Michael Manes of Blue Spiral Gallery - Art is a Hustle

0:02Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast where we are all about helping business owners just like you achieve success. So we don't do fancy smancy. We don't do flashing lights. We don't do a lot of things that a lot of podcasts will do. These are just real stories about real people and their entrepreneurial and business experiences. We go into their wins, their challenges, and their learnings. So we hope you enjoy it.

0:37Welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs powered by Action Coach Growth Partners. You likely went into business to have more freedom and flexibility so that you could spend more time with your family, do more things or travel or enjoy your hobbies or whatever it is that you like to do in your spare time. We're here to help you find better ways to make more money, build better teams and get that time back so that you can have that freedom and flexibility. We'll help you simplify things and make sense of business, investing, and wealth building so that you can be epic and achieve all your dreams and goals.

1:10And now, enjoy the show. Hi, my name is Michael Maines, and I'm the director and co-owner of Blue Spiral One, a fine art and studio craft gallery located in North Carolina in Asheville. We have been in business since 1990, and I've been with the gallery since 2010. So how did you get into the business in the first place? That's a good question. It's kind of a pretty linear approach to the profession. I went to art school in Columbus, Ohio, where I'm from Ohio originally, from Akron, Ohio, and I went to the Columbus College of Art Design and studied fine art and majored in painting and printmaking.

1:50I went into school thinking that I was going to be a professional artist, much like the artists that I represent today. but over time I became more interested in the behind the scenes work that happens in either a museum or a gallery setting and started to work for the Columbus Museum of Art which was at the backyard of my college and I worked there as a preparator for a few years and then eventually moved back home to Akron and Cleveland area and worked at those two museums as well as a preparator art handler for them and really took a liking to kind of the hands-on side of the museum world or the art world, hanging shows, curating shows, looking at art as an object and eventually decided that Ohio wasn't the place for me for a lot of reasons, mostly just spending my entire life there.

2:44I was ready for a change. So I was talking with an artist that I was an assistant to. His name was Don Drum, and he's an aluminum pewter artist in the Akron area. And he knew of a guy named John Cram, who owned a gallery in Asheville, North Carolina, which is the gallery Blue Spiral that I'm at now. And he said, if you're going to move somewhere, and I told him I I wanted to move south. He said, you should check out Asheville. And at that time in 2009 or so, I didn't really know too much about Asheville. And so I came down here, I met with John and I left with a full-time job working for him and he became my mentor.

3:25I started working for John in 2010 and he made me the assistant director to Blue Spiral One. And in 2017, I was promoted to the director of the gallery. Unfortunately, in 2020, John passed away, and that's when I became a co-owner of the gallery. But for 10 years, he was my mentor learning about the business of art, how to run a commercial gallery, and how to bridge the craft world with the fine art world. We have a lot of ways we could go here. Let's talk about mentorship first. Let's talk about the importance of what makes a good mentor in your mind. How was John a great mentor for you? And what were some of the characteristics of a good mentor someone's looking for?

4:10Well, it's kind of an interesting question because John was a very interesting person. He was very much a lot of people described him as a curmudgeon. But once you got to know John, He was a very sweet and caring and a very giving person. And what he gave me was a lot of insight into this business. And the biggest thing that he did for me, which at first was extremely frustrating, is that he pushed me. and he challenged me both intellectually and physically in this field and made me really know that this is a hustle. You have to work incredibly hard in this business to make it and you have to work not only for yourself, you have to work on behalf of all the artists that you represent and your colleagues here at the gallery in order to do all that we do here.

5:13We do an awful lot in a gallery that's our size. We're 15 ,000 square feet spanning three levels here in downtown Asheville. And we put on 24 to 25 exhibitions annually in this space on top of anything that we do outside of the gallery, like an art fair, collaborations with other nonprofits or institutions and museums. and on average we have a staff including myself of six so we wear a lot of different hats and so being able to manage that is something that he he instilled in me and the the idea of of being a broker or salesperson for art which is something that is interesting because it's not car salesmen.

6:07There's an eloquence to it. There's an intellectual capacity that's needed in order to do it. And so more than anything, we're educators in our field, working with clients to place works for artists. So he provided me a lot of different skills and

6:28and personality traits, both good and bad, to work on. I love that. So first of all, he was a giver. You have to be a little bit of a giver to be a mentor because you've got to want to help the next person. He gave you insight. But what I really like is he pushed and challenged you to be who you needed to be to be able to go to whatever next level was your next level, in this case, co-owner or eventually co-owner, but certainly to run the whole thing. And then I love the fact that you got to hustle. This is not about – and you've got to continually educate. So I think a great mentor does all of those things.

7:14So I think that's incredible. So I'm sure it hasn't been, you know, a straight line. Michael's been massively successful in everything that he's done. So I don't know any entrepreneurs that can say that. So tell me a little bit about some of the challenges or even maybe failures and what you've gained from that or how that's helped you grow. I mean, you're absolutely right, Bill. there's always challenges and failures and failures help to make successes. You know, every day I think I have a failure and every day I think I have somewhat of success as well. And failures can be seen in different ways.

8:04You know, one of the most recent challenges I think that we can all talk about, I'm sure that it comes up a lot on your program, is just what COVID did to a business. But more than anything, a challenge that we had here was what happens when your founder passes and how do you continue to honor a legacy, but also use it as an advantage or an opportunity to expand, grow, and pivot. So in a lot of ways, the pandemic also provided that platform and a reason to pivot and to change. Would I have chosen another reason to do so? Absolutely. I mean, because there's the downfalls of that, you know, having to furlough your staff and closing your doors for almost four months, but still the phone rings and email inquiries come in from our clients and having to run the entire business with just myself and at the time my assistant director while everybody else was just kind of waiting and seeing what happens and staying safe in their homes.

9:12We continued working. We continued to do that hustle and meeting with clients in their homes or outside their homes, actually. And so when the founder passes of a business, prior to that, a challenge was dealing with founder syndrome and how do they pass it off to the next generation of ownership or directorship of a gallery when, you know, everything has been fine up until then. Why change? Why rebrand the gallery? Why do all of that? So those are things that have always been challenging and things that John challenged me when I proposed to, for example, rebrand the gallery in 2017, change the logo that had been there for 20 some years.

10:04My reasoning was something that he didn't maybe quite understand because of our generational gap. And if it ain't broke, why fix it mentality? But at the end of the day, it was a good choice and he understood why and respected that.

10:24so how did you how did the industry or your business change as a result of losing the founder what what specifically have you have you have you done or or what was your plan to you know to continue to grow i think a lot of the plan was was kind of a marketing approach and to, you know, even though John passed away in 20, he had almost fully retired when I became the director. So a lot of it was an optics thing where, you know, in the business that we're in, trust is a big part of it. So trust in our clients and clients trusting myself and the business and the growth of the business. And so when I say optics, it's knowing that

11:17if the founder or the director is still associated with, he might not be doing all of the work or the pulling the strings anymore of how the business is running. And so making sure that people are aware of that in a way that honors him, but also lets people know that there's there's the next chapter. So, you know, putting myself in, in, in, in, in a position where, you know, telling that next generational story being a catalyst for change in the industry, in our town and kind of announcing that, that this change is happening before it was actually, you know, all the way there, um, kind of leading up to it.

12:09Um, so again, it gives, it gets, builds that trust, um, and tells that story. I love that. I love that. Like it's, it's a matter where people buy from who they know, like, and trust. And so, um, I love that the continuation of trust. That was the, that was the goal of the whole thing of, of any, of any change. Could we, can we maintain the trust even though we're not doing business the same way we did before, whether it was COVID or the founder? It sounds like he was very forward thinking because he meant a due to essentially run the business for him before he died. So that's an awesome, that's a great story.

12:51I think that's the way it should be done. And in a lot of medium and small businesses, it's probably a great idea to, to identify a mentee, identify somebody and get them ready. And it sounds, and it seems like he did a great job of that. It could have been better or smoother, but you know, it's, it's again, it goes back to his personality and it was more like a, a test, you know, to see how, how, how it works. So, you know, well, there are different, you know there are all kind of styles out there of leadership that work so uh well i'm assuming that you don't i don't that you that you're not just a local business that you're national international sell to you know people are interested in your art um how's that going so that's been that's been something that's been continually growing so when we when the gallery it first started, we only represented Southeastern artists.

13:50And because of that, majority of our clientele was Southeastern. As the business grew and the town of Asheville grew as a major tourism destination, more people were coming here, not just through day trips, but the airport here grew. So more people were flying in. We had more direct flights. In the most recent years, we're seeing a lot more international travel here, which expands our international clientele. but we're not just here with our doors open. We have a pretty robust marketing efforts, both digitally and in print, more so digitally these days. And so we're reaching out to reach new clients, both in that kind of day trip kind of region, as well as folks that are flying in nationally, internationally.

14:39And with that growth, we've expanded our artist pool of talent to be national and international. So we have artists from all over the country, and we have a handful of artists that are from different parts of the world, as well as we have a partnership gallery that was established in 2018 in Barcelona, where we trade exhibitions every other year with them. Yeah, Barcelona is a great place to visit. So that's probably a good relationship to have. That's awesome. Yeah, no, it's an interesting one to me. So, you know, in marketing, there's a lot of test and measure checking out. So is that how you do it with artists?

15:21You say, well, we like this artist and let's test and measure and see if we can sell any of this art. That's pretty, I mean, it's a lot of that. So at first it comes down to looking at our current roster of artists and seeing what might be missing and or what we could we could potentially grow if there's a subject matter that is continually does well like say for instance landscape painters having one landscape painter on our roster could be beneficial but having five could be maybe more beneficial as long as they have a variation between them that sets them apart so one thing that is a consistency throughout the gallery is craftsmanship so that is the thread throughout the gallery.

16:02So everything is made at a really high level. And we have artists that are doing similar styles or maybe working in similar mediums, but what they produce is completely different. So as you pan through the gallery, everything looks unique. You can tell the differences between various artists. But as you can imagine, when you represent about 120 different artists, there is some overlap. So how do we tell that story? And that's just it. We tell the story. we're talking about each artist as an individual and sharing their process their materials as a as a part of our educational approach of of consulting here yeah well that's awesome so i'm going to do a bit of a quick fire round here and uh epic is an acronym so i'm gonna i'm gonna go down through the epic and get your thoughts on uh first of all the e stands for education and we've talked about education a lot.

17:01So in business, what do you think the importance of education is? I think there's a bit of importance in education. Education is a broad term, and it can be both in academic and formal education, but can also be based on experience and getting your feet wet and your hands dirty. And so for me, I don't have a formal business education. And at times I thought maybe I would go back and get my MBA or something like that. But really, my education is in the doing. And so the longer that I'm doing this and in this field and working in my position with having employees and the artists and all of that, I'm continually learning.

17:41And like I said, every day there's a failure, but there's also something to be learned every day. And so that's the education that's important. Yeah. I love what you said about every day there's a failure. also every day there's a success. So, I mean, I've always looked at it. If they fail on something, at least you've learned something. So, yeah. All right. So how about the importance of planning? How does it play in your world? So planning is very important in our world. Like I said, we do those exhibitions every other month. So we're planning our exhibition schedule out about two years out in advance.

18:15So there's a lot of planning that goes into just contacting the artist from the inception of an idea of a show to finding the artists, whether they're in our current roster or we're inviting them, to the initial email invite, knowing what the inventory is coming in, when the work comes in, planning how the gallery is going to transition over. We don't close while we're transitioning our exhibitions. We stay open. So just in that small part of what we do here, there's a lot of planning. And then, you know, when we're working with clients on installs or auditioning or major projects, there's a lot of planning in that.

18:56So I would say planning is a major part of our business and is very much essential here. That's that's very interesting to me. you know i wouldn't think that most artists i mean my my impression of artists in general and artists that i know i have some in our in our family you know they don't i i can't say that they would be massive planners but i love that you're two years out i mean you have what artists need there's two main things that artists need and it's time and space and so we provide the time for them and they have the space and so you know in the gallery's history that that timeline line of planning was much shorter.

19:39It was much more reactionary. And we still leave a bit of that within our exhibition schedule, because if something comes up that is timely, we want to curate a show that kind of reacts to that. We have the ability to do that. But giving our artists the time to create a body of work that they're happy with is one of the best ways to ensure that we will get the best work from that artist and allows us the runway to do the marketing and the reaching to the clients that collect that artist's work. Yeah, I agree completely. To do the marketing right, you have to be planful. So that's amazing. That's cool.

20:20That's an interesting learning. How about inspiration? What do you think the importance of inspiration is in business? Inspiration is another very important factor. I mean, for us, I mean, I'm surrounded by inspiration daily by the work that our artists are putting forth in front of us. I'm inspired by my colleagues daily and I'm inspired by what we're able to do here. I'm inspired by my wife, inspired by my three-year-old. And that inspiration, like I said, comes from a lot of different places, but it's more what you do with it. So if I'm inspired by something, let's say I'm walking through the gallery and I see a couple artists that there's a moment that that these two or three pieces look really compelling together.

21:03Well, that inspiration might transfer into an exhibition that might happen in the future. So, you know, we're always continually looking with our eyes open and seeing where inspiration might come from and then how we might be able to use that inspiration. I love it. I love it. I thought you were going to like that one. How about commitment? How about the importance of commitment to wrap up the word? commitment is a big one too. Um, you know, we at the gallery and myself are fully committed to, to our artists. Um, we are family. And so we support them both on a, you know, on a financial level for one, uh, as their career, but also on an emotional level, we're, we're there for them to talk through some things, whether it's strictly about art, but also about anything else that might be going on.

21:58I mean, when you work with a gallery, it's like a family or a dating married situation. You are a unit together. And so being committed to each other is important. And to have that, again, that trust goes with it. And then to also, you know, being tastemakers in our field, we have to stand behind what we put forth. And so we're committed to presenting what we consider the very best in studio craft and fine art in the region and beyond. So do you still do art? I get that question almost daily, Bill. You know, it's one of those questions that kind of depends on what day you're asking me. I usually say no.

22:46And traditionally, the answer is always no. I don't go home. I don't paint anymore. I don't practice in the kind of traditional way. But my artistry is in and has become in the curation of the gallery and the exhibitions we have and in language. And so I work with people. And so being able to talk with somebody in a way like we're doing right now or with clients, I mean, that is in some way an artistry. No doubt. That's definitely an art. I love it. I love it. It's not, you know, people say it's a skill, but it's an art and a skill. So awesome. So if somebody wants to get in touch with you or find the gallery, how do they do it?

23:34So we are located again in downtown Asheville, North Carolina, and our website is bluespiral1.com. And you can follow us on all social media channels at bluespiral1. That's B-L-U-E-S-P-I-R-A-L, the number one. Yeah, no, that's awesome. Hey, look, it's been a great discussion. I love the way the art and business and the business of art. We need to have another. We'll have another and just talk about art and business and how business is an art. I think that'd be a great topic for us to have a chat about. So thanks for being on the show. Really enjoyed having me. Thanks for having me, Bill. Yeah.

24:13And until next time, we want you to be epic. Thanks for joining us for this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. Here's four things you can do. First, you can listen every week on Biz Radio Mondays at 1. Second, you can subscribe to the podcast. Hey, you get it. the more subscribers we have, the more cool things we can offer you. Three, you can also go out and give us a five-star rating everywhere. And number four, if you'd like a free copy of my book, The Coach Approach, Five Principles to Build an Epic Business, just go to giftfrombill.com. It's your roadmap to building your epic business. That's giftfrombill.com.

24:51Until next time, all the best. Hey, thanks for listening to the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast. podcasts, here's three things that you can do. Number one, remember to subscribe to the podcast. It takes very little effort on your part. It's going to help you and your fellow entrepreneurs. Plus, you guys know how it works. The more subscribers we get, the more cool things we can offer to you. Second, to learn more about growing your business, just download my book, the coach approach. It's free for you at giftfrombill.com. That's giftfrombill.com. Hey, and if you'd like more info about growing your business and what we can do to help you grow your business, send me an email directly.

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