849: Turning Creativity into Profit: How to Monetize Your Art

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2:01We are all creative. Even those of you who are listening who don't feel it, you are. It is there. It may be expressed in a million different ways. It doesn't have to be art, but we are creative. I think we were created to create. We have that innate desire to build. right to create, to make, to build. I'm Jenna Kutcher, your host of the Gold Digger podcast. I escaped the corporate world at the age of 23 with nothing more than a$300 camera from Craigslist and a dream. Now I'm running a seven figure online business that feels even better than it looks all from my house in small town, Minnesota with my family.

2:41Here we value time as our currency. We mix the woo and the work, and we are in the pursuit of building businesses that give us the freedom to live lives that we love. I've always loved turning big goals into reality, and I'm here to help you do the same. This isn't just a peek behind the curtain. Come along with me and my guests as we tear the whole curtain down. Every week we tackle practical, no-fluff marketing strategies and host honest discussions on what works and what doesn't. Join me and my expert guests for actionable insights to help you grow your dream business with confidence. Pull up a seat and get ready to be challenged, inspired, and empowered.

3:20This is the Gold Digger Podcast. What if I told you there's a career where your creativity isn't just a side hustle, it's the main event? A career where your art can live on products worldwide from fabrics to stationery to wallpaper, and you don't need a formal art background in order to get started. Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, it's not. Today's guest, my friend, Bonnie Christine, is living proof that big creative dreams are worth pursuing. Bonnie is an internationally renowned surface pattern designer, entrepreneur, and award-winning educator. What started as a leap of faith in her mom's quilt shop has grown into a multi-million dollar business helping tens of thousands of aspiring creatives turn their passions into thriving careers.

4:05In this episode, Bonnie pulls back the curtain on what it takes to transform your art into a sustainable business. We'll dive into the biggest mistakes creatives make when trying to monetize their work, how to overcome imposter syndrome, and why she believes there's room for everyone in the creative industry. If you're ready to unlock your creativity, take actionable steps towards your dream, and finally believe there's space for you in the world of design, this is the episode for you. And if you're interested in learning more about how Bonnie has built her incredibly successful business, you'll hear her reference her upcoming workshop.

4:39It's called Your Pattern Design Playbook, seven industry secrets to accelerate your success as a surface pattern designer. You can save your seat right now at jennacutcher.com slash design. This in-depth workshop teaches you how to achieve time, location, and financial freedom through surface design. So whether you're dreaming of transitioning from a hobby to a full-time career, breaking into the industry as a licensed artist, or simply discovering the endless possibilities within this surface design world, this workshop will give you the clarity, confidence, and roadmap app you need to make the next big step.

5:12Head to jennacutcher.com forward slash design to save your seat. Without further ado, Bonnie Christine, welcome to the Gold Digger podcast. Hey marketers, quick question. When was the last time you actually enjoyed marketing? If you're feeling overwhelmed juggling content creation, lead generation, campaign tracking, and analytics, let me introduce you to a game changer, HubSpot. HubSpot combines the power of Marketing Hub and Content Hub, and it's all enhanced by Breeze. They're built-in AI. Imagine taking just one piece of content and instantly remixing it for every channel. Imagine identifying your best leads with AI-powered scoring and having crystal clear analytics that simplify your reporting.

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6:40And I want to start with a heavy hitting question for you, Bonnie, which is you have helped thousands of creatives turn their passions into sustainable businesses. And I want to know what is the biggest mistake you see aspiring creatives make when they're trying to monetize their art and how can they avoid this mistake? Okay. I think that one One of the things that people struggle with so much is really rushing to kind of arrive. I think that we see so many really well-established, seemingly perfect artists crushing it, and we just want to arrive already. And so we kind of rush to that monetization.

7:21And really, there's no rushing that part of it. It is so different when I see someone who has really put in the work to refine their work and then they kind of come to market. And you can tell such an incredible difference in the quality of their work. You know, I think when we're talking about creative work and the output being so visual, right, that there's often like this. We call it the gap, right? There's often this bridge that we have to cross between what we envision our work looking like and then what actually comes out of our hands or our mind onto paper. And there's this gap. There's this gap for me still today is like, that's not exactly how I envision that looking.

8:04And you have to work and work and work. But slowly. So I think sometimes people get comfortable with the gap and they just go straight to market. But if you sit in it, the gap will close and the work at hand will begin to more closely and more closely mimic what you really want it to feel like, what you really want it to look like. And then when you bring it to market, it's well-received across the board. I love that. I feel like you are a dark horse in the industry of what you do. How did all of this unfold for you. I am absolutely blown away by how you empower people to learn surface pattern design and what that is.

8:47Give me the background because I'm so curious about it. Yeah. Well, I think it really all stemmed from just my own experience. So I have always been creative. I know you have as well. So I always felt like this creative superpower in me and I didn't know what to do with it. So kind of long story short, went to business school, came back to my hometown, married my high school sweetheart. And then I started working for my mom who owned a quill shop. And part of my job there was to meet with sales reps and decide what we were going to carry in the store. And so I had my hands on fabric and in collections.

9:26And then there was like this moment in time where everything stood still. And I was like, oh my goodness, this is somebody's job. And like, I want that to be my job and then talk about a gap, right? There was this enormous gap from like where I was to how could I possibly make that possible? And it was hard. This was back in 2009 and there were no online classes. There was nobody kind of teaching this and the industry was zipped up pretty tightly. And so I just dove in head At first, I spent about two years kind of piecemealing it all together and wasting tons of time learning the wrong thing and figuring it out.

10:07And then at the end of that, I signed my first licensing contract as a fabric designer in 2012. And I came out of that experience completely changed first and foremost, but also just with this huge heart of wanting to kind of crack the industry open and pave the way and share what I learned the hard way and simplify it for other people. And that eventually kind of led where we are today. Oh my gosh. Did I tell you that I went to a quilting conference this year and it was like the most magical experience ever, but my grandma was a quilter and I was like, my grandma would be so proud that I'm here right now.

10:45I wanted to learn and seeing people, people that were there were obsessed with you first and foremost, but also just like understanding that there are so many different niches out there that I think so many of us don't even realize. We don't even know. So what is surface pattern design for a dummy? Talk to me like I am a third grader and explain what that is. Because I'm sure there are people listening thinking, okay, awesome. You create fabric design, but you can do so much more than that too. Yeah. There was also a moment in time where I learned that this was the thing and I just feel like my whole world opened up.

11:23So we're going to start at the top. So the very top level of this is an industry called surface design. And so surface design is when a design or a piece of art gets put on literally any surface. So if you want to close your eyes and imagine walking into Target or anthropology, you're seeing like malamine dishes and rugs and tea towels and aprons and clothing and wallpaper and all of these things with design on them. And then, and kind of a segment of that industry is surface pattern design. And that is when you put repeating patterns on products that require it. So wallpaper, fabric, gift wrap, lots of stationary, ribbon, tape.

12:07So you think about that pattern that endlessly repeats. And that is, I teach from the top umbrella, like surface design. So you can do literally anything. The surface pattern design, when you get into the repetition is actually scientifically rewarding. Like there's something about seeing something put into repeat. And then also when it happens to be something that you created, it is like joy to the max. So incredibly satisfying and also tons of fun. This podcast is brought to you by Mercury, banking that helps entrepreneurs do more with their money. Okay. I remember in the early days of my entrepreneurship journey, clients would literally mail me checks and then I would have to drive all the way to the bank to deposit them.

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13:29Visit mercury.com to apply in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. For important details, check the show notes. When we were young, we dreamed of castles and fairy tales. And as we grow up, those dreams might shift into building something real, like starting a business. You need a website, payment systems, a logo, and a way to reach customers. It can all be overwhelming and confusing, but thankfully, that's where today's sponsor Shopify comes in. Shopify powers millions of businesses around the world and 10 % of all U.S. e-commerce, from big brands to folks just getting started.

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14:49I mean, you have inspired me so much. It was funny the other day I got out our iPad and the Apple pencil and I was just like drawing and doodling. And I used to do that all the time. And back in my watercolor days, I used to paint all the time. And I was like, I feel like being in your world and your ecosystem, it is just so inspiring. and it just brings out that creative in so many of us. I know so many of my listeners are like, wait, this is a thing. I feel like so many of us have these creative gifts and desires, but we might not be leveraging them or using them or even understanding how they could play a bigger role in our lives or in our businesses.

15:27Yeah, 100%. And I think something that's so fun about this is that you don't really have to be an artist. I think if you are an artist, you've got the easy road but there are so you really just need to be creative and so we take so many creatives and we teach them how to use simple marks and you know I've licensed a design before that came from scanning in a fern out of my yard and using it it's like you need that creative eye to love composition and arranging things and playing with color but beyond that that's really all. And then the industry is so expansive. It's like every industry, every company, every brand in the world is using artwork on their products.

16:10And so there's really so many different kinds of paths and routes that you can take it. It's immense. It's crazy to think about. One thing that I'm curious about is a lot of creatives feel really overwhelmed at the thought of monetizing their art. So I even know, like when I had my watercolor print shop years and years ago. I just started painting to heal and cure my burnout. It was not a business endeavor. It was not meant to turn into anything that was monetized. But over time, that little print shop was actually paying our mortgage. And so what is your advice for someone who has a dream of being an artist or monetizing art or starting a new branch of their business or making this their business?

16:51What is your advice for that? You know, I think a lot of times creatives have a fear kind of baked in around monetizing what they do for joy, monetizing what they do because they love it. And that's often because we have friends who have started to do this and they book their fall with craft shows every year. And Christmas is stressful and they're a slave to packing their Etsy shop orders. Right. And so I get it. And also that's kind of where I was. So I started a little bit before all of this with an Etsy shop. I was making handmade aprons and tea towels and I was fairly successful. And I remember kind of calculating how much could I make in a year if I made as many aprons as I can in a day and then sold them out every time.

17:41and my calculations were about$40 ,000 a year. And that's not bad, but also I felt completely exhausted when I thought about doing that much. So that's kind of the age old trading time for money. Like I can physically only make this amount of product. The interesting thing about surface pattern design is that it's not based on time for money. And so the typical way that we do it is through licensing, which is where you basically rent your artwork, right? You own your artwork, but you get paid royalties for letting companies use it. And so you do the work once and then you can get paid for it over and over and over again.

18:23So I'm still earning royalties on artwork that I made 10 years ago and also licensed in kind of multiple industries. So it is this beautiful way to be creative anywhere, anytime you want, and then also earn income in a different way. I like to call it like with no ceiling to it because it's all based on percentages. So before all of that, to get back to your question, I think that when you think about taking it and monetizing it, it feels really big. Like for me, that was huge. It was an enormous dream. I thought, who did I think I was to even think I could possibly do something like this? And that overwhelm crushed me.

19:07It paralyzed me. So I spent about six months, like knowing that this is what I wanted to do and not picking up a single finger because I didn't, I didn't know how, like I didn't know how to start. I didn't know what I was doing. And so the way that I kind of finally came to that was first of all, I got a little upset. I realized it had been six months And I'm like, all right, today's the day. And so I got a little feisty and I promised myself that I would start doing one thing every single day to inch me forwards. And that helped me kind of take my gaze out from the long view to right in front of me.

19:43And I, I didn't know what I could do that day. And so that day I started Googling like how to become a fabric designer. And I just promised myself that I would attend to it every day. and 15 minutes was my indicator that it counted and I started tracking. And eventually I got so consistent. I mean, that day, I didn't skip a day for 18 months. And at the end of 18 months is when I signed my first contract. So this kind of breaking it down is part of what I'm so passionate about today because I feel like the not knowing what the journey looks like is what is so overwhelming. So it's something that we do in our workshop where we break all of the different kind of milestones down into step-by-step-by-step action points so that you can kind of not use any of your brain bandwidth for figuring out what to do and just get to the doing of your daily tasks.

20:41Okay. I love that because I feel like for so many careers, people are, you're like looking around of like, is this good? Am I doing it right? Is it working? Am I making progress? It's like, there are no little pinpoints in the map that are guiding us. And so it's like, you really have no idea where you are on the journey, how close you are, how far you are, how to pace yourself. So I actually really love that. And I think that's a really interesting call out in terms of just entrepreneurship on its own is that so many people have these really, really big lofty visions, but they're not necessarily setting themselves up for like the daily consistency that will get them there.

21:21Right. We see the end result, but we don't necessarily break it down into the day by day. So I love like the 15 minutes a day of like, I mean, most people could benefit from that, whether it's reading for 15 minutes a day, moving your body for 15 minutes a day, learning something new for 15 minutes a day. So I love that money. Yeah. I mean, 15 minutes a day is over 90 hours in a year. So you can make this tremendous progress, but it's not even so much about that. It's like the momentum. So when we just get into the habit of coming to the goal, the momentum will carry you way further. I think that we so many times stand at the edge of a big goal and we want to get the answers and we want to figure out what it's going to look like.

22:05And we want to make a plan and we want to clear our desk before we start. And the truth is that the knowing comes in doing. You have to get your hands busy in order to even figure it out. And you and I, we all, everyone listening knows that starting is the hardest part. We need to kind of take the power away from that. We know starting is going to be hard. And we know that as soon as we start, everything else is going to become easier right away. So just get started. Yes. Oh my gosh. Yes. Tell me what it was like. Like what was your first deal that you made? What made it feel worth it? Legit? We all have that like first sale.

22:43So what was it for you? And walk us through it. Yeah, it was huge for me. So at the end of this two year period of figuring out what all this meant, what I had to learn, what I had to do, I had created collections. I had finished a portfolio and I started pitching it. So literally cold calling companies and saying, I was so nervous about this that I hand wrote a script and it literally said, hi, my name is Bonnie. I'm an artist. I would love to know if your art director is willing to look at my work or whatever. So incredibly nerve wracking. And so what I ended up doing was, this is a bit unique, but there's a huge industry trade show called Quilt Market.

23:28And so it's a trade show specific to retailers. But interesting fact is that all the art directors for all the companies are under one roof at one time. So I started making appointments to meet with them in person at Quill Market. And so I had about 12 appointments over the course of three days. And my very first top pick was on the second day. So again, I don't want to breeze over this because it was the most nerve wracking thing I've ever done in my entire life. I can't even order pizza on the phone. This was terrifying. And so I just, you know, put my boots on and went to work. And so I had had a lot of good meetings, a lot of feedback, a lot of kind of homework I was feeling like I was going to go home with.

24:15And on the second day, I had a meeting with my number one pick. and so I kind of sit down with my portfolio I slide it across the table to the art director and she starts flipping and she's a bit silent which is you know terrifying and she's just flipping through the pages and towards the end she starts to describe my work back to me in the precise way that I had hoped someone would see it and I was thinking my goodness she gets what I'm doing and so she closed the book and slid it back to me and she said if you'd be willing to cancel the rest of your appointments. I'd love to sign you with us today.

24:53And that was 2012. So I'm still with the same company. We've grown just an incredible relationship. And that was the moment that changed literally everything for me. I had just never had something so impossible come true. You know, burst into tears and ran to call my mom and all the things. Oh my gosh. Okay. I am dying, like going into an expo like that and speaking to people that, you know, kind of have your fate in their hands. That is terrifying. Is that the way that people still do it? If somebody was getting into surface pattern design and they're listening to this and they're like, wait, do I need to go do that?

25:34Is that still the way? I think you could do it, but there are many, many ways. So actually when I go back and look at my portfolio, it's really funny to see what I was kind of drumming up. And I don't think social media was really even part of my portfolio. And so more and more, I have students who are not even pitching their work, but they're using their, let's say, Instagram account as a visual portfolio. And art directors are finding them and sending them DMs and starting the conversation that way. So it's been really fun to see almost how much more casual it's become. You can also email companies.

26:13Of course, I always try to think about what could I do that's different than what everyone else is doing. And so everyone else is probably emailing the company. So what is one thing that I could do to just set myself apart? Like maybe I record a custom video for that person, or maybe I send them something in the mail and get the shipping address and send them like a tactile analog version of something to go along with my digital portfolio, or maybe I do call them on the phone. And I know that one is hard. It's the hardest for me. But every time I did it, the art director would say, wow, nobody does this anymore.