How To Earn Up To $500,000 Per HOUR As A Designer | With Cat Coquillette

[00:00:00] welcome back to another episode of the six figure creative podcast. I am your host Brian Hood. And if this is your first time joining us, this is a show all about how we can monetize our passions as creatives, without selling our souls giving up and going back to corporate life or working a day job somewhere.

I just celebrated my. Thousand day of unemployment recently this month. And I'm hoping to help any of our listeners get to their 5,000 plus days of unemployment. That's my goal for you where you're, self-employed working for yourself and our guest today is no different.

She took a different path than most people we talked to on the podcast. Cuz most people we talk to are freelancers. Usually that's because the easiest way to monetize your skills as a creative is through working for clients, creating art for clients, whether you're a music producer, helping bands produce music, whether you're a photographer, taking photos of your clients, whether you're a videographer taking videos for corporate clients or wedding videographer, whatever you do, usually you can monetize your skills.

The fastest way through just directly offering services. Well, our guest today, cat Coco has done none of that. She skipped the freelance game altogether and she went straight to something that I think is the end game for most [00:01:00] freelancers. And that is something called scalable income where you're taking your creative skills and passions and using it to create something one time that gets monetized Over and over and over and over again. Hopefully until you die. And then maybe even far past that she has mastered that just five episodes ago. We had,

James Victoria on the show and his art has been displayed or has currently displayed in the loof. Well, our guest today, cat cot is much different. She has art that's displayed in places that I think is probably a little more accessible for people, places that most of us have been at least a few times.

Her art is displayed in stores like Target bed bath and beyond urban Outfitters anthropology, Nordstrom home goods, Barnes, and noble. These are all stores that at least here in America, this is like household names. And her designs are in all of these stores, which is impressive to me.

And she does it through something called a licensing model. So if you're doing any sort of art creation where you're creating assets, this is the episode for you because she has. Mastered this, in my opinion, I don't think she even did the math on this, but I did the math live on the show.

she has made as much as a half, a million dollars per hour[00:02:00] with her art That's all I'm gonna say about the show is we, we dive into the deep, deep weeds of how do you get started in licensing specifically as a designer, but this really applies to anyone trying to do any sort of licensing deal as a creative.

So this episode, again, we talk through how she has done that, how she's achieved a half, a million dollar per hour, mark as a creative, which is utterly insane, but is achievable for her. And you might have a fraction of the successes, her, but it's still I'll take $5,000 an. Maybe not a half a million, but $5,000 an hour is pretty cool to me.

But anyways, this episode, we talked through everything from how she got started, how you can get started as a designer. How do you get clients? How do you get placed in these stores? How do you get an agent? If you want one how do you build your personal brand so that all of this can all work together.

This episode's all got this chalk full of great stuff from cat coly. So without further delay, here's my interview with KA. KA, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Yeah. I'm happy to be here. Thanks for inviting.

I wanna start at a place that I usually don't start interviews and this is a place that I feel like is, Good for your story, because, there's a really overused quote from [00:03:00] Stephen Covey that says, begin with the ending in mine.

And I would love for you to talk about before you even get into what you're doing and how you're doing it, cuz I've already gone over a lot of our story in the intro. You're one of the unique people that I've found has built your business around your

life and not your life around your business, which I think most freelancers are the other way around, where they set up their entire lives from where they live to what they're doing from day to day, all based on what they need to do for their clients and because of your unique business and what you're doing, you've actually set it up to where you have so much freedom in your life to do all these extraordinary things.

And I'd love to talk about what your lifestyle looks like because you are what some people would call like a digital nomad and you have so many cool things you're doing. And I'd love for you to just talk a bit about what this business you've created has allowed you to do.

Oh, yeah. So my, one of my biggest priorities is just autonomy. I wanna be able

to do what I wanna do when I wanna do it. And so that's how I've structured. My business is to give me the opportunity do those things. So, way I live my life now, I, I

don't like doing a lot of meetings, so I, I rarely have meetings on my [00:04:00] calendar because I

just don't work with clients that request that I travel 24, 7 full

time.

That's a really important thing in my life. So I wanna make

sure that way that I run my business and my day to day is able to fit that in. So yeah, I've been a full time nomad living out of a suitcase for about seven years now. So yeah, all, all over the world, lots of different experiences.

And as long as I have a good wifi connection, I can pretty much do my job from anywhere. So just working on my laptop as I go.

Yeah. And I was looking at your Instagram earlier, before this interview started and you were in, you were like hiking through Switzerland just a couple weeks ago. You've got a cold now, when he told me about, I was like, I wonder if that came from your, from being in the Swiss Alps you were in Spain, not too long ago, doing a wonderful workshop, like a

painting workshop.

you, used the travel as inspiration for your art that you create. And I feel like that if you were not able do this lifestyle, It could be more difficult for you to, keep up the amount of creativity that you're putting out. Cause you put out a lot of art, like more than most people, you are prolific in your art creation and from what I've seen, it, seems like that the travel that you do and all the things that [00:05:00] you're seeing and experiences you're having help with the art.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, some of my best sellers in my portfolio came directly from inspiration I had while I was traveling in 20 16, 20 15, I went down to Peru to hike the Inca trail to

Machu Pichu. Of course there's alpacas and Lamas, you know,

all over the place. So I probably had like

200 photos on my camera roll on my phone of just Lamas and alpacas.

And so I watercolored the series of alpacas and that was my best seller for

about two and a half years because it just I put that in my portfolio, right at the beginning of that big

alpaca trend we saw in 20 16, 20 17. Um, yeah, I was in the Vatican last summer. Um, Right before I hosted a retreat in France, I spent a few weeks in Italy beforehand, photographed a lot of works of art from the Vatican, turned those into color palettes that were inspirations for some new pieces I created.

A lot of stuff from nature, a lot of inspiration from museums, I visit around the world and it all just gets added into my art portfolio. So not only is it a licensing portfolio for, betting at target or urban Outfitters, it's also kind of a snapshot of my travels [00:06:00] around the world.

I've seen that in the art that I've seen.

from you. I see, like you have different collections from like a tropical collection, and that was from Your time in, in places like Southeast Asia, where you're around the tropical environment. And, the art, I see. when I'm looking into portfolio, I feel like there's some story or some location attached to some of that art. And I just love that. You've not only have you built a life that? I think a lot of people would likely envy, but you found a way to tie it back to business so that, I don't know if you can do this or not.

This is not a, she's not a CPA, I'm not a CPA, but I imagine you can write off some of your trips from a business perspective, because it is an inspiration for the art you create that you're directly monetizing.

monetize. Yeah, absolutely. my CPA has given me permission to, you know, we go through all the, write offs and he is like, yep, this can be written off.

No, you can't write off coffee to coffee shop, but yes, you can write off travel in some situation. So Yeah.

And, and I'm, and I'm not an artist per se. Like the creativity I have is all in music, production and audio, and, and now more in content creation and this podcast and things like that. But even I. I can get stifled of my creativity, just sitting at home all day, every day, like everyone has [00:07:00] been doing for the past couple years with COVID when it hit.

and even you, you likely had to hunker down in one spot for a long time during the COVID years. my wife and I were excited we're just a couple weeks away from leaving for our, our trip to Bali for the fall. And we don't have a return for that.

And, part of the goal for that trip is to just be reinspired and, and just have new experiences and inspire me to create more content and just I dunno, just change the energy in the environment that I'm in, in order to help my business grow. So I'd love to, to jump into the actual business model behind what you're doing, cuz I think that's very unique compared to most people that I interview on this podcast with the exception of Lisa Congdon, we had her on the show and part of her business model back on episode, 180 7. Part of her business model was licensing and she does other things too, where she's actually producing the merchandise herself, that her artist printed on.

You've decided not to do that, but I'd love for you to just give our audience the big picture of what the business model is behind licensing. Cuz that seems to be the bulk of what you've been doing the

last five, six years.

yeah, for sure. So I'll just, I'll just use an example. I'll do a watercolor of some tropical Palm leaves and I'll [00:08:00] scan it into my computer, clean it up in Photoshop, and then it becomes a digital file. And. Some company let's say target urban

Outfitters, ModCloth will be interested in that design.

And they'll ask to license it.

And then what I'll do is I'll just

send them the

design and then we'll negotiate, terms on

the contract. So we'll all get a royalty based off

of everything that sells. So yeah, those poem leaves that I painted could turn into bedding or wallpaper or apparel, dresses, skirts, anything.

And then I get a percentage of profits from sales. So yeah, it's a great business model because it means that I don't have to have the responsibility of inventory, that financial risk. You know, I tried inventory when I was first getting started and I immediately just lost all the money because I am not, I'm not great at sales, but I am great at creating things that are going to sell well.

So what I've done is I found out. good compromise for this it's I can create things that have massive sales power, even though I'm, I'm not a great saleswoman myself. I can partner with brands that are great at that. And [00:09:00] so I create something um, can get licensed out on a product and then hand it off to a company that actually turns it into a product and sells it to their own audience.

So to give a specific example? You were, you were backpacking Peru, you painted this wonderful thing. with the, I think You said Lamas on it or something like that. That became one of your best sellers for a couple years. give us an example of like, where did that design go? How did it become a best seller? Like what does that look like? from a business perspective?

Oh yeah. So I'll do one. I did this sunshine.

It was actually my uh, my sister-in-law was about to have a baby and she wanted me to do her baby shower invites and I'm like, oh yeah, great. This was a couple summers ago. daughter's name is Aurora and I did this like sunshine and this kind of celestial

theme.

that name.

It's beautiful. Yeah. And and then I was like, you know what, I did this sunshine for these, you know, baby shower

invites. and I was like, I'm gonna go ahead and throw that in my

licensing portfolio and just, you throw it at the wall, see what sticks and sure enough, that

became my, my best

selling design for about two years running. I mean, it's still like way up there. And so it's just a simple illustration I did on my iPad on the dry app procreate.

It's a really [00:10:00] simple sunshine kind of this like retro color palette. And it struck at a great time because retro inspired, 60 seventies motifs are. All the rage right now. And that one single design I did has turned into wallpaper bedding, like duvet covers, target, picked it up for art prints.

It's even sold as car fresheners wool hooked, throw pillows. I mean, it's on rugs. It's all over the place right now. And it was just this one simple design I did. And you know, one caveat I wanna mention here is I create a lot, a lot of new designs.

I mean, the new designs probably like, oh gosh, depending on the week, maybe like seven new designs a week, I can be pretty prolific with that, but not everything is gonna be a massive seller. It's kind of that 80 20 rule. 20% of my art licensing portfolio earns me about 80% of my art licensing income.

So for me with art licensing um, the strategy is just numbers. It's create as much content as I possibly can as many new designs. And it's a numbers game. The more I create the better chances that a few of those are going to become really [00:11:00] strong.

Are you willing to talk numbers at all with, like you said, it's a best seller? for a couple years. Like it took you How long to make the design, and then do you know how much it's brought in over the years?

As far as that? one design goes.

So when I was first getting started, I did a quote by Shakespeare. It was uh, though she be, but little, she is fierce and I did it with calligraphy and flowers around it. And this was in 2015, I think 20 14, 20 15, when that kind of motif like pretty calligraphy with floral reads was everywhere everybody was buying it.

And so that one design earns me about 75% of my income for my first two and a

half, three years of art licensing, which means that one design pulled

in probably close to $250,000. that's not every design. That was, that my first big break. And that again was over the course of several years, but it really goes to show that there, there can definitely be money in licensing.

If you really hit the jackpot with a, with a good design.

And How long did it take you to make that, one design? Do you remember?

oh God. Less than an hour. here's the worst part. I didn't even uh, come up with it. [00:12:00] It was my cousin's wife wanted to, it's always baby related. She wanted to decorate her nursery. And that was her favorite quote from Shakespeare.

I think it was Midsummer night stream she art directed the whole thing. She was like, I like calligraphy and I like flowers. And I was like, I do a lot of calligraphy. I do a lot of flowers. Let's go ahead and combine that. And I sent her the original and same thing. I was just on a whim. I scanned it in before I mailed it to her.

And I put it in my art licensing portfolio when it just blew up. So yeah, I was just like, thank you so much for the inspiration

for that piece that, you

know, bought my ability to make this into my livelihood,

And just for anyone not following wrong, like she made this design one time. And if it took you less than an hour, I'm just estimating here because you didn't give a specific time, but it earned you somewhere between 300,000 and $800,000 per hour of work. And that's the that's one of the strong benefits of this model is if you create a hit, it is a disproportionate earnings per hour that most freelancers, if you're a Lance designer right now, most freelancers have no ability even to be in the universe of hundreds of thousands per hour.

unless you're in this sort of [00:13:00] model, because it is more scalable. And that's one of the biggest benefits of this business model behind licensing,

And again, it's not every design, but yeah, a few of those designs can be just absolute Jack.

Yep. And again, that's why you need to be prolific with it, because like you said, the 80 20 principle, the 80 20 principle, for those who don't know parade ads, principle, we've talked about on the podcast a few times, if you just search 80 20 in our backlog usually in most cases in nature, in business, in life and wherever you are, 80% of your income will come from 20% of the stuff you've actually done to produce the income.

So for her 80% of her income comes from 20% of her art. And likewise, the other way, looking at it is 80% of what you do. Either really wasted time or just really inefficient time. it only produces 20% of the income. So Now you're just being more efficient with your time and and not wasting time, that's basically the gist of it. Go back and listen to our backlog if you want to hear more about that. So that's kind of the benefits of the licensing model. That's some of the, like the big picture of it.

But how do

we get started in this? Because I I'd love to know more about like, if, someone listening right now is kind of the position you were in years ago, where you working at an agency. You were [00:14:00] Directly trading your hours for

dollars. you were playing basically what everyone in a job does where you're stuck to a desk and fast forward, I guess, post COVID era, maybe you're not stuck to a desk, but you're stuck at home because you are working set hours for your agency or for your day job.

What do you do to get started? Like what are the prerequisites to move into this sort of model for someone in 2022 and.

just give you an example of what actually worked for me. So my actual journey. So in 2014, I was working at an agency. I was a designer at a branding agency in Kansas city. And one thing I really loved doing was coming home

from work and painting. So I would come home from work every day and.

Get out my watercolors or my wash or acrylics, and then just paint something and I wasn't painting to make money at

the time. I was just painting as some sort of creative outlet from, you doing logos all day or designing websites. Like as much as I love doing that, it's nice to get back into the fine arts.

And yeah, I kind of got to this point where I was posting my paintings on Instagram, that I didn't have a huge following. It was maybe a couple hundred people, mostly friends and family. [00:15:00] And I was posting the paintings I was doing to Instagram and my following began to just kind of organically grow to people that I didn't know that were following me because of my artwork.

And yeah, those people were asking if they could purchase the originals or get prints. And it had never even occurred to me to monetize my artwork before. I went to school to be a designer. I'm a designer. Now this is my career trajectory as a designer and finer didn't really fit into it.

But sure enough, you know, people were asking on Instagram if they could buy the originals. So I was doing all this research, how do I price my originals? How do I ship them? How do I market them? How do I make art prints? Like all of the logistics involved with that, how do, and it was just, it was kind of overwhelming.

You know, I was working 40 hours a week. I didn't feel like I had a lot of time to dedicate, to setting up the side business. And that's what led me to society six, which is a print on demand website. only reason I knew about society six was because that's where I bought my phone cases. If you're not familiar with society six, it's an online platform where you can go and buy art prints, coffee mugs, wallpaper, tapestries, [00:16:00] betting many, many home decor products, fashion and whatnot. And they're all designed by artists from around the world. And so what happens is anyone can start a shop on society, six upload their designs, set their margins, and then that design becomes live on that website.

And someone can purchase, let's just say a um, a a sticker or a coffee mug with that artwork on it, and then you'll get a percentage of sales.

we actually have a big like shelf with two doors that are, it looks really cool that my wife ordered on there. so yeah, we've actually used it before. we probably have one, of your. designs on like Pillows in our house or debate colors or something? Cuz I I'm not

the designer of this house, the interior decorator my wife is, and she's a fan of yours. So I think that there probably is something in this house of yours on there, but can do the story. society six,

sorry.

that'd be great. That'd be great. Um, Yeah, so I started um, uploading my designs to society six, and then I drove that Instagram traffic to society six. And I was like, if you wanna buy art prints

of this acrylic donut painting, here's where you can go do that. it actually blew

up faster than I thought it would.

I remember my first sale was, was a phone [00:17:00] case and a shower curtain. it was in the same purchase and it was the first time that I ever realized that someone would actually pay money for something that

I painted. It was just um, kind of this limiting belief I had about, fine artists can't make money.

You're a starving artist and that's, if you pursue fine arts, that's

what's gonna happen. I realized, oh God, maybe that's not the case. Maybe people actually do wanna purchase this artwork after all I bought phone cases from that website. So why wouldn't someone buy one of my designs So within three months of having my work on society six, I was making enough to pay my rent in Kansas city. And within six months I was making more on society six than I was at my full time job as a designer. So yeah, the writing on the wall was there and I really saw that potential. And that was just one print on demand website.

There's a lot out there. And so what I started doing was shotgun approach. Let's find as many different print on demand websites as possible, upload all of my work and then see what really begins to take off. Most of them didn't work out. some of them did red bubble was another one that did really well for me.

Mixed tiles is one. So there's, you know, there's a [00:18:00] lot of different print on demand websites, but yeah, a few of them did really well. so what happened there is that kind of afforded me the opportunity to one leave my job, which was sad. I did love my job, but ultimately I wanted to dedicate my time to.

This new opportunity that really I didn't see any ceiling on it. There were no restrictions. I could really push this as much as I wanna take it. I left my job focused on print on demand entirely. And what happened is because I was so successful with these print on demand websites.

My artwork was all over the internet. My name was associated with everything. I kept my signature, which is very legible, cat Coke, C a T C O Q on all of these pieces. So that if um, a brand or a company or an individual bought one of my items, they could easily Google me, find my society six shop and then buy more things.

So, yeah, it was, it wasn't very long before actual. big brand consumer companies began reaching out to me because of the success I'd had online through print on demand. So urban Outfitters was my first one. I was actually going through security at lax about [00:19:00] to um, get on a flight to Tokyo.

And I got this email on my phone from urban Outfitters was a buyer there that wanted to license one of my designs and I just completely freaked out. I don't know if I screamed, but I did have to do additional screening with security, so I probably did something.

Um,

To get a burst of massive energy when you're going through the security line at lax, they're already eyeing you suspiciously. And then all of a sudden You get tense. and you're really excited And your. eyes are darting Around and all of a sudden you're getting pulled aside for additional screening randomly, obviously.

Right. I mean, I, I was clapping and I was jumping also, but I was super excited. It was my first big licensing deal. And so yeah, I spent that whole flight to Tokyo, just like on the note section of my iPhone, just revising my, my response.

I was just like, oh yeah, I do licensing deals all the time, so blah, blah, blah. And I'm like,

Nope, delete that. Um yeah. And so that was my first big

break. And then once I got to

have that brand association with urban Outfitters a lot

of others just kind of fell into place, like target came after that home goods.

TJ, [00:20:00] max SPBA and beyond Nordstrom. And so that really kind of had a snowball effect. So, yeah. And it all started with print on demand.

let's unpack this a little bit because I don't want this to sound like uh, you know, I put it on society six fast forward, yada yada, yada, the Seinfeld thing. And then I'm, I've got it. I'm in target and everywhere and everyone knows my name. So I, I, I wanna, I wanna dissect this a bit for anyone that's like, well, that sounds easy, cuz it's not easy, but there's also like some steps that you're doing.

I'm I'm gonna unpack what I've noticed here from my research on you, from what you've said and what I did before this interview. So step one.

one is

First be good at what you do. , you're good at what you do. And if you're bad at what you do, it's gonna be harder for all this other stuff to work. So step one, be good.

But beyond that, like you were sharing all of this stuff without hopes of monetization and big dreams of money, money, money in your, in your eyes. You're just doing this on social media in your spare time, like all the stuff you're creating for fun, the art you're making for friends, the art you're making for your friends' baby showers or whatever the art you're making.

When you're sad, when you're happy, when you're traveling, when you're stuck at home, bored, like all this art you're creating, you're sharing as you go. And that's that running theme we seem to [00:21:00] have we had Peggy on the show. I think she's the one that actually recommended. We reach out to you, Kat we've had James Martin on the show.

All these people are doing the same thing in the design world where they're sharing their art as they're creating it. And they're. Holding it close to their chest, scared to release to the world where no one will ever see it. the faster you get away from the fear of just sitting around holding your art, better off you're gonna be in the long term, because you're gonna get more feedback from people.

You're gonna see what resonates with people. You're gonna learn from all of the engagement you're getting on social media. and then you started to, get questions from people naturally asking, where do I buy this now? you mentioned like you never had any desire to monetize this or hopes to monetize this because the phrase is what starving artists.

because if you wanna go into the arts, you're gonna be broke. so KA,

so CA

You put things on society. Six, how large was your social following at the time? Do you remember the

size of It at the time? Like, was it massive? Was it moderate?

It was under 500 people. So honestly, I wanna go back to what you just said. You really hit the nail on the

head there. I made myself incredibly open

to,

opportunities, so everything I was doing I didn't really know where it was gonna go, but I knew that I [00:22:00] wanted it to go somewhere.

And so I was like, okay, how do I optimize for

whatever potential this could take. And so like, one thing I did is I had my contact information on all social media, on

my society, six shop. So if someone found um, one of my paintings on society. Six it wouldn't be hard to contact me.

My email address was right there. even what I mentioned earlier of getting involved with as many print on demand websites as I could, I mean, That was really boring. that takes a lot of time. You sit there and you wait for uploads, you type in keyword tags. Like it's not fun. Uploading is, is just one of the most boring things about my job, but it's necessary.

It's one of those things where you've gotta put yourself out there going back to that first post I made on Instagram, I think it was, it these donuts that I painted in acrylic, I was terrified to post that picture on Instagram because I felt like an imposter, I'm a designer?

You know, like, I'm about to be an art director at my job. Like if I get this promotion, like I don't go home and paint donuts. That's like not what art directors do. And I had this, this extreme limiting belief about what what if people think this is a [00:23:00] shitty painting?

That was terrifying. And then. got to this point where I was like, you know what, I'm gonna post this painting on Instagram and just see what happens. And it, I had like two glasses of wine and I'm like, here we go. was, it was really terrifying to put myself out there like that.

But what I learned is no one, really, cares. Like, no one's judging you for putting, you know, a half finished painting or, you know, a drawing that doesn't look absolutely perfect. Everyone's more concerned about themselves rather than what everybody else is doing. And that was a big moment for me.

So, sometimes I get asked what is my best advice for aspiring artists? And my best advice is just like to put yourself out there and get started with it because I mean, I'd been painting. Since I can remember I was painting in college. I painted after I graduated and I just never shared that publicly with anyone.

It was something that I always held close to my chest. And as soon as I started putting it out there, opportunities started arising. So it's something that I kind of glossed over earlier, but that was a big moment for me, was actually sharing my artwork publicly and getting past that fear of judgment.

there's a [00:24:00] quote that I love that my wife has hanging on her office on her wall behind me. And it says to avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing be nothing. And for anyone right now, struggling to put stuff out in the world because they're afraid of criticism.

inevitable. Like I'm sure Kat is successful as you are as great as your work is, someone has criticized your work somewhere. And the worst part is that's the stuff that sticks in our brain. That's the stuff we remember. You don't remember all the wonderful comments you get on social media.

It's that one asshole who says the mean thing to you that you're like, oh, that really hurt. So it's inevitable. Like, if you want to, become something, if you wanna be something you have to put out in the world and face the criticism head on instead. Just sitting back, holding it in, not releasing your art into the world.

and the result of that is just, you become nothing. If you refuse to face, fear like that. So just something worth pointing out and something that you over, you had to overcome. And I'm glad that you kind of reflected on that, cuz so much of our audience is still kind of struggling with that side of things where they're, still holding back.

It doesn't even matter if it's your work. it could be something as simple as like content marketing, like you coming on this podcast, cat is a form of content marketing. Like [00:25:00] you come on this show as part of your marketing strategy. I would imagine that's what I would be doing other podcasts for, but you could just as easily avoid doing this stuff for the same fear.

So it's not all art. Sometimes when growing our businesses, we still have to overcome these fears that hold us back from facing things, because we're afraid of either looking dumb or saying something stupid or, or coming across is not as smart. And like you had a cold right now, you have a cold right now and you could have easily said like you, you had to reschedule a couple times.

You could have easily canceled or whatever because you're. I don't wanna show up with like maybe lower energy than normal because I am sick and I might cough, you know, like these are all things that could hold normal people back. And you said, you know what, I'm just gonna do it anyways. Maybe I'll have to cough off camera for a second.

Maybe I'll have to take a break every 10 minutes. But, but then you realize, like I talk for like four minutes straight when I'm dissecting something. So you have plenty of

room for your voice to kind of recuperate, you know, but let's, continue in this conversation. Cause I wanna talk about marketing yourself and

attracting partners to you because you, you talked about your first partner was urban Outfitters, a household name here in America,

as far as clothing and, and home good store.

I guess

they've kind of shifted to home goods now that I think about what their inventory has and I imagine you don't [00:26:00] just create great

art and then all of a sudden, those brands start contacting you out of nowhere. Like there's a few things that people like that look for before they start to reach out to you because this person came

to you.

So talk about what do these, licensing partners look

for and people they wanna license artwork from.

So one thing that's really important right now that a lot of brands are looking for is for the artist story. So a lot of brands you'll see, you've probably started seeing this trend already. It started about a year and a half, two years ago. A lot of brands would be featuring artists instead of just promoting the product.

um, maybe it's like in a store, they'll have like a little placard and it'll be like, meet the artist behind the design. that's something that's really surging right now. And a lot of my partners and licenses are actively looking for that. So associating a personality with the design.

So it's not just this generic flower

pattern that gets printed on, coffee mugs it's oh, this flower pattern was inspired by this Alpine hike I did in Switzerland and I photographed these mountain flowers and then I incorporated them into this new pattern, that's kind of what's trending right now for licensers, trying to [00:27:00] attract.

artists and new designs. So that's something that's been really successful for me because a lot of my designs, like we mentioned earlier have this connotation of some experience I had around the world. Some trip I did um, some insight I had while I was traveling that turn into this piece of artwork, that's now licensed out.

And another thing I wanna mention is in 2018, I actually signed on with a licensing agency. So prior to that, I was doing everything on my own. So every um, contract, I would be reviewing it negotiating terms trying to, you know, squeeze as much out as I possibly could, which is exhausting.

You know, it's like, I'm good at contract negotiations compared to probably most creatives, but I don't necessarily enjoy it. um, a and then also keeping track of what's being licensed. That was something that was really bogging down my, my day to day. It's like, okay, I have this design of pine trees licensed exclusively through this brand for two years only on tapestries.

So I could have it printed on anything except tapestries for the next two years and nor it was just, it was just [00:28:00] confusing and overwhelming. So that's one of the reasons I wanted to sign on with an agency because they all of a sudden handle all of, the negotiations, the business end the organization.

And then it really just comes down to me at this point of creating designs that I think are going to be on trend and be strong sellers. Prior to having an agent was doing it all on my own. I tried outreach with new clients. Like I signed up for LinkedIn premium. I was messaging buyers at Nordstrom at target, I like created these little mailers with, information about me and samples.

And it got zero returns. Like I mentioned earlier. I'm not, at sales. I'm not good at reaching out and getting something out of it. I'm not good at cold calls. I'm good at other things, but that's not one of them. And so every opportunity I had with licensing prior to hiring an agency to represent me was because they reached out to me.

Again, I tried reaching out, but I failed every single time. So I just made myself very available. I spent a lot of time on social media, posting new pieces of artwork. Talking about the stories behind those designs photographing [00:29:00] product samples, and really just trying to put myself out there and become available as much as possible.

And then since I signed on with an agency in 2018, they go out on my behalf now and they're looking actively for partnerships. they're talking to target, they're pitching new work of mine and I can just sit back create new designs and do what I'm actually good at, which is creating designs that are gonna be strong sellers.

So yeah, finding those partnerships has been really, really helpful for my brand and my growth. It's hard to do everything on your own. So one thing that's really worked for me is partnering with people that are going to do it better than I could. I tried inventory when I was first getting started and I just, I mean, it was just like flushing money down the toilet.

I purchased coffee mugs and tote bags and I paid for screen printed posters and I tried selling. On my website, I tried selling them at like craft shows that I went to and it was just a waste of time and money. Like it, wasn't, it wasn't my strength. I wasn't talking to my audience.

Like it was just wasn't working out. And so I was like, okay, well, I know that these are good designs, but I'm not good at actually selling them. So [00:30:00] let's find someone that's going to be good at the sales part. And I've kind of, you know, implemented that idea into many parts of my business. wasn't good at outreach to clients.

Okay. I'll work with an agent and then they can do that on my behalf. I wasn't good at sales, so I'll work with brands that already have that audience built in and they're known for selling to customers. Even with like my, my tax stuff, like my finances it's don't wanna handle my taxes on my own.

Many people hire a CPA for that. including me. So it's, it's that idea just applied to many different aspects of my business so that I can focus on what I am uniquely good at.

And this goes back to what we were talking about at the very beginning of this interview, where I talked about begin with the ending in mind that Stephen Covey quote, that gets overused everywhere, because it's a great quote some of these decisions you're making that are, really important decisions to go with an agency or not to, to handle it all yourself, to use inventory or not to let the licensing people handle all of that, are all decisions that everyone has a different answer and everyone has different goals in, in their lives.

But. Everything you were making, as far as your decisions were based on the kinda lifestyle you wanted. And if you had decided to have a big print shop where you had screen printers and you had inventory with [00:31:00] warehousing and you, had your own online store and you did all these things yourself.

Well, now you're tied down to a specific location. Now you've got a staff that all answered to you. Like now you can't travel the world. You can't be in Bali for three months. You can't be in in Chani Thailand for five months outta the year. You can't go to the Swiss Alps and get a cold and come back to this podcast with a sniffly nose.

You can't do all these things that you, that you're getting to do now, but you've made decisions along the way that help with that. I you could be probably earning more than you are. You could have a bigger business and you could grow bigger and, and better, but that's not your goal at the end of the

day. Again, your business serves your life. Your life does not serve your business. And that's the big takeaway. I, I think when I look at your business is how well you shaped that and prioritize that the right. Going back a couple things here that I want to bring back up from stuff you said earlier, was you first built kind of a social following, just posting your work, like as you go.

And you're great at what you do, which is part of the reason you were able to grow, but also you were stuff, improving that your art does sell on society six and red bubble. And the other ones that you mentioned only then did you attract I believe the first brand deal and [00:32:00] eventually you attracted the agency, but I believe from something you said before, these brands don't wanna just have your designs on their stuff. They're like promoting artists and I, I saw on your social media page, I it's like a boomer I saw on your Instagram. On your social media page. I saw on, I saw on your

Instagram had just been picked up in Sam's club, which for those in America, it's

like one of the biggest stores in America, like Costco, for those who

are familiar with Costco of like a lunch collection or something of

like these cool bags or whatever, like with your art

on it, but it had your face on the thing.

Like, it was like your face as an

artist was on the display in Sam's club. And I don't want to put words in your mouth or, misunderstand the system. So I wanna make sure I'm I'm right here, but all of these brands seem to be partnering with artists that already have a personal brand. Is that right or wrong?

That's largely correct. Like I mentioned earlier, a lot of brands right now are, are looking for that personal connection, that personal touch to who created the design behind the product. And so part of contract with Sam's club was they [00:33:00] want social media posts from me promoting the collection store visit if I can, I like was actually back in the state.

So I made that happen.

go actually into the store, do an Instagram live of me in the store being like, Hey, here I am in Sam's

club. Here's my new lunch boxes. And so that's, that's something that they're actively looking

for Is promotion, not just on their end, they're not just relying on their sales, but they want the artists, the designers behind those pieces to be um, promoting them as well.

And that's, really what, what makes it a little bit more special for them in terms of like meet the artist? You know, I have a little bio there on the website, it show, it talks about the inspiration behind those pieces. So this new bedding that I have in target right now, was like a acrylic sunshine kind of sunset thing I had done when I was in Bali.

The sunset's in Bali are beautiful. You're gonna have a great time when you get there, by

the

looking forward to it.

Yeah, so I talked about um, inspiration behind that I was living there. You know, I used to go there during February to March, April every year. And get really inspired by um, the beautiful sunsets, the ocean, the nature jungle.

that was something that I, I kind of [00:34:00] wrote about in the description of that art piece. So that now when you go to the target website and you look at that particular bedding, not only does it describe like, you this is a hundred percent cotton and ball, you know, like the, the technical logistics of it.

It also is, talks about the inspiration that I, the artist had when I created that piece. And then that makes it a little bit more

special for customers when they wanna purchase.

it is so funny that you're putting in the contract or they're putting in the contract that you must show up in the store and like go online with it. Which, but it's funny to me, cuz like this is stuff that I would wanna do anyways, as an artist.

It's like, I am contractually obligated humble brag about my work being on display. And it's like, I looked at your Instagram and that was like a very engaged with post. Like I had a lot of like a lot of comments, the stuff where you're promoting that. And again, that's the stuff you would likely do anyways.

Especially if you're physically in the states and you're able to do that. So I feel. we should talk about negotiations a bit because the contract negotiations, a lot of this hinges on, good contracts and good negotiations and good rates and things like that. And I was watching one of your talks that, that you did at a, conference, and you talked about the contract negotiations, and you said that

when you were early on, you kind of just [00:35:00] got taken advantage of cuz you didn't know better or in some cases you were like asking for way too much cuz you had no, no idea what the

business model was like and it kind of made you look inexperience,

you know?

and eventually you've kind of learned how it should look like what is a good

contract and you talk about negotiations, like adding certain things in and, and you don't really care if you get those, but it's at least showing when you're trying to get the rate up that you're licensing like your

royalty percentage up to a

percentage that you want. You're willing to give up these other things because you don't necessarily care about those. you just talk about negotiating

contracts with these bigger brands? What, to expect, what to look at.

Yeah. I mean, it, it was definitely a learning curve for me because didn't go to school to learn business contracts or licensing contracts. It

I hate contracts personally, but yes, I, this is a necessary evil. I know

but um, yeah, the negotiations, that was something that I was like, okay. First and foremost, when I was starting out, I was thinking, okay, negotiations are just about that royalty rate. So I wanna get the highest percentage possible. the way, for licensing it's in store. Licensing, it can range from like 2.5 to maybe 10 or [00:36:00] 11%. So you're you're not making, you know, 50, 70%, which is what I was asking for at the beginning, for sure. And then, you know, there's just no email response back, cuz like clearly this woman has no idea what she's talking about with licensing, but yeah.

So once I kind of understood, okay,

these are the normal licensing rates, is what I should be kind of asking for. I realized that I could also ask for other things in the contract that would benefit me and they wouldn't be hard for the company to say yes to. So like for example, I would ask for.

Product samples. So if I'm negotiating with target or urban outfits for something, I would ask for them to ship me products, and then I would always say, you so I can photograph and promote on social media, promote the collaboration. It's not just for me to have selfishly it's for me to continue promoting this collaboration.

So it's a win-win for both of us. Um, That's easy for the client to do. They would always say yes. One thing I would also add into my negotiations was my copyright or my signature has to be visible on every single product that gets printed without exception. And so that's one that not a lot of artists know to ask for, but that's, that was so important for me, especially [00:37:00] at the beginning, because that's how I got that brand recognition and really builds up my brand.

Other things I asked for would be like social media shout outs. So if the company that I was. In contract negotiations with had a big social media audience, then I would try to leverage that. I'd be like, okay I want you in the first month of this new collaboration to do at least three social media posts where you tag me in the first two lines of the caption, don't bury it at the bottom.

You know, like little things like that you can add in. I asked for features and their email newsletter features on the homepage. Yeah, a lot of these things that were easy things for the companies to say yes to, and that it also gave me more bargaining chips also. So it's like, Couldn't do something like if they already had their social posts, you know, figured out for the next month and a half and they had to say no to that, then that gave me a more leverage to ask for a higher royalty percentage.

So advice for anyone going into licensing contract negotiations is you can be really creative with what you ask for and look for things that is easy for that company to say yes to. And that can benefit you massively. And so [00:38:00] that's kind of where I was when I was first getting started with it.

And now there's things baked in too. companies are doing the same right back at me at this point. So like the social media thing go to Sam's club, do an Instagram live. Talk about these launch boxes artist Q and a videos are something a lot of companies are wanting right now. So for a lot of new collaborations, I do part of the contract is I I have to film a video of myself talking about what inspired the collaboration, what inspired these designs, and then post it to my YouTube channel or post it on, you know, an Instagram reel or something like that and share it with them.

And again, that's, that's a win-win for me because, you know, okay, it's annoying to have to do an Instagram live. Like no one likes doing those, but um, it's really beneficial. It's good for marketing. It helps get my name out get my brand out there. and it's something that the client is asking for that I can easily say yes to you know, while we're talking about contracts, something I wanna point out real quick is I was first getting started with contracts, I got lucky, I didn't know this.

I'm gonna share this now. If you're going to be licensing Out your intellectual property, whether it's a song you wrote or design you created, or, you know, a, a script you wrote[00:39:00] make sure that that contract includes that you own the intellectual property, you own the copyright to that.

You're never transferring the copyright. You always retain that. And so luckily my first few contracts they had that in there, but I didn't know to look for it. It wasn't until later when I was like, actually getting better contracts and it was doing a lot of research on contract red flags. And I was like, oh wow.

I, I didn't even know that I should be looking for that. But apparently that's the most important thing in a contract licensing is that you always always own that copyright. You're just temporarily leasing out your intellectual property based on the terms of that contract.

That's and that's really important if you happen to license out the grand slam design, the, the one that brought in a quarter million dollars for you over those years, if you transfer the copyright, you no longer can collect any royalties from that. Is that right? Like it's theirs now, right?

it wouldn't even be licensing at that point. I mean, when you transfer your copyright that that's called a buyout, so you no longer have any rights over that, that design. And just to be clear in contracts, you also have exclusivity and non exclusivity. And [00:40:00] exclusivity means that that company is the only company that can license this design based off of the

stipulations.

Like you don't give

just full exclusivity, you put terms on there, like only for one year or two years only in north America, only on these particular products, you, know, you can really stipulate what that. exclusivity means, but you can license things exclusively and then still own the copyright to that.

That's great. So just to go back a little bit, because I, I feel like so much of this entire business model hinders on this

and I don't, I, don't want to, to sweep the son of the rug or like ignore this and not give it the, the amount of time it deserves. it just keeps coming back to

personal brand.

Like everything you do comes back

to personal brand and you've built a really good one for yourself. and you're, you're doing a couple things that I think are really smart. you're building a, a snowball, or you can call it a flywheel or whatever you want. And just to point this out to people that maybe didn't catch this, you have your social media following.

You also have an email list. I dunno if that's a big part of what you do or not, but I know my, my wife is like, I just got an email from KA today. So like I was like, okay. So she obviously has an email list that she's utilizing in some way, shape or form. Is that a big part of, what you're doing as well?

Or is it mostly just social media?

oh, man. Email [00:41:00] is huge. prioritize email over any social media because that's something that I actually have equity over. Like no one can take that away from me, no one can take those emails away from me. Whereas my Instagram account could get shut down tomorrow for some arbitrary reason.

And I have no control over

yeah, So we actually had Peggy Dean on the podcast back in episode 2 0 1, which was back in may.

And she said the same thing. She's got an Instagram following of like a quarter million people at this point. I think I don't quote me on that, but she has a mailing list of 60 or 70,000 people. And she says that is by far more valuable than her social following. to me, it's just minutia at this point, because at the end of the day, you've.

A brand for yourself. Does it matter if it's on social media? Does it matter if it's on email? would always prefer email personally myself. I don't really play big on social media. I, I do the email thing for sure. But you do this, really cool thing. This, the flywheel effect that is when you get a client that has a large following, you get them to post about you, which grows your following your personal brand.

And then you use that same personal brand in contract negotiations to help promote your partners. So for every partner you get, your brand gets bigger and then you have more clout [00:42:00] to use in your contract negotiations. I have a screenshot here from your website. This is my artwork has gotten my licensing partners featured by New York, post teen Vogue.

Good housekeeping, HGTV, Ellen Hillary Duff, all these big brands or, or, media companies or whatever are, featuring the people that are licensing your work. And part of that, I would have to imagine comes from this big social following that you've gotten. so when you can help your partners win, now they're more attracted to you.

And so when you are just another designer on society six, and you have no social following, you're basically a commodity at that point. It's he or she who has the best design probably wins. But with you, I don't mean this with any

disrespect, but you don't necessarily have to have the most groundbreaking, amazing design.

Yes,

it helps. But the personal brand helps elevate any designs you have above everyone

else. And I feel like anyone listening, like the artist

brain is like, I don't wanna do social. I don't wanna build a brand. I don't wanna have an email list. I don't wanna do all these things. And they fail to realize

how important it is to your overall career and your overall income ability and your [00:43:00] ability to attract an agent,

which has been huge for you and this whole snowball has hinged on the

personal brand, which is email list, social media, whatever your, your pick, your poison, but at the end of the day, that's, the thing that, this all hinges on.

that's really well put that's exactly it. I mean, I'm not the best artist out there by any means. I'm one of the top sellers on society, six and other print on demand websites. Not because I'm the most talented artist, but because I've leveraged that with marketing and the right way to attract an audience and boost those sales.

know, I did this recent collaboration with a, another print on demand company called Conrado and they do luxury goods and, you know, silk leather, and One of the pieces that they wanted to license was a, pattern I made out of Daisy Daisy, they're really on trend right now.

It's going back to those like kind of sixties, seventies motifs, and they chose this Daisy pattern. And there are so many better Daisy illustrations out there by other artists that they easily could have used, but that's not all they cared about. They cared about won the quality of the artwork which you knows is good, there's better ones out there.

But one thing they also cared about was does she [00:44:00] have a large audience on social media, that's active and engaged. And I do um, I have an email list. I have, you know, following on YouTube, all of these things are what that company's looking for. It's not necessarily the best design.

It's the whole branding package. And wanna work with yeah, artists and designers that also are really keyed in with a strong audience that can help promote that product or that brand or that collaboration.

I think you said before we even got in the interview, you've said it multiple times during this interview, you said, I am bad at sales that may or may not be true. I don't know. I've never heard you try to sell something or sell yourself or whatever art or whatever, but at the end

of the

day, if you have a large enough following big enough personal brand, you don't have to sell you, attract people to you.

So at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how good you are at selling. You've built

a big enough brand and a big enough following a big enough name for yourself. And you have good enough portfolio of work, a good enough body of work to where people are now attracted to you. You don't have to sell anymore.

Now you're just cherry picking the deals and the licensing deals as you want. And it's a completely different game that you're playing versus a freelancer who refuses to build their personal brand. And now it's [00:45:00] all based on sales, quality of their work and differentiating themselves from the person down the road who's offering the exact same thing.

absolutely. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's, that's really nail on the head there.

is there anything else we're missing in this business model that people need to know about? Or are there any negatives or things they should watch out for or anything as

oh, you get lot of rejections. So it's like, you know, this, this whole interview, I'm like, oh, it's all, you know, flowers and sunshine. No, it's, it's a lot of, a lot of failures all along the way.

So, going back to that 80 20 rule, I applied that

with prospecting as well for my business. So I spend 80% of my time doing things that I know are going to make money for my business, creating designs working on my email newsletter to, you know, promote classes that I have on Skillshare.

And then 20% is prospecting. So 20%

is mostly wasted time, but every once in a while I get something good out of it. So

20% is me looking for other

opportunities, other ways to expand my brand. One thing that's really important to me is diversifying my income and my God COVID was a perfect example of why that was so important.

I lost 50% of my [00:46:00] art licensing income from in-store sales when COVID started, you March 20, 20, that took about a year to build back up. And so it was devastating to have 50% of my in store or licensing income, just completely annihilated. But what also happened at that time is I have a diversified income stream.

I also have classes on Skillshare, which is a online education platform where you can go and you can watch classes on mine are how to watercolor, how to get into art licensing, how to promote yourself on social media, how to get into surface design. It's the things that I wish I would've known seven years ago when I was first getting started.

But yeah, going back to the diversification. So the pandemic started, I lost 50% of my art licensing income, but everyone was stuck at home and guess what everybody was doing, they were getting on Skillshare and watching classes.

2020 was a great year for anyone with education businesses, I just remember that side of my business with with this brand blew up 2020, and it was outta nowhere. And so like, things were great. you know, it didn't necessarily sustain itself throughout the exact same level the year after.

[00:47:00] But the good thing is like the income sources that were down from 2020 came up in

2021 and 2022. So it's kind of like you said, diversifying your income streams and you do that by using that 20% of your time as like, I wouldn't say wasting, but testing new things, being willing to try and fail and, and face failure as we talked about before, if if you want to avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.

You're the antithesis of that. You try all the things within, you know, a nice amount of time. It wasn't taking up 80% of your time trying a bunch of crap. You spend most of your time on the things, you know, work. And then you have a small amount of time you devote to, pushing new envelopes, to building new income streams, to trying stuff that you're not sure about, but you, but damn it.

If you're gonna try it, you know,

Yeah. And online education was a perfect example of that. Like, I didn't wanna do a class. like, I would be terrible at that, but uh, society six reached out and they were like, Hey, we want one of our. Top selling artists to do a class on Skillshare. Can you teach a class basically inviting competitors also uploading designs through society six?

And at the time society six was my biggest income provider. And if they asked me to do anything, I would say yes, because I mean, they were, they were paying [00:48:00] my bills, they were paying my lifestyle. And so, yeah, I partnered up with Skillshare. They flew me out to New York. I did filmed a class. I just showed up, talked about everything.

I knew about art licensing through society six and their editing team, chopped it up, turned it into a phenomenal class. And then I was just thinking, okay, this is a one and done kind of thing. This is I'll put together a class know, as a favor six. I mean, they paid me, but it was also like, it's not like I wanted to do.

I was like, okay, I'm gonna do it, cuz they're asking, but I would never do that on my own. But then what happened is that class actually, it was, it was a really popular class that did really well. I grew this huge following on, on Skillshare and I realized that I didn't hate it.

Like I thought I would just hate having to be in front of a camera and teaching. I would be so nervous and not know what to say, but it was actually, it was fine. It was fun. And so I was like, okay, maybe I'll put together a class on my own now. And just see what happens. I already have this built in audience on Skillshare now because of that one class I did with society six and now, I mean, that's a huge part of my brand.

I've got 24 classes on Skillshare, all teaching the things that I wish I would've known [00:49:00] when I was first getting started and I love doing it. And I never would've ever pursued that avenue, if I weren't, you know, seizing new opportunities as they came, even the ones that I wasn't really that excited about doing.

Cause I was nervous about it. Like the first time I spoke on the main stage at an entrepreneur conference, I was absolutely terrified. Um, But then I did it and it wasn't that bad. I actually kind of enjoyed it.

now I get to do those all the time and you kind of learn what you like and what you don't like by actually experiencing it. me, that's so been so integral in my business. It's doing a lot of these things that pushes me out of my comfort zone have turned into something where it's something I actually love doing and is a really viable income for.

I follow a YouTuber. I'm blanking on his name right now, but he's a productivity YouTuber and he has classes on Skillshare and he's also pretty open about income and where it all comes from and what he, how he monetizes different things. And I'm always interested in that stuff as a business owner.

And he's talked about his numbers behind what he earns from Skillshare, and it's like tens of thousands of like high, tens of thousands, almost six figures a month just from [00:50:00] Skillshare. And I'm looking at, you've got 87,000 students on Skillshare. I can kind of deduce roughly probably how much you're earning from that.

And it is a substantial amount of money from that alternative income stream that you set up. And this all goes back to a couple different things that we've mentioned throughout this episode. One is your ability to try new things that you're willing to, that most people are unwilling to do.

Two is the following you've built up to get the credibility to even have society six and Skillshare or whatever, put your course out there. And then the third thing is just being open to. These sorts of assets, you're creating one time that then can be repeatedly monetized over time. And you, I think you're the first guest I've had on here that I don't see trading dollars for hours anywhere because everything you're doing is scalable income and scalable just means you create it once and you can sell it forever.

And in our world, in the creative world where most of us are freelancers, that is a rare thing. So it's great to see that you have done this amongst a bunch of different areas. So as we wrap this up, like where, where do you want people to go to connect with you or learn from you? I know [00:51:00] you've got the Skillshare classes that have different things.

Like what would be the most relevant place for people to go.

Yeah, my website it's cat coke.com C a T C OQ. And there you can have links to everything. So you can find all of my classes Instagram contact information, all of that. See my new licensing collaborations on my blog. Um, yeah, website is just like one and done. You'll, you'll find everything. So C a T C oq.com.

it's funny, you just mentioned the, recurring revenue thing. That's such an important part of my business and we didn't even talk about it. Everything I do in my business is not a one and done kind of monetization. It's something that's going to earn, money. For years to come.

So those alpacas that I painted in 2015 or 2016, whenever I was in Peru those are still earning me money today. it's great because it just kind of snowballs and it builds and builds in every year. It just, it gets larger and larger because the more pieces I have in my portfolio, the more classes I have on Skillshare that just grows from there.

So I no longer trade my time for money, which is what I used to do. every decision I make in my business is this something that I can leverage for years to come?

[00:52:00] That's wonderful. And I'm pretty sure my wife has joined your uh, procreate for beginners' course on Skillshare. So you've gotten some money from, from

Yeah.

as well, which is great. So I definitely highly encourage anyone to go. Just browse through her courses on there. See if any are a fit for you and obviously go to her website as well.

Thank you so much for coming out on the show. Kat.

Oh, thanks, Brian. This has been a great combo.