There is often additional information on the recording that is not in this written interview.  Inspire yourself and listen while you make art.
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My primary goal is to inspire you with living examples of people who make a living in any economy and who consider being an artist a real job and valid choice of profession.




Today I have the pleasure of bringing you the backstory to the Creative Catalyst family business through this interview with Kelly Powers. 


A.C.T.: What prompted your family to start Creative Catalyst? What is your company mission? Please tell us about the journey from founding until now.

Lynn and Jim Powers

My mother, Lynn Powers has an art background, and my father, Jim Powers, has a business background.
 
Way before they started Creative Catalyst, my Mom helped her mother - watercolorist Jan Kunz - produce three instructional videos with a third-party video contractor. The goal was to create a wonderful tool for Jan's students and allow Jan more time to paint. However the process was sort of a technical nightmare, and it was incredibly expensive. The video contractor didn't understand anything about art. They ended up making a really good product, but it took a ridiculous amount of oversight from both Lynn and Jan - hundreds of hours of work.

Almost a decade later, in 2001, my parents were both at a point where they were ready to move on to the next stage of their lives. When they looked back to that experience they thought, "We could do this better." And so they set off to try. They understood art and business and would soon understand video production.

And like most small businesses it started with two people and no down time. They had an office manager and then the two of them would do all the shooting and editing.
 
When they started, I was in college for video production. In 2005, I joined the company as a full-time editor. Shortly after that we brought on my now husband Zach as an additional editor. At that point Zach and I took over the editing side of the process. And soon after Zach we brought on Susan, our office manager. Last year we hired a web developer, Cassie. We also have a part-time project manager, Bob, who works with Cassie, but we still are a very small business.

A.C.T.: What services do you offer? Who do you work with and how do they benefit from your services?

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We sell instructional media in various forms, both on DVDs and streaming online. We work with two overlapping pools of "creatives." We work with professional artists and teachers to produce a DVD workshop, and we also work with our customers, who range from professional artists and teachers to hobbyists.

The artists we represent gain a solid teaching tool. They also have a really high quality product they can sell. Making a living teaching and selling art is very hard. Teaching each month around the country is absolutely exhausting. We create a way for artists to earn additional income.

On the flip side of that, serious artists, whether they are serious part time artists or serious full time artists, have these incredible learning tools at their disposal. When we produce a DVD, suddenly someone has instant access to a teacher like Carla O'Connor or George James or Anne Bagby. A student can fast forward and rewind and learn from some of the best teachers out there. Serious artists of all levels very quickly realize the power of these tools.

A.C.T.: Does the artist's career stage matter for them to benefit? What kinds of issues do they seem to wrestle with most?

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We know a viewer will come back to a DVD again and again, so we spend a lot of time making sure our DVDs are very high quality. At the beginning of their careers, artists will learn a set of tools and ideas from it. If they return to that DVD years down the line, they will find new information they might have missed earlier.

I've edited about three-fourths of the DVDs in our catalog, and every once in a while I'll go back to one to answer a question for a customer and see something I didn't notice before. Or I'll be at home working on my own art and find things that weren't relevant to me before are suddenly incredibly relevant. I'll spend half an evening immersed in this DVD that I thought I knew every inch of.

A.C.T.:  What are the most common creative mistakes artists make? What solutions do you propose to these problems?

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We artists make so many mistakes. As beginners - and I am one - we think we need to be perfect. Each piece feels like a referendum on whether or not our art is worth continuing. That is completely wrong. This is something I'm struggling with a lot. We think that we're not meant for art unless we know exactly the kind of art we want to create. It's like we're looking for any excuse to quit.

The solution is to just keep going, day in and day out. Keep at it until you have a break through! We need to trust that if all we have is a desire to create something, then that's all the evidence we need that we are doing the right thing with our time.

A.C.T.:  Which basic creative skills and tools should artists have in place and in which order should they proceed?

After a DVD shoot, we always record an interview with the artist, and I asked mixed media artist Sherrill Kahn something similar to this question. Her response was completely eye opening to me. She said that if what you love doing is trying new things and new techniques and going from this thing to that, that is great. There is nothing wrong with that. Enjoy. Explore. Do what makes you happy. If you are really just interested in getting your hands dirty every day with no goal in mind other than play - great!
 

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Different people need different tools depending on what they want to do with art. If you want to be a professional artist and make it a career, at some point you'll need to focus on certain skills and develop them. At that point you'll want to find a style that is purely and definitively yours and go with it. When you look at certain well-known artists like the ones in our DVDs, you can recognize their work anywhere. Achieving that can take a very long time.

A.C.T.: What does it take to do what you do? Please describe a typical day, and a typical month so readers can understand how you manage your time, money and energy.

I used to be an editor at Creative Catalyst so I'd literally spend my entire day editing. Time was quite linear. I'd start at one part of the DVD and by the end of the day I would be further along. It was easy to measure the results. I know I'll miss editing because I have learned so much from my time watching these amazing artists teach their classes and I was paid to do it!

Recently I transitioned from editing into three fairly different jobs. I produce our videos, which means I work with the artists on their DVDs before they come to Oregon to shoot the video. I then act as a director during the video shoot. I spend the rest of my time working on our weekly newsletter and talking with people on the Creative Catalyst Blog and Face Book. I get to interact a lot more with customers now, which is great.  I didn't realize the kinds of relationships I would develop!

A.C.T.: What peak moments big and small - have you had through and with Creative Catalyst?

The big moments for our company have been the moments where we took the leap of growth. That's always scary but our customers have been there with us. It's still scary, but we get one nice letter from a viewer, and we know it's worth the fear.

For me the peak moments have been feeling like I have these things I think I want to say in art but not feeling confident that they are valid statements. For whatever reason I'm scared. Then an artist like Anne Bagby will walk into our studios, and I feel like she touches on those same topics, and it's like someone has opened a door to my heart and said, "No, it's OK. It's OK to want to do this." And that is liberating. I mean, I'd hug mixed media artist Gloria Page every day if I could for what she opened up to me in the world of hand-carved stamps. I hated stamps before she walked in our door, and those three days we spent shooting her DVD have changed my art forever. You would be shocked at how much carving material I have in my studio because of those three days!

A.C.T.: How do you define success and how do you celebrate it?

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We define success a couple of ways. First, we want to create the highest-quality art instruction DVDs on the market. We want to create something that an artist can use again and again on their path to becoming better artists. We don't just crank these DVDs through an assembly line process. We spend months on a single workshop, from planning through filming and editing. We celebrate that success with managers who allow us to spend that time crafting a fantastic learning tool. There's not many video companies where you can go to your boss and say, "I think we can make this product better by doing x, but it may take a week longer to get out the door," and have your boss say, "Do it! Fantastic!"

We also define success through good customer service. If I get an email from a customer, it doesn't matter what else I'm doing, that email becomes my first priority. People think sometimes that we're this huge company. What they don't realize is that when they send a letter to one of us, we read it, and we think about it. And when people send us comments about how much they loved a particular DVD and how they learned this or that, or what we could change to make it better, we literally pass those around the office, and it makes us feel really successful because we feel like if that person feels more confident in their art, then we did our job.

We also circulate the criticisms we get. We don't get that many, but when someone is frustrated with something or they want us to change something, we really listen. And we talk with each other about how we can take this comment into account. Literally there have been Thanksgiving dinners where one of us will say, "You know, a customer wrote and she had this criticism and I think I agree." Family business, you know? So a year ago a customer suggested our previews be longer, and I saved that email and we talked about her suggestion in the company and the next time we filmed an artist, we created a longer preview. She said it was hard for her to know if she wanted to listen to the DVD again and again, unless she heard the instructors' voice. And once we did that, it felt really good to email her and say, "You may not even remember emailing us, but thank you so much for this suggestion. You really made us try to make this better." And that felt like success.

A.C.T.: What obstacles have you encountered in your business and how have you handled them?

When two people start a business, they are part of every aspect of that business. As the business grows, they have to relinquish some of those jobs. Sometimes that can be hard because they've poured their heart and souls into their work. My parents used to direct the business in tandem. I came from a journalism background and had very strong ideas about how the business could be more focused and efficient. I didn't realize how drastic a change that would be for us or for the artists. In a small company and especially in a family business, a minor change can cause a big shift. We never had a discussion about how things would change when I started directing because we didn't realize we needed to. But those first few shoots after that switch were kind of intense, and I think I didn't do a very good job understanding how hard it would be for Lynn and Jim to say goodbye to this role they had shared for 5 years. But we're family, so luckily we are forced to talk about those issues, and we got past it.
 
A.C.T.: What opportunities has a professional approach to your career brought you that you might otherwise not have had?

Even in a family business you have to prove your abilities. Being a professional has given the people around me confidence in me so when I come to them with an idea they don't think, "Is she capable? What does her past work say?" They think, "Let's do this!" That confidence is really important among a small, tightly knit group of people.

A.C.T.: Who are your role models and mentors? What was the best advice they gave you?

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Every artist that walks through our doors becomes a role model for me. Even if I'm not interested in their particular style, there's always something I can learn.

I work with two incredible role models - my parents - every day. It's great to see aspects of my own personality in action and engaged in problem-solving and I learn from that.

The best advice any of them has ever given me is just keep at it. It sounds like simple advice, but it isn't simple to live up to it. Every day I come home from work, and I could either turn on the television or go into my studio and create art. Becoming an artist isn't about waking up one day and deciding to become an artist. It's not true that you are either born to art or you are out of luck. It's about 10,000 little decisions every day - what you are seeing, and how you are going to convey that. Even artists like Sherrill Kahn and George James and Susan Bourdet choose art every time. I find that amazing and inspiring.

A.C.T.: What is your marketing strategy? What promotional materials and actions do you use most often?

We are not a huge company so we have a limited marketing budget. We do what we can, and we really appreciate it when people talk about us. I read a lot of blogs, and I can't begin to explain how excited I am when I see someone has actually taken the time to write, "I learned this from a Creative Catalyst Productions DVD and man did it help me in my art!" That makes my week. And then of course I forward it to everyone else in the company, and it makes their weeks too.
 
We do basic magazine advertising.
 
We have a "drool-worthy" catalogue.
 
My favorite marketing tools, however, are our newsletter, Blog and Face Book page. And our newsletter readers are amazing. They send me their art, and I'm continually inspired by what they are doing day after day.

A.C.T.: How do you use social media and how have sites like Twitter, Face Book and Linked in changed art marketing? What has not changed?

Everyone buzzes about social media, and I totally love it. Where else can you actually talk with the very people who use your product?  The new platforms present a lot of wonderful opportunities for marketing, but marketing still takes a lot of work.

I love the new platforms because you can actually interact with your customers. But social media is not a cure-all. There is an industry out there trying to sell a product, and that product is social media marketing. It's a great product, but it still takes a lot of work to use it successfully. It's very easy to think that people will just magically find you in this new era of web 2.0 and yes, a lot of people find us through Google searches, but that doesn't mean we can be successful without putting any work into communicating with customers.

I think artists should also remember that when they reach point in their careers where they're entering shows or trying to get into galleries, they need websites. Step one is always a good website, and an artist should have a good one in place before launching into social media.

I'm still not sold on Twitter. I feel like it's a lot of people shouting at each other. But I love Face Book, and I love Blogs.

So I think social media changed the marketing game because suddenly you and I and anyone else can have a professional online presence. I think it hasn't changed the game because we still have to weigh the costs and benefits of each communication tool. We still only have so many hours in a day, so should I be posting on my Facebook page or should I be getting better at my art? Each artist might have a different approach to social media. But people have to remember that it's not a magic bullet.

A.C.T.: What advice would you pass on to artists who want to succeed in any economy?

Realize that it's hard to succeed as an artist, even in a good economy.

• Make sure that you have a strong style;
• Keep working on the foundation and technical aspects of your art;
• Do what you can with the marketing;
• Set goals for yourself;
• Have a beautiful web site;
• Make it easy to contact you;
• If you have Face Book page or a Blog, update it regularly;

Don't do it all at once - you are setting yourself up to fail.

I've greatly enjoyed and benefited from the column you write monthly for our Creative Catalyst Productions newsletter. You are working through twelve of the biggest art myths we tell ourselves. The goal of the series is that we'll all be better marketers if we bust through those myths and deal with the reality of ourselves as artists and the art world at large.

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