What Sales Taught Me About
Being a Better Artist, Part II
“A Little Help From Friends” South Boundary Aiken, SC, January 2022
Hello Friend,
Last week I brought up that there were a few skills I learned from my time as a salesperson that I thought would be transferable to an artistic/creative setting. These set of blogs grew out of my conversation with Matt Payne on his podcast, F-Stop Collaborate and Listen that was recently released on YouTube, Spotify and iTunes.
Please read Part I if you want my sales backstory – no reason to rehash it here.
Networking: One of the things that helped me, and basically any salesperson do well, is networking. I know I can hear you all groaning over this one. But let me break this down and reframe this in a way that you would feel comfortable with. Basically, I’m telling you to go out and make friends. That’s not so hard, is it? Even with people spread out across the world, we are able to find those that have similar interests and hobbies and values. What do we do? We start to follow them online. Then maybe we like and comment on their work. Even that small of a thing is a way to develop your network.
“Maples in the Morning” Carolina Bay Aiken, SC, November 2025
It’s better when these people are close by, but that’s not always a possibility. Though, there are local, state and for sure, regional organizations for basically any art form out there. That is a ready-made network for likeminded people. This “network” will be people you have gotten to know, and trust. They will be people to bounce ideas off, share stories with, help edit your images, give you advice, give you a heads up on opportunities. Just as important – if not more so – you do these things back to your network. It’s called reciprocation, and it’s how collaborations start. And your network doesn’t need to be in your same creative form. In fact, I think the wider and more diverse it is, the more it will help you. For me it was getting involved with my local artist guild. When I show my work to non-photographers, they give me perspectives I would have missed if I keep it to just photo people.
Marketing yourself: Something my mom would say to us kids a lot was, “You have to market yourself, because no one else will do it for you.” Like so many sales topics, this is one people think you need to go to an extreme to have an effect. Not so. It can be thought of as “just putting yourself out there.” While I was interacting with Matt after my category win in NLPA, I casually and humorously wrote to him that if he was looking for “kinda of an unknown in the photo world, give me a shout.” Since I was the one to let him know I’d be open to the idea, he did reach out to me a few months later. It’s likely that if I didn’t say something, he might never have.
“Roots and Fallen Leaves” Vaucluse, SC, December 2025
I came up with the idea for this blog back in 2022. But it wasn’t until the summer of 2025, and a conversation I had with Chris Smith of Out of Chicago about growing an audience, that I really put the effort into getting this going. Yes, this is a marketing tool, just like all newsletters and blogs are. Though, just as important, it’s a way for me to work on my writing and hopefully put something out there of value that helps and inspires others.
For those who being on podcasts and making blogs are not your thing, what else am I talking about? I’m thinking about the simple things we do in our lives. All our posts and writings on social media are marketing. Every time someone asks us about our work, we are marketing. Though, we could spend all day telling others we are a great photographer, painter, writer, sculptor, whatever, but unless we are making something, how are they to know if we really can make anything? Empty hype will get us nowhere. We need to be making work that others can see. Not making it for them, but at least putting it out there.
Patrick Krohn
March 2026
“Frozen Friends” Boyd Pond Park Aiken, SC, December 2025
For example, one of the areas that has become important to me and my photography is conservation. As a landscape photographer, I have come to appreciate the efforts made by some of the local conservation groups that protect the lands I have come to enjoy and photograph on. I then started reaching out to them to see if they had interest in my work. I have done a few things for their publications and marketing materials, and we continue to explore ideas that help both of us. I have a good friend who, for fun, started photographing her daughters during their dance classes and routines. Other dancers and parents started to ask her to do photography for them. She now has a flourishing photo business she loves, she is very good at, and most importantly, her clients value her and her work. I’m sure we have heard similar stories of people having a hobby that within a few years ends up being their new career. Mostly because the people around them saw what they were going and liked the work they were making.
I’m trying to get us to think about our customers and audience not as something we need to hustle after, but as people who have similar interests and values. Because of that, they are more likely to appreciate and understand the time and effort we have put into creating our work. And just as I wrote above about networking is about making friends, sometimes our clients and people in our audience become our friends. Those shared interests and values can come through to forge deeper connections. They go from being faceless customers to potentially being an import part of your life. And they are often likely to become champions of our work who will then help us grow our networks and audiences.
I hope you starting to see a connection with what I am trying to say about networking, marketing and finding your audience. My challenge for us this week is to think a little differently about networking and our audience. How do we market ourselves to them without sacrificing our values?
Thank you, and keep creating what you do.
“Frosty Leaves” Boyd Pond Park Aiken, SC, December 2025
And on the most basic level, I think an argument could be made that almost every interaction you have with another person is some type of marketing. We are showing over and over again what type of person we are. Like I put out in last week’s post: Are we the type of people who do what we say we will do? Not that I want us thinking that every human interaction is a marketing campaign; it’s just that, how we interact does tell others what is important and valuable to us and how important and valuable they are to us.
Understanding who our customers/audience might be: For those who don’t ever plan to sell their work to anyone, you might skip this part. But, I think the idea of putting our work out there and possibly selling what we make crosses our minds at some point. And what is the most common answer to the question of “who is your customer”? People are most likely to say, “everyone is my customer.” Really, everyone? Matt caught me a little off guard when he thought the answer was that most people don’t know. Actually, this is a more honest and a better place to start. When we realize we don’t know something, we begin to look for answers and see where they take us. When we think the whole world is our potential customer, we can waste too much time trying to chase an audience who are not likely going to buy or value our work anyway.
As we make the shift from our internal world of creating our art, to exploring the external world of marketing it, maybe one of the first question should be “who is going to value my work”. We have put time and effort into developing our look, our style, and our vision, often chasing after an audience seems like too much work and doesn’t feel right to us. Maybe a better way to look for an audience is to think about what are the things that are important to us, and who are the people who also enjoy and find value in those things.
