EP150: Trends We're Paying Attention to in Our Creative Businesses in 2024

This week, Melissa and Heather do a brief recap of what they did in their creative businesses in 2023 and what they are focusing on for 2024. But at the heart of the episode we get into the trends we're paying attention to in our creative businesses - including a very frank (and possibly surprising?) discussion about generative AI and how we feel about it. 2024 has the potential to be a huge year of change for a lot of working creatives - whether we like it or not!

This is a great episode for creatives who...

• like to hear about what others are working on in their creative businesses (because we're both nosy parkers lol)
• are wondering what they need to focus on or be aware of in 2024
• are feeling very nervous and unsettled by the use of AI

This episode is brought to you by Fine Lime Designs Illustrations

For a summary of this episode and all the links mentioned please visit:
Episode150: Trends We're Paying Attention to in Our Creative Businesses in 2024

You can find Melissa at finelimedesigns.com, finelimeillustrations.com or on Instagram @finelimedesigns.

You can find Heather at heatherlynnetravis.com or on Instagram @heathertravis.

Transcript

Melissa Hartfiel: 0:00

This week's episode of the And She Looked Up podcast is brought to you by Fine Lime Illustrations. If you love quirky, colorful art transformed into fun handmade stationery items pretty much guaranteed to brighten somebody's day that's just what you'll find in my new online shop at finelimeillustrationscom. That's fine, as in I'm fine lime, as in the fruit illustrationscom. Browse the entire collection or sign up for my email list to see some behind the scenes peeks into my studio. You'll also get first notice of new product launches and subscriber only sales, and as an added little bonus, you'll also receive a free coloring sheet to help you relax and de-stress from your day. Now on with the show.

Melissa Hartfiel: 0:58

Welcome to the And She Looked Up podcast. Each week, we sit down with inspiring Canadian women who create for a living. We talk about their creative journeys and their best business tips, as well as the creative and business mindset issues all creative entrepreneurs struggle with. I'm your host, Melissa Hartfiel, and after leaving a 20 year career in corporate retail, I've been happily self-employed for 12 years. I'm a graphic designer, an illustrator and a multi-six figure a year entrepreneur in the digital content space. This podcast is for the artists, the makers and the creatives who want to find a way to make a living doing what they love. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the And She Looked Up podcast. I'm Melissa and I'm here today with my semi-regular guest host, Heather Travis, and I love you. Hi everybody, hello, happy New Year, if it's not too late.

Heather Travis: 1:58

Happy New Year.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:59

Yes, I don't know, but it's your first appearance on the show for 2024, so happy New Year Exactly. So today, heather and I are we're going to be talking a little bit of a mixed bag. I guess we normally do an end of year episode where we talk a bit about how our year went and what our goals are for the coming year, and we decided to scrap it for 2023 because we just weren't sure if people were into those episodes. But then we heard from a few people that, yeah, they did want to hear how our 2023s went, and more, I think more they were more curious in what we had planned for the coming year. And so I feel like people either love those episodes or they don't. I mean, I love them. I am such a nosy Parker. I love to hear what other people have planned. I learn a lot from that, I get ideas from it. So I like those episodes. But I know some people are just like, yeah, I don't really care. So if you don't really care, well, you can tune up for the next week.

Melissa Hartfiel: 3:02

Yeah, you can come back, but we're also going to be talking as part of this episode, about some of the trends that we see happening in 2024 and whether or not we're going to participate in those trends or whether we're planning on incorporating them some way into what we are doing this year. So, if you're interested in the trends for the coming year or what we think our personal opinions of what we think the trends for the year will be then, yeah, stick around. So stay, go, it's up to you, Okay. So yeah, let's Heather super quick. How did 2023 go for you? Were you happy? What did you learn? What did you? What made you unhappy? Coles notes.

Heather Travis: 3:52

Coles notes. So 2023 was an absolutely crazy year because it started well. It started actually with our dog dying, so that was like we've listen, I have talked about 2023.

Melissa Hartfiel: 4:04

Yeah, so that was a pretty star pops this year in 2023.

Heather Travis: 4:09

So yeah so that was a super shitty start to the year, but then, gosh, you know, I finished up the production of the works for the exhibition. I then launched the exhibition, had the entire exhibition, had all the events associated with the exhibition, and then wrapped up the exhibition at the end, right at the end of 2023. And it was an overall. I would say 2023 was an incredible year, despite the shitty start, because I learned a lot about art, the art world, having an exhibit, dealing with the gallery, meeting new customers in person, events, you know, when I started a new contract job to fill up the piggy bank after painting for a year and a half. So it was a really honestly, I think 2023 was a huge year of growth. It was a huge year of cathartic release.

Heather Travis: 5:08

I think we've talked about it that the exhibition and the creation process was really cathartic for me and being able to release parts of myself into these paintings and sort of leave them in the world and not carry that weight myself anymore has been incredibly, incredibly thrilling, gratifying, relieving, like I feel there's so much opportunity and that you know that. That's why my plans for 2024 are kind of interesting, because I did I think I did so much in 2023 and I also learned so much and exclaimed so much. I feel like there's so much more potential now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Melissa Hartfiel: 5:49

It was a huge year for you, so definitely a lot of emotions wrapped up in there too.

Heather Travis: 5:57

Right, yeah, and you know, I mean you know just as well as I do that having when you're at home in your studio with your companion, when they're no longer there, it is a huge change to the workflow and process and your day. And so, like new routines, new habits I know you've posted about it on your Instagram in terms of like, grief, routines and all of like, all of those things like the first time I found an Eddie here in one of the paintings that I was working on for the exhibition. I was just shattered up here in the studio, like it shattered, so it really changed things, but I'll tell you it was a huge opportunity too. It was a huge opportunity and the gift that his absence actually gave me in terms of time. You know I had to really focus on the positives that that allowed, and so it was a really yeah, it was a really. 2023 was like the the awesomest shitty year, if that makes sense.

Melissa Hartfiel: 6:55

No, it does, I find. I find momentous years are often like that. It's a mix of great loss, but also of great gain, yes, and great growth. And yeah, yeah, I've noticed that throughout my life that usually the really crappy years are also the really best years.

Heather Travis: 7:17

It's funny how that works, yeah, and you know it's interesting. You and I have talked about the waves of creativity before, but I also feel like that that's, it's the waves, like in order to spirit that really high, high, yeah, of the awesomeness, you have to go, like there has to be, you have to go low.

Melissa Hartfiel: 7:32

Yeah, yeah, yeah, otherwise there's no wave.

Heather Travis: 7:36

It's flat right, yes, you don't have a higher or low.

Melissa Hartfiel: 7:39

It's just a straight line, yeah.

Heather Travis: 7:42

Monotone, which is so not interesting.

Melissa Hartfiel: 7:44

Very boring, exactly.

Heather Travis: 7:45

Very boring yeah. So what about you for 2023?

Melissa Hartfiel: 7:49

Yeah. So just before we get into that, if you want to hear about Heather's exhibit and everything that went into it and a lot of the emotions and things that were behind the exhibit, our season opener for season five is with Heather and we talked in great depth about the exhibit. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. But if you want to go back and listen to that, if you missed it, we get into all the juicy stuff behind launching a solo exhibition. Yeah, yeah, 2023 was a funny year, I think. Yeah, I lost my pup. For those of you who I haven't talked about it too much on the podcast, but for those of you who don't know, he was five months old when I quit my real job, so he has been with me in my studio for almost 14 and a half years. And it's almost 14 because, yeah, I just celebrated my 14th anniversary of being self-employed.

Heather Travis: 8:51

Wow, that's a huge accomplishment. Yeah, 12th. Well, on that first second, that's a huge accomplishment. I think it was last.

Melissa Hartfiel: 8:56

Friday. It was the 18th, which was last Thursday. Wow, today's Thursday.

Heather Travis: 9:02

We're recording this on January 25th.

Melissa Hartfiel: 9:04

It is the Thursday, yeah, it was the 18th and so you know. And I never really understood people saying how they find working from home alone. I never found it lonely with him here, but now that he's not here it is so weird. His head is still in the studio because I don't like the empty floor space, Even though I know he's not in it. I don't like the empty space. It bothers me way more than I can explain to anything. It's such an irrational thing, but yeah.

Heather Travis: 9:36

My feet are currently sitting in Eddie's bed underneath my desk. Yeah, and he's been gone for a year. It's so funny they're keeping my feet warm.

Melissa Hartfiel: 9:44

They're keeping my feet warm, but you know, sam was diagnosed with cancer in May and he had a successful surgery, but the oncologist was very upfront and said it will be back. His blood work showed that it had probably already started to spread, even though we couldn't find any signs of it, and she gave him six to eight months, which is pretty much exactly what we got. But I was fortunate enough to know that in advance. Like, looking back on it, I realized how fortunate I was and how being self-employed allowed me to change my priorities for the last six months of his life and I was able to spend much more intentional time with him and make sure that they were a great six months. I'm going to start crying. I'm going to cry. I'm going to cry. No, no, I'm already tearing.

Heather Travis: 10:39

I'm already tearing because I'm totally with you and that's such a.

Melissa Hartfiel: 10:40

It was a gift we were just talking the other day.

Heather Travis: 10:43

It's a huge gift and that you cannot put a dollar value when people say, oh, you're self-employed, how much money do you make? You could not. The experience that you had that six months that's like a million-dollar experience. There are people that would trade and give limbs for the experience of caring for the family member. That's such a gift and there is no finance that you could put on that.

Melissa Hartfiel: 11:07

Exactly, it could have been one of my parents.

Melissa Hartfiel: 11:10

It could have been a friend to be there for a friend who's going through something. So that's something I could not have had if I was in a traditional job and I'm so grateful for that. And that leads to I actually had a good. I don't want to say I had a great year, but I had a good year. I'm not disappointed in my year and this was the second full-time year of the current businesses that I have. I had done some part-time work a few years before that. So I am still very much in the early growth stages. I have two arms to my business and each year I've had a big revenue leap, and my goal this year was also another fairly aggressive increase in revenue percentage-wise. It's still nowhere near where I need to be financially, but when I did my numbers at the end of the year, I was $600 short of my goal for the year. I was so upset hey, on the one hand I'm just like wow, that was Because it was a very aggressive goal. So yay me, yeah, yes.

Melissa Hartfiel: 12:22

But here's why I was frustrated. I was frustrated because Somebody actually thought I was frustrated because I had slowed down because of Sam. No, absolutely not. That was a very intentional choice and I'm glad I was frustrated because I did not go through my numbers at the end of November. I was busy, it was market season, sam had been sick, he had passed away, my dad had had some health stuff and I was just like, ugh, I'll just do it at the end of December. So I didn't know my numbers, I didn't know where I was at and if I had just sat down for half an hour and done my numbers, I would have known how close I was and I could have filled that $600. I turned down two client requests because I just wanted a break but honestly, if I had known how close I was, I would have taken them and I would have been over the $600 and I would have hit the target.

Melissa Hartfiel: 13:22

So this is why numbers are so important and why paying attention to your numbers are so important. I mean, at the end of the day, $600 is not a deal-paker or anything, but it was annoying to me that the reason I didn't hit this goal is because I wasn't paying attention to my numbers. And sometimes it's those very small things. It's not that we. You know, if you miss them for one month, big deal, but if you miss them for three or four months they add up and things start to go in the wrong direction. So if you catch them quickly, you can course correct and that's what I could have done. So that was my big lesson for 2020. So you pay attention to your numbers, but otherwise, you know, I really set two big goals for the year. One was visibility and one was creating, and I had initially planned to do 365 days of creating new things. I tapped out around day 210, I think, or 218 or somewhere in there, because I was just that's impressive. You got that far.

Heather Travis: 14:23

Holy moly, yeah it burnt me out.

Melissa Hartfiel: 14:26

By the time I got to that I was like I don't care if I ever pick up another pen or pencil or a piece of paper or my iPad. But I created a huge body of work and a lot of work that is helping me to be ahead of things promotion-wise for 2024. I have artwork created, so I'm really pleased with how I did. I will never do another 365 challenge again. I will do a much more reasonable yeah reasonable, forgiving type of challenge.

Melissa Hartfiel: 14:57

100 days is great, or doing 52 weeks or something like that. Yeah, 360 days was crazy and I don't think I missed a day in the 210 that I did or I might have missed one or two, but it was very consistent.

Melissa Hartfiel: 15:13

So that is yeah, that's 2023 in a nutshell for me. So, yeah, so that brings us to this year. Just NFYI for the audience. Heather and I did not discuss this before coming on this, so I have no idea what she is doing for this year. She has no idea what I'm doing. So, heather and Leigh, what's happening this year?

Heather Travis: 15:36

Yeah, so this year is really interesting. So, first off, the amount of time that I was able to spend creating for the exhibition. It was such a dedicated like. I literally spent 60 hours a week for eight months, nine months, working on art for this exhibition. I tried new techniques, I tried new paints, I experimented a lot. All of that was incredibly gratifying. I kind of feel like when the exhibition happened, I didn't create actually anything for quite a few months on purpose, so I still did.

Heather Travis: 16:15

Anybody who follows me on Instagram knows that I'd dick around the house and do stuff with spray paint. I'm always making creative. There's never not a creative but I didn't. No intentional art, no intentional and no sitting down. I am going paint. That did not happen and I kind of enjoyed that.

Heather Travis: 16:34

I enjoyed that I released myself from the sort of freedom and then, in thinking about that and actually really dwelling on the fact that I really enjoyed the experimentation that I allowed myself to do during the exhibition creation period, that I actually 2024 for me, is going to be all about experimenting, and so my financial goals are actually to just make experimentation as inexpensive as possible so that I don't go into the hole, but using things that I have here things that I might find. I'm really so. I want to experiment with different styles, I want to experiment with different techniques. I want to experiment with subject matter. There's a lot that I and so if I was picking, like, my word of 2024, it would be experimentation. If I was adding, if I was adding a word before that, it would be limitless experimentation.

Heather Travis: 17:38

I don't want to limit myself by saying that's not on brand. I don't want to limit myself by saying what will people think? I don't want to limit myself by how I'm seeing it, my head. I don't want to limit that experimentation, even financially. It's not like I'm going to go out and just whatever, but I've been researching airbrushes and maybe playing with painting with airbrush tools. What does that look like? So financially that's a big one.

Heather Travis: 18:14

But I also am really interested in that experimentation, one thing that I've never. I mean I'm not an only child, but I'm really an only child. I'm an Aries and I'm a child of divorce. So my like I don't need your help, I can do it all by myself is brewed and baked into my core. So part of that experimentation that I want to look at for this year is more collaboration. For me, collaboration immediately, like it's like high school projects all over again, where I do all the work, everybody else is like thanks so much. That's great, heather, we'll see you in class.

Heather Travis: 19:06

So I really I want to be a little bit more obviously intentional about who I collaborate with, not just like Willie Nilly, but I also want that experimentation through collaboration. I don't want it to be a surefire thing. So like, for instance, I've been talking to a girlfriend of mine about creating a line of tarot cards for her studio. I've never designed tarot cards before, but how fun would that be. And so it's like experimentation, how cool would that be? And just playing, I think. And I would actually argue that my experimentation I chose that overplay because that seems a little frivolous, but I would argue that I want my experimentation to be quite a lot of play as well. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Heather Travis: 19:52

So I have no idea what I'm going to create. I have no. I have a couple ideas on series that I want to paint, but again, if it comes, it comes. I'm like I have so many ideas actually, which is kind of exciting, and I'm not and I'm not going to say, ok, well, if I did this, then I could sell it, or if I did this, like, my decisions are not going to be maced. It sounds so weird because you and I always talk about business, but I don't think any of my artistic decisions this year are going to be business based. They're going to be purely learning, so filling, spreading my wings and just like. There's going to be a lot of throwing spaghetti against the wall and and and I'm OK, and I'm OK with that, and I think part of the comfort of that is that I still have that contract job.

Melissa Hartfiel: 20:39

I was just going to ask, like, do you feel like the contract job is giving you the freedom to be able to experiment without necessarily worrying too much about? Because I think for a lot of us, we, we're, we got to eat right, so there's always that in the back of our mind, like is this going to be commercially viable? Which maybe holds us back a bit from from going down a path we might really want to go down. So do you feel like having that contract job is sort of giving you a little bit of a cushion so that you can make that happen?

Heather Travis: 21:13

Big, big time. I would say it's. It's giving a lot of opportunity, but it also, you know, it is demanding, so it's. You know I have half as much time in my studio as as I would if I was just home, but I also have money to pay for food. So you know, when some lose some, yeah, and so yes, I and I think also to you know it's interesting, being all alone, talking to the dog is is a huge gift, but you also not being out in the world, like I'm a really social being and so I I take a lot from being out in the world and I didn't actually realize how much I missed it until I got Back in.

Melissa Hartfiel: 22:09

I think that's something within Our pets age, so Like it's not something. You just notice that that they're aging right, and so I think the last few years of their lives we do, whether it's consciously or subconsciously, just retreat a little bit so that because they can't be as active.

Heather Travis: 22:30

So we yes, I made a category. Does it like? No, we can't go there.

Melissa Hartfiel: 22:35

I'm not leaving the dog like going on vacation unless he comes with me or I'm not. You know I don't want to, yeah. So I definitely did that. But after he passed away I was going through a lot of pictures and videos and stuff and you know, the first 10 years, sam was 14 and a half when he passed away, so he was a good old age for a Labrador. He's a big dog. Labs are big dogs, so they have a shorter lifespan.

Melissa Hartfiel: 22:56

But you know, the first 10 years of his life were so different from the last four and a half he was. We were so active. I had no problem leaving him. I mean, I missed him for sure. But he came with me on all the adventures. Like I was out there a lot more than I was the last few years because he was in a different point in his life. So I kind of remind myself, like if I was to get another dog, we'd be back at the puppy stage and we'd be, we'd be active again, we'd be out there, we'd be doing stuff. So, yeah, so I do. There is something nice about having this little break where, yeah, I can go out without having to worry quite so much right.

Heather Travis: 23:34

Yeah, yeah, yes, like it's a gift, like closer gifts, right, and so you just it's, the choice in your attitude obviously is a big thing, but like exactly, and because even when Eddie was fit as a fiddle and we did all the things you know, we would go for like three hour long hikes but I'd go with girlfriends and their kids and other dogs and like yeah, yeah, so there was social, whereas when we just, you know, we're lucky to make it around the block, I saw the same, I saw the same two neighbors. Right, it takes you an hour.

Heather Travis: 24:04

And it took us an hour and and exactly, and I wouldn't go, I wouldn't leave the house for a four hour hike because that was leaving him and so all of those things, exactly. And so being out with people is really like it's filling my cup up. I'm meeting new people, different people. I feel like my perspectives have been challenged. You know, I'm working in the services sector, that is, supporting people who live with developmental disability. I've met a huge, huge, huge number of people who live very interesting and beautiful lives and it's really I kind of feel like the Grinch.

Heather Travis: 24:45

My heart has grown two sizes bigger and I just feel like I just feel more connected to my community. I think where the collaboration aspect comes from is I'd like to do more within my community and like that, you know, just to sort of veer onto what we were hoping to talk about as well is I see a big trend for 2024 being continued emphasis on local and community connection, and I, as an artist, want to embrace that more within my work, my sales, so like even this weekend I'm hosting a studio open house, I'm putting a sign at the end of my driveway and encouraging people to come into my studio, and so my neighbors are going to see this right, and so, like I'm inviting the community, and quite literally, and, and, and, that's an experiment, who knows how it's going to go? But I have this fancy little thing now, melissa, where I can take credit card payments in person.

Melissa Hartfiel: 25:43

And so I feel all like fancy pants.

Heather Travis: 25:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, anyway. So yeah, it's going to be. I think 2024 is going to be a really interesting year of throwing spaghetti, throwing paint around and really just challenging myself to try to try. I think that's yeah, yeah.

Melissa Hartfiel: 26:04

Yeah. Yeah, it's funny because, like I said, we hadn't heard what each other's goals were, but it's pretty weird how aligned they are. Yeah, collaboration was number two on my list for this year. Yeah, I think that's going to be huge. And again, like you, I'm not sure what that's going to look like or who it's going to be with, or, but basically I'm I am very open to it, like if yeah.

Melissa Hartfiel: 26:35

I'm just going to let myself be open to, yes, to seeing what comes along, and and if there's somebody that I want to work with, I'm going to push myself outside of my comfort zone and see if they'd be interested in it.

Melissa Hartfiel: 26:49

And when I like I was, I was. I was actually out with a girlfriend yesterday. We went thrifting, I took a rare Wednesday off. It was fun, we had a great time. And she's a she's a blogger. Well, she doesn't really blog anymore. She still has her blog but I yeah. So anyway, but we were just, we were just talking about all of this and I was just saying like I feel like this is the year where I'm just going to be open and experiment with things. And one of the things I was thinking about inviting, like who I want to invite on the show for the rest of the season, and I was saying how I was really nervous about approaching some of these people, and one of them is actually somebody that her and I both know and who has dramatically changed her life in the last couple of years in the terms of what she does now. And I said I'm really nervous about asking her to be on the show and she was like why you like, we know her, she's nice she's, and I said I don't know. I think it's because she's doing something so incredibly different now and yet, at the same time, like it's so funny, how, anyways? So, yeah, I want, I want to experiment with who I bring on the show and I yeah. So experimentation and collaboration are are both very high on my list this year.

Melissa Hartfiel: 28:15

My word for last year was visibility, because, because I'm such it's such an early stage, I still really struggle with getting eyeballs on me and I'm actually carrying that word over for 2024. I'm still going to be working very much on visibility. I saw the results of a very concentrated effort on that for 2023. The results for that started to roll in around October of last year, like and right. So I just I want to put that out there for everybody who who struggles like I think we all struggle with visibility and we get very frustrated with social media for not making our visibility better.

Melissa Hartfiel: 28:57

But I think it really is true that you have to show up every day and not just on social media. The way that visibility started to snowball for me was actually through my services newsletter, which I found that people were sharing because it had good stuff in it and SEO I had. For the first time in September I had somebody approach me and say I found you through a search online for my services. I have a very niche service, like the people that I work with is very niche, and so that told me my SEO was working, something that I had done a very concentrated effort on for eight months. So, yeah, I think it's so much more than social media getting seen.

Melissa Hartfiel: 29:51

And I think I still have a ton of work to do in that area, and so I'm very much still planning on doing that for this year. Just before we came on the show, I was working on a newsletter that I'm sending out this afternoon because IncoRymo starts in February and I'm going to participate in that as a way to grow my community, because I think community is kind of part of collaboration to me, like in a way, because you're collaborating with the people who love your stuff, right, yes, and community, yes, massive. I mean, you've known me for a long time. I preach community nonstop. I've been pre, it's been to me. It's a trend that has been going on for years. Like, it's not even a trend, is just a thing that you should be doing in your business, regardless of fact, whatever. Yes, and I am a huge proponent of community and I am absolutely focusing in on that. But I think more and more people have realized that this year, community is definitely something they need to pay attention to. So, yeah, visibility is a big one and, yeah, I am.

Melissa Hartfiel: 31:02

I am also very focused on revenue because I am asked a bunch of debt personal, like consumer debt last year because of dental mishaps. Right, I almost cried yesterday because I'm finally getting my crown put on. To finish off this entire. I've had three surgeries. I have one tiny one left to do in February and then I get my crown put on.

Melissa Hartfiel: 31:30

And you guys, you guys extended dental is such BS when you don't have a corporate job. It covers, right, nothing, nothing. So it's all out of pocket and, and, yeah, so this year is about I'm hoping to hit like a respectable revenue this year that is life supporting, right, yeah, and, and that can hopefully help me chip away at this debt, because I just, I hate carrying any kind of debt, especially when I'm self employed. So, yeah, those are my big things this year. And you know, we were talking about trends and where we see those going and how we're going to get involved in them, and the one we've both mentioned is community. So, yeah, like I just said, I don't think it's a trend personally, but I know it is a trend that has been identified by a lot of people this year. But yeah, so, yeah, like, where do you see community in your world this year?

Heather Travis: 32:42

You know, for me I see community, and like community to me is like authenticity, in that people are like buzzwords. It's all about community, it's all about authenticity. But quite truly, if you do not live and breathe, those doesn't really matter. And and for me, community, particularly via social media, is my, my shirt community, the shirt with Heather community that comes together every odd Saturday to shirt with me is such a beautiful group of humans and it continues to grow. We just celebrated our third shard of earth.

Melissa Hartfiel: 33:24

So three years of sharding and you know, did a radio spot on CBC for it, didn't you?

Heather Travis: 33:31

Yeah, I did. I got interviewed on CBC. I was on um like the Toronto Morning Radio. Yeah, yeah, we talked for like 10 minutes and what was interesting was one of the producers. When she called me, she was like I follow you on Instagram I have for years and then she was asking about the background of shirt and just this ties to community.

Heather Travis: 33:50

Actually, quite interestingly is when I took a break from sharding live over the summer so that I could just have my summer to go out and be in the world, uh, switched to doing reels as a shirt prompt, and so my shirt prompts were as reels I could create the many time I wanted over the course of the week, published the month Saturday, and they were getting like 10,000, 20,000 views. So I was getting like that shirt was actually going a lot further than when I went live, and when I decided to go back to going live, I've I basically sacrificed that 20,000 viewership on every potential reel to having 20 to 30 people show up, and so it's a drastic number in difference. But to me that community is actually more powerful. It's mightier, stronger, or it's stronger and mightier, smaller and, like I, have more meaningful connection, more authentic connection, opposed to me coming up into my studio recording a fun reel, publishing it, pushing it out into the world and having a few people comment, a couple of people slide into my DMs, but nothing really. Whereas live on Saturdays, we have delightful conversation, like there is constant conversation over the half an hour, people are engaged. Those people don't just engage with me, but they get engaged with each other and so, like they all now follow each other on Instagram and like we've made our own little community of connection.

Heather Travis: 35:26

Some of us have met in real life, some of us haven't, and that is like to me, just so cool, and so I really want to continue to foster that because, like some of the people who I've met through Shart are friends of mine now. Like I'm now in a book club with one of the girls who I met via Shart, so now we're meeting monthly with a whole other group of people to talk about awesome books. And how cool is that? That this one area spawned another. And, like you just never know. To me, that's the beauty of authentic connection through community is that you, you never know what seeds are being planted, and that's like to me just being. You don't need to plant deliberate seeds. The deliberate is fostering authentic connection within your community. And then seeds are just going to plant themselves Like and you don't have to worry about it, and so for me that that community is a big one.

Heather Travis: 36:26

And then there are lots of local artists who I've met. I love they do cool shit. Like there's a pottery artist. She and I have talked about having like me painting her pottery. How cool would that be? And right, like, how fun would that be. What a neat collaboration I've.

Heather Travis: 36:44

I haven't painted pottery since I painted an ashtray in grade five in elementary school for my non smoking parents. Like you know, I'll did, we all did Autist thing ever anyway. And so you know I like that's part of the experimentation, but that's also part of the community and connection. And just leaving the house seeing somebody else like I. There's people I've met on Instagram who literally I'm like can we have a Instagram call and can you take me on a tour of your studio? I want to see your tools. And, like you know, I met somebody recently who makes like resin, printed resin sculptures and then airbrush paints them. So I was talking with him about airbrush like just so people do such cool stuff.

Heather Travis: 37:31

And when you step outside of yourself and are like look at you, look how cool that is. Authentically interested, authentically wanting to connect with a person. Yeah, I think so much can come out of it. So that for me is like that's a, that's a big one. The community one it's a, it's a big one. And expanding that community really deliberately, like I don't need to, I don't need to blow up, I don't need 10 million Instagram followers to sell my art, just need one person who thinks that's really awesome and connects with me in some way. That's what I need, right, that's what we all need.

Melissa Hartfiel: 38:11

So no, absolutely, it's so funny. I was having a conversation with a client about a week ago who is this one of my email marketing clients and she's doing a challenge this year with her list. Oh cool, yeah, it's cool. It's her first time doing this and she had done a lot of research on it and she just want she had written the emails. She just wanted me to go in and make them more fun. Make them more fun and, and you know, you know, you do them up a little bit yeah, yeah.

Melissa Hartfiel: 38:42

And she wanted some, some graphics and printables and stuff to go with it. So, anyway, I had done some stuff and I had asked her how many people had signed up. I knew how big her list was and she told me the number. And I read the number and I was like, oh my God, she did awesome. So, to give you an idea, the kind of engagement you can expect on these things is is one to 2%, and she was hovering, I think, around three, I can't remember now. So she had done really well, yeah, but she, I hadn't said anything to her yet and the next line in her email was I'm really disappointed, I feel like I failed my audience.

Melissa Hartfiel: 39:22

And so I emailed her back and I said you have done so well, like, that is that is that's, that is a good number, like. And we had a little conversation back and forth and I said look, here's what you've learned. You've learned that these people are your people, right, these people who sign up, they are your people, like they, they want to be involved with you, they want to do this with you. I said that is priceless information and you need to like tag those in your email list, as you know, yeah, people.

Melissa Hartfiel: 39:55

Exactly she she's since growing the lit, like I think it just launched this week and she had she had come close to doubling the number she had when we had this conversation. So she, she's super well with this, but she just she didn't know what the numbers were or what to expect and she thought she had she hadn't done well at all. But yeah, she's, she's identified this group of people as as hers. These are the ones who are, you know, and that is to know who those who those people are, is such amazing information, because now you can really focus on them and really serve them in a way that makes them loyal forever. Right, and I think we forget about that. We're always.

Melissa Hartfiel: 40:41

I think sometimes we veer into that space where we become a mobile phone provider company where it's like, yeah, yeah, I got all you who cares, I got to go out and get all these people Right. So, hey, all you people who are not subscribers, I got a deal for you. All you people who are already subscribed, you just sit over there and be quiet, right, like you're already here, you know, you know how we feel when our phone companies. It's irritating, right, it doesn't inspire loyalty, it doesn't make you like them, but you need a mobile phone, so you just suck it up and go with it, right, but it's not nice.

Melissa Hartfiel: 41:16

And so I think, as creatives, we have to be very careful we we don't neglect the people who are in our community at the expense of trying to just draw everyone in. You know, we're never going to appeal to everyone, and, yeah, so I. Community is huge and we've done, we've done so many conversations on the show about building your community. And you know, community is not just about who you hang out with online. It is the people that you hang out with in person. It's your colleagues. It's yeah, it's not just customers, it's colleagues, it's other artists, it's other creatives, it's other professionals who might see a way to use your work in what they do. Somebody was asking me a few weeks ago about whether she should approach local realtors in her area. She runs a subscription box and I was like, yeah, local realtors are they. Their whole marketing revolves around their local community. They want to be seen as specialists in that community. So they go out of their way to promote other small businesses because it makes them, because it makes them more entrenched in their local community.

Heather Travis: 42:33

So you know, I'm not saying we should work with realtors, but like think about it like that Like, oh, honestly, I collaborate with a local realtor who, in addition to having a number of Airbnb properties, also does home staging, so it's a realtor home staging partnership and I rent out my paint.

Melissa Hartfiel: 42:55

They need art. They need art.

Heather Travis: 42:56

And I rent. I rent out art for a monthly fee. It gets display, business cards are put in front of it at all of the houses. It gets exposure. And the best thing for me is when people are trolling realtorca and they see one of my paintings in a home staging photo and I get a screen capture. I spy you on, realtor, holy shit, and I'm like that's so cool to me. That's so cool Because it's like not only your community first off recognize your work, saw you out in the wild and reached out to you Like it's an opportunity for connection, but also I made money on paintings that were just sitting and I always said if somebody buys it, I'm just going to, you know, pick it up, give you the rest of your money for the rest of the month, that and then sell the painting. Like it. It makes money doing nothing.

Melissa Hartfiel: 43:49

But yeah, I think we were always so busy looking for the big win we forget that it's really all the small wins that add up. And it's like I mentioned this in an episode the other day. You know, there's this Tom Cochran song where he talks about life isn't big, it's kind of small, is made up of small moments all strung together and if you don't look out you miss it all. And that has been like my motto forever and I have to remind myself of it all the time is it's it's it's the little things that add up.

Melissa Hartfiel: 44:22

And I was having a conversation in a group that I'm in that brought back a memory I had not thought of for years, but when I was very young I was, I think I was 18 or 19, it was my first employer and he was. He was a pharmacist and he owned the store that I worked in, but he was also basically an entrepreneur. He had other businesses and he did other things. And one day his bank manager was in the store and they were chatting in the pharmacy and I went in because I needed something and I just sort of stood there politely waiting for a break in the conversation and he turned to me and he said, melissa, I'm going to give you some advice. I was like, okay, and he said you know, like this is my bank manager. And he said you know, I've had a lot of businesses in my life. And he said my goal is always to have them break even by year five, and by year seven they should be turning a good profit.

Melissa Hartfiel: 45:26

And his bank manager was nodding very emphatically like yes, yes, that's what we look for, two kind of thing. And I was like, okay, cool, you know, I need some lottery tickets out of the safe. Anyway, I forgot about it, but I was thinking about it Because you see all these gurus out there now selling you the secret that you take my course and your business will be six figures in a year, kind of thing. And it just, I don't know something about. This conversation shot me back to that memory and I was like you know, if I look at all the businesses I've run over the years, his formula was bang on, it takes five years to get to a point where you are in the black and it takes a few more years after that to get to a point where you know the black is filling your wallet.

Melissa Hartfiel: 46:23

Yes, and and and. Yes, there's exceptions to that. Yes, there is the odd person who gets there in a year, but you know what that's like being the Beatles?

Heather Travis: 46:34

Most of us are not the Beatles, we're just and honestly, I see, I see those like grow your business, do this. Those to me are like the National Enquirer diet plans. There are the things that say she lost 57 pounds in three weeks just doing blah and it's like yeah, okay, I don't think so, I've noticed. It's like an exercise regimen, like you have to stick with it, you have to, and things, things take time, yeah, take time.

Melissa Hartfiel: 47:04

Yeah, I noticed a few conversations on threads lately where a lot of creatives are calling out all these people who, who help people with their art business because they've had a successful art business, and and somebody said something that I had noticed a few months ago. Like, have you ever noticed that these people never show where they make this imaginary art that they got rich off of? And it's like, yeah, you know like I was looking at one the other day she's got 10 print on demand Etsy shops and she makes this. She's had this many sales this year but she never lists what the Etsy shops are Like. I want to go see what you made. What makes you the expert, because most of the time they're not.

Heather Travis: 47:44

They're not actually walking the walk they're just trying to sell you something.

Melissa Hartfiel: 47:47

It's become almost like a pyramid scheme.

Heather Travis: 47:50

You know, honestly, yes, and it's like the snake oil salesman, the pyramid scheme. It's the and you know it's interesting, like I think it was on Netflix Anyway, it was on one of the streaming services, but it was the story of Lulu Lulu LaRoe.

Melissa Hartfiel: 48:03

Oh yeah, yeah, I think that's on it. It was a whole time. Yeah, it sounds good. That's a good one.

Heather Travis: 48:08

A total pyramid scheme and it really is like, I think, particularly like the Etsy marketplaces. They really it's like the olden day, like you can be an Avon lady and work for home and still take care of your kids and make the money and blah, blah, blah. And it's like I think that we've glamorized the side hustle culture so much that everybody seems to, if you don't have like a $30,000 a year side hustle gig, that you're not successful. But like, first off, nobody needs a side hustle, you don't have to have one. If you don't want one, you can just make stuff.

Heather Travis: 48:48

To make stuff, that's okay, too right. And like it doesn't have to be a business. Just because you like painting mugs, it doesn't have to be a business. And even if you do make it a side hustle, like it doesn't need to be the million dollars Like, unless that's your goal. And I think that's the thing. A lot of people feel the pressure to do it because that's what we're supposed to do, air quotes, but not because it's their actual goal. Like they really. Yeah, it's almost like a mindless creation process and I really rebel against that.

Melissa Hartfiel: 49:29

Yeah, I really rebel against that. I get very frustrated when my feed gets inundated with people telling me how to run my like. I'll sell you a course to show you how to run your Etsy shop. It's like, but where is your Etsy shop, Like I'd like, I want to see you know yes. And that's not to say you know, we've talked about this on the show before. Like that you can teach as a revenue stream.

Heather Travis: 49:48

You absolutely can, oh, my God yes, right, like that's.

Melissa Hartfiel: 49:51

we're not saying you can't teach or you can't run courses, but we're talking about the roof has to be there, though. Yes, we have to. We're talking about these sketchy people who you never actually see their art or what it is that they create. They're just telling you that they have a solution, and usually it's something social. You know how to be great on social media, which, anyway, we could go off on a whole rant on that.

Heather Travis: 50:13

Oh, my God right.

Melissa Hartfiel: 50:15

But you know, so we were talking about community and we got here.

Heather Travis: 50:18

and I'm not sure how we got there, but anyway, Well, just authentic community right and like building it meaningfully and not having to worry about yes.

Melissa Hartfiel: 50:28

And it does take time and it can be tedious at times, but that's how you build a solid business that your bank manager will look at and go. Yes, you've got a track record of steady improvement and you are now functioning profitably and you are on the path to not only functioning profitably but being able to support yourself. You know, and whatever other endeavors you want to make happen Exactly, and I think it was a good reminder for me because you know I've talked about this before. Having sold a business that I had for 10 years, I forgot that the first five years were really hard and really slow, because all you remember is when things got good. You forget the slogging that went on behind that, and you know how many musicians out there who've had great careers. If you talk to them, they remember those days where they were playing like these seedy little dives and eating cold pizza in their van and parking lot. You know Exactly, because it takes a while.

Heather Travis: 51:35

It takes a while, but they were building a community around their music.

Melissa Hartfiel: 51:38

Yeah.

Heather Travis: 51:39

Yes, and I think you know it's great if people see Like I wish success on everybody, I wish success on everybody, and it's great when people see success really, really quickly.

Heather Travis: 51:52

But for me, I feel like I really enjoy the slog and I think that there's opportunity in the slog and in taking your time you can change course, you can realign, you can look at those numbers and say what am I going to do this week to focus on my goals, and that you know, I think if things are moving too quickly and we talked about it in the episode where we talked about what happens if things, if you go viral, like when things speed out of control, you almost don't have time to sit down and think what do I want, what do I want my business to look like, what do I want this to look like in my community? How, you know, how does this? When things just steamroll, you're like, okay, that's great, that's great, that's great. And then the next thing, you know you've signed all your rights away and you're very upset about things. Who knows what could happen, right, yeah?

Melissa Hartfiel: 52:42

exactly, exactly. I think, yeah, when you, there's always that initial panic and need, you know, need to hurry, when you are not earning enough to pay your bills, that's a very frightening situation to be in, and so you always want things to move faster when you're in that space and I get that because that's where I've been the last two years.

Melissa Hartfiel: 53:09

And now I, you know, this year I I hit a number where I'm I still would not be considered a middle class wage earner or anything like that, but at least I know that there's enough coming in every month to pay the bare minimum of my bills Like. And once that happens, it is nice to be able to to take a breath and now enjoy the process. And I feel like I'm enjoying the process a lot more this year and towards the end of last year than I was the first 18, 20 months of of being full time with this, and now it's like okay, and so that was another. One of my kind of goals this year was going sticking with basics and going back to my marketing routes and doing old school stuff that I know works. It's not glamorous but it works.

Melissa Hartfiel: 54:06

So yeah, yeah, so. So I think community, I think collaboration is a part of community, you know yes, so so for sure, Any, what else are you seeing this year?

Heather Travis: 54:21

You know, I mean one of the things that I'm and I think and maybe it's just because of what I'm interested in, but I see an, an even greater increase in, and I guess authenticity fits into it but actual transparency. So like, where, what is for Etsy shop? What is the transparency Like? Give me the link back. Like, show me the proof in the pudding, but also proof in the putting on. So if you say they're sustainably made, what does that mean? Explain that to me clearly.

Heather Travis: 54:54

If you say that you do X, what does that mean? Explain it to me clearly. And so I don't want, don't want to be like marketing jargon. I don't want if, if I am saying something, I think that's part of it is. I want, like I know how much waste created my studio. It really bothers me as part of my experimentation how do I get that waste? But I also can't, I don't know. It's a really interesting thing.

Heather Travis: 55:25

So for me it's like that transparency on all the things where you get your supplies, how you source them, how you're shipping things out, even pricing structures and understanding like I don't want anybody to feel like I am a big bad wolf trying to take somebody's money. I don't want anybody to feel like I'm deceitful or not what I say I am, and so it sort of feeds into that community connection, authenticity. But it also really to me, is like it's the purest form of transparency and wanting to be accountable for that transparency, I think also right. So if I say something sustainable, green, local, by using those words, what do I mean by that? How can I trace that back?

Heather Travis: 56:21

And if I make a mistake, I really want somebody to call me on it and I want to be able to hold myself accountable and I want my audience to feel like they can hold me accountable, like I want that community connection to be strong enough for somebody to say Heather, when you say local, you say this, but I call bullshit. Yeah, because I saw you, whatever, or I heard that you like. I want them to be able to say that to me and I think if they know that I'm open to that as part of that connection that we've built to me, it'll be much more meaningful. Yeah, so to me it's like that transparency thing is a point and I haven't written on as transparency, authenticity and actual, genuine connection.

Melissa Hartfiel: 57:12

Yeah, absolutely.

Heather Travis: 57:15

And I'm seeing it like I follow a lot of bull who talk about fair clothing where they source clothing, all the micro plastic or you know, in our clothing. I did for 2022 and I did it, I'd say 70% of 2023. I had nothing new for 2022 was my rule, so I bought no new to me clothing, shoes or accessories, Underwear being an exception to that rule. That's just a personal choice. I'm not slamming.

Melissa Hartfiel: 57:47

That's an acceptable exception.

Heather Travis: 57:51

But it was nothing new to like, nothing new for 2022. I continue that through 2023. I did buy some new things because I did start a new corporate job and I needed, like there's only so much you can find at your local value, village and consignment shops and so, but I've continued that because I'm really, I'm really, really, really concentrating more on being deliberate about my purchases, much more deliberate about my purchases, much more deliberate about the source of my purchases, and if I'm doing that, I would kind of expect people to do the same when they're purchasing from me, and so that's where that's come. Full circle is, if I'm expecting it of others, I should expect it of myself, and so what waste do I create? How do I portray myself as an artist, maker, creator? Yeah, that's a big one for me that I, and I see it because I see it in my interests, like what I appeals to me, and then I sort of dwell on it and I'm like, oh, okay, how does that impact me, my life, my art, my creation?

Melissa Hartfiel: 58:54

right, like yeah yeah, I have seen so many people doing no shopping 2024s this year, like it. People really do seem to be. It's definitely a trend that I have seen. I don't know if other people are seeing this or if it's just again because of who I follow or whatever. No, I'm seeing it, yeah, and even a girlfriend of mine, who's not really on social media, mentioned to me the other day that she's not. She's doing a no shopping January, I think. I don't think she's doing the whole year. So, yes, people are, and there's all different variations on how you do a challenge like that. But, yeah, definitely seems to be something that people are part of. So transparency, I think, is huge, because one of the things I'm going to bring up here, at the risk of being controversial, and it's actually I don't think it's a trend. It's not a trend, it's here to stay. It's a change in technology and that is.

Melissa Hartfiel: 59:52

AI, ai, yes, right, and I have wanted to do an episode on AI for so long, but finding a good person to talk to has been a challenge. But the other challenge with AI and doing an episode on it is it is moving so fast right now that I feel like if I had done an episode last week, it would already be out of date this week. Yes, so it's just such a fast moving thing, and the reason I wanted to bring it up is because it's not going anywhere. It's here, it's staying Correct and if you don't like it, that's fine. But it's like saying 100 years ago I don't like electricity, right, cool, I don't like it, don't have it, but it's here. Yeah, exactly, it's there and it's been making me think a lot about. So if you listen, you know that I loved Downton Abbey and if you think back to the very first season of Downton Abbey, all the changes that were happening, like in the first episode, I think it started in 1912.

Heather Travis: 1:00:49

Yeah, when the telephone and the telephone came in.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:00:52

Well, the very first episode was Lady Grantham complaining, like old Lady Grantham complaining about the electricity in the library, like the glare, you know, and they were all worried about electrical vapors and they weren't going to have it in the bedroom because of the vapors coming out of the walls. And why would you even bother in the kitchen, like they don't need it down there, kind of thing, right. But then you also had like the car coming in. People were just starting to drive. I mean, there's a scene where Lord Grantham is like oh, don't drive into town, there's too many people. I was there the other day and there was like five cars on the street.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:01:27

And then the telephone, and then huge advances in medicine with World War II and stuff like that. Like it was a massive period of change and it really impacted the class structure in Europe at the same time and so that's. But you know what, like you either adopted it or you didn't. And if you didn't, you fell behind and you wound up being like those people who lost their estates because they're not willing to modernize. So yeah, ai is here to stay and whether you choose to use it or not, you need to understand how it works, you need to understand what it can do and you need to be aware of it and informed. I don't think artists. Well, first of all, I think most artists already use AI, whether they care to admit it or not. If you use Photoshop, if you use Canva, you've been using AI for a long time.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:02:23

Yep, that's what it is. So to say that you don't use AI, I think you need to be very careful when you make that statement, because you probably are using it in some form. Do you need to use it to create art? No, you don't, and I do think that, like one of the things I've noticed with AI-generated art is that, to me, I can almost always tell when it's been generated by AI, and somebody mentioned it in a comment on an artist that I follow.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:03:04

She did a series of AI paintings and then she created photos using Dolly, I think, which is a photo AI photo generator, where she took the AI-generated art and then created like a flat lay for her Instagram with the art in the middle. I'll send you a link to it, yeah, and if I find it, I'll put it in the show notes. Anyway, she was very upfront. This is AI-generated art. Like this is what I did and the comments one person commented and she put into words exactly how I feel about it. She's like it's beautiful, but it's also really creepy, and if you ever look at AI-generated art like?

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:03:46

that kind of sums it up. There's something just a wee bit off about it, and I think part of it is it doesn't have a soul. Yes, you know, and that's where artists excel. We put a piece of our soul into our work, and I was talking about this with a friend maybe six or seven months ago. There was a period where everybody went through and generated LinkedIn headshots of themselves using AI?

Heather Travis: 1:04:12

Do you?

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:04:12

remember that. And so people would post all the pictures. Which one do you like best? And a friend of mine posted hers and I said this is like it was really cool, but none of them looked like her. And I think I was one of the few people who commented on the post who had actually met her in person and I said I don't know if it's because I've met you in person, but there's no life in these pictures.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:04:35

And she's like, exactly, she's like they're really cool, but I don't think I can use them because I look like I don't have a soul, and I think that is where the opportunity for art and this goes hand in hand with your trend on transparency this is where no-transcript as more traditional, I think people are going to get to a point where they're going to value more traditionally created, hand-created art.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:05:03

Yes, yes, because they know who created it, they know the work that went into it and they know it wasn't made by a machine. Yes, and so being transparent about how you make your art, showing the behind the scenes, talking about what it means when you say that you use locally sourced materials or that all of that goes a long way to showing that you're human. And I think I follow a number of creatives who are very big on AI, really pro AI, but at the same time, they've been very clear that, for them, the key to using it in their creative practice is to use it as a tool that allows them to double down on being human. Yes, and I thought that's a perfect way to summarize it A hundred percent. Yes, you know, and I noticed I've started publishing some blank notebooks on Amazon through Amazon KDP, and I noticed that now I have to check off a box stating whether or not I used any AI tools in the creation of this book and I think that's interesting.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:06:12

I think you're going to start to see that kind of disclosure where you're going to see that kind of disclosure appear on books. You know I follow Joanna Penn from the Creative Penn. She has a fantastic podcast on writing and being an author fiction, nonfiction. She's a huge proponent of AI. She calls herself an AI-assisted author, but she's talked about how she uses it. She still writes, but she said now because I have something that's helping me with the more mundane parts of my work I am able to like.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:06:46

She launched her first Kickstarter last year where she created beautiful, hand-bound special editions of some of her books and stuff like that. She's like it's freed me up to do these really big, juicy, creative, hands-on projects that I could not have done otherwise, because she's bearing down hard on showing the human part of the artist, on creating things that are beautiful, handcrafted, because that's what people will treasure. Once you have a system where you can spew out content or art or anything on a mass scale, it loses what makes it special, absolutely. So what we do becomes even more special. So that's how I feel about AI. Is you know what? Use it as a tool in your business, use it to help you streamline the things you don't like doing.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:07:47

Use it to help you brainstorm. We were talking about it the other day in my mastermind group and just for fun, because I've always wanted to write a mystery novel, I typed into chat GPT, I gave it what I wanted as a plot and I said you know, tell me, I want it to take place in this era and I want it to be like about it. So it spewed out a very detailed mystery plot, but it didn't tell me who killed, who the murderer.

Heather Travis: 1:08:13

Oh my god, that's amazing.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:08:14

I still have to figure out who did it.

Heather Travis: 1:08:19

So I probably need to prompt it better, but I thought that was hilarious, right and that's I mean.

Heather Travis: 1:08:24

I think that that I use AI all the time in my freelance like PR, communications work and also in my contract work. I use it all the time. It is a tool that allows me to do my job more efficiently. I save time. What you put in is what you get out, so you're prompt. Like you still have to have a quality prompt, you still have to. You know shit in shit out seriously. So like you put shit in, shit's going to come back out. It's what you put in. And I use it for art experiments all the time too, only to. It's like part of the play process for me and also understanding I did. A girlfriend of mine had a birthday last year and for her birthday I painted her a painting for her dining room. She newly single and also has backyard chickens, and I decided to sort of celebrate both of those things. Chickens are a big trend this year, just chickens are a big trend, and so I decided to paint a painting for her.

Heather Travis: 1:09:33

That was just sort of really cheeky, and so I typed into a variety of art AI generators. The prompt was male phallus dressed sorry, my exact prompt was an uncircumcised male phallus dressed as a chicken. And every single one of the art AI developers said that it's against their terms of use because it's pornographic. And immediately I will tell you categorically part of my experimentation is going to be filling that niche, because if AI cannot create pornographic art, I might have found my niche Anyway. So I painted her a painting called cockadoodle do and it was a cock dressed as a chicken in a beautiful field of flowers and it hangs in her dining room and it's hysterical and it was very funny.

Heather Travis: 1:10:32

But to me, I'm like there are things that AI cannot do. There are things that only us as humans can do, and my only caution with AI is really understand what that means for your individual rights as an artist. So if you are going to be using an like this is not an episode on AI, but I've done a lot of research on it If you are using AI for your artwork or inputting any artwork of your original creation into AI creation or tools, really understand what that means for your rights and ownership on that work, because if you are sacrificing that simply to experiment, you need to really understand what that is worth to you.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:11:20

Yeah.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:11:20

And you also need to understand. If you're using things that are generated by AI, you need to understand that AI has been trained on other people's work and there are a lot of lawsuits going on surrounding the rights and things behind that and whether or not that falls under fair use and a whole bunch of things. And this is like any new technology the legal ramifications and the government regulation of it are always behind, but they are coming along and those things are being worked on in the background and you can absolutely go learn more about that and you should learn more about it.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:12:03

You should understand what's going on with all of that, and there's even some interesting revenue generating models that are starting to appear, where some of these tools are now starting to collaborate with journalists, artists, writers and things, and there's potential there for revenue streams that could even be better, like in the case of a blogger, if you allow your work to be used to train AI, you could like it becomes a licensing agreement, so you would start to earn revenue from that that could potentially outperform your ad revenue. So there's a lot of possibilities here. We're just barely scratching the surface and there's a lot that needs to be sorted out. But think carefully about how you want to use it and know what your boundaries are going to be around it. Do what you can to understand the legal ramifications of it and again, these are going to change as things catch up.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:13:13

I mentioned Joanna Penn. She has this podcast called the Creative Penn. She has been talking about AI probably for four or five years now and she's very bang on with her predictions and where she says it's going, and she's been very informative for me. When I listen to her in terms of like and she fully admits it she's like AI freaks me out too, but it also really excites me and I think that's normal with any new technology.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:13:41

It's scary Like those electricity vapors run around, and we had the same thing when the internet came in, like oh, there's all these things, all these things run around our house and yeah, you know it's scary, but I remember in the 80s don't stand in front of the microwave.

Heather Travis: 1:14:01

Oh, stand in front of the microwave when you're heating up your stuff.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:14:02

Don't stand too close to the television, like all those, anytime there's new technology. Just don't get too close to it. And you know what that's? That's, I think that's a very normal human thing. But you know what else is a very normal human thing? It's baked into our DNA, is wanting to tell stories and wanting to create. We are wired that way. I don't. I don't care if you think you're creative or not. If you're listening to this podcast, you probably think you're creative because you are creative, because we are all creative.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:14:32

It's just how that creativity manifests itself is different for everyone, and so you know it's baked in. Ai isn't going to stop us from wanting to create. It's not going to stop us from wanting to tell stories. It's going to change how we create and how we tell stories, but it's not going to take away that deeply human need to do anything, it's going to free up our time to create more.

Heather Travis: 1:14:58

More and that's I.

Heather Travis: 1:14:59

Honestly, I see that like this ties back to my goal for 2024 of experimentation, but one of the things that I experimented with in 2023, when I was going through the creation process of the exhibition was using a projector.

Heather Travis: 1:15:13

So instead of sketching out and spending hours, you know, making sure I was getting the proportions right and putting my grid on my canvas and sketching things out and translating things from my original teeny tiny sketch to my big canvas, now I drew my sketch on my iPad, I transferred that image and projected it onto my canvas. It is still me, it is still my work, but I found a tool, a technological tool combining my iPad and a projector that allowed me to save literally hours per canvas. And it's still my art, but I use technology and experimenting with technology to just do more with less, I would say. And so you know that to me is like a perfect example of there's tools and technologies out there that can enable you to be a more profitable artist. So like, if I can cut the time that it takes me to paint a painting in half, from 10 hours to five hours, I've quite literally just doubled my profit opportunity because I can now make another painting in those five hours Like or you can do like so.

Heather Travis: 1:16:28

I can do other things.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:16:29

I can see Heather right now and I can see her studio and she's prepping for her studio open house this weekend. So she's got all her paintings in the background and we were talking before we came on the episode. She's got this one painting of the pair of jeans the paint splattered jeans and it's in this incredible frame that she has painted to go, that she's painted to go with this, this painting. Oh, my goodness, my brain. This is a very big podcast recording day for me, so I'm losing my words here, but right, Anyway.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:17:05

So now she had time to spend creating this incredible frame for this painting. That is something that she might not have been able to do otherwise because she would have impressed for time. So she's taken this whole creation to another level in a way that she might not have been able to do otherwise. And so that's, you know, like, like Joanna doing this special edition book that's handbound with guilt edges and beautiful plate photography, you know, plated illustrations in the book and things like that, like something somebody will treasure forever. Yes, that instead of downloading an ebook off of Amazon of this book, right, Like, yeah, there's a big difference and there's a place for both of them, oh, totally.

Heather Travis: 1:17:53

And in terms of even the transparency like I shared stories and reels of using my projector and showing me tracing my own image to be completely transparent and totally authentic with my audience on my creation process, but also to invite. I feel like this is like the perfect circle back, but like it's that authentic authenticity, transparency, but also really inviting the community in behind the scenes. Look how I made, look how I'm making my art, and I hope that people actually appreciate the art more because they've they've got that insight. It's not just finished piece, it's like look, you saw me slog over it, you saw the things that I did to make this awesome happen and and I, for me, that's to bring it right back. That's what 2024 is going to be all about is letting people in, opening the door, trying new things and just seeing what happens.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:18:48

And and show the humanity behind your work.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:18:51

Yes, yes, I know a while back I was talking with a friend and she sent me an article about this guy who's talking about how he can generate thousands of blog posts in in a week and posts them to his website and get ad revenue from that and everything. And it's like and she was like, like this is what it's coming to. And I, you know, yeah, it's like nobody gives a crap about this guy and his thousand crappy articles on his website, like nobody cares, he's not contributing anything new or interesting to the conversation, he's just adding to all the junk and the yocrity that's already out there. Our job is to use these tools to elevate our work and create things that nobody else is doing and to let our creativity shine.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:19:41

I mean, how many of us use Procreate? Procreate is just an ad. Love it, love it, love it. You can't draw a perfect circle on your own. Procreate you can draw a perfect circle. That's AI, I mean. You know. And yet you look at a lot of the digital art that's out there and it is all very similar because we have these tools to bake perfection in. Yeah, human art done with our hands is never perfect because we're not capable of drawing a perfect circle or a perfectly straight line. We can't do that. But it's those quirks, those human quirks, that are what makes our art so appealing and what gives us our style. Because I might not be able to draw a very good I can't draw a very good circle on my own. Heather might be able to draw a circle much better than I can, but her circle is going to look different from my circle. Yeah, yeah, we're two different people, but if we draw a circle on Procreate, our circles are going to look the same.

Heather Travis: 1:20:40

You know, I'll tell you I did an experiment and it's funny. I was just thinking of it because of course, I can see in the background behind me, obviously staring at Melissa, obviously staring at Melissa. On Zoom, I can see one of my paintings is a confetti. Anybody who follows me on Instagram will be very familiar with my confetti style paintings and I that is done by using a very specific and deliberate brush stroke over and over and over and, over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, and I have one specific brush earmarked.

Heather Travis: 1:21:08

It's taped because it's the perfect brush for that, but it is, it's the tool and it's me, but it's 100% human. And then one night I thought to myself man, this would be really fun. So I popped into Procreate and just with my iPad and my you know Apple Pencil, I tried. I was essentially creating a digital confetti piece. It looked pretty, like it was pretty, but it didn't it to exactly to your point. There was a little first off. It really was off. There was no and like it's just little squares on a canvas. So it's not like I have painted this touching scene, like it's not like. But there is there's feeling in that. The feeling on my screen was nada, it was like oh, those are pretty colors, but whatever. And it was so interesting to me to basically try and it is in exactly recreating something digitally losing, and even though it was still me creating it, something was lost in translation.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:22:14

Yeah, it's been. I don't even know what the exact word would be for it, but it's kind of softened it's new but softened or it was weird. Like it is, it's just a little bit off, it was just off, yeah, and it's not to say you can't have a digital style that's still yours, oh Christ there's?

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:22:35

yes, it is. It's so tempting to use the tools to make things perfect that didn't need to be perfect and that does take away from the uniqueness of your style. It's sort of like if we all try to dress like Audrey Hepburn, right? Yes, not really. It's not our style, it's Audrey Hepburn style. It's just copying, copying.

Heather Travis: 1:22:57

Yes.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:22:58

So you have to figure out how to bring your humanity into it, and so maybe that means generating the beginnings of the work with yes Create, and then taking that work and adding on something with markers or paint or more mixed media style yeah, yes, and things like that. Or using it as a way to collage or like. I think there's a way to do that. There's so many possibilities with it Totally.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:23:28

And I do think that if you don't want to use it, don't use it. But you can use AI to help you with the business side of your business. So whether it's writing subject lines for your email newsletters or helping you with product descriptions and things like that. But even that like I've used Shopify a few times to write AI tool to use, I've used Shopify's AI tool to write product descriptions for me and I write newsletters for a living. I've even tried generating newsletter content, but I have never, ever, published anything without me, the human, going in and tweaking it, because it's 100% quite Like we said, never quite right, it's always a little off. Another writer friend pointed out to me like a sure dead giveaway that is AI is AI never uses the same word twice. Humans use the same words over and over again.

Heather Travis: 1:24:18

All the time.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:24:20

And so that's a sure fire sign. Ai descriptions and copy tend to be almost overly flowery because it's trying to use so many like use all the words yeah, so yeah, but to be able to generate that first draft really quickly is so many.

Heather Travis: 1:24:40

I did it for mural pitches. I typed into chat GBT and said what are the benefits of having a mural in a veterinary clinic? And then they pulled up all these points.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:24:50

And then I copy and paste it. Yeah.

Heather Travis: 1:24:53

And I honestly, it saved so much time and even in art experiment excuse me, experimentation like I'd have to start taking acid or something to see some of the things that AI art generators generate for me in terms of, like, I have crazy ideas and so I put the prompts in and see what they pull up and those random things that are a creation of my own mind, the visual that then is handed to me. I'm like, ooh, that's interesting, and I don't, as I said, like I'd have to start dropping acid to see those weird things like in my own brain. Do you know what I mean? Like it would just be such an odd, whereas now I feel like I can get to that point of experimentation so quicker, and so it'll for me. It facilitates me being me in a more efficient way, if that makes sense.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:25:49

How different is AI from say, like you know, the Beatles have talked quite openly about their use of LSD and things like that, particularly, I think, on the strawberry fields and the white album? I believe it's been a while, but I think those were two. But how different is them taking a mind-altering substance from somebody using?

Heather Travis: 1:26:09

AI.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:26:11

They didn't come up with that on their own. They put something into their body that helped them generate that.

Heather Travis: 1:26:18

Lock things and that's. I think that's. The key is like don't use it.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:26:22

I'm not recommending you all go out and use LSD or anything like that Exactly, but I know like is it that different?

Heather Travis: 1:26:27

I don't know, I don't know. And that's exactly, and I'm with you. I think it using these tools to unlock more of you is the key to it. Not using the tools to create something. You're still creating something, but and that, like, I plan on experimenting with AI more this year, that part of my experimentation, sort of wish list, and I'm yeah, like I'm.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:26:52

I just you just need to understand your rights anyway, but I feel like 2024 is going to be a kind of a cool, very interesting year to see how people do use this. Yes, there will be people who abuse it. Yes, because that's just what happens.

Heather Travis: 1:27:06

There's humans that will always have to do that.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:27:08

There are going to be people who use it to, like you said, really unlock their creativity and probably embark on new periods of career that are extremely productive and creative. There's going to be others who are like I'm not touching it with a 10-foot pole.

Heather Travis: 1:27:21

Yep, you know, okay, does it mean you do you it's going to not go anywhere. It's still going to be back Exactly.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:27:28

But that's up to you, that's your decision. There's going to be others who are like it's cool to fool around with, but I really just like painting watercolors. But you know what? I am going to use it to write subject lines for my because, now, sure, I think with subject lines, I might actually send a newsletter out every week instead of once every four months. Yes, exactly, which is good. So I think, be cautious, but be curious. I think that's a good model for life. Be cautious, but be curious.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:27:56

Yes, and it's okay to be freaked out by it because there are some creepy stuff, but I think there's also opportunities with it.

Heather Travis: 1:28:06

I saw, I think.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:28:07

Strathmore. I want to say it was Strathmore at the paper company.

Heather Travis: 1:28:11

Yeah.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:28:12

I may have the brand wrong, but one of the brands that I art art supply brands that I follow on the internet did a really cool campaign where, because one of the things that AI is not good at generating is the human hand- yes, the images of the human hand they're all very weird.

Heather Travis: 1:28:31

I am also not good at recreating the human hand, the human hand is very hard to draw.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:28:35

So they invited a bunch of artists to incorporate the human hand into a piece of their work and the tagline was the future of art is in good hands. It was very something like that, but it was very cheeky and well done and they showed these incredible creations that these artists made. And they showed the making like amazing. Yeah, for sure it was on Strathmore paper or whatever, but I have to look and make sure I have the brand right. But and I just thought that is a genius campaign- it is just showing like, yes, ai is here, but you know what?

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:29:12

We still need our artists. We still need them creating things and yeah they're going to do it on our paper, Like how cool it is. So yeah, tried it all in very nicely.

Heather Travis: 1:29:20

Oh yeah, and that I mean that was a beautiful collaboration too. Right, that's the thing. Like we're seeing it more and more is like that true collaboration and understanding that there's benefits to that partnership and celebrating each other's contributions, I think is a big one, yeah.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:29:36

So, whatever kind of art you produce or whatever you create, there's always going to be a place for you. But I just I feel like, yeah, it's. Ai is not a trend, it's just it's here.

Heather Travis: 1:29:51

It's here. Yeah, exactly, we used to fax things and now we don't. We scan our art.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:29:56

Yeah, you know, we do all kinds of things.

Heather Travis: 1:30:00

Yes.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:30:00

We don't even think about that.

Heather Travis: 1:30:02

10, 15, 20, 30 years ago would have been like honestly, like I literally just looking at the desk in front of me. There are two cell phones, an iPad, a digital tool to accept mobile payments, a giant podcasting microphone and two laptops in front of me.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:30:22

Yeah, even that cell phone. You have what's on that cell phone? There's a camera on it. Oh yeah, so 10 years ago, people were freaking out over digital cameras and how it was going to destroy photography and you know, anybody would be able. Yeah, it did. It opened up, it broke down a lot of barriers for a lot of people to enter into a medium that was incredibly expensive to participate in. And suddenly and the digital camera suddenly became something that went into our phones. It was crappy at first. Now it's amazing. Does that mean that anybody can be a photographer? No, anyone can snap a photo, but not anyone can be a photographer. They're two different things.

Heather Travis: 1:31:04

Make your difference.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:31:05

I see a lot of crappy cell phone photos.

Heather Travis: 1:31:07

Oh, my God.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:31:08

Taking a really good camera, but the photos.

Heather Travis: 1:31:10

Which blows my mind honestly, because I'm like dude, there are YouTube tutorials out there that tell you it's, it's, yeah, anyway, yeah, so I could go down the road Totally If you.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:31:21

I remember when Joe McNally did the first digital photography cover for a National Geographic and it was the stealth bomber and people were like lost their minds.

Heather Travis: 1:31:34

National.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:31:34

Geographic has jumped the shark. You know, you know, joe McNally is a brilliant photographer and there is no way, I don't care, you could give him and me the same freaking tool, same camera in her hands, and he would take a better picture than me, like a thousand times better picture than me. I went to a Joe McNally workshop once and it was amazing.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:32:00

He was here in Vancouver I'm sure he comes to Vancouver quite often actually, and he was. He was getting people from the audience to come up and he was taking these shots and he had the. He had his camera tethered to his computer so the shot, as soon as he snapped the frame, it would go up on the screen. And I was looking at these images and I and I know he does use Lightroom and things to polish them off, but these images look like they had been put into Photoshop and made even like. It was just like and that was straight out of the camera. I was like to be able to do that Like. This is just a man who understands light movement composition and he's been doing it for years and it doesn't matter what tool you give him, and that's what we should all strive to be To be masters of our tools, yep.

Heather Travis: 1:32:51

Yes, yes, and that the tools enhance our human delivery of what we were trying to express. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:33:01

So, yes, yes, AI is going to open doors for a lot of people who may not have participated in our world before, but it's also it's not going to take away from what we do.

Heather Travis: 1:33:12

Yeah, no, and I would say it's. I would say it's a very clear opportunity to set yourself apart, whether you use it a little bit, a lot or not at all. Whatever that is, it's that like sharing that story and process with your people so that they know, so that there's no surprises, and using it to set yourself apart, like the human element to set yourself apart.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:33:32

Exactly. Double down on being human Totally. Don't be afraid to get in front of the camera and show who you are, show who the person behind the art is Totally, how you make the art, how you use the tools. What makes your work special? Because all our work is special. Yes, my work is special and we're all unique, and this tool just gives you the opportunity to spend even more time.

Heather Travis: 1:33:57

Yes, being you, being you.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:33:59

Yes, absolutely, so we got very passionate about that.

Heather Travis: 1:34:03

Yeah, but it honestly, in terms of 2024, like it is, it's not on the horizon, it's not a trend. It's here, it's here.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:34:10

Yeah, and it's only going to become more refined and Big time and get better. And I heard a doctor who was talking about because they use AI tremendously in medicine oh yeah, and emergency medicine and things like that and he was saying AI isn't going to get rid of clinicians. He said it's going to make better clinicians. Yes, it's like if you take a clinician who doesn't use AI and you put them against one who does you use AI when using AI is going to be the better clinician because they've got better information, better data, better yes, all of that at their fingertips. So that's the way to look at it. How can this make?

Heather Travis: 1:34:51

me better, oh better.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:34:52

Yes, all right. Did we cover everything we wanted to cover here?

Heather Travis: 1:34:58

I feel like I did.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:34:59

Yeah, I did. It's a big stuff there, yeah, so we're going to wrap up for this week. It was good to have you back, heather, and yeah, that is it for this week. We'll put links to everything we talked about in the show notes so you can all go check it out, but we'll be back in two more weeks with another brand new episode and we'll talk to you all then.

Heather Travis: 1:35:25

Okay, guys.

Melissa Hartfiel: 1:35:29

Thank you so much for joining us for the Anchi LookDev Creative Hour. If you're looking for links or resources mentioned in this episode, you can find detailed show notes on our website at AnchiLookDevcom. While you're there, be sure to sign up for our newsletter for more business tips, profiles of inspiring community and creative women and so much more. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe to the show via your podcast app of choice so you never miss an episode. We always love to hear from you, so we'd love it if you'd leave us a review through iTunes or Apple Podcasts. Drop us a note via our website at AnchiLookDevcom or come say hi on Instagram at Anchi LookDev. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.