The Art Coaching Club Podcast

On the Art Coaching Club podcast, Danielle Hayden of Kickstart Accounting, Inc. breaks down money management for artists, especially those navigating fluctuating income.

Drawing from her own background as a creative, Danielle shares how to establish a rhythm for reviewing your finances weekly, monthly, and quarterly. She emphasizes the foundational role of accurate bookkeeping, recommending QuickBooks Online and advising creatives to hire an expert for this important task.

Danielle introduces the concept of a 'money team' — your bookkeeper, tax accountant, business coach/CFO, and you as CEO — and explains the three key numbers every business owner should know: net income, average operating expenses, and monthly cash outlay. Learn how to set strategic goals based on your 'season of business' (growth, lifestyle, or legacy) and approach budgeting as a growth plan rather than a restriction.

Danielle also covers when to consider switching to an S corp, smart tax strategies, and financial considerations for hiring your first team members. Plus, she offers insights on understanding your money mindset and grounding yourself in data. You don't have to do it alone – tune in for practical, actionable financial advice tailored for creative entrepreneurs.

Learn more: https://kickstartaccountinginc.com/gift/

Follow along on Substack: https://hayleypricewhite.substack.com/

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Host Hayley White shares her Instagram strategy for artists, emphasizing that while Instagram can be a powerful tool, it's not the only path to growth. She explains why artists often gravitate to Instagram despite other effective channels like galleries, designers, and newsletters. Hayley breaks down her "Instagram playbook" into three essential content types: 40% top-of-funnel content for views (like trending audio or memes with an art spin), 40% useful content for saves and shares (teaching, solving, or resonating), and 20% "you content" (your face, voice, story) to build trust and drive sales. She stresses that you need all three types to convert views into followers and ultimately into customers. Hayley also highlights the importance of using Instagram as part of a larger funnel, primarily to grow your newsletter, which is where the vast majority of her own sales happen. Learn how to implement this strategy, track the right metrics, and push your audience to your website or email list. For more visuals and examples, subscribe to Hayley's Substack, Paper Trail, and look out for details on her upcoming Instagram workshop.

Subscribe to Paper Trail: https://hayleypricewhite.substack.com/

Follow along: @haleypricewhite and @theartcoachingclub on Instagram

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A year ago, Lucy Camp was painting before work and on weekends, quietly wondering if a full-time creative career was even an option. Now she’s full-time, fresh off her first in-person show, and prepping for a solo show with Ann Irwin Gallery this December. In this episode, Lucy walks us through what finally made her take the leap: a strong gut instinct, a viral trial reel that hit a million views, and a friend's simple question, “You know you can just be an artist, right?”

We talk about her sustainable Instagram approach for artists, including posting short Reels of final touches every morning, and why trial reels can be so hit or miss. Lucy shares how she found her unique artistic style by following the thread from high school mark-making to oil sticks, line drawings, and joyful, colorful tablescapes. She also discusses the practical side of managing a creative business: cleaning up your Instagram, overcoming the fear of shipping large paintings, and the psychology of setting art prices like a professional (and why starting too low is a hard hole to dig out of). Lucy also reveals the very real storage problem that comes with slow-drying materials like oil sticks.

Plus, hear what Lucy learned from standing in her booth at the Loyola Art Show, meeting her ideal clients, and hearing collectors describe her work as "joyful" and "hopeful." If you’ve ever felt like you need to research something to death before you’re allowed to start, this one’s for you. Give yourself the room to grow, and you’ll grow into it.

https://www.lucycampart.com/ https://www.instagram.com/lucycamp.art/

Subscribe to the Substack: https://hayleypricewhite.substack.com/

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Katie Brown returns to the podcast, sharing how much has changed since our last chat! She opens up about the whirlwind of the past two years: welcoming her second child, Sadie, building a dream studio over her detached garage, and a major pivot in her creative path. Katie details the intense experience of working with five prominent art galleries simultaneously, including Well + Wonder, Campbell Collective, Shane and Greg Irby, and Gallery Orange. She candidly discusses the overwhelming pressure, battling postpartum anxiety and depression, and the realization that she was burning out trying to meet demands while raising two young children.

This episode delves into Katie's brave decision to step away from most of her gallery representation to focus on selling her creations directly and building her own audience. She recounts the pivotal moment when her first independent release sold out in just 20 minutes, confirming her path to self-representation. Katie also shares her personal journey with anxiety and how seeking medication was a game-changer, allowing her to regain control and clarity in her life and work.

We explore the pros and cons of working with art galleries versus self-representation, and why it's crucial for any artist to understand their own goals and seasons of life. Katie emphasizes the importance of creating 'margin' for creativity and avoiding the 'hamster wheel' of constant production. She reflects on how these early partnerships legitimized her work and pricing, but how her current focus is on developing her own brand, including future plans for textiles and wall coverings. This is a must-listen for any creative entrepreneur navigating growth, burnout, and the evolving landscape of their business. Follow the show and leave a review if this helped.

See her work: https://katiebrownart.com/

Follow along: https://www.instagram.com/katiebrown_art

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Caroline and Bex have been best friends since before they were born, literally, their moms knew each other first. So when Caroline fell in love with mahjong two and a half years ago and Bex was working as a fashion illustrator in New York doing live events for brands like Jimmy Choo and Vogue, the idea for The Gilded Shuffle wasn't some calculated market gap they spotted. It was a coffee morning, a mahjong lesson, and Caroline saying out loud that she wished more artists were designing tiles.

On this episode we get into how they turned that into an actual product line: Bex's design process for translating her flower girls and dove motifs onto a functional mahjong set without losing the rules of the game, why they spent real money on branding before they had a product to sell, and what it took to find a manufacturing partner who wouldn't cut corners on something meant to feel like an heirloom. We also talk about the unglamorous parts, tariffs, supplier communication at 2am, decision paralysis when the creative options are genuinely endless, and why working with your best friend might be the opposite of the advice everyone gives you.

If you've ever wondered what it actually takes to go from "wouldn't this be cool" to a launched, beautifully branded product, this one's for you.

Find Caroline and The Gilded Shuffle at @thegildedshuffle and thegildedshuffle.com
Find Bex at @xobexstudio

New episodes of The Art Coaching Club podcast drop every week. If this one resonated, follow along and leave a review, it helps more artists find their way here.

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Elizabeth Rees started Chasing Paper because she wanted a wallpaper company that worked for her. In this episode we talk about how she built that into a real business, and about the part of her model that makes her a genuinely interesting guest for this audience, she doesn't just sell wallpaper, she licenses other people's art onto it.

We get into what that partnership actually looks like from both sides, using her collaborations with Liz Lidgett and Meredith Kinney as real examples. We discuss growing a business, challenges that come with that, lessons learned along the way and so much more.

Find Elizabeth and Chasing Paper @chasing paper and chasingpaper.com

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* I️ misspoke when announcing the Club - spots are open from September 16th - the 24th!

Jennifer M. Walker is a St. Louis-based painter who's been selling her work for three and a half years, and in the last year has found real traction with botanicals, even though her heart still wanders toward abstract work and patterned framing. In this conversation, she walks through the actual trajectory of her career: painting quietly at home after leaving a corporate job, a studio that came with the house she and her husband bought, a two-year adoption journey that turned painting into an emotional outlet, and the local shop visit on a family walk that eventually led to her best sales weekend ever at a Round Top-style show.

We get into the stepping-stone nature of an art career, how relationships and "wasted" opportunities compound over time, and why Jennifer believes none of her past jobs or slow seasons were ever really wasted. She's candid about using ChatGPT to place her work in styled rooms for Instagram, despite her instinct to resist AI as someone who loves physical books, handmade work, and supporting other makers, and why she's landed on it as a tool that solves a real problem rather than something that cheapens what she does.

We also dig into her marketing engine: how she built an Instagram strategy around recurring content pillars (she compares it to a newspaper column), why she posts the same piece of art multiple times without guilt, and how a simple DM conversation starter turns into a commission. Jennifer talks honestly about the harder parts too: juggling four young kids with a growing business, the years it took to stop feeling like an imposter calling herself an artist, and how she sets financial and creative goals she can hold loosely.

She closes with what's ahead: new releases through the Scouted Studio this fall, a collaboration with Serena & Lily launching in September, and a show with Mended at Round Top in October.

Find Jennifer on Instagram at @jennifermwalkerart and at jennifermwalkerart.com and check out her new collection on thescoutedstudio.com.

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This is the final episode in our three-part series on working with interior designers, and it covers the part almost nobody talks about: what happens after the project ships. You landed the commission, she loved the piece, everyone's happy — and then six months go by and you haven't heard a word.

I get into why that happens (it's usually not personal, she's just busy and juggling a dozen projects) and what to do about it: building a real re-engagement strategy that lives in her inbox instead of your Instagram feed, why install photos are the best marketing lever you're not using yet, and how to stay top of mind without turning into the artist who's always pitching. I also make the case for why I think too many of us are spending four hours a week worrying about reel views instead of one hour sending three emails that would actually move the business forward. If you missed them, go back and listen to part one and part two first.

And for the extended version of today's episode — exactly how to ask for photos, usage rights, and what a follow-up cadence should look like — that's up on Paper Trail, my Substack, this week.

Doors to The Club close September 24 and won't open again until next year, so if you've been on the fence, this is your sign. learn more here.

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This Friday's replay is my conversation with Katherine Corden, a fine artist in Traverse City, Michigan, known for her expressive figures and color work, who got here by easing out of a career as a physical therapist rather than leaping. She started her art Instagram the week she graduated PT school, and eight years later, that side project has become a full-time business complete with an Anthropologie partnership, gallery representation, and licensing deals.

We talk through what she learned in Emily Jeffords' first-ever mastermind cohort, why she never discounts her original paintings, and how she runs a print business with zero inventory by printing everything to order. Katherine also shares some genuinely pinch-me moments, from her work appearing in an Architectural Digest home feature to her first public mural, plus a book cover licensing deal she was keeping mostly under wraps.

Find Katherine at https://katherinecorden.com/ and on Instagram @Katherinecorden.art, and check out her Substack, The Art Table.

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Welcome back to part two of my three-part series on working with interior designers. This one picks up after the designer has already said yes, and it's all about what happens next. I start with a story from my time at Fritz Porter, the to-the-trade studio in Charleston, and what it taught me about why the same designers kept coming back again and again: because we were easy to work with. That's the whole episode.

I get into why being easy to work with matters more than almost anything else once you've got your foot in the door, why a simple contract actually builds trust instead of scaring people off, why you should always give yourself and your client more time than you think you need, and how a real invoicing and inventory system makes you look like the professional you already are.

If you haven't heard part one, start there. I cover how to research designers and build the portfolio you'll actually send them.

And if you want the extended version of everything in this episode, subscribe to my Substack. It's free, with bonus content if you want to go deeper.

Next week I'm sharing an interview with an artist, and in two weeks I'll be back with part three, where we talk about what happens after the piece is delivered: follow-up, photography, and turning one sale into the next one. Your homework this week: get your systems in place. A way to track inventory, a real invoice, a commission contract, a policy on deposits. Do it now, even if you're not working with a designer yet, so you're ready the second someone says yes.

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This Friday's replay is my conversation with Eden Flora, an artist and registered art therapist in Oxford, Mississippi, whose collection-based approach to art has grown into a business built on teaching, licensing, and a lot of hard-won reinvestment.

Eden walks through how her fabric design degree and her master's in art therapy from Pratt both shaped how she works today, how she builds a collection around an idea she's personally sitting with, and how art licensing, something she says almost nobody talks about, has quietly become a steady source of income. We also cover why she's shifted energy away from Instagram and into her email newsletter, Studio Scoop, why she hired a marketing consultant this year, and the M&M story from a high school science class that still guides how she reinvests in her business.

Find Eden at edenwflora.com and on Instagram @edenwflora.

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Welcome to Part 1 of our series on working with interior designers! For artists, understanding how to connect with these professionals can truly transform your business. In this episode, I share my insights from years as an artist and working for firms like Courtney Agosti Interior Design, plus coaching many of you. We're covering everything you need to know before you land that first project.

I'll explain why being memorable is key, drawing on examples like a fabric vendor's unique packaging and artist Shelby Hamilton's studio proximity. Learn my top recommendation for initial outreach: a compelling PDF portfolio. This isn't just a website link; it's a tailored document that fits how these experts already track vendors, including your work, commission process, and trade discounts.

Discover how to research and find the right partners, starting local, and why you need to reach out to many to get a 'yes.' I'll also share tips on personalizing your emails and even sending a small, memorable physical gift to your ideal contacts. Don't discount smaller to mid-size studios; they can offer consistent business and strong relationships.

Finally, I'll walk you through setting up an organization spreadsheet to track your communications and follow-ups – an important step for closing more deals. Stop relying solely on Instagram; proactively get your artwork in front of potential clients. Your homework: create your PDF portfolio, develop your outreach list, and start sending those emails. This is the jumping-off point for a truly successful full-time art business.

Subscribe to the Art Coaching Club Substack for more detailed tips and templates. Join me next week for Part 2!

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This is a fan favorite replay, and if you missed it the first time, now's your chance. I sat down with Ashley Ford of Pretty Penny Accounting, who works specifically with women-owned and creative businesses, and this conversation answers nearly every financial question I had when I started my art business.

We walk through the difference between a bookkeeper and an accountant, when it's actually time to hire one, what artists can legitimately write off, why you need a separate business bank account sooner than you think, and how to make sense of sales tax, 1099s, and quarterly estimated payments without losing your mind. Ashley also reframes budgeting as a spending plan instead of a restriction, which might change how you think about your own money.

We close out with listener questions, covering how much cash to keep on hand, what to do when your revenue grows but your profit doesn't, and the easiest way to stay on top of your books if bookkeeping is your least favorite task.

Find Ashley at heyprettypenny.com and on Instagram @prettypennyaccounting.

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Season two starts with one of my favorite conversations yet, with Brynn Casey, a Georgia-based artist known for her coastal and water-inspired paintings. We talk about her years apprenticing under Brit Bass Turner, why trying oil paint after a decade in her signature style feels almost forbidden, and the marriage metaphor she uses for the seasons of a creative career, some fireworks, some grind, all worth it.

We also get practical: why Instagram doesn't convert the way it used to and what Brynn's doing about it, including a Pinterest strategy pulling 40 percent of her web traffic, how to cold-pitch interior designers, why photography should come before your website, and how she built a product ladder, from journals and calendars to prints and commissions, so there's an entry point at every budget.

Her closing advice stuck with me: stay in your lane, keep your eyes forward, and stop checking what everyone else is doing. It's the perfect way to kick off this season.

Find Brynn at brynncasey.com and on Instagram @brynnwcasey.art.

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It's a Friday fan favorite, so today I'm resurfacing one of the episodes y'all keep coming back to: my interview with Chad and Daisy of Studio Giclée in Wilmington, North Carolina. These two are the real deal — Daisy's a painter who studied art and interior design, and Chad grew up working in his family's print shop in Nebraska before spending over a decade doing color correction in LA, including for TV and film. Put those two together and you get a print shop that only works with artists, which changes everything about how they approach a print.

We get into all of it: paper versus canvas, the difference between a standard border and an excess border (a distinction that will save you from ordering the wrong frame), aspect ratios and why they make everyone's brain hurt, what DPI actually means for your file, and how to photograph your own work at home if you're not local to them. We also talk about limited editions, whether you should sign your prints, and the smartest way to decide which sizes to even offer when you're just starting out.

If you've ever felt overwhelmed trying to turn your art into prints, or you already sell prints and want to tighten up your process, this one's worth the replay.

Come find me elsewhere too. I'm on Instagram at @theartcoachingclub and @hayleypricewhite, on TikTok at @hayleypricewhite, and if you want the deeper stuff — the essays, the behind-the-scenes of running this business, all of it — subscribe to my Substack, Paper Trail.

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Yes, it's August. Yes, we're talking about Christmas. Stick with me, because the artists who do holiday well aren't the ones scrambling in November, they're the ones who planned in the summer.

Today I'm walking through the framework I use with my coaching clients to think about holiday sales: seeds versus money makers. Money makers are your originals, commissions, and bigger bespoke pieces. Seeds are the giftable stuff, ornaments, calendars, small prints, cards, and their real return isn't the sale price, it's the marketing. A seed sits in a stranger's home for years, doing the kind of word-of-mouth work no ad campaign can touch.

I share the story of the ornaments my grandmother gave my sister and me every year growing up, why I still think of her every time I decorate my tree, and what that kind of loyalty could mean for an artist's business. We also dig into pricing psychology (the holiday-party-wine-bottle test), why underpricing gift items can actually lose you sales, and how to reverse-engineer your whole season from your ship dates.

Want the deeper breakdown, with case studies? Subscribe to my Substack, Paper Trail, for Thursday's issue.

And if you want to build out your own holiday plan with me directly, the waitlist for the Art Coaching Club is here: https://www.theartcoachingclub.com/about-1

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Pricing is probably the question I get asked more than anything else — right behind shipping tips. So to close out this three-day series and kick off season two, we're talking about how to actually price your art.

I'm walking through the pricing mistakes I see most often — giving work away "for exposure," panic-discounting during a slow month, pricing off materials alone, copying someone else's price sheet, underpricing commissions just to land the client — and what those mistakes really cost you over time: a hole that's brutal to climb out of, galleries and shows that pass you over, and the burnout that pushes so many talented artists to quit.

Then we get into the fix: the three pricing models I actually use (square inch, hourly, and market comparison), how to price commissions so you stop resenting them, and the mindset shift that matters more than any formula — your dream client respects the number, raising your prices can grow demand instead of killing it, and a sustainable business beats a busy one every time.

If you've ever wondered whether you're charging enough or you're ready to raise your prices without scaring off clients, start here.

Homework this week: audit your own pricing and see where you land.

Loved this one? A quick rating and review helps this show reach more artists who need it — and subscribing means you never miss an episode.

Read my recent Substacks on Pricing: https://hayleypricewhite.substack.com/p/tips-for-pricing-art

https://hayleypricewhite.substack.com/p/the-year-i-sold-a-painting-for-20?r=3ehfyc

https://hayleypricewhite.substack.com/p/the-truth-about-raising-your-prices?r=3ehfyc

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Most artists think their ideal buyer is some hyper-rich woman sitting in a castle, waiting to click purchase. She's not. Your real buyer is closer to you than you think — she's the person who splurged on something last month she didn't need, saved all year for a piece she loved, or bought herself a gift she didn't feel like explaining to anyone. Art isn't a commodity only the wealthy buy. It's belief, desire, and a luxury people find a way toward even when the math doesn't quite work.

In this episode I'm breaking down what's actually happening in a collector's head in the moment they decide to buy: the role of story, why real scarcity works and manufactured urgency backfires, how trust gets built long before anyone sees your prices, and why the way you tier your work can make or break a sale. I'm pulling real examples from my own Reading Girls collection and from what running The Scouted Studio gallery has taught me about which artists build collectors and which ones don't.

If you've ever made something beautiful and still couldn't figure out why it wasn't selling, this one's for you.

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Season two is here, and yes, I know season one somehow ran 250-something episodes and this is still "season two." We're not overthinking it. I took the spring and summer off, and I'm back with a shift: fewer interviews, more solo episodes built around one thing — growing a real, sustainable art business. The interviews aren't gone, and there are 200-plus of them in the archive if you want another artist's story to pair with these. But the weekly focus now is practical, walk-away-and-do-it advice, not just inspiration.

This episode is part story, part reckoning. I tell you about the semester I nearly didn't double major in art, the professor who talked me into it, and the day I stood up in front of my class, flipped my notes over mid-presentation, and asked them to vote on whether I should take a "safe" internship or go all in on my art. I also tell you what happened after — the magazine job that didn't turn into a job, the arts management gig that turned into a gallery I ran out of a bedroom, then a closet with curtains hung around a painting so I'd feel like I had a window, then an actual studio, then King Street, then back online because, well, 2020.

From there we get into the starving artist myth itself — where it actually comes from, what it costs you the longer you believe it, and why I think it's increasingly just not true. My take: money and art aren't enemies, collectors respect work priced with confidence, and building a sustainable business doesn't mean turning into a machine or giving up your mornings with your coffee and your dog.

Your homework this week isn't a five-step framework. It's two words: just start. The email you've been drafting, the video you've been avoiding, the collaboration you keep talking yourself out of — that's the thing to do today.

If this is useful, subscribe so you don't miss an episode, and send it to another artist who needs to hear it. Come find me on Instagram at The Art Coaching Club and tell me what you're starting this week.

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Lindsey McCord paints under the name Lindsay Crafter, a nickname a boss in New York gave her years ago when she was rigging marshmallows from ceilings for Target and L'Oréal events. She got there through fashion school, event production, ghostwriting, prop styling, basically every creative job that existed, and it wasn't until she had her daughter in 2020 that painting became the thing she actually built a business around, posting one piece at a time while the baby slept.

This conversation goes deep on the parts of running an art business that don't show up on Instagram. Lindsey walks through what she believes was a full year of suppressed reach after opting into Instagram's paid views program, watching her income graph mirror her impressions graph almost exactly, and how a single interior design placement (a show house piece that got picked up by House Beautiful) pulled her back from the edge. She talks about the bathroom-mirror goal sheet that changed her income more than anything else she tried, why she stopped making tiny pieces and started painting larger canvases for the same amount of studio time, and why she quit discounting her work entirely after watching flash sales quietly train collectors to wait her out.

We also get into Pinterest as her single biggest source of international sales, why she thinks chasing follower count actively works against you, a cautionary tale about a market booth that cost her thousands of dollars and taught her how to vet a show before committing, and a refreshingly honest conversation about money, shame, and why she thinks women artists in particular need to talk about income more openly.

If you've ever wondered whether the artists you follow online have it as figured out as it looks, this one is a good reminder that nobody does, and that's fine.

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