Earning $800k As An Artist By Using Marketing And Metrics To Dominate A Niche | With Blake Jamieson

[00:00:00] Brian: Welcome back to another episode of the six figure creative podcast. I am your host Brian Hood, and I'm here with my big bald beautiful co-host who's not wearing a purple shirt today, but he usually does. Christopher J. Graham, how are you doing today? My dude, 


[00:00:13] Chris: I'm great, buddy. How are you doing? 


[00:00:15] Brian: I'm doing good, man. You've, you've been slacking a lot lately on these podcasts intros, because usually you'll talk and like you'll have something interesting or witty or like, or sometimes like completely pointless and meaningless to say. 


[00:00:26] Chris: What did you you've shamed me repeatedly for not asking how you are. And so I 


[00:00:30] Brian: I know, but like at the same time I have nothing, the whole dynamic of this podcast and the reason we've worked for all these years, Chris is because you say silly, stupid stuff is fun and lighthearted the intro just to ease people in. So we're not going straight to business. Cause here's the thing in the south here. 


[00:00:42] Like I'm from Alabama in the south. We don't go straight to business. You small talk for like a while before you ever talk business. That's like, that's the culture of the south. 


[00:00:50] Chris: I have small talk. Okay. You shut up all small talk. Here we go. 


[00:00:53] What's going on in my life. I recently, and don't go out and buy one of these yet. Cause I'm trying to get an affiliate deal with them. But I, you know, those purple mattresses that are all fancy schmancy. I, I went large and I got like one of their nicest ones with an electric bass and it like moves around and like, I have never slept better or been more comfortable in my life. 


[00:01:15] And so I lie in bed a lot. 


[00:01:17] Brian: that's a trend that you've, if people have probably noticed on this podcast in the, of, for awhile, is that anytime you talk about gear or hardware or something like something like that, it's always the most exciting, amazing thing you've ever experienced in your life. It's like, it's the extreme, it's always the extreme. 


[00:01:31] You're never medium Chris. 


[00:01:33] Chris: I'm a superlative superlative. 


[00:01:35] Brian: Okay, well, God don't, don't start the punts or anything like wordy today. Cause you man, last episode, last interview was a train wreck with your stupid puns. All right. Let's let's, let's dive into that. We got a, we got a good guest today. Uh, His name is Blake Jamieson. He is a artist who is making a killing, selling his creative works. 


[00:01:52] He has been featured on CNBC. He is from what I understand is a multi six figure income artists, which is hard to do in his world. And he's made nearly, this is, this is just the numbers I'm finding online. So correct me if you want Blake we'll get, we'll get into your story here made nearly 50 K in six weeks with NFTs, which, you know, that's a thing that's heightened, heightened and popular and you know, in the last year or so, and there's a quote I'm going to pull from your CNBC interview. 


[00:02:18] You said my business went from 100 K to 800 K in what felt like a second. So we're going to dive into a lot of this stuff and some of the backstory and some of the things that I think a lot of our audience are struggling with. So Blake, thank you for coming on the podcast. 


[00:02:31] Blake: Thanks for having me happy to be here. 


[00:02:34] Brian: And there's always, it always, we never do this, but thanks for sitting through the stupid intro, the me and my, my class, it's always, it's always weird doing these. 


[00:02:41] Like, because for years we did this podcast was just me and Chris. We never did interviews. So it was like we could banter and do stupid stuff, but now it's like, we got guests just watching us. So we full yeah. 


[00:02:49] Blake: Hey, live your life, man. Live your life. 


[00:02:51] Brian: just to start things off, I'd love in your own words, like w what would you, how would you even describe what you do at this point? 


[00:02:57] Because you, you seem to have gotten a very winding path, what kind of go back through, and you seem to have your hand, your eye, like a few different irons in the fire. How do you describe what you do with it? 


[00:03:06] Blake: I'm a pop portrait artist focused on painting portraits of professional athletes based in Brooklyn, New York, originally from San Francisco. Uh, I grew up in a very creative household where I was always encouraged to create my parents are both creatives in their own. Right. And when it was time to go to college, they encouraged me to go to art school and I've, I very much rebelled from that and thought that it was not a viable career path. 


[00:03:27] And so I studied economics skated by as a C student, a C minus student through college, and then got into digital marketing. And it was really early at Zynga, a gaming company 


[00:03:37] Brian: Oh, yeah. Familiar with it. 


[00:03:39] Blake: That was my first job right out of college. And got to ride that wave. And could kind of leverage that into a pretty successful career in digital marketing, working for a variety of clients in different industries and different company sizes. 


[00:03:52] And at the end of the day, I learned that I was moderately good at selling stuff online, whatever it was. And so I sold, you know, it was whether I was driving app downloads or like I sold chlorine, like pool chlorine, and sold millions of dollars of it on Facebook for one of my clients. And so. It was doing that over and over and over again for all these different brands. 


[00:04:13] They gave me, I think, enough confidence to say, you know what, I could probably actually make the art thing work. And so when I was 30, which is six years ago, I left digital marketing to pursue painting full time and having look back and I've had two niches since then. Now the sports niche has really been one to kind of take my business to the next level. 


[00:04:31] And specifically within that, I work with tops baseball cards and my art is turned into baseball cards and that's a licensing deal, which is a big source of revenue for me in terms of you know, the mix. But yeah, and if T's, you know, with my background in tech, I was very bullish on NFTs pretty early and got to ride a lot of that that hype cycle that we got to see earlier this year. 


[00:04:51] And I'm still bullish on the technology. Long-term, that's an exciting thing. And, and man, I just get to wake up every day and paint pictures, and there's not much better than that in my book. 


[00:05:01] Brian: I think our audience can resonate with that, that vision a lot. So we have a wide variety of people that listen to this podcast, but they all have one thing in common. they are either doing it or they want to do, they want to wake up and do their creative talent for a living, what they want to do. 


[00:05:15] And so you're, you're kind of doing that. So I want to, I want to step back a little bit. You talked about the, the career at Zynga, and I don't want you to, I'm not going to ask you to bash them or do anything, but you did mention something that I saw on one of your interviews, that when I was doing my pre episode research, which was There was never a point where you're like, I can't, this is the day I'm putting my flag in the ground. I'm going to go full-time and doing my art for living. But you said as a gradual decline until eventually in your thirties, you left to go pursue art, or actually you left to go do a big trip talk about that transition that made you eventually, what was that gradual wear down that that said, okay, I'm successful in the digital marketing world, the day job, the golden handcuffs as we call it where you have probably a good living and you're successful, but you're not really fulfilled, or I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but that's how a lot of people feel. 


[00:05:59] What was that transition like that got you eventually to say, Hey, I'm going to go down to this other. 


[00:06:03] Blake: Yeah. I mean, it was gradual and it wasn't like I didn't plan ahead of time that I was going to leave and start painting full time. When I decided at age 30 to quit the corporate job. It was just because I was just tired of looking forward to Fridays and dreading Mondays. And that was something that did happen over time, where at first, you know, you get a new gig and it's exciting and there's new challenges and new things to learn creatively, even like in the digital marketing space, I was still able to flex my creativity a little bit. 


[00:06:31] the last company I was with, I was there for two years. I love the people that I work with. You know, like the company wasn't like passionate about what they were doing, but like, it was cool, but yeah man, just enough, enough Fridays that I was just so stoked for and then followed by a Monday that I was bummed out, just all added up and I turned 30 and I was like, what's the point? 


[00:06:49] Like, like you said, golden handcuffs. Like I had I was in Arizona at the time I had bought a house and remodeling that house was kind of. Art project, I guess of the two years that I was at that job. And I basically got the house so close to completion and I was like coming to the end of that project. 


[00:07:02] And I'm like, well, what am I going to do next? Cause I can't just like go this cubicle job Monday through Friday and you know, whatever, they, it's just not what I, that's not the way I wanted to live my life. So I, I put a notice. I quit that job that business was seasonal. So I actually ended up staying. 


[00:07:15] I gave them like four or five months notice just so that I could like run them through their busy season. And then I'm planning this trip to Barcelona. Spain. I had never been to Europe in my life I didn't know anybody there. I had a backpack and night the first night, like reservation at a hostel that I found online. 


[00:07:34] And just went with it. And, and actually the goal when I went to Barcelona was it was a five week trip and I'm a really big audio book guy. I love audible. And specifically within audible, I love, I fall in love with narrators more so than, than authors. And so like, I'll follow specific narrators where any books they get, they, they are narrating. 


[00:07:53] I will buy that book and there's a narrator named RC Bray. He's a total beast. and he's like a legend. He like wins awards in the audio book kind of world. And he happens to do a lot of zombie fiction. And I had never been a fan of zombie fiction, but I had kind of gotten into it because I was following like all of his books and I listened to like 12 of them and I'm like, I get the formula. 


[00:08:14] I could write a zombie, I could write a zombie book. And so my goal for Spain was to. Right. As AMI book with the ultimate goal of having RC Bray, be the narrator of the audio book version. And so I was writing specifically for the narrator that I wanted in mind and I got to Barcelona and I started, you know, I'd go out and explore the city and stuff during the day. 


[00:08:34] And then at night I'd come home and sit in my, crack a beer and right. And that book is fired by the way. I've only, I've only written probably about 25% of it. Then what happened is at the, at these hostels in Barcelona, they have like these walking tours through the city where the front desk person at the hostel will say, oh, well, if you like architecture, you can see this gouty walking tour. 


[00:08:53] If you like art, you can see this street art and graffiti walking tour, if you like this. And so like, I was always drawn to like street art and graffiti stuff. And so I took this walking tour where. this tour guide Raquel walked us all, you know, a group of a dozen of us through the city and we'd stop at different kinds of iconic places where artists do street art. 


[00:09:10] And she explained the history of street art and graffiti and Barcelona, which is kind of through the eighties. It was like one of the meccas of the world because the city would actually let you let artists just paint everywhere. And then I think it was mid eighties. They started, they stopped doing that, but still like, it has this like crazy like history and there's still like these spots that are, that are super legit. 


[00:09:29] And then I get back to my hostel that night after the tour. And I look across the street and there's an art store and I'm a very much like, everything happens for a reason kind of guy. And I saw that as a sign and I'm like, all right, I'm just going to go get some paint and see what happens. And so I go get some paint and I start like spending the days of going out or exploring or writing or anything, I'm like cutting stencils to go out at night and then spray paint and do like little tag. 


[00:09:53] It's so much fun. And like, because I knew where the tour stopped, all the different key spots. That's where I would tag is because I knew these are the stops. And so then I hit all these spots, like sequentially over certain nights, I'd go and I'd hit the different spots and then I would go, and then I went and I took the tour again and Raquel's like walking through. 


[00:10:11] She's like, oh, well this is a new artist. We don't know who stoke is, but this is interesting. And then we go to the next spot and she's like, whoa, stoke is everywhere. stoke was my name. Am I like, you know, handle or whatever for, for tagging. And so like then, like, I can't, I'm such a bad secret keeper. 


[00:10:25] Like by the end of that first tour that I took, when she likes all my stuff, I'm like, Hey, I'm stoke. And she's like, are you serious? I'm like, yeah. So she's like, that's so cool. It was just, it was, it was amazing. Like, it was just so funny, like how it all works and like the timing of it all. But, you know, I had always enjoyed eating in different fashions and doing art painting specifically had always been a love of mine and also like the street art and graffiti angle was always an influence. 


[00:10:48] Like I loved, you know, Shepard, Fairey and Banksy are some of my biggest influences. And so. I had always like, you know, loved that stuff. And then being able to make it myself was fun. And like being in college, being from California in Spain, I meet other local artists. Yeah. They're like, whoa, you're from California. 


[00:11:04] That's the coolest, like your art is so cool. And like, even though, like, it was whatever, but like, it would have been different if I was in California doing our in California, like where I'm from and people will be like, okay, cool. You're just, you're just an artist, but they're like, oh, you're an artist from around the world. 


[00:11:19] Like this is epic. And like just sometimes just a tiny bit of like positive feedback is, is enough to like, get you over that initial learning curve and creative endeavors where like most people just stop because they don't think they're good enough. And they don't have validation for somebody else to say no, no. 


[00:11:33] Like given how much time you've done this, like, you're pretty good. It was really good to get that. And so when I came back to the states, after that trip, it was signed, sealed and delivered. I'm like, I'm gonna. 


[00:11:42] Brian: Yeah. So I think anytime someone's trying to find their way in this new path, that they've never had any experience before that imposter syndrome, I think holds back so many people we've, we've touched on this in some past interviews we've done recently of just imposter syndrome, stopping so many talented, creative, amazing people from doing something that could potentially change the world or change someone's life or help someone to provide value to someone just because they didn't have that initial boost of confidence that you got on what I call your self discovery trip to Barcelona. 


[00:12:09] So what was it if I'm doing the math right? I was 2015. You were in Barcelona. 


[00:12:12] Blake: let's see. So I'm 36. So I put in notice when I was 30 on my 30th birthday, I stayed for like six months later. So that was actually February of. I guess it must've been February of 2016 that I went, so I left the job in like August of 2015, even though I gave, I gave or maybe not, I don't know, it's hard, but it was, it was January of 2016, February of 2016. 


[00:12:34] Then I was in Barcelona. So, you know, I tell people I've been painting for six years, but really when I do the math, because of like the lag on the notice and stuff, it's really closer to five, 


[00:12:42] Brian: That's what I'm trying to get is like, this was relatively recently. It's not like you've been plugging away for 15 years of this. Like you're very far along in a short amount of time, but there's a, there's a next step in your journey that I want to cover. Now. That is you, went on this journey, you went on the self-discovery journey. 


[00:12:57] You were going to write the zombie apocalypse, whatever, 


[00:12:59] Blake: I still will. 


[00:13:01] It's still, in, it's just still in progress. 


[00:13:03] Brian: I trust you. 


[00:13:04] Chris: So a buddy of mine actually is in that genre and he has a book called zombie haiku in its haiku poems about 


[00:13:12] Blake: I love that. 


[00:13:13] Chris: It's so amazing. 


[00:13:14] Blake: love that. 


[00:13:15] Brian: Well, let's, let's go, let's get back on topic here. You were, you went to write this book, which is, which is really cool. And like, I've, I've listened to a few, a few, like in the bigger books in that genre. So like I do like fishing books like 


[00:13:26] Blake: I'll give you, I mean, this is also like it's a made for TV book, if I could say. So it is a zombie apocalypse that breaks out at EDC and there's the protagonist, who's like a tech tech surfer from LA, which also is like, kind of like, oh, we're all writing on, stuff are familiar about, right? So it's like this nerdy tech surfer that is building this like wetsuit company. 


[00:13:46] He goes to EDC with like his super crushed that's like this girl is totally out of his league. There's a bad batch of ecstasy that ends up turning into turning people into zombies. And it's at EDC where there's all these, you know, scantily clad chicks and they become zombies and they come up to dudes like, ah, they're like, woo. 


[00:13:59] And then they get fucking bit and becomes zombies. I 


[00:14:02] Chris: sexy zombies. I can't think of anything 


[00:14:04] Blake: dude, it is literally will be a feature film stuff. but before that RC Bray will narrate it. And uh, yeah, no, I I'm. There's no doubt in my mind that those things will happen. It's just the timeline changed. 


[00:14:14] Brian: Yeah. Yeah. So, but you went to do this, but you got distracted. You it's a side quest really now it's like when you're successful, one thing is actually easier to leverage into these other, other areas. So you had the side quests that turned into your main thing, at least for now. And, but then you did something. 


[00:14:28] What I would consider unexpected, but shows commitment. You sold your house and move back in with your parents. Is that, is that accurate? Why, why would you. 


[00:14:38] Blake: I was making a lot of money, but I wasn't S I w I'm not a saver and still not. I reinvest in myself all the time. And so I had put a lot of money and sweat equity into this house and done a ton of improvements to the point where the value had increased 50% over what I paid for it. 


[00:14:55] And I figured at first, the first the plan was because I don't know still, like, I'm not sure, like when I'm going to be able to buy my next house. And again, that's because I'm like investing in other things. And so like the fact that I was able to buy it, like I really wanted to hold onto that house if I could just to have that asset. 


[00:15:12] And so my plan was to refinance and just pull some of the equity out that I had gotten into it. And then when I saw the appraisals come back and then also just saw kind of the strength of the market within the neighborhood that I was in. And literally, like I found the buyer to my house. It was, it was like the best friend of my neighbor. 


[00:15:28] And, and like, it just, it just fell in my lap. And so I'm like, okay, I can get full asking price the first day it goes on the market with like a six figure profit just on, based on like the work that I put into the house, you know, over the last, the previous two years, It just made sense to be able to kind of walk away from it and just, just pull the cash out. 


[00:15:48] And lived in the house for two years that I wasn't hit with capital gains tax. It was like, there was all these kinds of perfect storm of like, okay, now all of a sudden I have this nest egg and I have a super supportive family that will let me, not only just move into their house house and like help, like with cooking and laundry Dre and stuff, but also like my parents' property, which actually belongs to my grandparents is this beautiful too, or kind of ranch north of San Francisco. 


[00:16:11] And like, there was this three different or four structures on the property. There's a main house where my parents live. There's a guest house where my grandparents live, who owned the property there. And then there are two different barns. There was an old barn that's strictly storage. And then there's the new newborn, which is still not very new, but like, there's like a horse and like stalls and everything. 


[00:16:29] It's like, it's a proper barn. And my grandma. Who also is an artist. She actually paints pictures of horses. No surprise. Had at one point had an art studio set up at the very end of the new barn. And as she got older and a little bit less mobile, even though she's insane, still insanely like sharp and agile for, for her age. 


[00:16:49] She wanted to put the studio closer to her where she like stayed in the, like the cottage. And so they built like another, like one of those like prefab structures from like home Depot where it's like a single bedroom, like, you know, a single little cottage and she just moved her so that she could literally like walk out of her door and be at the studio instead of having to walk to the back of the property, which is like up this little hill and go to the barn. 


[00:17:08] And so like, there was already like basically the bones of an art studio. Plus like free laundry, free food, free rent. Like my parents are super dope. I like, I hit the lottery. I think a lot of people say, oh, you got lucky because of the top thing you got lucky because of this, you got lucky because this, I got the luckiest because my parents are just so cool and understanding and supportive and just everything possible that I could ever want in parents. 


[00:17:35] I have. And so it was a no brainer to move back there. 


[00:17:37] Brian: Well, there was something that there's a reason I brought this up and, and I can totally relate to that because I started my business out of my parents' basement when in 2009. And so like, I have incredibly supportive, amazing parents the same way. Not everyone's that lucky, but whether or not you have supportive parents, you did something that I think a lot of people wouldn't do. 


[00:17:53] You said, this is a new thing I want to pursue. And I want to sell my house. But instead of doing what the traditional American path is of, I've got so much equity. I'm going to go buy a bigger, better house, or I'm going to go do something with this money. Then like saving it and moving in with my parents because you were committed to actually making this thing work. 


[00:18:10] That's why I wanted to kind of put this thing out there. There's maybe you don't have. We'll do this. If you're listening right now, but you're not making the sacrifices that Blake has made so far in order to make this career work. So I just want to point that out as an important step in your journey, because you're not the first person that's done this, like, oh, we had a guest a few episodes ago, Rodrigo. 


[00:18:28] Taska where he moved in. He moved in from New York into his parents' house in Florida to start his video production studio. And now he's wildly successful as well. So I think that's a trend that you see as people are willing to make these sacrifices all along their journey, no matter what the path is or number, no matter where the destination is, they're just willing to make those, those sacrifice. 


[00:18:46] Blake: Yeah. And the crazy thing too, is that like my first, like I came back and I, and then I was kind of blinders on. I want to learn how to paint. Like I knew like I needed to catch up. I didn't go to. And although I kind of painted as a hobbyist, like I had a lot to do. So I did, like, I was focused on just getting better myself at painting in that, that nest egg allowed me to do that. 


[00:19:05] But then as soon as I felt like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm going to start putting myself out there more as an artist, I actually hired a videographer on Craigslist. This guy, Matt Webster, a freaking amazing videographer. We'd both gone to UC Davis. He was just graduating. He had at the very end of his college career left premed to pursue videography full time. 


[00:19:24] And so I convinced not only my parents to let me move back home, but I'm like, Hey, I'm going to move in. But also this guy that I met on Craigslist, can he move in for three days? And he's gonna live with us and fill me every single day. And we're just going to document what this looks like to like, try to break into the art world. 


[00:19:40] And they let me do that too. So like then, like Matt basically got my bedroom where like I moved back in with my parents and I was sleeping on the couch in the living room for, for all summer, because I wanted to be able to give a room to the videographer. And we, we did this project called 90 days to MoMA where I spent 90 days from becoming like a brand new artist to try to get my art into SF MoMA, which is like a world-class museum. 


[00:20:00] And I'm not going to give it a score. I'm not going to give a too many spoilers, but it was, it's amazing how, like, even now, like I'll rewatch that content and we're producing a video a day. It's pretty short. It's like anywhere from like three minutes on average for an episode. And so you could watch all 90 of them. 


[00:20:14] The time it takes to watch one movie, but it's like crazy how my mindset is like exactly the same now. And although I didn't know as much about art world, I didn't understand it. I was still thinking of like creative ways to like market my art and stand out and have a niche and build a business from the jump. 


[00:20:29] So it's insane. Like, and that's also like hats off to my parents because not only was I'm like, okay, surprise. I'm coming home. Also bringing a stranger from Craigslist. Also, hopefully this works out like it's insane. 


[00:20:40] Brian: So, so there there's a couple of things I want to point out there that was, was super interesting. It was either further sacrifice. You literally gave up your bedroom in your parents' house for this essentially a stranger, because you had a vision for something that was bigger than what you know, other people may have initially had. 


[00:20:54] So here's one thing that I really enjoy about what we're gonna talk about next. You, you talked about 90 days to Momo and I saw it. I saw it. I saw some of those emails and I saw the shirt. I had no idea what MoMA was. So I'm glad you explained that. Like it was it was like this big, hairy, audacious goal that like most people that are just starting out wouldn't have the goal of getting a MoMA their first 90 days. 


[00:21:10] Like, that's, that's incredible. But so I want to talk about that. You talked about and I probably skipped over some things that I wanted to mention, but that's the way podcasts go. You talked about documenting the thing, right? Is it you are doing, I want to, I want to talk, I wanna touch on that because this is an important step that I think a lot of people miss out is. 


[00:21:24] Being willing to share part of the journey and let other people in so many people build in secret, they have this like passion that they're learning or this thing they're pursuing, or this business they're building, or this art they're creating, or this talent that they're using, that they never let anyone in because of that is that imposter syndrome is that fear. 


[00:21:41] already know why you did it because you're like, you're, you're like me and Chris, just the, just blindly self-confident whether you should be, or shouldn't be, but like you have that self-confidence that you just do it without ever considering the consequences. So that's just your personality, which is a great superpower of yours. 


[00:21:55] But let's talk about like, what were the results of that? What was this talk about the actual content creation thing about how that helped build your audience? Like got you started like talk, talk through those things. Uh, Just from the perspective of like people listening, they want to maybe replicate that or maybe utilize that in their own businesses. 


[00:22:09] Blake: Yeah. I mean, I think like the reason that, that content creation and, and not even necessarily content creation and publishing even just content capturing what's so important is because all of the brands that I'd worked with for the previous eight years in digital marketing, I was always trying to capture every single thing, everything we're doing, we're capturing, even if it's only internal, let's just capture it and see, we never know when we're like, you know, the best quotes always happened when the camera's off and the best way to avoid that is just to turn the camera on all the time. 


[00:22:37] And so I've had that mindset just kind of like built into my DNA at this point. And so once I started doing the art thing, I'm thinking like, okay, well, like I'm serious about this and I'm not going to give up, but also, like I already know that there's going to be all these cranes. Blocks at the beginning that if I just like skate by and do it and don't document it, it's going to be really easy to forget this in 1, 5, 10 years, whatever, which is true. 


[00:23:00] And still, like if I don't document something it's swept in the past and like it's never going to be brought up again. So I thought it was like really interesting to like, think like, okay, if art is what I'm going to pursue my legacy. why not have the very beginning of that journey filmed and rather than just putting it on a tripod and filming myself, cause I'm used to doing that. 


[00:23:18] And I still do that all the time and just bank hard drives and hard drives of footage every single day. I figured like I had just sold this house and I made a nice little chunk of change. And so I'm like, I'm going to reinvest some of that into just content for the future. And so like we have, you know, a very cool product of these 90 videos that I think tell an interesting story that is a different take on the art world than you usually see. 


[00:23:39] And then I think what's also special is that there's, you know, each day we would be filming typically for like eight to 10 hours. And then, and then Matt would go and spend like two to four hours editing. But like we also just have banks of footage from that, that startup process that I've never watched back and, and know plan to for decades and someday. 


[00:23:58] And I have it backed up in multiple spaces in multiple states on multiple hard drives because that's like gold to me. I think it's just going to be fast. Like if I could go back and look at like, when Andy Warhol decided to become an artist, like, what was his day like, and then actually see the entire day for 90 days straight of him starting and like the thought process of like, I'm going to do this. 


[00:24:19] Oh, I'll try this. Oh This happened. Oh. You're like, whatever, like that just doesn't exist yet for other artists. And so I'm gonna try and like have the blueprint for like here here's everything. And like, who knows, like maybe I end up being a mediocre artist. And that's fine, but like the fact that that's there, I just think it's so cool and so unique I don't know. 


[00:24:39] I think it's, it's going to be special. 


[00:24:41] Chris: Dude. I love that, man. I watch a lot of . Documentaries. I recently watched. I can totally blanking on the name of it, but it was a story about a portrait, a photographer in New York. she would shoot in large format Polaroid and large format. Polaroid is like, like three feet wide and six feet tall. 


[00:24:58] Like the negative is that big. 


[00:25:01] And it was so cool to just see another artist process through, through film and to see like what they struggle with and what was hard for them and what the roadblocks were. I love what you're doing, man. Like I think we have this strange culture that I think is beginning to break where artists really went out of their way to be mysterious. to me, that just seems like a boring move to be like, I'm just going to completely be a mystery to everyone. 


[00:25:27] Brian: I don't, I wouldn't call it a completely boring cause people like Banksy did it really well, but I, I will say 


[00:25:31] Chris: True. 


[00:25:32] Brian: it could be, it is really easy to make really boring because then you're just unknown. That's all it is. 


[00:25:37] Blake: Yeah, I think that like also, think this goes for artists, but it all, it goes for all types of creatives or all type of people where they think that their moat is what's in their head and they think that's what makes them special. I don't think that's the case. I think that everybody has good ideas. 


[00:25:50] Everybody has great ideas. The only thing that separates a great creator or a great creative than, than the average creative is the great one executes more of the ideas that they have in their head. And so I've always felt like from the jump I've been his parents like, Hey, I didn't go to art school. I don't, I don't, I don't know how to paint. 


[00:26:07] I taught myself how to paint through YouTube and through like, watch it like trial and error and learning from other artists. And here's everything that I've learned along the way. Every single mistake. There's literally nothing that an artist could ask. Yeah. Artist to artist or just person to artist, whatever of saying, how do you do X or what do you think about X? 


[00:26:24] Or what do you think about this? I have no problem sharing all that information and to the, sometimes to the point where people are like, whoa, why are you, why are you telling them like every little financial detail of where your money comes from and where it goes or whatever. I'm like, I don't care. 


[00:26:37] People can know anything that they want. It doesn't mean that they can, like, they're not going to outwork me. They're not going to out Blake, Blake which isn't necessarily like working the hardest. It's like just prioritizing and like thinking creatively and then executing those ideas very quickly iterating and just keeping up. 


[00:26:53] Brian: So you, you touched on something that I think is kind of one of our core tenants. It's, you know, not hoarding information, but freely giving information. if you've ever read the book, the Go-Giver, they talk about this in detail. We had Bob Burg on our podcast you know, a few episodes back, but the whole gist of the book is like, you don't hold information and you don't hold things in, or you don't put, you don't put a gate behind things and say, I will do this. If you do that, no, you just freely give that information. 


[00:27:17] And that seems to be your mindset. I don't know if you need to read the book because you're already like 


[00:27:21] Blake: No, it sounds right up my alley, man. 


[00:27:23] Brian: It's why we touched on this all the time is because it is very different. To have a scarcity mindset and be successful these days with so much free information out there. 


[00:27:32] So many people that are willing to so many people willing to give bad reviews or talk crap about you behind your back. Like your reputation is gonna be ruined if you're not, freely giving information or freely helping people out without strings attached to it or things like that. 


[00:27:44] So let's, let's actually shift it. I want to talk about one thing related to that 90 day content thing that you did to start your career out. What were kind of some of the results of that you don't have to give away spoilers of the actual 90 day results from your Momo thing, but what were some of the results as far as followers or like social media people or whatever you like, what, what did you gain from doing. 


[00:28:00] Blake: It's funny watching it back now, because I remember at the time. Simultaneously being really proud of, you know, consistently getting a thousand views on the videos. And like I had kind of the really maybe 20 or 30 people that were the diehard crew that were commenting on everything that I did and getting those messages from random artists or, or, or people that had seen it and been like, you know, feeling inspired to go pursue their own dreams and see if they can do something epic within a 90 day. 


[00:28:27] You know? So my short time, yeah, window at the time, like, I think, like I had seen a lot of like almost viral stuff access on behalf of clients that I was really hoping to like capture where I was. I was thinking I was going to get magnitudes you tire I guess, visibility that then the project got now looking back, you know, five, six years later. 


[00:28:45] That was, it was a lot like it was, it was really strong engagement within kind of the niche, a small group of people that saw it. And so it's also interesting because every second well thing that I do there, all the mindset stuff is exactly who I am like. It hasn't changed at all. And now I have a much bigger platform through my work with tops and these athletes that I'm working with in different, you know, things like CNBC covering the NFT success definitely gives me this much bigger platform where like I'm kind of waiting for the perfect time to kind of rendered, introduce that project to the world. 


[00:29:20] Cause I think that it holds up really well. It's very timeless content. And I know that at some point this project will get the recognition that I think it deserves. I'm in no rush to make that happen because I think that like the longer I go and the more successful art career. The more impactful it is to be, to be like, yeah, guys, but this was, this was a decade ago and I've been, I've been like this, it just took you guys a while to catch on. 


[00:29:44] Like, then, then people are gonna be like, whoa, like that really is like, that's that dude? So, yeah. I mean, it was cool. And then in terms of like tangible results, like, I mean, I don't wanna give too much away, but like I got my art into MoMA 


[00:29:56] Brian: Spoiler alert, 


[00:29:58] Blake: Spoiler alert. I got in a, in a, in a, in a very creative way, it worked and it was, it was meaningful and impactful. 


[00:30:04] And again, I think that, like, I think ultimately what's w my work, if it will end up in SF MoMA is going to be that documentary will be like part of their film program or something like that. Where I'm, where I'm, where I'm constantly in there. I got in there, I get in there for a short window and made it happen. 


[00:30:19] You got to watch it to see how. 


[00:30:21] Brian: we're going to put that on our show notes page, James. We'll have to find that and put it somewhere because I'm going to go find it myself. But so when our audience to watch that as well, so that's cool. So they're the reason I'm asking you about this is because at some point you've built a following because I was watching something in my research and something stood out to me. 


[00:30:38] And that is like, when you, when you finally started to sell. He made $5,000 in one day. And no one just does that without something happening to build that up. It's it's that whole overnight success sensation. People always think like they see, they see Blake, oh, he sold 5,001 day what an overnight success, but they don't see all the work that went into it before that. 


[00:30:56] What sets you up to where you could actually sell $5,000 worth of art on your first day of actually selling any artwork that you've heard? 


[00:31:04] Blake: Yeah. So part of it was because I didn't go to art school and I didn't have formal training. I wasn't comfortable selling my art right away, you know, but I was sharing my art. I was posting pictures. Posting videos of the process or whatever. So people would reach out and say, oh, how much does that piece? 


[00:31:20] Sorry, it's not for sale yet, but I'll let you know when something's ready. And, and there was a lot of that to the point where I was meticulously keeping track of interested buyers. And so when I finally got to a point where I was ready to sell some art and I guess I'll take it one step back. 


[00:31:33] Almost all of my art is stencil based, meaning that I'm taking a piece of paper or a poster board and using an Exacto knife and cutting out a stencil, which is like holes to make a face or a portrait or anything really. And then that allows paint to like go through. So like the central cutting takes a long time. 


[00:31:49] And then once I have it cut, the painting is very fast. And that goes all the way back to like in Barcelona of street, artists could do very complex stencils, but then they can put them up in the streets and spread it super fast and runaway before the police catch them or whatever. 


[00:32:03] Chris: It's a system that's amazing. 


[00:32:05] Blake: Yeah. So I had done like a ton of stencils stencil work throughout of. I think it probably took me about six months to feel comfortable selling a work. I was painting in general, like 10 hours a day, 12 hours a day. I wasn't doing anything else at that point in my life. 


[00:32:18] and then like promoting it and, and fostering those relationships. And so then when I finally was like ready to sell art, I said, okay, here's how we're going to do this. I bought, I went out and bought 10 canvases that were 16 by 20 inches. Just blank canvases. And I did that had a special video. 


[00:32:31] It was during, it was actually during 90 days to MoMA and I said, I'm ready to sell some art. Here's how it works. I have these 10 blank canvases. They're 500 bucks each. And if you buy one, you get to choose. What stem cell I'm going to use to paint on it and what color scheme you want. And those are the two, like, so you're getting whatever you want. 


[00:32:46] And so for the people that like saw a James Brown portrait and were like, I really want, I wish I had that all of a sudden, they're like, oh, now I can get James Brown and it could be whatever color I want. And so then I would, I followed up with every single one of the people that had said, oh, I was interested in this painting. 


[00:33:01] I said, Hey, you know, while that painting is not for sale, I am doing this new thing where for 500 bucks, you can get anything you want any color you want from my existing stencils. So those sold out extremely quickly. It's also cool. Like at least half of those she'll 10 customers have like, continued to patronize. 


[00:33:17] Like they're still like collectors and they have like the early, early G stuff. And it was just like you said, like building up all the preparation to be an overnight success And it was validating, you know, just like it wasn't Spain being told like that my art was cool. 


[00:33:31] Cause I was a kid from California. Same thing with like, if people are telling me I'm cool with their wallets and saying, you know, here's 500 bucks, here's 500 bucks. Here's 500 bucks. I mean, it felt easy. It wasn't, but in that moment it was enough to say, all right, I think I can make this work. 


[00:33:46] Brian: How do you know, you are truly not prepared to accept someone's money for a piece of art that you created versus just being scared? Like, do you think that it was just a fear thing? Like the imposter syndrome of why you wouldn't accept their money? When they clearly said, I want to pay for this? How much is it 


[00:34:02] Blake: Yeah. Yeah. Well, part, so part of that is at least with painters is it's, it's really difficult to price your work. And I think that there's a lot of creators out there that, that undervalue themselves and they price their work too low. And they're going to get themselves stuck in that wherever they, wherever they think they are. 


[00:34:20] So, I mean, knew from the jump that I wanted to have, like respectable prices, I guess, and respectable, such as subjective term, who knows what that means to me, I decided for us a 16 by 20 painting, that was 500 bucks. It was respectable. It wasn't, it's not crazy. a lot of people, a lot of people that I was connected with, like that way. 


[00:34:37] Too much of a calculated purchase for them, right. They're like, okay, well, we've seen what Blake's doing. Like, we want to support him in some way or another and 500 bucks. Isn't going to stress. I'm not going to lose sleep over spending that whether or not my art career is successful or not. Because I don't think that like almost nobody was buying as strictly an investment to say, this is going to be worth more some day. 


[00:34:56] It's like, I believe in what's Blake's doing. And so I was putting a price tag on that and still trying to like, maintain the balance between having respectable price, but also a price that's cheap enough that people aren't going to have to like check with the wife and balance the checkbook and like, really think about it for a long time to see whether or not they can do it. 


[00:35:13] And I think I nailed that price point in terms of like them just selling super quickly. And like, even like there were 11 or 12 or 13 people that also were like, oh, I wanted one, but I missed it. And like, you know, they bought something later because after that it was like, okay, flood gates are open. 


[00:35:27] And I kind of used that as, as the, my floor to say, okay, well, 500 bucks is the cheapest also worked for And I even said that at the time, I was like, I'm not going to sell work for less than this. Like, this is the best deal you're going to get. So, yeah. I don't know. I think I mean, I was afraid to be honest, like I, I had done all the preparation I could, but at some point, especially like when the video guy like maps, they're filming me every day and I talk, I'm like, okay, we're going to do this. 


[00:35:48] And it's like, he's filming me. I can't not do it. Like, we're just going to try it. Right. But I remember like pushing, enter on the Facebook post or whatever, and being like, oh I hope something. 


[00:35:58] Brian: How large was your social following at that point, whenever you sold out of those $5,000. 


[00:36:03] Blake: Oh, pretty small couple thousand on Facebook. Probably I was at like 30 K on Twitter. Twitter, Twitter has been my biggest platform for a while, but also like all of my social followers knew me as a digital marketer and knew me as different things. I had this social experiment on Tinder that went viral and I got like a ton of press and a ton of like recognition for my work, like growth hacking or like helping people maximize their Tinder profiles which is like silly, but like, you know, a ton of my followers were those people that literally knew me as this is the guy that helped me get more matches on Tinder. 


[00:36:37] Brian: Were you like a profile doctor? I've actually talked about this in the past. 


[00:36:40] Blake: Before profile doctors were a thing kind of when I moved to Arizona to take that corporate job Tinder was like brand new. This was 2014, January of 2014. Tinder was pretty fresh. 


[00:36:50] Brian: Which I had, I met my eventual wife on Tinder in 2015. So that's 


[00:36:55] Blake: love it. I love it. So I did, I was moving to a new city and I faced I a Photoshop, my profile picture and used a font that looked like Tinder's and it said hot match of the day. And I put like the Tinder logos. And so like, I basically made it look like I was endorsed by Tinder and, but it was kind of like a fun, you know, it was a fun thing. 


[00:37:12] And so, and then I was just swiping right on everyone both in Arizona where I was moving as well as LA, where I was moving from as well as San Francisco. And I was like back there getting stuff. So I got like 800 matches in, in a couple of days. And then I wrote a medium article about it and being like, here's how I, like, I hacked Tinder. 


[00:37:28] And then that just went viral and got picked up by ad week and FHM and New York times, like all, I mean, big, big places. And so then all these guys started emailing me that are reading the article saying, well, okay, you got all the matches, but like, what do you say to get a date? How do you, how do you get a phone number? 


[00:37:43] How do you do this? And I'm like, okay, cool. They just wrote a table of contents for. I'll write the book is so I just, I took all those questions and I wrote a table of contents and I sent that out to my email list. Cause I started collecting emails really early on that, against that like traffic, I was getting to that medium article. 


[00:37:57] And so I just wrote, I sent like on a Friday I sent an email with the table of contents saying the book is almost done. You know, you can pre-order it right now for $17. Otherwise it's gonna be $27 and it's going to launch on Monday and I got a bunch of pre-orders and I'm like, I better go. Right. 


[00:38:12] This whole book. Like I ha I actually, like, I had the data in the backend because I had been like don't yet, but I hadn't organized it all into a book. And so that was that ran on Tinder, hacks.com and Tinder hacks was the e-book that crushed it. And so anyways, that was all because like my audience was a, not that big and be super fragmented. 


[00:38:30] Brian: So this, this sounds way off topic and people were probably like, why are we talking about Tinder? What is this? So there's actually something about this. This is not what I intended to go for in the interview, but this is actually, there's a learning moment here to two learning moments that I spotted. One is something called a social proof and credibility indicators. 


[00:38:46] So this is great for any sort of marketing that you're going to do as a freelancer, as a creative of having some sort of stamp from some bigger trusted source. That's what place he did in his, in his fake Tinder profile photo, where he put hot match of the day from Tinder and made it look like he was like the stamp of approval from tender to get his 800 matches. 


[00:39:03] So that was like, that was just a funny use of that and like a fun and like lighthearted way. But then there's a second, the second kind of lesson from this where you just talked about, it was kind of the whole ready fire aim mentality of starting a business where you, you were sharing something that caught on. 


[00:39:18] There was some. For it. People are like saying, Hey, I want more of this. And they literally helped you create your own niche here. So this was, it was super interesting. You can dive into that. We don't have to go deep into this, this whole topic, but I just love it. Like you accidentally found this niche when so much of our audience is out there doing something similar. 


[00:39:33] They're not doing dating stuff, but they're doing something similar, creating art, doing something creative and fun that people want to do. They're just not listening. They're not paying attention to what signals the, their niche is sending them and thus missing out on opportunities where you you're just like, I'm going to sell a frame and have the standby. 


[00:39:49] Oh, I sold a lot crap. Now I've got to write this book. Like, I just love that sort of mentality there. 


[00:39:53] Blake: Yeah. I mean, having your buyers basically validate your idea before you executed is, is super valuable. It's awesome. Also, also just fascinating of like the dating niche in general, never thought that DNA, but man, there is such little price sensitivity when it comes to like finding a date, finding love or like, you know, hooking up, like people will pay whatever it takes. 


[00:40:15] And so like I was selling what started as like a 25 page PDF ebook for $27. They would, at first they would literally like pay, just PayPal it to me. And then I would just like email them the PDF. And then, you know, I set up more systems and affiliate program and whatnot, but it's crazy, man, that people will pay you whatever you say. 


[00:40:33] And there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of stuff like that where it's like, you're tapping into that. Primal thing where they're just like, I will do anything to have that. 


[00:40:41] Brian: Yeah. So that goes into my Maslow's hierarchy of needs and like a whole other there's like a lot of psychology behind why that is, but we don't, we don't necessarily have to get into that. Cause it's not, it's not completely on topic for this podcast, but I do love that story. It's just an interesting kind of thing. 


[00:40:53] So let's actually, it's a good segue. The niche conversation into the niches that you're now in your, you, you, you said pretty clearly that you do pop art for NFL athletes, 


[00:41:04] Blake: athletes. 


[00:41:05] Chris: I'm so excited about this part of the conversation. 


[00:41:07] Brian: before you even did that, you actually planted your flag in the startup world. Is that, is that right? Or you try to, is that, why was that? 


[00:41:13] What was that? What was your, like, that was your first niche. Why did you choose that one? Or why did you decide to go down that. 


[00:41:17] Blake: Sure man. So I told you about the 10 paintings I sold something that I started really early, and I think this is great for artists. If you're, if you're in, if you're making physical art like me and giving, selling it to customers, keeping track of the, of where your art is going, who it goes to is very valuable to information to have. 


[00:41:35] And so I had sold those 10 and then over kind of the rest of that year, I think I sold maybe 20 or so more paintings. And what I did was I knew from the jump, like, I want to have a focus, but I didn't, I didn't want to come in without any validation and just make my focus. I wanted to like, let the focus find me. 


[00:41:53] And so at first I was painting for anybody that would pay for painting and I would pay anything that they want. And I still will I'll pay anything that anybody wants. If they're willing to pay me the price, there's no problem. But I looked at my Excel or my Google doc spreadsheet, and I had a very meticulous list. 


[00:42:08] What paintings went, where, who they are, what they do and, and not in all cases, but as my, as I could, like, where's the art hanging. And oftentimes and this is definitely biased because I came from the world of digital marketing and tech companies and PR firms and marketing agencies. So it shouldn't have been a surprise, but it was a little bit eyeopening to say, oh almost all of my work is selling to like tech professionals. 


[00:42:31] And almost all of my work is hanging in their office, whether that's their office office or their home office, that's where people put my paintings. And so I just was like, cool. My niche found me. And so I branded myself as like, I make art for offices and kind of came up with this ideal customer avatar that. 


[00:42:47] A company that was moving it just raised a series of funding was moving from co-working space into their first own office. They have all these blank walls that they don't know do with. And the really important part is that they have a budget for it. And there's not, it's not an emotional decision. It is just a strictly, there's an art budget. 


[00:43:04] And I was going to be able to fit into their art budget, whatever that was. And so I did really well in that space and worked for some awesome companies, mainly post people that were already in my network already saw what I was doing. And I, so I already had that like a little bit level of like trust and familiarity with them. 


[00:43:19] Brian: Yeah, I'll let you get the, let you get your foot in the door, essentially in an area that most people may not be able to get their foot in the door 


[00:43:24] Blake: Yeah. Yeah. And so that did really well. And I was, I mean, I think, and I say this and he's like, I think if I had stuck with that, I would be the dude for office art. Now, like do this, like six years later, five years later, I would have my art in offices all over the world, all like, you know, working on big projects. 


[00:43:41] However fate had a different plan for me. And I was delivering art to a client in Las Vegas, met this guy named Jared Faison who had played in the NFL and now manages NFL clients. And he really liked my work. We really got along and hit it off and he said, Hey man, I've got some clients. Why don't you pay these three of them for free? 


[00:43:59] And I'm going to get them to promote you on social media, to their teammates. Maybe they're going to buy one after you give them one and I'll help you. Like, I got to meet all those players in person and deliver the work myself. And so it was like I was busy, but I wasn't busy. I wasn't so busy that I couldn't take on it. 


[00:44:13] Like can hit a flyer on top of some other opportunity to be a little side quest. And, uh, it worked out exactly like Jared said I delivered art to three NFL players. One of the three immediately just turned around and bought a piece for $5,000, which was at the time, my most expensive piece that I'd ever sold. 


[00:44:29] and then it's like the teammates started seeing it. And so like I ended up and have to this day and still do use what I call strategic gifting as a way as a marketing expense for myself. And so I will be very strategically doing pieces of art for athletes, where I give it to them for free in exchange for hopefully some social promotion. 


[00:44:47] And it's obviously, it's hard to control that and manage it, but you do enough of them. And I, I know like it's a numbers game and so. I just continuously was, was doing free work to get my foot in the door, usually with like new teams. And I would find a team that I wanted to break into. And I started in the NFL now I've kind of branched out to other sports and I found out pretty quickly, like, you don't want to do the stars you want to do guys that are respected in the locker room, but guys that are like probably getting their first fan painting. 


[00:45:12] Right. And it's, and if you can get, yeah, if you can find those right people, you sit, you ship it to the training facility instead of to their house. I used to think it's cool to have their home address. It's not, they don't, they, they, it takes them so long to receive that mail because that's like vetted or just sitting in their hallway of their mansions or whatever. 


[00:45:27] You send it to the training facility, they unwrap it to make sure that it's not safe or whatever. And then they put, put that art into the player's locker. And that a 24 by 36 painting will fit perfectly in an NFL locker and be sitting below the weather patterns are hanging and it's like a fucking billboard man. 


[00:45:43] And so it's just like, that was my marketing. And I didn't do any, any papers, the acquisition besides that, but I was paying to make the camp, like buy the materials and spend my time doing the canvas and then spend the shipping. And then there was like tracking it in the spreadsheet and following up and making sure that they got it. 


[00:45:58] And like, you know, sometimes they don't post. And I got to say, Hey, like, you know, we talked like, can you share a picture of that? Because like, I would reach out to them ahead of time and say, Hey, if I do a painting for you, you posted on social media. And then I sent him some examples of my work and my conversion rate was really high. 


[00:46:12] If people saw the message sometimes with celeb like celebrities or athletes, they don't necessarily see it. And obviously you can't do anything about that. It's a numbers game, man. And that's, that's like how I built the business. And then ultimately tops caught notice of some of the athlete work I'd done and invited me to be a, one of their licensed artists to design baseball cards. 


[00:46:29] And here we go. 


[00:46:31] Brian: Gosh. So this is, this to me is like the ultimate power of a niche kind of story, because like, you could be the like artists. Trying to sell their paintings to someone that'll, that'll try to buy it for like 20 to 50, to a hundred dollars. And like, maybe you can make a living or a side hustle on that, but you're not going to get invited by tops to make art on a licensing deal for their baseball cards. 


[00:46:49] Like that's not going to work. So I just love, I love like how, how well you've done in that niche and the opportunities