127. Brand Your Passion Live: Makers on Marketing with Emma Smith & Pepper Raccoon

Episode 127 • 4th December 2024 • Brand Your Passion • Maker & Moxie

Hollie Arnett: Have you wondered how other artists and makers are marketing their creative business? Or maybe wondered how they feel about Instagram and TikTok and all the different platforms and the strategies that they are using to brand their own passion? If you do then you are in luck because I recorded a live in person podcast episode with two incredible artists and creatives.

We have Peppa Raccoon and Emma Smith, also known as Steer Illustrations. And I am so excited to share that conversation with you today. We had a incredible panel discussion where I talked to them and asked them a bunch of questions about how they market their business as creatives. And then also answered a bunch of questions from people who were in the audience on the night.

So if you want to hear from them and you want to know how our. Successful professional creatives marketing their creative business right now, then you want to tune into this one. Let's dive in. Thank you so much for coming. I am so excited for us to be here. We are here to talk about makers on marketing with our wonderful speakers here.

We have Emma and Pepper. Before we dive in, I just want to talk to you a little bit about why we are here, and why I created this event. I'm not just going to tell you all about me, we're going to dive into these, but I just want to tell you a little bit about what inspired this event. I am a creative, I am an artist myself, started my business as a hand lettering and typography studio, and I will one day get back to doing that.

But then I started doing this. Creating and I'm also a business owner and there are a couple of things that have helped me and my business to Do all of these things continue to evolve into all of these things and those two things have been Branding and marketing my business and also community. So community has been a huge part of my business and my growth I'm also just a huge I just love creating community and bringing people together in community.

So I used to be the Wellington host of Design Assembly, if anybody of you have ever been to one of their events. I used to host workshops and bring people together to learn things and I also now have a podcast called Brand Your Passion where I bring people together to learn from my community of creatives about how they brand their passion and then a community of people who listen to that podcast who learn about branding their passion as well.

So if I've said community enough, it's because community is important. And when I talked to artists and makers and creatives over the last four months about what they wanted and what they needed help with, I thought I'd get loads of branding questions and marketing questions, which I did. But a lot of them were about, I want to grow and challenge myself.

I want to be surrounded by other creatives with similar values. I want to be brave and take some courageous steps. I want to turn my hobby into something more than what it is. I want to collaborate with other creatives and I want to find a community and build relationships. Maybe some of those things sound familiar to you.

And when I was thinking about how to help more creatives and their brands and their businesses. This is what I thought I should make. And part of the reason we're here today is to celebrate the fact that I have launched a community for artists and creatives. It's a membership called the Brand Your Passion Collective and there are a bunch of things that you get as part of that, but I think the main thing is that 24 7 creative community.

I'm just excited to tell you all about that and to invite you. If you want to check it out and you want a community outside of this room then please come and check it out. You can come and talk to me. I would love to welcome you in and have you as part of an online community so that we can keep this going after today, but that's it for me.

We are going to dive into the questions and while we are talking, if you have any questions, you can scan this QR code. and put in your question and then I'll read them at the end, but also by asking questions you're going to go in the draw to win some prizes. So I'm going to give away a year's worth of the membership in the Brain Your Passion Collective.

Pepper has given me a 50 voucher to her store and Emma has got a bag full of prints here. If you scan this QR code while we're talking, ask a question, then I will ask some at the end and we'll go through them. That's the plan. Let's dive in. Let's talk to these incredible creatives. Let me introduce them both.

Pepper Raccoon, incredible person here is an illustrator and artist and has done some incredible things for places like Zealandia and places that you probably have seen all around Wellington. Sells her own work and does also some incredible client work as well. So I'm excited to hear from Pepper Raccoon.

And then we also have Emma here in the corner. Emma is also an artist. And creates her own work, like these prints that you're going to get to see. But also is on the team at Eco, Ico. Ico, like the song. Thank you. I have never known how to say that properly. Ico and does all, if you ever walk past there and see the window installations, that's Emma.

Oh, yeah. So Emma does an incredible job of doing that and sharing the process behind all of that on social media. And has a massive TikTok following now from doing that. So I can't wait to hear all about it. So I am excited to dive into those. Let's sit. up with some questions. So let me dive in with the first question.

I would love to know straight off the bat, what do you think is the most successful way that you have connected with your potential customers, clients, and built your kind of following from them?

Emma Smith: I found over the last year, I just went ham on markets and that was the one way that I found was really successful and meeting people, getting instant feedback on if they liked the prints or if it was, if they wanted to buy it, or it was that, yeah, you get to chat with them and figure out what they like in a home or what they want on their walls and stuff.

So it was that, yeah, that instant getting feedback. inspiration from them and what they want and trying to, yeah, it was really nice. It's it's a cool little community and doing just back to back markets every weekend was a good way of just, yeah, meeting people and, yeah, getting to know community and seeing, yeah, what people like.

Hollie Arnett: Yeah, I love that. I think, yeah, anytime you can talk to your audience, it's so good to get their feedback and hear, like you said, what do they actually want? What are they going to put on the walls? And when they're buying things in front of you, it's pretty obvious what they're picking up or not picking up.

That's awesome. What about you, Pepper? What do you think has been the most successful way?

Pepper Raccoon: I think it's been being myself online. Going to markets is definitely good customer research, but I burned out on them really badly. Because I had way too many for five years. And they're great, and I still do them, and they're fantastic, and I recommend them to everybody.

But the most successful thing I ever did was being on Twitter, and just being basically a shit poster on Twitter. And, yeah, just being myself online has always been the best way to find the audience that most relates to the things that I make, so I don't have to make things that are so for other people.

So I can make the things I'm passionate about. And. be connecting with an audience that's also passionate about those things. So I definitely think like platforms that let you be yourself whatever you're like, find the platforms that make you feel the most comfortable being yourself and leverage those because they're good.

Yeah.

Hollie Arnett: One of my questions was to ask you about like, how do you decide what platforms to market your business on? What platforms to not worry about? Like, how do you make that decision and decide? The platforms and also the content that you're going to create.

Pepper Raccoon: Okay. I have a very low tolerance for things I don't like.

And so I'm on the platforms I can tolerate. And I think that's actually like a really healthy choice for me. And I think most people are somewhat similar, maybe not quite so passionate about it. But I don't particularly enjoy creating content. And so platforms where I can just be myself and post random thoughts and my art and my process tend to be the places that I do the best because I like being there.

So I think like looking at the platforms that you use and which ones make you happy and which ones make you feel stressed or give you a sense of imposter syndrome or any of those kinds of things, maybe you focus a little bit less on those and more on the ones that make you feel at home. Like now, I Have a team that helps me do Instagram and Facebook because I'm not so passionate about them, but I recognize their importance.

But I spend a lot of my time on blue sky, which is the Twitter replacement that's suddenly became the biggest platform for that kind of thing. And that's been great for me. So my friends are there and I still feel like it's a place where I can sell things without feeling inauthentic. And that's really nice.

Yeah,

Hollie Arnett: definitely. It's one of the pieces of advice that I always give people is if you want your marketing to be sustainable, you want it to be something that you enjoy doing. Otherwise you're going to get burnt out and you're not going to want to do it. And then you're not going to post. So sticking, finding the platforms you enjoy and that you're good at.

If you. Suck it video, maybe do like a newsletter or something that you can write. Play into your strings. Yeah,

Emma Smith: for sure. How about you Emma? What about you? I'm just a one man show. I just am still super new to social media and I just up, I just upload whatever I want and just say it's still that organic.

Like I just, when I have a project on, I'm just doing what I'm doing that hour and. Yeah, I try not to think about it too much and just yeah, upload thoughts or just upload stupid memes or me cleaning something. It's very yeah, it's very just back and forth of my own life and what I enjoy doing.

It's not I haven't thought so much about researching the side of yeah, when I'm going to post and when. It's a good, I think the most I've done is oh, seven o'clock seems like a good time to do it, or Googling when the best time to upload on Instagram, but it's, it really is, it's so luck of the draw, and I'll try and make a video go viral, and sometimes I'll upload it twice, and I'm like, okay, great, we're not doing that again okay, let's choose a better song yeah, so it's just, it's really luck of the draw to do that viral, yes, you need a good video to do it, Which is yeah, I find making videos really fun and rewarding, but Yeah, opposites.

Yeah. Yeah. It definitely comes with the, yeah, what's, yeah, just, I think filming you just chuck a camera down and then just do your work. It's and then spend three hours editing a video. Yeah, it's really hard, really, but, I've learned to love it because it is, it's fun.

I love people seeing people's reaction and feedback to it, but yeah, it's it's I find, Oh, I'm a lot more organic. I wish I was more organized. It's working for you. Yeah.

Pepper Raccoon: It is. I probably could do better. That's the thing about it though, is like a lot of people think, Oh, I could be doing this a lot more structured.

I could have more of a system, but if the way you're doing it now is working for you, there's no need to. Totally. Don't fuck with that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Hollie Arnett: Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. So you both have mentioned sharing what you feel like you want to share and feeling like. finding a place where you can be yourself.

How long did it take you to get to a point where you felt comfortable doing that? Because I feel like a lot of people posting on social media it's oh I need to be posting this, I need to be doing this trend, I need to be doing that, whatever. So how, yeah, how long did it take you to realize or figure out, or have you figured out that, yeah, being yourself and just posting what you feel like, yeah, tell me about that kind of journey?

Emma Smith: It took me a very long time to feel confident in posting. Just even the window displays that I was doing, which I found wasn't, I didn't see them as my creations or my work because I was obviously just at work, just doing my job, putting products in a window, finding a creative way of displaying them.

So I didn't, it took me a long time to realize that. Oh, that is a source of creativity that people enjoy. So it was that kind of imposter syndrome where it was like, Oh, this isn't real art. If I'm not painting or drawing and I'd only upload small little photos of if I was to do a drawing on the glass, like it would be the small little.

So it took me a very long time to get the confidence to upload photos of a full art installation or a full window. Because I myself didn't see it as, yeah, real art. I don't know where that came from, but yeah, I think people's yeah, comments and realizing that, oh, okay. Relaxing it, yeah, I think people's people give you confidence and feedback.

It made it a lot easier to not care as much and then, yeah, I think once you get that standing behind you that it is okay just to post whatever you want and no one's going to care because I, yeah, and then you just do it and

Hollie Arnett: yeah, for sure. How about you, Pippa?

Pepper Raccoon: I think, I felt pretty confident about my art because I had a fine art background and I felt confident about the work.

So I was pretty okay posting what I was making because I felt like I was good at what I was, I started out doing a lot of drawing. Just like traditional drawing and I felt comfortable posting that because it wasn't a business at the time and I was just messing around. And then I made like one enamel pen.

And I needed to sell it, so I figured I had to post it, and people bought it, and so that validation is it just builds over time, and you just have to try things and see what happens but the biggest thing that gave me the boost to being comfortable talking online and posting things online was actually I streamed on Twitch for three years and that was a huge thing that got me over the hurdle of I'm still horrible on camera, but I'm better on camera, and I can talk for days, and I know that people like watching me.

If people watch me draw for three hours, which is the slowest, most boring thing in the world, they will happily watch a one minute sped up time lapse of my drawing. So yeah, that's definitely helped.

Hollie Arnett: Yeah. For sure. You both have mentioned like a few things that you have going on and Emma, you have a job and then you also create your own things.

Pippa, you have like client work, your own work, many different things. How do you like communicate to your audience all of the things that you do when you're a multi passionate, multi hyphenate person with many things going on? How do you, yeah. How do you communicate? Make it clear to your audience like what you do and what they can know you for and what they can buy from you.

Pepper Raccoon: I'm pretty careful about what I show people. So I don't love doing client work, so I don't show people my client work. And there's certain types of client work I don't want to do and so if I end up doing a bit of that I'd never show anybody that work ever. And it sounds ridiculous, but like you get the work that you put out there and so people will associate you with whatever you show them and so if you show people work that you're not proud of or work that, Yeah, you did because you needed to make money rather than work because you wanted, you were passionate about it you're gonna end up with more of that.

So you gotta be careful there. So I don't worry too much about separating, like my brand has a whole bunch of different vibes going on in it. I mash them all into one basket because I'm excited about all of them and I Put that out there and it seems to create like a Venn diagram where like my audience is in the middle and like that works out fine.

I think some people feel more strongly about having separate brands for separate vibes and things like that. I can't that's a lot. And one social media account is enough. So i'm just like people either accept all of me or they Except none of me. Yeah, so I just throw it all out there and I hope it's okay.

And over time it's been coming more clear how I can build a narrative around that entire big picture that makes it all make sense together. But I think it's also fine to be messy. Yeah.

Hollie Arnett: Yeah. I love the People can either accept all of me or none of me. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

Pepper Raccoon: like I'm a menace.

I'm like, that's, I can't hide that. So yeah, if that doesn't, if that's not your vibe, then I'm not for you and that's fine. Yeah. So we're good. You

Hollie Arnett: find the people that you are for. Exactly. Other menaces. Yeah, exactly. I would love to know about your You know, we've just mentioned a few things around things that maybe you didn't feel like, you don't feel comfortable super on video or like things like that.

Can you share an example of where you feel like marketing pushed you out of your comfort zone and helped you to grow? Yeah, an example of that.

Emma Smith: How it pushed me out of my comfort zone. I think I'm always being pushed out of my comfort zone with social media. I find it still so embarrassing to upload and I sit there and I'm like, okay, yeah, just ride with it.

But it's Yeah, I think with the validation thing we were talking about before, when you upload something and someone says something nice to you, you're like, Okay, I'm doing a good job that is okay. It all makes it worth it when you see a community being happy with what you're uploading and it bringing joy to someone's life, even if it's, like a 30 second video.

So yeah, it's That validation definitely helps a lot. Yeah, it's hard. It's so silly, but it's it's, yeah.

Pepper Raccoon: It's hard because people are like, oh, you should, get the validation from yourself and not seek out external validation. I'm like, if you're an artist, I'm so sorry, but if you're getting all your validation from within great for you.

But I don't know, I don't know a single artist that isn't like a complete egomaniac. Yeah. Yeah I, yeah, if I don't, yeah, I remember like when I was starting out, I would post stuff, and if I didn't get Comments and likes I'd get really sad and throw it away and all this stuff and I've built enough of an audience and enough confidence now that like I don't care anymore but also generally I do all right off of what I post because yeah, I've been doing this for eight years, but like the first four years were very like Hit or miss with stuff and it's just the way it is.

You have to stick it out and it can be really crushing. But I think the biggest thing that's pushed me out of my comfort zone is like learning to deal with attention that isn't necessarily positive when you do start to succeed. And you do start to make some bigger moves and then continuing to keep.

Sharing your work and marketing yourself in a positive way and that's probably the hardest thing I've had to do as an artist. Both with like other artists in the community doing the tall poppy thing and also with, random commenters online saying completely uninformed things that were wrong, but really hateful and stuff like that, and you just have to learn to eat that for breakfast and Not respond angrily and move on and keep being yourself. And that's definitely that was one of the biggest hurdles I had to overcome, for sure.

Hollie Arnett: Yeah, definitely. And I guess those moments and we just talked a little bit about measuring likes and things like that.

How do you measure quote unquote, success for your business? Is it numbers? Is it how you feel? Tell me, yeah, tell me what is success? How do you measure that for your business?

Emma Smith: When I have jobs backed up, when I feel like I'm on the end of my tether. And yeah, when I'm coming home from my day job at Aiko and then going home and doing some more work for the next six hours and then going to it the next day.

And then on my weekends, I'm working. So that's, is it good? I'm like, I'm a workaholic and an active relaxer as well. So I do love the grind. I love the chaos of it. And yeah, it's it's. It's full on, but I love it and that's when I Burn out. Do you know her? I'll do this for you.

I've been burned out for three years. Yeah. But yeah, no, I'm just it's yeah, when there's back to back jobs, I feel like that's when I'm like, okay, cool. I feel like I'm doing the right thing or if I'm reaching the right amount of People that I need to be talking to and yeah, getting the jobs that I would like and saying no to the jobs that I don't particularly want to do or find too stressful to do.

So yeah. That's

Pepper Raccoon: hell yeah. That's good. Yeah, I'm a basic bitch. I based it on sales. I think a lot of people get hung up on followers and likes and comments. Does not matter. I had a 2, 000 following Instagram account for a very long time and was crushing it. So it's not, none of that is relevant.

Reaching your audience and converting to sales is hard, but if you are doing it, that to me, if I make a something, like a piece of art or a product that I'm proud of and I put it out there and people buy it, like that's the metric that makes me feel good. And if that's Kind of superficial.

I'm good with that. But also on the workload side of things, I feel most successful when I've got money in the bank and I don't have to work as hard rather than having I have projects and events lined up for a long time at the moment. I've had a fairly quiet winter and I feel stressed, burned out and freaked out.

And the reason I have all that stacked up is because this year was really tough. And so I need all that work to make up for a whole bunch of slow times. And what I'm hoping for at the end of that is that I have enough money in the bank. Yeah. Yeah. I love to cruise.

Hollie Arnett: We love to cruise.

Yeah. I think there's some people like, don't worry about the numbers. Worry about how you feel. Some people are the opposite. I think in my opinion. Yeah. I think you need to balance both and I think it is good to know where your business is at. And like you said, are people buying things?

Are people liking this thing? Are they coming to buy it at the market? That's a good indicator of whether your business is working.

Pepper Raccoon: Yeah, and if I can't pay my bills, I'm not relaxed. So yeah, regardless of how you feel about money, if the bills aren't paid and you can't be comfortable, then you're going to be stressed.

So having that money matters. Yeah.

Hollie Arnett: So are there any other like metrics that you do measure as an artist when it comes to marketing or your business that you think are important or helpful in your business?

Pepper Raccoon: Conversion rate demographics, I've got some more information on that from my marketing company that I use, and that's been great yeah, learning what your audience looks like.

Those kinds of numbers are important yeah, that kind of thing is neat and that's only been because I get enough volume through my store now, I get a decent amount of data and I can actually look at that stuff before that I tried to ignore all the numbers because none of them were big enough to be meaningful, yeah.

Okay.

Emma Smith: I'm I don't, yeah, I'm so cruising. The thing is, the funny thing is that since Aiko is my full time job, I don't have to, art is my side hustle and is my luxury money. So if I do a big job for a company, I, Can get that money and use it towards travel, towards, anything that's the more luxury side of what we want to do in our life.

We can go out for dinner that weekend or, it's cause it's, yeah, it's, I'm still just so chill about the kind of money side of it at the moment. I haven't gone too much into that cause I mean my website, it's, it's mainly just a, place where I can give people to look at my projects that I do.

I do more project work than rather than selling stock. So it's a different end for me. But yeah, mainly just the project side is if I have enough projects lined up, that's the kind of metric, of what is successful, what I'm doing. But yeah. No, it's a good one. Yeah. We're more into that side of it, into project work.

Cause It's less work when I have to ship out, I hate shipping. Oh yeah, see I love doing orders. Yeah, it's the best part. I get

Pepper Raccoon: to say that's nice. The

Hollie Arnett: cool thing about creative business is you can build it however you want it. Yeah, exactly. Okay, I would love to know what is the most valuable piece of marketing advice that you have received from other creatives or, yeah, from the creative community.

Pepper Raccoon: Can you play the Jeopardy game? Best piece of advice? I think the best thing I've ever heard from people is just don't worry about all your engagement letters. Just dump it. You can take notes and see what's going on and what's doing well and learn from that, but if you're getting up in your head about some artist has more followers than you or that kind of nonsense that's a bad place and you shouldn't hang out there.

I think that's the most important thing and it can, it's all well and good for me to say that or for someone else to say that, but when you're trying to grow your business and you're desperately trying to figure out what is going to grow your business, it's really easy to get hooked on those things.

And it's not good for you. Yeah. A

Emma Smith: hundred percent. Yeah. Like looking at people's artwork and being like, they're doing more than me or they're selling more than me. Markets are bad for

Pepper Raccoon: that. Oh

Emma Smith: yeah. And seeing, people have more vision than you it's, I'm still starting out artist, I've been doing this for, doing the Aika Waika windows for 10 years now.

I feel very comfortable in that area, but I've only just started into doing, digital prints and digital, commissions. For the last, maybe, I would say, yeah, a year and a half, I bought my first iPad. So I'm still very new to the game. So it's still trying to figure out even stuff that I like.

What is the stuff that I want to hang in my house or what, so it's that weird balance of trying to pick, take on a new, Discipline. Yeah. And figuring out. It's also

Pepper Raccoon: You can filter what you see online as well. A lot of people think, oh I need to follow all the artists, I need to follow everyone I know who's an artist.

I actually block and mute a lot of artists. And it's not because I don't like them, it's because when I look at their content I feel stressed. Because they're doing so much more than me, or their work is better than mine, and there's some work that's better than mine that inspires me greatly, and then there's some that makes me feel stressed, and like I'm never gonna get there, and I'm like, if that's not helping me, I'll put it away for later, and it's okay to do that with your online, you're not obligated to interact with anybody or do anything, and if stuff makes you feel bad, you can take a break for your own selfish reasons, and no one needs to know that you're doing that.

Hollie Arnett: Yeah, for sure. Great piece of advice. I, now I'm just going to give you some rapid fire questions and then we will go into all of your questions because I've got some submissions. I would love to know your, what you think is the most overrated marketing strategy. Go.

Pepper Raccoon: Trends, memes. I think memes are important.

They're great. But if you can't connect them back to what you're actually freaking doing, it is pointless. And I just, yeah, I see a lot of artists that just draw whatever mudang, cute, love it, great. If you drew a picture of mudang, that's okay. But everybody drew a picture of bloody mudang, and it was just like, who cares?

At some point, that's enough. And it's just that thing of and then people were like, I talked to some people who were like, Oh, I feel like I have to draw a picture of that fucking hippo. And I was like, why? And they were like, Oh, cause she's popular and I need the views. And I'm just like, that's a bad reason.

Yeah. And that's a hard one for me. I get really frustrated when I see artists just pandering to whatever meme is popular that week. Like I do some of that for funsies as part of my marketing in between posts with a bit more substance and people really like it and it helps them connect with me as a person.

But I also do fun ones that I think are fun. Whereas, yeah, I'm not doing every single thing that's happening every single week. Yeah, and I think you don't need to do that stuff. And if you don't like doing any of it, then don't do it. Exactly. Yeah. That hippo's cute. Draw a hippo. Yeah, it's all good.

But if you feel pressured to do it that's not the right place to be. Yeah.

Emma Smith: I. When I first started doing illustration and wanting to sell my prints and stuff, I was like, I'm going to do all of the Instagram ads. I'm going to do, I'm going to buy all of the things. I'm going to get so much, content from this.

And no, it just failed so miserably, probably because I didn't have a website. It just seemed like a scam, probably DM me if you want to print and say, okay, we'll probably get to the website first and then, yeah, maybe get a little bit more professional. So maybe the Instagram will, work.

Now that I have a website and have it like a shop yeah but yeah, that was, that's the only thing I can think of. It just miserably did not work for me. Yeah, I'm just still bitter. I still haven't gotten there. That is so fair. I'm like 30 bucks for three days. Yeah, like I can't do that.

Pepper Raccoon: No.

Emma Smith: Yeah. One day, one day. I heard someone else do it for

Pepper Raccoon: me. I was like, don't do it.

Hollie Arnett: Okay, opposite to that, what do you think is the most underrated marketing strategy? I think just

Emma Smith: chatting to your community. I think, A, just like it's yeah, I think finding when you're in a conversation or something when they say, Oh, my sister's has a new baby room and they're looking for someone to do a mural.

I can do a mural if you'd give them my details or, I'm starting up a new company and I'm looking for some signage. It's oh, I can do some signage. It's that I think that's the beautiful thing about Wellington as well is that everything is so connected and so everyone's so there for each other and supportive.

So I think as well, that's a huge thing that people don't think about when it comes to those big projects. I would say, if not 100%, then 99. 9 percent would be people that I have known from a friend of a friend and gotten me work through there, so it's yeah, I think that is such a beautiful part about our community in Wellington.

That's

Pepper Raccoon: all I'll talk

Emma Smith: about, that's it. Mic drop.

Hollie Arnett: Okay, what do you, what is one marketing task you wish you could delegate to someone else?

Pepper Raccoon: Yeah, please come over, do it, I'll pay you. Yeah yeah, no, shooting video is hard because I'm the only person in my studio, so even though my lovely marketing team, some of whom are here do a lot of my stuff for me, I have to shoot my own video because I'm in my studio doing my things.

But I find that video, shooting video takes me out of the part of the creative process I enjoy the most. I can't be present, I'm not fully engaged, I keep getting distracted by having to adjust the camera, like press stop or whatever, all those things, and so I'm never really fully in my head, and so I just feel like the work suffers so I just don't do it until the last minute.

Yeah, but I'm finding better ways to do it, and different things to shoot that are less stressful for me, and sometimes I am excited about shooting a speed draw, it just depends on the day, but yeah, shooting video is hard. Yeah, some days I'm like, yeah, and then other days no, thank you. Yeah

Emma Smith: The budgeting side of anything I hate it.

I'm just not wired for that budgeting side. My husband is works in finance So he does all of that. So he handles all the Henry stuff and all the taxes. Yeah, so good Yeah, but it just really goes over my head. ICI, I hear someone talk about finance, and I'm like, I just own out. I tap out. I'm good to gone.

I'm, I do not care, have anything to do with it. So I think, yeah, if he can see the numbers and see what's working and where we can invest our time into and stuff. Do I invest more time into print sales or do I put more time into doing the bigger companies where they'll pay.

a lot more than, the kind of work balance, so he'll look at those. I'd be like, you should probably, but yeah, any of the taxing stuff, I hate that as well. I really hate it. I hate it so much. Yeah. And filming as well. I really I like. Editing videos and making, doing that, I think the filming really helps you, like sometimes I'll, I'm like, I'm not doing any videos on a big project or if it's a big window and then at the very end when it's all done, I'll sit out back and pretend to like, oh yeah,

Pepper Raccoon: stuff and I'm like, I feel like such a fake.

That's my least favorite is when I'm like, ah, I have not shot the video and now I have to pretend that I did and I'm like. Yeah. doing some BS yeah,

Emma Smith: I'm like painting something and there's no paint on the brush. Why?

Pepper Raccoon: Why would I think that's okay? It's fine.

Emma Smith: It's fine.

Pepper Raccoon: Yeah. It's always like digital where I'm like, Oh, I'll just hide a layer that I already drew and then pretend to draw it again.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's ridiculous. Yeah. I think anytime I have to like, Fake anything. I feel frustrated. Yeah. But also I feel you on the finances. Yeah.

Hollie Arnett: So everybody go to their videos and try and spot what they were faking. You will find things. Okay. My last rapid fire. What is the best time saving marketing hack or tip that you have?

Pepper Raccoon: Ah I got it, which is you can post multiple, oh the same thing, multiple times. That is okay. I just figured that out. No, half of Instagram doesn't show your posts to anyone, so you can just keep posting it and to different people maybe will see that post. Yeah, super true. Very true. Yeah, the algorithm is screwing you over so you might as well just overload it with, yeah.

Take five different photos of the same thing you made and post one every week for five weeks like I'm just saying it's fine. Yeah, especially if you find new and interesting ways to represent the work, like anything like that. Yeah, reuse your content.

Emma Smith: I only just started doing that. That's great. I can't believe I just, I was looking through new content every single week.

What can I post? And I'm like, oh yeah, something from five years ago. Yeah, this is why

Pepper Raccoon: I love doing photo shoots now. I'm like, oh, I end up with 200 photos. And if I'm like having a down week, I'm just like, oh, I guess we could just pull something from the shoot. It's fine. Yeah. And then people buy the thing, and I'm like, great, love it.

Hollie Arnett: Amazing. Okay. Those were great rapid fire answers, thank you very much. We have some questions from the audience now, so I'm going to ask some of these. Okay, let me go through some of these. Do you have a dog? Doubt making your art into a career is the right direction. If so, how do you deal with that doubt?

Pepper Raccoon: Hell yeah. I'm not good at anything else, so I don't have a choice in the matter, is how I feel about it. I tried to have a regular job and it wasn't for me. Like I said, a menace. I'm really neurodivergent, and ADHD is hard. And I don't like regular work hours, and I don't like authority, and I don't like other people.

I do. I just, yeah, we're all co workers. Ugh. So art was always the thing I could do that I was good at. I love it. It makes me happy. Capitalism definitely ruins that on a regular basis, but there are still lots of moments of joy. So I definitely have lots of times where I look on seek. com for jobs and then back right back out again.

And question it all the time, and I think that's healthy actually. Yeah, it's, living under capitalism's a bummer. And it will take your art from you, and make it a job, and a really hard job, and maybe a job that doesn't even pay your bills. And if you're not willing to fight through that as a full time thing, you don't have to do art full time.

And doing art as a hobby is so legitimate. And I yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, you can do it part time, you can do it as a hobby, you can do it with your friends as a collaborative thing where there's, it's just because you want to get together and do something, it's fine.

All of those are legitimate real art, and it doesn't matter if you make it a job or not. You're not better than anybody else. Art is your full time job,

Emma Smith: I love going to my 9 to 5. I'm very lucky that I have a place that is filled with lots of yeah. It's very fun. And being part of a, local business and they look after me so well.

And it's a very fun environment to work in. There's lots of bright colors and it's fun, stock coming in. So that side of it I do love. I love that if I'm not feeling it that week, if I don't feel like creating that week, I can just go to work. Price and stock, organize, like clean, mop, like I love it so much and I think that really grounds me.

I think, yeah, I have that chaotic side to me where if I don't have that grounding I do go a little bit, yeah, hey I, I did drop a few days to try get into more art and I just couldn't do it because I, my brain is just not. I tell people to test it out, try it out, don't fully commit, but I had to go and yeah, my art is.

Part time? I wouldn't say hobby, but Side hustle is a perfectly legitimate thing to say. Yeah, side hustle, yeah. But I feel like it's not, I don't think I could do it as a full time thing. It's so much pressure. Yeah, it is a lot of pressure. And I think, yeah, when you don't feel like doing it, I don't have that to rely on.

And with my 9 to 5 debt, I can just go to work and not have to

Pepper Raccoon: That's why I'm so obsessed with sales, is because I need that money. I don't have a backup. Yeah, that's harder, yeah. And also, if I burn out, I'm a slave. I run my own. I'm a sole trader. I'm not anymore. I'm an LLC. But regardless, no one's paying me to take time off.

It's me. So I don't have that money. I can't take a break. And that's really stressful. So yeah, I always tell people to try out art as a job before you decide to go full time. If you see someone on tick tock bragging about how they're full time and making a million dollars making, garbage t shirts.

Don't worry about them. That might not be real. Try it out for yourself. You're your own person and don't quit your day job until you feel like that's really what you want to do. Yeah.

Hollie Arnett: We have a couple of market questions. So one person would love to know what was your, can you tell us more about your favorite market you've participated in?

And what made it memorable and someone else asked tips for markets. I'm doing my first on Friday night celebratory. Yeah, tell us. Yay! That's so exciting! So tell us about, yeah, your favorite markets and any tips that you have for markets.

Emma Smith: Yeah. It's a lot. It's a lot to deal with. I did my first Martin Barrow.

Not last year, but last year before by myself and like getting up at 4am having to travel over from Tawa to over in Mardin Borough. That was so hard. I think I had a mental breakdown on the way back and I had a three hour nap at the bottom of Rimutaka Hill. So it was just, it's a lot, it's a lot, but I had my lovely mum come with me this year.

So it's, when you have someone to help you it's really nice. And we stayed over there as well, which was a lot. Oh, that's nice. Yeah.

Pepper Raccoon: I go bougie for markets out of town. Like anytime I'm out of town, I'm In a hotel. I'm eating I'm doing everything right. I'm in bed by nine o'clock. Yeah.

Emma Smith: But they're a good, they're a good payback. And they're, it's with those bigger markets, sometimes you can go to a little market and it is really nice to check to people and get to know the community and stuff. But sometimes you'll walk away with 50 bucks and you're like this is my day off right now.

Yeah. So I've just finished a shift the day before and I just, yeah, they're always on Sunday. And so it's oh, you take a day off of Saturday. And so sometimes they can be really hard to decipher when to go to the good, when it's fortune telling. It really is. It's hard. They're so hit and miss, but it's you do get a sense for it over time though.

Pepper Raccoon: Based on the branding and who else is going. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think that one or like definitely that one. My, my favorite is big gay out. I love big gay out in Auckland. That's my favorite. I go every year because that's my community. And I get I'm like, I'm bi and I only came out quite late in life.

And so I'm in a heteronormative relationship and everything looks very hetero. And then I go to Big Gay Out, and I get to be gay for a day, and it's really great. So that's nice, and I get to connect with my community, and I get to wear a bikini top and shorts, and that's a great outfit for selling your stuff, and being outside, and it's hot, and it's nice, and it's way better than being in an auditorium under Fluorescent lights for three days straight at Armageddon.

Yeah yeah, which, yeah, is a great thing to do as well. You make lots of money at events that are really big and three days long, but they're also a marathon and they're so hard. I like the ones that again, align with my vibe, yeah. Wrap bag market. Oh yeah. Yeah. I run wrap bag market in Wellington and that's also a fave, but that's cause I run it, so I'm biased.

It's on this

Hollie Arnett: weekend if you are looking for something to do. Okay. Incredible. What would you. So let me find this question I was going to ask you. What have you found to be the best ways to share your work in person? So maybe at markets, but other things. Yeah. What are some in person marketing things you've tried?

That's so embarrassing. It's

Emma Smith: so embarrassing. It's so embarrassing though. People are like, Oh, do you. Do you have any of your work? Show them your Instagram. Sure! It's so embarrassing, but it's the best way to get that instant, yeah, Instagram. Instagram's the best, just to show them.

If you're already in that networking conversation you might

Pepper Raccoon: as well just show them your phone. Yeah, exactly. Some people I know put their art on the back of their business cards. That's really cute. You can just hand them one of your things and it's got a picture of what you do on it. So good.

At markets, I've found take pictures. There's so much emphasis on making your display really fancy and I think you can show people more of your work if you worry less about fancy and more about just actually making it visible. Everybody has these beautiful videos where they show how beautiful and cute all the like custom cut things for their whole stall are and it looks great, but a lot of the time I find if I just put my t shirts on stands in a row, they sell better than if I try to make some sort of cute display out of it.

Yeah, there's especially because you have limited space. Yeah. If you have more space. Yeah. Like a full shop window, then you're playing with something yeah, it's way better. But yeah, at a market, you're just like, someone's cruising by for one second, and you've got this big of a table, and you're just like, please, yeah yeah, just make sure people can see your stuff.

It sounds really obvious.

Hollie Arnett: Are there any particular in person things, other than markets, that you have found helpful?

Pepper Raccoon: Events like this are probably good. Yeah there's not a lot of things like this. I think network is really important. I don't know, I go to, I do client work for a lot of hackers, and so I go to information security conferences.

I usually do the art for the conferences. Really? Yeah, my partner's a hacker. Yeah. Oh. Yeah yeah. Yeah. Yeah, hackers love t shirts and stickers. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it turns out. Oh, not

Emma Smith: that.

Pepper Raccoon: Yeah. So it turns out like all hackers want goth t shirts and stickers. Yeah. Lots of love. So

Emma Smith: yeah, I was like, let me in.

Pepper Raccoon: Yeah. Yeah, so I just go and I'm like, here's stickers. I give people stickers at events that I go to. I'm like, yeah, just give people some cheap stuff. It's great. It's fine. They love it. You put your name on it, they hit you up. They're like, I run a corporate hacker business. Do you want 5, 000?

And that was from giving them a sticker, or having a drink with them in a bar. And it's really, just show up to places where people are that you want to work with and try to, Work up the courage to talk to them. Helps if your partner already works in the industry, that makes things a lot easier, and that's not really fair, but Yeah, you can also be brave and take a shot at things.

Yeah, shoot your shot.

Emma Smith: Like being in a gift shop, like I'm constantly meeting new business people that So I'll stock with us and it's yeah, I say, if you ever needed a mural done or some, design work, it's always that, using what you have in your area. Yeah. Remind

Pepper Raccoon: them, be like, I'm an artist, I do cool shit.

Yeah. And a lot of artists are very shy and don't want to say any of that and it gets easier. So you just got to try. Yeah.

Hollie Arnett: Yeah, I will, can agree that I've been to a bunch of events and gone to different countries even for conferences but made money back from those things. I just did that.

It was great. People just did the same. Life

Pepper Raccoon: validation.

Hollie Arnett: Yeah. From meeting people, getting clients, getting customers it can be a worthwhile thing to try for sure. Yeah. Okay, let's do some more quickly in the last five minutes. What is the thing that, but this is a deep one, what is the thing that drives you each day, specifically the shitty hard days?

Pepper Raccoon: It's spite. Yeah, it is spite. I live on the skulls of my enemies. Yeah, I People tell you can't do stuff, or that you shouldn't do stuff, or you're not good at stuff, and that makes me really motivated to prove them wrong. Probably neurodivergence again, but yeah, I don't like it when people tell me I can't do something, so when people say that, I tend to be like I'm gonna prove it so I just go and do it, and I usually try to do it ten times better than I thought I could.

So I live on spite. It's really easy to get on the negative side of spite. But I think it's a really positive motivating force for me.

Hollie Arnett: It's a good way to turn the negativity. Yeah, bad things happen to you and you can

Pepper Raccoon: just be like I'm not going to let this stop me. And that's spite, baby. It's

Emma Smith: nice, yeah.

I don't have something that's so exciting. Yeah, but yeah. What gets me out of bed and makes me Yeah, I think I really love my work at ICO. Especially With window displays and stuff, I think seeing people's reaction when they walk past or take photos, I think that really gets me out of bed.

And knowing that what I do makes a slight difference in the people's lives when they can walk past. And yeah, I think. That really helps. And then yeah, that connection is really super cool. Yeah. With my community, it's mean. It's been a long time since when I've, since I've been at ico, it's it's, yeah, it's really rewarding and I think that's what gets me, oh my God, my answer sounds so lame.

I was just gonna say, mine was so

Pepper Raccoon: sarcastic and mean. I also

Emma Smith: Yeah, the spectrum. Yeah. I

Pepper Raccoon: feel like I should say that I'm also really motivated by nature and I love nature. Yeah. And I get to draw nature a lot of the time. Yeah, it's too late. I can't change it. I'm just saying I'm also a nice person and I like plants.

Yeah, I'm just saying there's other stuff. Yeah, it's just sometimes when things are really shitty and hard, which is specifically what it's the thing of I am not quitting today. Yeah, that's spite.

Hollie Arnett: Okay, my last question, and I think will be a nice one. Not mine, one of yours. What are the Reflections you have had and the biggest learnings in your journey to making art or creating your paid job.

Basically, what's your biggest lesson? Biggest reflection?

Pepper Raccoon: Both of us just absolutely stoned. I'm cooking. Yeah, let her cook. I'm thinking like, I think it's the thing of You have to find a balance between what you make for them and what you make for you if you want to make this a business.

And that's really tough because if you don't feel passionate about what you're making, it's not going to be sustainable. You'll burn out. So you have to find a way to sometimes some people do one for them and then one for you. So you make a design that you know will appeal to people and then you make one that you know you like and you see how they go.

I've over time, I've done a lot of that. And I feel like when I really get too far out into the making them for them, I make stuff nobody wants. And I feel like when I find a happy Venn diagram medium in between the two circles is where things are really good. But also a lot of the time when I make stuff that I'm excited about, other people are excited about it too.

And that's the security thing as well. Like feeling secure enough to share what you're excited about with everybody else is often harder than making something you think will have mass appeal. And I think if you can do both. The thing for you, you'll be happier and they'll be happier. Yeah. I still struggle with it.

Emma Smith: When you get into lots of client work, when they're asking you what they, when they're telling you what they want and you try to put your spin on it and they're like, no, and you're like, okay, cool. Myself, it sucks, so it's that hard balance of, and I haven't made another print for a very long time.

Like my, one of my own prints that I sell on my website and stuff. I haven't done that in a very long time. So I think it's it's that hard.

Pepper Raccoon: Sometimes you gotta pay your bills too you can't do your own stuff for a while. And

Emma Smith: in seasons it comes and in seasons it goes, and during market times I sometimes get a little bit more inspired to do new art and new things.

But for the moment, yeah it's Really hard to find that balance and I'm still figuring it out. Yeah, I

Pepper Raccoon: think that's a constant thing for everybody all the time. Yeah. Yeah.

Hollie Arnett: That's all the questions we have time for right now, but I want to thank both of you for sharing your experience and Thank you so much for listening to this episode.

I hope you enjoyed learning from Pepper and Emma and hearing all about how they market their creative business. As you might have heard us mention a couple of times, community can be a huge part of marketing your creative business. So So if you want to join a community of creatives who are all working to turn the thing they love the most into the thing people know and love them for, then you want to join the Brand Your Passion Collective.

This is the membership for artists, makers, and creators who want to build a creatively fulfilling, community building, financially stable, creative business through the power of branding and do it together. Within the collective, we are working to. Craft you a custom brand strategy. That's going to bring in floods of raving fans turned customers to your creative business.

And when you do that, you're going to unlock more trainings on brand identity, design, marketing, and so much more. Plus you get to ask questions that go into this podcast and get access to the private podcast, branding Holly's passions too. So if you want to do all that, Come and join us. You can join us right now, quarterly or annually, and it works out to 12 a month.

So come and check it out at brandyourpassion. co hit the link in the description in the show notes and come and join us in the collective. Okay. Thanks so much for listening, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this episode and as always creating. Bye.

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