and put little balls on top of the mushroom and then I painted the little balls, a different color.
It was red and white, you know, not surprising, but that's what I did. Mushroom was red. The little balls were white. And then the next week, or maybe it was two weeks, when they were all fired, and they were so beautiful and shiny and she was putting them in front of each of us again. And as she was going down the line and she said, Oh.
David, I love the this and she was complimenting each kid and I couldn't wait to get mine and she put mine in front of me. And all she said was. Jodie, those little balls were not part of the assignment. So. In that moment, I, of course, felt shame and decided I wasn't an artist. Wow. Now, in hindsight, I know that, that that was, showed creativity that was different, right?
I was different or I was creating something different. So now I'm like, hell yes, I was an artist.
[00:19:58] Kellee Wynne Conrad: Right, not showing the differentiation, the willingness to go outside of the lines is what actually shows that you're creative and an artist. But dang, if they can't just suffocate it out of us when we're kids
[00:20:13] Jodie King: Yeah, and I'm sure you as well. I've heard so many stories of something similar, which just squelches squelches that creativity. So I decided I'm not an artist and I never picked up a paintbrush again. And then 1 day. When I was 35, I'm 55 now. So it's 20 years ago, which is hard to believe because I still feel like I'm a toddler, but, at 35, I literally woke up one day and thought I want to paint, but that was before YouTube.
And that was before, you know, any access there was really before the internet. Really took off, so I think all we had was email. I don't even know if there was internet.
[00:20:47] Kellee Wynne Conrad: I mean, we had, I think YouTube was around 20 years ago, but it just wasn't populated with a whole lot of anything. I think the best we have was forums.
[00:20:55] Jodie King: Yeah, I didn't. I definitely it. There was probably YouTube, but I didn't I didn't know what it was.
[00:21:02] Kellee Wynne Conrad: It took us a while to jump on board.
[00:21:05] Jodie King: Yeah, it was not an early adopter anyway. So I just started painting and, I did the best I could and I ended up having a home tour because my then husband and I, had as cute little bungalow that we had remodeled and it was in this small town in Texas.
Um, and it was, so the historical society, said, Hey, will you put your house on the tour of homes? So we did, and I was cleaning up all of the. Crap because of the tour and I decided to hang a few of the paintings I had done on the wall. And as the women came through, some men came through as well.
A lot of the questions were, who did this? Who did this? And I was like, get the hell out of here. You're kidding me. And so I. One of the women, asked to buy a piece, and so I just told, it was a, I think it was a 36 by 48. It was a bigger piece. And she said, well, how much is it? And I had no, I, I no clue, but I knew I couldn't, was my belief.
I knew I couldn't get more than a thousand. Right. Because that would be crazy. Crazy. Um, crazy, crazy. So I said, I said 900, and she said, sold. Just like that.
[00:22:20] Kellee Wynne Conrad: And you're like, I meant,
[00:22:24] Jodie King: and then another woman owned a store in town and she asked if she could start selling my art there. So it became an accidental professional artists, but because before that I had had so many businesses and run businesses and had marketing training and all of this, I just decided I was going to apply the business skills that I knew.
To my art business and because I didn't have an art background or I had never said to a parent or anyone else for that matter, that I wanted to be an artist. I wasn't indoctrinated into the, you better get a real job. That's not a real job. Starving artists have a plan B. I wasn't indoctrinated to any of that.
So I just thought I'll just apply these business skills to my art business. That's what I did and the rest is history.
[00:23:16] Kellee Wynne Conrad: Tell me what some of those business experiences you have that you apply right now to, to your current. Like, obviously for the last 2 decades as being an artist, but what were some of those, business experiences that led you to understand the 1 thing that most artists are not very good at, which is a business acumen or knowledge of marketing and branding.
[00:23:37] Jodie King: Right. Right. So, 1 of the things that I did was, my family had a very high end restaurant, in Houston. So, that did 2 things number 1, I ran the restaurant and I understood the value that every single person that walks in the door is valuable. Like, you can't afford to not have a quality product and serve them in the best possible way.
Because if they leave, they're not going to tell one person. They're going to tell 10. So already I was like, have the best possible product. and serve people well. So that's why, I do fine art because I'm like, I'm going to have the best possible product and I am not going to be shy about asking for what it's worth.
So a lot of times, and I work with artists all the time who really feel very scared about First of all, knowing how to charge for art. And so that's one thing, you know, that we teach is how to do that. But the other thing is owning their own value and owning the value of their work. So that early experience of, um, have the finest product and you can charge a premium for it.
If you also give the best service possible, right. That was one thing. And then later,
[00:25:03] Kellee Wynne Conrad: Oh, wait, I have to interrupt you. Have you watched the bear?
[00:25:07] Jodie King: I have watched it, but I haven't got to the end of it, but I'm watching it right now.
[00:25:11] Kellee Wynne Conrad: But very much in season two, there's an episode where it really dives deep into that, that the customer experience to love on them and to be so proud of what you do and how you care for them.
And it just hit me like a ton of bricks. I'm like, that's how we have to run our businesses. So it's. And you're saying that in real life, not just in the TV shows, this is really how you do it in a restaurant. This is what we need to apply to the business model that we have now.
[00:25:39] Jodie King: A hundred percent. I couldn't agree with you more.
And the second thing I was going to say is along those same lines. So later when, I call him starter husband Todd. I adore this man. He was my 1st husband. He's the father of my children. He's the great guy. We're great friends. But anyway, started husband Todd and I started a wine bar in the early 90s.
This was before now their wine bars are a dime a dozen, but there weren't wine bars back then. Okay. So this was kind of a new concept. We started this wine bar and in order to get our name out there, there's so many things that we had to do. There was no social media. We could do mailers, we could do, you know, all of these things to reach out and to get people to come in the door.
So. There was that. Then the other thing is every time somebody walked in the door again, just like the restaurant before every time somebody walked in the door, that was a customer experience. So then fast forward 2 years later when instagram. Is coming up right and it's a thing and I'm using it to post.
I wasn't connecting the dots. So I was posting photos of my vacation and my dog and things like that. And then 1 day, I woke up and I'm like, holy shit. This is a platform that had, I think it's more than this now, but at the time, 1 billion users a month and it's free.
Jodie, what the hell are you doing? Use this platform. But because of my training, I never looked at it as I'm going to get followers. I'm going to followers. I'm going to followers. It was never about the number of followers. It was always about that person that walks in the door. You serve that customer to your highest ability.
You serve, you serve, you serve, and you connect because without the connection, they're not going to stay around long and without the service, they're not going to stay around long. And you have a quality product, all of those things. So that was just some of it. So now I teach people within my business courses about social media.
And I'm sure like you, I get so much resistance. From artists, because, and I used to say this too, by the way, so I get it, but they, they're like, I paint. I want to be alone. I don't want to show my art. I want to just paint. They want the art to speak for itself. You know, all of this. So they're very reluctant and hesitant.
To use social media or their, I don't know how, and, I think you and I have the same demographic of women. We're usually late forties into their seventies and it's not, um, innate. It feels awkward to them, but reframing. So when they say, how do I do this? I say, you treat it like one customer at a time.
And if they're like, well, nobody's commenting, nobody's engaging. It's like, then you need to change the way you're talking to people. Cause let's quit thinking of it as an algorithm and start thinking of it as a connection.
[00:28:44] Kellee Wynne Conrad: You got it and this is not what everyone complains about, but the algorithm and I have heard this and I feel like it's harsh, but I also know it's the truth.
It's not the algorithm. It's you. I mean, the truth of the matter is, is that you have to show up 100 percent you have to create. Engage worthy content, and you have to engage.
[00:29:06] Jodie King: Absolutely.
[00:29:07] Kellee Wynne Conrad: Right. So, and prior to the advent of social media, like you, you have mailers, you have radio ads, you have billboards, you have TV ads, you could go door to door and not, but you didn't have this free resource.
And now we do. So if we show up to serve the people who are already there, then it doesn't matter what number we're getting as far as following goes, right? Right. Because really engaged people is way better than a hundred thousand people who don't give a damn about what you're.
[00:29:33] Jodie King: Absolutely. Yeah. And oftentimes, if you have a big platform, let's say you have a platform of, you know, a million people, people are less likely to engage in comment because they think that, you know, it's getting lost in the numbers.
And so oftentimes with a smaller community, you're able to get more traction from a business perspective and people to really engage in what you're up to. Because it's not diluted.
[00:29:59] Kellee Wynne Conrad: It's not diluted, but it's up to you to engage. And so I noticed that quite often, it's like, no one's engaging with me.
And I'm like, but are you engaging with them? Are you responding to their comments? Are you reaching out and making comments on other people's posts that have something in common with you? And even now we've got threads. Thank you for one more thing for us to do, Zach. But.
I had someone ask me, she's like, well, I'm not getting any engagement and I'm finding it really hard to connect here on threads. Like everyone else says it's so easy. She's like, can you take a look really quick at what's going on? And I'm like, sure, I'll take a look. And she was posting the same stuff. She was posting on Instagram, highly curated photos with really me centric types of posts when you're talking all about yourself.
Nobody has an interest in engaging. She's like, but I'm asking questions. I'm like, you're not asking questions about them. You're asking them questions about yourself. So spend some time to actually listen to what your customer, whoever that customer is, listen to what their needs are and help engage with what their needs are.
Absolutely. That changes everything about whether people want, because then they feel heard and seen.
[00:31:13] Jodie King: Right. 100%. Yeah. I always say it's about you, but it's not for you. Right. Yeah. So you can, you can share your experiences, but it's not for you. It's for them. So how can you relate it back to them? How can you use it as a form of service?
[00:31:31] Kellee Wynne Conrad: Right, you can tell your journey, your story, but you've got to do it so that they see themselves in it and they become the hero of that story and they get the transformation, whether it's something for teaching business or in, you know, in the case of people who are selling art or selling an art courses, how did they see themselves in the story or what you shared and what is their transformation from, even if it's just a few sentences, how do they walk away feeling different?
Right?
[00:32:02] Jodie King: Absolutely. Absolutely.
[00:32:03] Kellee Wynne Conrad: And that's it. Each person is a customer that you have to cherish and that's it. With the wine bar, with social media, I mean, we all know if everyone on our social media list, any one of those posts that we have, like we're like, I only got 146 likes on this one post. Okay. Well, what happens if 146 people showed up for dinner?
You'd be overwhelmed, like, so yes, I get it, like, we're still looking at the reach and it's kind of unfortunate, but it's not a like, it's not a heart, it's a human.
[00:32:39] Jodie King: Yeah. And it, it is hard to get, to have to look at ourselves, just like when we first started talking, it's hard to look at ourselves and say, okay, you know, what is it about me?
What is it that I can do differently and how maybe I need to show up differently. And, and we're so resistant to change generally. And it takes a little while, but I have seen that artists that are willing to not just on social media, but even, you know, on their email lists. Or, on a podcast or in any, if when an artist really starts showing up in their fullness of who they are, the collectors are drawn to them and to their work in a different way.
And it makes a meaningful difference, financially to their bottom line.
[00:33:28] Kellee Wynne Conrad: Yeah. And I noticed that, like you said, even on podcasts, which is why I hit record before we were actually officially recording, because I'm noticing that I'm getting better conversations when I do that. I can't tell you how many times I turned on the podcast and all of a sudden it was like, I'm in business mode now and I have to act accordingly and I'm like, no, no, we're all done with that.
We all want you to just show up and like you said, give generously, serve, be human for change. Yeah. You know, I don't know. It is easier said than done because we get into routines and it's easy to just keep doing what we think everybody else is doing and, and it goes back to a vulnerability. It feels comfortable to post what we really want to post, you know, to talk about what we really want to talk about.
That's one of the reasons I took a break from social media is I was personally becoming a robot again. Here's this problem. Here's this event. Here's this thing we're doing. Here's how, what, but after a while, I'm like, this is not serving them or me. It's taking the, the, all the joy out of it. So it's a chance to reset and figure out what I really want. What I really want is deeper connection. Just like you're saying, I want to be able to have enough energy. So part of it for me is energy level and the space that I'm in to hold for each person who comes through the door and I say door, but I mean like that shows up in social media shows up in my inbox, sends me an email, works with me.
I want to be able to hold energy and space and serve them better. So I really have to rethink how I'm doing things.
[00:35:01] Jodie King: Right, right. You know, I had to do that, recently because I was doing so much at the end of 2022. Yeah, 2022 was just one of those years that just things just exploded. Um, just,
[00:35:15] Kellee Wynne Conrad: I saw you had some really exciting things.
[00:35:18] Jodie King: Oh, so great. So many great things from, you know, fortune entrepreneur, cBS, NBC, like all kinds of great press and great opportunities came through. But at the end of November, December of 2022, I was completely burned out, completely burned out. Not surprising because I said yes to everything.
Because, that whole hustle. Culture hustle mentality be grateful for what you got. You got to just keep going and going and going until it burn, you know, get burned out. And so then, as I was thinking, okay, well, what do what do I want? What what is going to make this fun again? That was the question.
Would this be fun? If it's not fun, I'm not coming. That was the bar. It's like, is this going to be fun?
[00:36:09] Kellee Wynne Conrad: I mean, every yes, you've heard this quote, every yes, you say is a no to something else. Right. So, gotta make those yeses count, which I'm glad that you chose coming on the podcast
[00:36:27] Jodie King: as one of fun, and I wasn't wrong.
[00:36:30] Kellee Wynne Conrad: Yeah, thank you. No, I mean, podcasters. understand podcasters. We throw in podcasting, I think, partly just so that we can get on that deeper level. It is a chance to have a better conversation.
[00:36:42] Jodie King: I agree, but not every podcaster wants to have those conversations.
[00:36:45] Kellee Wynne Conrad: I know, but I do.
And if you don't want to show up on my podcast, And have a real conversation, then it's going to be a real short podcast episode. Yeah. Yeah. That's just me though, but so I want to ask you a little bit about those PR opportunities. Was it one of those things where, you were an overnight sensation and it just miraculously happened after 20 years of hard work?
Or did you actually apply?
[00:37:13] Jodie King: Yeah, okay. So that's a good question. Different things happen. Like, for instance, let's just start with, the beginning of the year was NBC. And it was, it was local. It wasn't national. So I want to be really clear about that. But, you know, I live in Austin. It's a big.
It's a big city, right?
[00:37:29] Kellee Wynne Conrad: It's a big art city too. Yeah. Texas in general is a big art state.
[00:37:35] Jodie King: Yeah, yeah. So because I had been talking and I still talk about it, but at the time I had really been talking about it, especially with COVID, about how art is so healing for us, emotionally, um, well, in all kinds of ways.
What we went to NBC and pitch to them was you know, we're starting off the year. How can, people, really kick it off in a good frame of mind and use art as a form of healing, you know, art, journaling, et cetera. So, when, when it comes to PR and media in general, you always need to think, how can I serve their audience?
I guess it's like social media, right? It's like, it is not about me. It is how I can serve their audience, right? So that's, that's how those things started. And then, fortune magazine was, this was okay. This is back when the whole NFT craze was happening and I was looking at NFTs and I was looking at the value of.
what that could bring to an artist. Like how was that affecting the artist? And when I saw that with NFTs, anytime the art, the NFT is sold, then the artist gets that money. And then anytime it's resold, the artist gets, up to 10 percent in perpetuity. So that was what made me interested in it. And so then, we pitched that to Fortune and said, I've got something to say about this as a woman and as an artist because they were all coming at it from the collector's standpoint.
Yeah. And so, you know, I had something to say about it from an artist standpoint. So anytime we are looking at media, any sort, print, TV, magazine, whatever it might be, we always look at it as what value can I add to their audience?
[00:39:36] Kellee Wynne Conrad: Right. And maybe a twist on a point of view that they hadn't considered.
Exactly. I mean, you put the 2 together, the value was, this is a real hot topic, so we want to be able to talk about it. I know that's what our audience wants. And then here you come in and you're like, I have a take on this hot topic from a totally different point of view.
[00:39:57] Jodie King: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So that's how that works.
[00:40:02] Kellee Wynne Conrad: No, you guys did the pitching. You and your team did the pitching and
[00:40:05] Jodie King: exactly pretty cool. Yeah. And, I'm not trying to pitch my, but I have a program. Where I do work with a coaching program. And one of the things that we know that I
[00:40:15] Kellee Wynne Conrad: want you to pitch it, right? I love supporting other artists and the things they do, because I might not be the right person for everyone.
So you're here.
[00:40:25] Jodie King: It's very kind. So I have a program we call studio elite, and it's a very small group. I never take more than eight artists. We're about to start with my next cohort is a six month program. And, there's. Five or six artists in there. Anyway, what we do is we, it's six months, but one of the things we do is we have a private retreat here in Austin and my team comes and my team, one of my PR person who is doing this pitching, and my social media person who is running my social media.
I'm still writing my captions, but she's running the social media, right? My digital marketing specialist who is doing all the emailing and putting together the, Courses like they all come and they work directly with the artists so that my PR person can say, okay, you know, Kellee, what is I've looked at your stuff.
Here are some different angles that you can go about doing for getting into different media situations. And here's the different things that you can consider. So I just think it's really valuable to be able to teach that to artists.
[00:41:28] Kellee Wynne Conrad: Absolutely. Because. Yeah. Again, we can go back to the fact that you're in an unusual situation of having had a history with business and understanding these things better.
I might have a bit of an unusual background too, in the fact that my parents were both entrepreneurs. And my father was an artist, but, he's run his own business his whole life. I think I might remember him having worked for someone else once in the entire time that I've, you know. Been alive.
Yeah,
[00:41:57] Jodie King: some of us are just not suited for most, most
[00:42:03] Kellee Wynne Conrad: creatives don't really have a natural born inkling towards how to do a business, how to do marketing, how to do PR. And so when they find the right resources, they find. A mentor that they can trust that that has paved the way that has shown that they've gotten results.
It just shortens that time of trying to figure it all out instead of 20 years, right? It can take you six months to a year to really totally radically shift what you're doing. So things that I still don't know that much about, like I get, I have a creative brain to come up with new ideas, but I don't know much about PR.
Could I come up with some, Original ideas that I could pitch. Yes, but I wouldn't even know who to go to or how to pitch them. So it's awesome when you have a program that kind of builds in that training that people really need that they wouldn't have sought out on their own.
[00:42:50] Jodie King: Yeah, yeah.
Well, 1 tip I can give you into all of your listeners is a tip that, my PR person told me and that is start in your own backyard. And she said, then you want to own your backyard. And the reason for this, cause you know we all want national recognition, right? Or global recognition, you know, why stop at national?
But the thing is, is that any sort of national publication media of any sort. They will always, Google or research you. And if you haven't had any press just within your own city, they are less likely to take it to a larger scale. So it's really important for artists to get PR, even if you think it's nothing, even if you live in a town of 5, 000 people and it's just in your local newspaper, or you're in a free magazine for your community. All of it matters. So start in your own backyard and from there things things start to pick up.
[00:43:57] Kellee Wynne Conrad: That's a really excellent advice. In fact, that just reminds me of another entrepreneur I've followed for ages.
She's in the floral wedding industry, and that's where she started with her, our own, Baltimore News hosting in the morning, doing some floral Advice, you know, and it's like just blown up from there. So yeah, start local for sure. I mean, that's really how we start selling our work anyway, is start local.
And that's how I started to, as I joined small organizations in my area, because that gave me connections to all the other artists who were doing things that had the inside scoop. Oh, I know this person who did this. I know this art show that's coming up here. A publication or I'm connected with, you know, whatever it is, is like, once you start networking, and this is good old fashion, how you build a business, networking has been the best resource for, for, you know, 100 years and now here we are, we rely so much on just social media and the truth of the matter is, is networking and collaborations and connecting with other Yeah.
Like minded people, like minded artists, like minded businesses makes just all the difference in the world. I mean, that's how I really got myself started in my profession. I walked right into a gallery and said, let me curate your next show. And she said, okay. And now I realize because it's hard as hell.
And I took a big chunk off her shoulders, but then that gave me the next four years of experience of curating shows, you know?
[00:45:31] Jodie King: Yeah. Yeah. It's so scary for us also, because we're, you know, by and large visual artists tend to be introverts and it's just really, as you were talking about earlier, talking about going outside of your comfort zone, right.
That is such a stretch, but as we know, everything awesome happens outside of our comfort zone. So. Just taking that leap. I promise you won't die. That's what we feel like is going to happen. I'm going to die. It doesn't go well. You won't die
[00:46:01] Kellee Wynne Conrad: system just a little bit. Exactly. It'll be okay. And then that begs the question of how much do you want to stay in your comfort zone versus how much do you really want it?
Right? Yeah. So when you have big dreams and visions and You know, you can't sit in your room all alone and manifest it. You actually have to embody it and show up as it.
[00:46:28] Jodie King: 100 percent 100 percent yes, but yeah, but to your point, which is such a good one is how much do you want , to succeed and how much do you want to stay in your comfort zone?
Yeah, that is all about cognitive dissonance. And if an artist. And I'm sure your listeners know about cognitive dissonance, but it's basically holding two things at once. It's, I really want this one thing, but I'm really worried that if I have it, this is going to happen, something bad. Right. So let's say I really want to have a successful art business, but, I'm afraid that I'll have to sacrifice being a great wife.
Or mother, or I really want to have this successful art business, but I'm afraid I'll have to be visible. And I'm anxious about that. Right? And so when you have this cognitive dissonance that you're not acknowledging, and you're not addressing that cognitive dissonance, it's like having 1 foot on the gas and 1 foot on the break and nothing is going to go anywhere.
[00:47:30] Kellee Wynne Conrad: Absolutely. Right. And what we convince ourselves is, is I'm not good enough, or I don't know enough yet. Let me learn some more, or it's not right. It's not perfect yet. We give ourselves a whole lot of other things. It's really just excuses to keep us from taking the next step. Right?
Exactly. I've learned. That the best way to make the next step forward, but also to get clarity is to just take action. Right?
[00:48:00] Jodie King: Absolutely. You can,
[00:48:01] Kellee Wynne Conrad: you can make the action. You can take the action. You can totally fall flat on your face. You're going to learn more from that than having never done it at all.
[00:48:09] Jodie King: And you're going to probably learn more from it than if you were wildly successful right out of the gate.
[00:48:13] Kellee Wynne Conrad: I think so. I mean, the amount of times that I failed. Trying to get to the point of being able to sell my artwork and look, I have a little bit of a different story. I may come from artists. I may come from an art background.
I wanted to be an artist since I was a child. I am very fortunate to have never really had any teacher or. Or authority figures say you didn't do it right. But at the same time I watched the struggle and I had seen a lot of artists around me succeed, but I also knew how hard it was. And then I just chose not to go down that path, but I had always wanted it.
And so even though I had seen success, I mean, I grew up, this is so weird. I know, but I grew up in a neighborhood where everyone was an artist and all these fathers and mothers supported their family, but everyone had, and this is in the eighties. multi hundred thousand dollar homes in the eighties on five acres.
That's amazing. And had eight kids or whatever. Well, you know, like, so all of these families were supported by art. So you would think that my natural inclination is, is there's no such thing as a starving artist. And yet I hit my own blocks. And then I really waited until probably the first time I started selling artwork was 2012.
And it never took off. Like, I made a little progress, but it never, like, I kept hitting the wall and I kept getting up over and over again. So, like, . I'm willing to, to be battered and bruised for the cause. Cause I keep going.
[00:49:42] Jodie King: Well, I was going to say, you knew, you knew that, you had visual representations of this.
It does work. It really does work. And all the time you know, artists say, I want what you got. I want, the success that you had. And I always say there is nothing. I have in me that you don't have in you right. I just refuse to quit.
[00:50:04] Kellee Wynne Conrad: That's the secret. If everyone's listening and wants to know the secret to success, the secret is you just don't quit everything else.
We are just figuring it out as well. But I would say that's the number one thing. You just don't quit. Exactly. If I if I quit when I got hard, I wouldn't be here right now.
[00:50:26] Jodie King: Absolutely. You don't quit. And then you just adjust, right? It's like, well, that that didn't go well. What could I have done differently?
[00:50:35] Kellee Wynne Conrad: It's all just data. How do we. On to that.
[00:50:38] Jodie King: Exactly. You know, I teach artists out to release a collection right there. I have all these different strategy that I teach, you know, I also paintings one off, you know, throughout the year, but then once a year, I have a collection and they're released.
And so I teach artists how to release a collection. And the ones that do it and use the tools that I'm teaching them. They have, like, wild success, like, sell out. Maybe it's their 1st collection ever, even if they're new, or whether they've been painting a really long time. They do incredible.
They sell out of the collection, but the ones that just do part of it. Meaning they post on social media. Right? Because that's what we all think as artists. Well, I'll just post on social media and I'll sell my art and I'll have a wildly successful career. It doesn't work like that.
[00:51:28] Kellee Wynne Conrad: No, there's so many other things you've got to do.
[00:51:31] Jodie King: So many things. Um, anyway, so for those artists that don't do that, they did not have a great release of their collection. But guess what? That's okay. Because next time they're like, oh, all right. Noted probably do what I, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this other stuff next time. So you don't quit.
You don't decide at that point. I'm a terrible artist. Because that's what happens is we make it mean something about our art, right? You know, like I was saying earlier, I'm a hack. My work is terrible. That's what we make it mean. That's not the case. Not usually. Not usually the case. I mean, you do have to have a great product.
But it's usually just the execution. You're just going to change the execution. Yeah.
[00:52:15] Kellee Wynne Conrad: Well, and so if you were like, I might as well allow you to give a few tips about like you've given a lot of advice, but what are some of those things that you say when you're releasing a collection? If you were to say like three or four things that are absolute must do besides having quality work.
We know for sure you probably want to have been creating long enough that you have a clear vision and voice and you can create the collection. So that part's done. We know you can do that. You figured out how to photograph it, blah, blah, blah. But what do we do for the marketing leading up to that? What would be a few really important things?
[00:52:49] Jodie King: Such a good question. And I like to look, at other industries and look at best practices of other industries. What are they doing? Right? Because we don't need to reinvent the wheel. We can just look at what's successful out there in other industries. And so two of my favorite things in the world are Ted Lasso and JLo's skin.
I mean, what the hell? We're the same age. She looks amazing. You look amazing though. Wait, you look amazing. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Anyway, okay. So best practices. So I look at all we have to do is we look at so Ted Lasso, right? First season came out so good, right? We have a great product.
So no one knew when season 2 was coming out until we did. And then it was going to be released. The 2nd season was going to come out at the end of July. And guess when we learned about that? The 1st of June. Okay. And when JLo was going to release her skin care line, she was releasing her skin care line on January 1st.
Guess when we started hearing about her new skin care line? November 1st. So, as artists, what we generally do is, let's say, the 1st of December, we start thinking, huh, I think I should create something for Christmas.
[00:54:16] Kellee Wynne Conrad: Oh, yeah.
[00:54:17] Jodie King: Like, okay, that that doesn't give you much of a runway. To start letting people know that this is coming, right?
So that's what both Ted Lasso and JLo did is they let people know it was coming early. They started teasing it and promoting it ahead of time. Right. So that's the exact same thing I suggest artists do. Pick a date, right? So JLo had January 1st. She picked it for a reason. She didn't want it lost in the noise of Christmas, although you can release a collection in, you know, Christmas.
But I'm just saying she picked a date and she stuck with it, okay? So you start with the date. Pick a date that you want to release the collection. Now work backwards from that date, okay? And just know that two months You know, eight weeks. You could even say six weeks. You don't even have to do, because come on, you know, I'm not J Lo.
I don't have to do a whole eight weeks. So, I'm much more Ted Lasso than J Lo.
Anyway, so you pick a date, say six weeks in advance, and you're like, that's the date. I'm going to start letting people know that I have a collection coming out. And then within the next six weeks, you start giving people a taste of what this collection is, what it's about, what is inspiring you and you create FOMO, you create a FOMO around and you create a buzz around this.
And this goes back to social media. Yes, , it's about me. It's about this collection, but it's not for me, right? It is. How is this going to connect to your collector? And you make sure you talk about that in your messaging. So you're getting people excited about it. And then as it gets closer, you're going to want to make sure that you are letting, your email list know that this is coming because.
The people that are on your email list, they are your warmest audience. These are the people that already thinks the sun shines out of your ass or they would, or they would have unsubscribed. Right. They already love what you're doing. We're not a big box store. That's not who we are.
They're not just staying on for that, right? They have to love what we're doing. They're going to unsubscribe. So you let them know ahead of time through your emails. You let them know 3 weeks in advance. Hey, you guys put this on your calendar, but, market on there. And then a couple of weeks before that, you tell them again, you're in it and then you release it to the people that have served you like that are in your community that have supported you the most.
And you release your collection to your email list. Thanks. First, that also serves because when you are talking about it on social media, because you're going to be talking about it on social media a lot also, right? You drive people to your email list. So now you're building your email list at the same time and you give them the benefit of being the first to view the collection.
It's like a gift. Look, you guys have decided to support me and just by getting on my email list. So I'm going to give you 1st access to that collection. So all the while. Yeah, you're talking about it on social media for sure. But you're also. Honoring those people on your email list, and you're letting them know, and then you set it all up from an e commerce standpoint to where those people do get first access to your collection.
And you have a cut off date. Right, so you want to give them in some incentive to purchase before you release it to all of your social media. So those are those are my biggest tips in a nutshell of if you're going to release a collection, but what do we do? Like, I'm working on this. I'm working on my holiday collection right now.
Right. Right.
[00:58:01] Kellee Wynne Conrad: So the other point is, is, you know, you start promoting here, but that means months in advance.
[00:58:07] Jodie King: Absolutely.
[00:58:08] Kellee Wynne Conrad: Bringing it all out and working on it. And this is actually the exact, so I, I teach more of those who are creating courses, coaching programs, community projects, collaborations, and other kinds of forms of building their creative business other than usually how to sell art, but it's the same principle.
We let them know in an excitement that this thing is coming and we say get on the email list because those on the email list get first dibs, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They get a priority price. They get a first chance before everything sells out. Whatever it is, is both an end, a launch of whatever it is, whether it's your artwork or a course or whatever you're going to do a retreat, you're going to do.
That's going to be something that builds your list. So if someone misses out this time, or they look at it and they're like, I don't have the finances, but I'm now on the list next time around. Guess what? If you've been nurturing them the whole time, they're there and ready and waiting.
[00:59:04] Jodie King: Exactly. And it comes down to what we talked about at the very beginning. It is serving every single person that comes to your door. If somebody got on your email list, they have walked in your door, right? Serve that
[00:59:18] Kellee Wynne Conrad: they had to make a choice.
[00:59:20] Jodie King: Because nobody wants another email. you know? Yeah, exactly. But, you know, nobody wants another email.
So if they made the decision to get on your email list, they're really interested in what you're doing. Yeah, exactly.
[00:59:35] Kellee Wynne Conrad: Just like you, exactly. I love that. I think this is really valuable. I am so glad you came on. I am going to ask you two questions. One, what do you have coming up in the near future that we can all be excited for?
Or how can people connect with you?
[00:59:50] Jodie King: Yeah, thank you for asking. So something I have coming up October 3rd and 4th is, our 1st annual art biz and soul summit, which is a 2 day online summit. I'm so excited about this. I know we visited briefly about it. I'm so excited about this because as artists, we do have to consider a business.
We have to consider our creativity, making our strongest art, and we have to consider, like, our mindset stuff are, and I love the woo part of it, the energy work, the mindset work that all of the stuff. So that's coming up, October 3rd and 4th. Yeah.
[01:00:25] Kellee Wynne Conrad: Yeah, awesome. So they'll be able to connect with you at Jodi underscore King underscore,
[01:00:32] Jodie King: right? Yeah. Yeah. So my Instagram is Jodi, J O D I E underscore King underscore, or you can just find me on my website. Jodi king. com J O D I E K I N G. com.
[01:00:42] Kellee Wynne Conrad: And I know you have. A couple of really good on demand programs. One is the Color Course for Rebels, which, you know, I'm a color lover.
Like, that's my language when it comes to art. And then the Art Biz Course for Rebels as well, so you can go at your own pace before you might be ready to jump into... A deeper coaching program, right?
[01:01:02] Jodie King: Exactly. Thanks for mentioning that. I'm always so bad about pitching my own stuff.
[01:01:06] Kellee Wynne Conrad: Okay. But those who are listening to you, who are probably connecting with you really deeply right now are going to be like, okay, I'm ready for that next step.
And Jody's my person. So we'll make sure all those links are there. And for the summit, that's really exciting. So the last question I have is. What is your big audacious stream?
[01:01:26] Jodie King: Oh, I can't tell you cause I'm looking for a patent. I'm trying to get a patent on it right now. But, uh, no, but I would say beyond that, my big audacious dream is.
To impact artists globally to put this whole starving artists BS aside, because I believe to my core that artists are some of the most important people in the world right now, because, well, have always been. Because we are the feelers. Of the world, we are the sensitive ones and, you know, Anita Morjani wrote a book called sensitive is the new strong and I really believe that we don't need any more bravado and stuff.
We need to start really looking at ourselves and sensitivity. That's who artists are, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't get paid. To do what we love. So I'm on a mission globally to elevate artists, not only in how the world sees us, but how we see ourselves so that we can have a life and a career doing what we love.
[01:02:34] Kellee Wynne Conrad: There you go. That's awesome. Thank you so much.
[01:02:37] Jodie King: You're welcome. It was such a pleasure to talk to you.
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