Why Your Website Will Still Be Working in 2055

0:00Coming up on today's edition of the Art Marketing Podcast, why your website will still be working in 2055. Specifically, I'm going to talk about the basics today. They need to be hammered home. I'm going to give you some history and what I hope will end up becoming the potential rewrite of your story.

0:30All right, so let's talk about who this episode is for. Happy to have you back listening to another episode. Appreciate you all. If you are getting value out of the podcast, would you consider writing a review and or leaving us a follow or a like on Spotify or Apple Podcast or YouTube? I got to remind myself to do that more often. I almost never do. Anyway, thank you for those that have. But who this episode is for? This is for the artist in their 20s. It's just getting started. It's for the artist in their 30s honing their craft.

1:03It's for the artist in their 40s, their 50s, their 60s, their 70s, and yes, even those into their 80s. It turns out the basics are the basics, no matter what age bracket life finds you in. This should have been thermally ensconced by someone far more intelligent than me and written into every single solitary artist, photographer, creative college study curriculum, and it should have gone down freshman year. It should have gone down freshman year because what is the best time to plant an oak tree?

1:3630 years ago. When is the next best time? Today. Today, right? And I think the basics are like, they're easily glossed over. They're not tightly defined. They're not hammered into creatives. And I think it's time to address that. And so that was the idea with this podcast episode. Let's formally address the basics. So I plan to define the basics. I'm going to give you some story and some histories over the years, talk about the facts on the ground as we find ourselves here in 2026. And, you know, ideally,

2:06I should leave you in a place ending this thing if you make it to the end, feeling a bit better about your future as a creative and some list items to get sorted. And, you know, as I was preparing for this, I think back into my history in this company and then even what I was doing before this was like art industry adjacent and, you know, how different the world was back then when I got started. And, you know, I think I've been in this industry, including the adjacent,

2:37maybe since like the early 2000s, perhaps even 12 to 13 years, I think with Art Storefronts, if I had to go back and look because I started consulting first before I joined. So much has changed since then. I mean, so much has changed in those call it 25, 26 years. Yet the basics have pretty much remained the basics and not really changed in that entire period of time, right? They just haven't. You know, I think back to the art world and like, you know,

3:07call it 2005, 2010, 2015. And, you know, the G. Clay movement is still picking up speed. Print shops were everywhere, all over the place, individual mom and pops that had like the Epson 9600s and the basic media types were out fine art paper and canvas. You know, internet commerce was, it was humming along back then, but still in its infancy in terms of like the overall share of commerce, but it was growing year over year over year and eating more share from traditional brick and mortar,

3:37real world retail. Artist websites, even back then, started growing in popularity. Gallery model was still strong, phones were becoming a bigger and bigger thing. You know, I think back to like no websites were properly formatted for the phone back then and then like responsive design started becoming a thing and how you design for the phone. I mean, 2010s, that would have been like iPhone 4, I think at that point in time. Blogs and blogging were a huge and nascent thing. That was the heyday of Flickr and I remember being on Flickr even way back then because I was into photography,

4:10amateur photographer, and I had a Flickr site. I gotta see if I can still find it. Had some images on there. I loved those days. You know, Instagram getting bought by Facebook and then Facebook now meta and, you know, social advertising started to become a thing and, you know, that was wild. Like Pinterest was in a gold rush. You know, everyone was talking about Facebook pages and organic reach, clout and Google Plus chasing was a thing and pretty much all of those were gone and or irrelevant within five years, right?

4:42Things changed so quickly back then. I always think about COVID when I think back, you know, when the music stopped and that was a wild time. You guys, it was a wild, wild time and, you know, the initial panic of being locked in our homes and what was gonna happen ended up turning out to be one of the biggest booms things that the wall art interior decor world had ever seen, right? Because everyone was working from home, not going back into the office,

5:12not really going on vacation or going anywhere, having anything to spend their money on and still having their jobs and then the art decor market just exploded. And it was one of the greatest times in history, if not the greatest time in history, to be a digital marketer because, oh my goodness, with everyone being at home and on their phones and on their computers all day, I mean, I would get, I would get, I remember I would get like three, four, five hundred people watching concurrently on Instagram and Facebook Live broadcasts or maybe it was just Facebook Live back then, I can't remember.

5:43But it was a great time to be a digital marketer, right? It was also a terrifying time because I would get all of these artists, all of these photographers on the webinars going, oh my God, I'm in, I'm in, I'm in deep, deep trouble, you know, all of my income was reliant on this gallery, that gallery, this in-person fair, this in-person show and I can't do any of those anymore and like, I'm dying, I've never done any marketing, I don't have an email list, like, that was a terrifying time and it, like, you know, people were just pouring,

6:14I feel like I was like Dr. Drew and Adam Carolla on Loveline, like therapy sessions and just hearing, hearing these stories and it, it made a, like a formidable impact on my life, how I think about this industry and how important it is to like essentially get, you know, the basics correct. I think about, you know, the thousands of artists and photographers and really creatives of all stripes that, that, you know, I've had the pleasure of talking with and interacting with over the years, all stages of life, craft,

6:44business acumen, business success and not, and, you know, everything in between and all over North America really, but all over the world and this episode is for all of them but it's also for you because I, I think about how things are on the ground right now as we find ourselves in 2026 and yes, inflation is still ripping, yes, we're at war, yes, gas prices are insane, I mean, I have a, I have a diesel truck and I think I'm paying $7.50 a gallon to fill that thing up, thankfully I don't drive anywhere. Feels like we've likely

7:14been in a recession or knocking on the door in a recession for years. Mortgage rates have got to be what, like a 25 year high and real estate is not really moving which is really, really important to drive sales in the yard market. So there's a lot to potentially complain about at this particular moment in time. Right? And the combination of the facts of the ground, the combination of everything that I've learned about this business and like my history of going through all of it had me record this episode today, had me write this episode today about why the basics are just so,

7:44so important. So let's get back to the economy for a moment and then, and then I want to talk a little bit about time horizons because I think it's really interesting to do that. You know, why the economy doesn't matter and does and you know, where I live in Southern California I live in like a real estate town, like pretty much all of my buddies that I went to high school with, I grew up with still live here and you know, 80% of them are in one facet or another of the real estate business and you know, one of the common refrains that would always come up because a bunch of them are title guys, a bunch of them are realtors, a bunch of them are mortgage people,

8:15a bunch of them are commercial guys, whatever, doesn't matter. But, you know, there would always be this note of this notion of like, is it a good time to buy a house, right? And maybe the home prices are high or maybe the interest rates at this particular time were higher than they've been in years previous or whatever the case may be. And, you know, the refrain that would always come up was like, look, if you can see yourself having to live in the house for 10 years, don't worry about it. The time says everything is going to work itself out. If the rates are too high in a couple of years they'll be low,

8:45you can refinance, right? In 10 years time the data historically just says that your home price is going to grow. You've got nothing to worry about. So if you can see yourself being in the house for 10 years, don't wait. Don't sit on the sidelines. And that ended up being really sage advice certainly in my lifetime because just about everybody that waited missed out on massive growth, right? And everybody that did got in regardless of what time it was, especially the ones on a 10-year time horizon although just about everybody really, really did well. So I think that's really, really good advice.

9:15And then I think about how that applies to our certain economic situation and it's like you can let whatever the facts are on the ground get to you and dissuade you and demotivate you and the sum total of all of that is you end up not getting in, not owning a home, not getting any of the growth and inevitably not increasing your net worth. and I think I think the same thing applies to an art business. I think the same thing applies to any business

9:46if you get the basics right what I want to get into. But next I want to talk about the time horizon, okay? And I know I talk about this a ton of my webinars so if you've been on my webinars and you've heard it sorry you're going to get it again but I don't think I'd talk about it all that much on the podcast and it's just this notion of how much time you guys have as artists as photographers as creatives right? And sort of the disclaimer I always put in it's like okay I've built

10:17a career in marketing and digital marketing and content marketing and you know marketing whatever I'm good at it I enjoy it I really do but when I retire I am not going to market anymore I'm going to take up gardening I'm going to take up cooking I'm going to take up dog training I don't know what I will take up drinking beers in the sun I will find something but it's not going to be marketing but that is not you that is not the way that you are wired as a human being that is just

10:48not the way that artists that photographers that creatives are you guys have been blessed with a talent or cursed some might say but you've been blessed with a talent and the sheer pattern reps and sets that I've seen are the thousands of artists and photographers that no matter what season of life they are in come on to these webinars and they're trying to talk about their art and how to market their art and how to sell their art and how to price their art because ultimately this desire to create

11:18just never leaves you guys it is just the way that you are wired and it's how it goes you know it's funny because I was reading I was listening to a podcast and was like talking about like all these people that are like you know they call themselves Bitcoiners and they're just all about Bitcoin as a movement right like you know money that you own that you have the keys to you're not in the financial system sovereignty like the libertarian ethos all of this and they found out apparently that like everyone that's like

11:48a diehard into that movement goes to all the conferences won't shut off about Bitcoin crypto crypto and not the scammy crypto but really just Bitcoin like the vast majority of those folks all have the same personality test you know there's like those personality tests there's like the Colby test I always forget what the names are but you know you're like an amiable driver or like an EBRT they have the little scores that all of the Bitcoin people that are like the diehard ones seem to have the same personality type which I think is really really interesting and like these two guys that were talking about it

12:18and they were saying like yeah it's my personality type yeah it's my personality type it's so weird it's like why does it always attract us whatever your guys personality type is you are never going to stop creating period end of sentence okay you're going to be doing it for the rest of your lives you are not going to retire and move on to something else you are going to retire and spend even more time creating than you are now and that's those are just facts right and I would say you know a few of my current interests and hobbies by the way you see what I'm doing here I'm eating my own dog food and I'm telling you about me right not just

12:49telling you about art marketing I'm telling you about me I'm giving you some details into my world but one of the things you know one of the things in life that I'm that I'm passionate about is being really good at getting information and I think I'm decent at that and I enjoy learning getting better AI of course and really just emerging technology and I've been pretty switched on to like health fitness longevity stuff for a while and I follow you know a lot of the names that you know like everything from you know David Sinclair

13:16you know like longevity healing yes I like I like watching Brian Johnson love Peter Huberman Ron DePatrick I'd pop all around all of them and get all the messages and like stay up to close with that right and it's wild it's especially wild right now right like they're finding out that aging is absolutely not a death sentence and that it is reversible okay health and longevity plus AI is like the most wild thing to contemplate period and you know Sinclair who's like he's got a lab at Harvard and he's

13:47like one of the the main longevity guys he's the guy he's the guy that like published the story about res theratrol way back in the day and then the whole world picked it up because red theratrol is in red wine and everyone's like see it's good to drink red wine anyway beside the point he's got this line in his book that says that like it's really profound he's like there is a person living on the planet with us right now that will hit 150 150 in age right and the toolkits are just getting insane there's genome sequencing and there's all these wearables and peptides and supplementation

14:17and what we've learned about sleep and what we've learned about food and what we've learned about microplastics and what everyone's sick of hearing about cold plunges and saunas red light therapy and how important the exercise is right but I think I think notwithstanding how fast AI is like accelerating all this is none of that information really existed a generation ago right like that wasn't a big thing like and it's personal to me because I lost my dad to cancer at 60 and he was like a banker his whole life he was in international banking

14:49so he was flying all over the world all the time which means time zone terrible sleep he never really exercised after college at all because he just didn't know and find he ate healthy but cancer got him in 60 right so it's impressed my interest to not go down that path and make sure you know that that I'm there and I can do that and then you read about these crazy stories right and then like the first one came out about a guy that took his dog his name was Paul Cunningham I think Australian guy anyway took his dog into the vet that's like I'm sorry the dog's got a bad

15:19deal he's gonna die he took all the blood tests all the data fed it into GPT Chad GPT figured out a treatment plan and the dog went on to live like a happy life right and I think this was in 2023 when this happened so who knows if the dog still alive anyway there's an even crazier story recently and there's this guy I gotta look at his name because I'm gonna hack it Sid Sid Brandage sorry I hacked your name but I think he's Dutch he's he's the CEO of some company called GitLab I'm not exactly sure what that does but it's in programming but anyway he got this

15:49gnarly diagnosis osteosarcoma is what it is what is the cancer that he had and when saw he had a lot of money went and saw the best doctors tried to figure it out doctors couldn't really do anything for him he resigned from the company he took his 25 terabytes of medical data that he had started hammering it on Chad GPT figured out in his own custom treatment regiment regiment regime just for him for his genome for his epigenetic genome and he'd be cancer and there's no evidence of the disease left in

16:20his body and the doctors told him he was smoked right so I'm bringing all this up to say like in the next call it three to five years as a result of one all of this passion for this data in this study and then two how AI is speeding all of this up I think we are going to see a great many diseases that we've never made progress on completely solved and when we do get sick you know the treatments that are going to be given to us are going to be custom tailored to our genomes right

16:50and I think also like epigenetic reprogramming so essentially making your cells younger is going to be an FDA approved thing and it's going to be happening now I personally don't want to live forever but I want you know I want the time I do have on this earth to be healthy and mobile and flexible and ideally be able to run around with grandkids God gives me this and so I think it's important to have that perspective like the horizon is growing longer by the day than all of us think and all of us are probably taken into account right so I think the future

17:21for all of you guys is working artists working creatives the basics are going to still remain the basics okay attention is still going to be attention you're going to need to get it owning your own business is still going to be owning your own business the basics will still be the basics so I want to define these because I haven't in a great many years right and I think everyone needs to hear them and everyone needs to internalize them because they haven't changed they haven't changed since all the way back when I started my career in this industry and I don't think they're

17:51changed today and I don't think they're going to change all the way till 2055 okay which is why I put that in in the subtitle and I think about all of these folks that routinely come on to my webinars there was this delightful gal I forget her name from Switzerland she was 81 she was on my webinar Monday and if those folks like that gal would have just known the basics and implemented the basics okay she would be in a completely different position than she is right now right which

18:22is I have all this art I want to keep selling it what do I do I'm not tech savvy I'm not sophisticated where can I go with all this right so the basics as I define them right in 2026 okay and I kind of like this analogy too because one the time horizon is just so long right and you know where I live in Southern California wine is pretty big deal I don't live in Napa Valley or wine country up there but I've been up there and we have our own little wine countries down here and you know it's

18:53a snooty place so everyone loves talking about their wines not really my passion I'll drink it occasionally but it's real trendy to talk about vintages right and the vintage is just the year of what that particular wine is and when it was a great vintage what years were good and what years were bad and some years are good and some years are bad right sometimes there's fire or sometimes there's terrible weather frost or whatever and it ends up being a bad vintage or sometimes that stresses the grapes and ends up being a good vintage for whatever reason right but the line lives 30 50 100 years right in some

19:24cases it's different vintage every year some are going to be good and some are going to be bad right and in our business it's really the same there's going to be good vintages and there's going to be bad vintages over the years some years you're firing on all cylinders it's COVID and you're killing it some years like 2025 2026 we're in a recession war gas prices and it's less so right but I think the three questions that like really really matter in all of this why the basics are so important is the business your business cemented somewhere that you

19:54own such that it can't be taken away from you okay do you have attention that you control and I'll get into this more in a second and is the business moving forward even an inch okay even an inch every quarter right maybe maybe it's a rough year and you're going to have a bad vintage but is the business still moving forward every quarter and if you can just get that sorted okay if you can just nail those three and I'm going to I'm going to sort of articulate them and define them here okay if you can just nail

20:25those you're going to be on the right track you're going to be moving forward here you're going to be having upward growth okay and you're going to be you're going to be getting into your 70s 80s 90s or 150 if that's as long as we're going to live coming up with a much healthier more robust business with something that is actually producing income with eyeballs that are seeing your art and with the forward motion that's going to keep you motivated keep you inspired and keep you wanting to paint keep wanting to

20:56shoot keep wanting to create it so the basic number one okay is a website that you own right a website that you own and I had this line that I used to use all the time years ago but it's still just as important as it is today and it's like you would never build your castle on rented land right you can't build your castle on rented land if you just have a social media site that's great but that's rented land you can lose it can be taken away from you if you're up

21:27on an art gallery website because you're in a gallery that's great but that can go away if you're on an art marketplace maybe you have been for 20 years that can go away you don't own it right don't ever build your castle on rented land okay it has to be somewhere where you have control and it's not a binary situation right it's not it's not either or okay there's only one mandatory do you have a website that

21:57you own that you control that cannot be taken away from you okay good you have number one you're set you can have number one two three four five six seven for all I care that's great especially if it's working for you the only thing that matters though is that you have number one right and you know we can get into what I think the website should be what the website needs to be and I and I would say more broadly you should have clear pricing on your website you should be able to transact commerce on your

22:28website you should have it easy for your potential customers and buyers and collectors to visualize the art visualize the art and frames visualize the art on walls you should have real options okay sizes formats framings additions and this essentially all goes back and you know I know I've said this a ton of times but I'm going to not stop saying it repetition road is very important you know we're not trying to reinvent the wheel we are just taking the paradigm that is viewing art

23:00and buying art that's been the paradigm for hundreds of years which is in a museum in an art gallery and we're trying to make our website look as close to that as possible I don't know what it is about that mojo but that mojo is so important it's so important even if you use your website just as a sales tool and you don't actually transact any commerce on it if you just use your website to have people call you which I love when my customers do this like get on the phone with your potential buyer and

23:31form the relationship that's way more important than just someone checking out on their own and I don't know what the mojo is of presenting yourself as an actual e-commerce experience but it's important it's really really important and I do not think a pretty portfolio gets that done there's just something subtle in the