live stream kind of Q&A answering some of your art business questions now I'm broadcasting this hopefully hopefully the text working on to YouTube so shout out to everyone who's watching on YouTube and also into my Facebook group and shout out for those of you in the business for artists Facebook group as well now as we get started out I would really love somebody just to let me know that you can see and hear me okay because otherwise you chat along to yourself I'm not sure if I've connected everything properly so just let me know out of my earrings are dangling against that and it's annoying you if it's making a noise or if you can't hear please just type something in the chat so that I know straight away and can get that sorted so today I have a lot of questions that were submitted for this Q&A all good Wendy thank you so much Wendy who was struggling with the time zones you're here that's so exciting so yeah we I asked out I'm gonna shout out for questions what we what with the main challenges what were the things she'd like me to talk about and from that quite enormous list I've pulled down I think nine questions I'm gonna attempt to answer in this session today so if yours is not one of the questions that I've answered just give me a reminder or just sort of just bear with me I'd love to do this on a regular basis actually so I've kind of picked questions I think appeal to a lot of people again I cover awesome core topics I know a lot of you are really struggling with so like I say I know I can't answer all of them so apologies ahead of time but I'm definitely gonna be answering as many as possible I can see and hear you from Northern Minnesota hello Ramona welcome welcome welcome that's always good but it's going across the across the airwaves isn't it thank you to technology let's just keep our fingers crossed that it all hangs together so we're gonna be talking about things like should we be selling our online or offline how do we actually get people to go to our website and look at what we're selling let alone turn it into sales we're going to be talking about pricing about email list about that customer because I know that's coming up again and again and again and we're going to be talking about at the very end I've got a really juicy question actually right at the end I'm not going to tell you about that right now but somebody asked it and I thought do you know actually I think that comes up for so many of us and it's about our art so I'm going to save that to the end because I think it's going to be a really really good one after some of the tech more techie kind of marketing you type of questions so if some of you might want to know how long the stream is going to go on for I normally aim for an hour I kind of don't want to take up more time than that if there's a question coming at the end or we have a conversation going that it might go a bit longer but my aim is to kind of keep it in that sort of time frame greetings from Houston hello welcome from Houston yeah do give a shout out and listen as we go through this I'm going to be giving you a lot of information so I'm going to suggest that you have either the old-fashioned pen and paper or if you're great at typing I've got my iPod with questions and notes on in front of me an iPad or even take some notes on your phone so that you have something to walk away with I'm also going to suggest that you really listen out for what's appropriate for you because you know we're all at different stages you'll all be at different stages like I said I'm going to give you a lot of information and of course this is going to hang out here on YouTube it's going to stay in the Facebook group so you'll be able to listen to it over and over again if you hear something you think well that's particularly pertinent to me I need to do that but I'm going to really suggest as we kind of get towards the end you think about what was the key take away for me today what's something that I can take away from this live stream and actually take action on in my art business and I'm going to remind you of that at the very very end and if for any reason I forget please somebody remind me in the chat will you help me to that and make sure that we keep going again you know ask questions as we go along chat in the comments as well chat to each other if you need to let's get this thing nicely interactive so hopefully everybody's got a cup of something to drink hi everyone from Maryland hello from WA awesome amazing I think the people that come in from no that's okay some people come in with a name some people don't I don't know that's the tech for you all right let's start with Wendy's question actually at the very beginning because I thought this was quite a good one to kick off with so Wendy says I'm switching back and forth from wanting to sell my art online and not wanting to it's driving me crazy she says she's been trying and she says in brackets obviously the wrong way since 2017 can anyone else relate that they've been trying they've been doing different things it's been going on year in year out but you're not quite getting the results that you want to get so if that's you just sort of type something in the chat and say yeah that's also me I've been going at this a while and not getting where I want to go I've sold two paintings on blue thumb in all that time all right and she says both in the last year I've got a website etc etc so really I think the question there for me is we're selling it online or offline because these two things are very very different and when I assumed that was the kind of question that you were asking there's a part two to this question that we're going to come to in a minute how does an artist who isn't pushy and not keen on showing up visually online go about selling a bit of art so there's a bit of a there's a bit of an awkward situation isn't that because if you want to sell online Christine says that's me if you want to sell online I'm going to tell you you need to show up because nobody really knows who you are in order to build that trust in connection with the audience and we're going to come to that bit later on you're going to have to show up it's quite difficult these days not to have your face out then one way or the other so I'm going to throw something in here Wendy and I'm going to suggest that perhaps you do make a decision you say you know what I'm not going to sell online I'm going to sell offline so here's kind of my thoughts on that I think number one is you know when we're going to and throw we just need to make a decision and stick with it both online and offline have their pros and cons right if you sell online you're going to have to get the hang of some tech you're going to have to show up unfortunately you're going to have to probably spend more time on these kind of items than perhaps you would like to but the flip side is that once you've got things working you can wake up in the morning and see some sales happening all right and I often give the example of a friend of mine who actually she's a leather handbag maker and she's a very close friend of mine I've just spent a weekend with three three arty friends and she was included and she would groan every time the phone would go ping it was another sale another order another order another order and we all just laugh because I just said wouldn't you all just love that phone going ding ding ding ding like that she's got it all automated all right and it's working one thing one platform a system and it's all working did it happen overnight folks no it didn't all right I'll probably tell you bits about her story as we go along I'm sure she won't mind I didn't mention I said I'll probably use you as an example because really she's done so many things that are right she's kept it very very simple and she is online and you might say she doesn't really show up too much visually either so that's food for thought so offline however can be easier and I hear you Wendy you don't want to be making a big full-time business either so sometimes building your business offline can seem simpler you find some galleries or shops boutiques etc locally that will stop you stop your art and you don't need to do the social media or show up because they're going to sell it for you so you might for example I mean when I was selling art back in the UK I got an agent so I didn't have to do any of that I did at the beginning but essentially in the end I just drove my work to different galleries and to her house and she went off and sold it for me so if you're somebody who says I really don't want to show up online I don't want to do social media I don't want to do any of those things then selling online is probably not going to be for you therefore you want to choose an offline strategy finding a place that will take your art and finding somebody that will do the work for you and sell it for you does that make does that make sense and am I answering the question correctly as well that's important oh look Tracy and Wendy have made buddies I think artist buddies so that's nice does it does that make sense and Wendy have I answered that correctly was that the question you were asking because I kind of was like it seems like it's an online offline for me the number one thing for everyone to take away when you have a dilemma like this is there's probably there's no right or wrong right you just want to choose one of them and stick with it and just keep going and keep going down that route because the moment we start thinking oh maybe I'll do a bit of this or I'll do a bit of that well do a little bit of online it can be very disappointing because if you're not all in and you're not doing that online thing with all your heart and soul then you won't get the results and so I for me I think just make a decision you're going to focus offline or online you know offline has its limitations perhaps geographically maybe you know your customers they've got to drive to the gallery so you've only got customers within a certain kind of location so it's going to depend where you live but then I want to give you an example of a client of mine actually who lives in the UK in a really rural part of Wales she's miles from anywhere but she sells predominantly from her studio people drive the distance to go and get one of her works so I feel like when you do just put your commitments into one way or the other way then it's clear that you haven't got the stress of oh god what am I going to do it's now like let's just follow the strategy offline that is yes that's it I think you know then you don't have to stress about it just make the decision stop looking online you don't have to worry about showing up visually when there you don't have to worry about all of that stuff then you have to find somebody who's proactive about selling your art so not a gallery that's going to say yeah thank you and then you're waiting there for the sales but a gallery is like yeah this is how I'm going to promote we have regular open evenings we have a list of people that are likely going to want to buy your art specifically you know a gallery that goes and takes work to local shows or art fairs someone who's going to be proactive for you and also not more than you know more than one gallery not putting all your eggs in one basket so I used to drive to London to London and then over to the east coast to the east coast and then down to the south coast so I drive my art into different areas into different galleries so you might have to be prepared to do that so great Wendy's got a decision anyone else thinking I don't want to do the online thing either I quite like to work offline so let us know in the chat if you're thinking maybe I'm going to sell offline rather than online it's a different strategy and someone's going to ask me well can't we do both Sophie of course you can do both however I'm feeling like right now if you're at the beginning and who here feels like they're at the beginning even if they've been doing it for a while at the beginning means you're not making a living from your art yet so therefore if you're at the beginning choose one way first like if you choose offline first and get that established it's quite easy to add some online to it if you get established or offline first it's quite easy to say oh by the way everybody I've actually got a show physical show for anyone in the area over here so setting one of those up first is going to be really good for you yes here hello here do you mean here physical you're going to do physical stuff so yeah just think about which way is going to work better for you because doing the two things together folks is hard work because you're not really focusing on one or the other right you're not really focusing on one or the other you're doing kind of like one half-hearted and the other half-hearted when it says I'd like to do both though I'm not just starting yeah cool well then start you know think about one to focus on for now and get that going so in my I think I've got a maybe a couple of members on this call some of you may or may not know that I have a membership for artists and I'm always telling the story in the membership of the rowing boats and so everyone knows my little analogy of the rowing boats so let me quickly tell you that because it really really really is pertinent I think at this point so there's two imagine there are two islands there's one island where you are now and that's reality island that's where you are now and then there is dream island where you want to go and in my picture dream island has palm trees and it has nice lounges by the beach whatever it is for you there's reality island where you are now and dream island and you want to get yourself to dream island with your art business so imagine now that you say okay I'm going to start selling original art so that's your first boat if you like so what you really want to do is you want to do everything you possibly can towards selling that original art rowing that particular original art boat right the way over to the island because if you keep going until you've got to success island it's like okay that's working now I can look at developing something else but here's what people typically do I'm going to sell original art so this is boat number one I'm going to start working on that so I row a little bit but I'm not making the sales I want so I'm going to start working on some prints right and I'm going to put prints up on my online shop so this is boat number two so now we start rowing boat number two over towards dream island getting the prints getting the prints oh they're not really working either somebody said it's great if I do workshops why don't I just do that because it's easy income so now I've got boat number three and I'm starting to row boat number three and I've sort of got the workshops going over here so imagine if the moment you've only got a couple of legs right there's no way you can row three boats at once where are you going to end up in the water so what we want to be doing is we want to choose one of the boats one of the avenues to the income and row it all the way over to dream island until you've got it working and then you come back and go okay so that's working while I leave that working now I'll set up the next income stream and I'll keep doing what I need to do to that until I get that's a success island dream island whatever you want to call it and then I'll start again does that make sense so often people will say to me I'm rowing my first boat and I know what they mean by that it's virtually impossible to do all of those things at the same time all right unless you are super human or you have an enormous budget for ads or you can pay someone else to do your marketing it's just the reality as creative businesses we are spending a lot of time creating what we're going to be selling right we're either making or we're delivering if we run workshops or teaching etc yes and so there for a huge amount of our time is taken up with making product or service as we call it in a regular business right they've they've got the product all they need to do is put all their energy effort into selling but we're then left with a smaller chunk of time likely to market and sell I mean to do that for multiple items is going to be really difficult all right so make life simple choose one thing start with that get it working go back and start again all right that's a very kind of big answer to those questions I hope that answers the question so that's the answer how do you sell it online without being pushy is it's difficult to sell online without being visually there because people like what they want to see the person behind the art who is that person right who is that person who's doing it and that's not to say that you need to be out there every day going hey I've got up sale it's not about that at all we're going to talk about that as we continue on through okay so let's have a look at our second question so um well in fact third question right how long do you keep going with this kind of rowing rowing and rowing how long do you keep going with the business before you give up who asked that question so that was Tracy she's like okay but dilemma how long do we keep trying I just saw something somewhere saying we can't know the answers the results of all our actions ahead of time so if we stop we'll never know this is this is true but when do we know we haven't succeeded and it's time to stop so for me the time to stop is when you get there um the analogy that you've probably heard and I think I just told it again the other day actually it's like having it's like the dwarves in the cave right and they're chipping away chipping away looking for the gold the gold is in here somewhere if I keep chipping away chipping away I've been in here for weeks in this kind of mine this cave I'm looking for the gold and though it's in here somewhere or I think it's in here somewhere and after a few weeks they're exhausted they put down their tools and they go forget it what they didn't know is they are like a few millimeters away from the biggest gold seen ever and I think that's the thing isn't it it's if you're doing what you love you keep going and you stop when you succeed and the journey to successful any type of business however that looks for you is a bumpy road and that's just the fact it's not like this beautiful gleaming shiny you know when you see on instagram I got these great results I didn't get those yesterday they were bumpy those are bumpy road so you do a little bit of growth then you plateau things kind of stagnate then you maybe have a dip you're like oh that's a learning opportunity need to change things up and then you have another growth spurt then you go up you find something that's working you keep going you plateau again and so it goes on all right it's not this shiny nice path to success that goes up like that all right it's not your motorboat that you can turn up the engine and go there we are on dream island it's going to take work it's going to take commitment and for me the only time you stop is if you're doing something that you don't love all right if you're making something that you are making because you think it's going to sell better and over here is the thing that you really want to make you really lights you up but somebody said to you don't do that do this because they're trending right now or you'll sell more of those that for me is the time to stop that if you're not loving what you're doing then stop all right for me the business thing I mean and ultimately it's going to be your decision if financially you get to a place where like I can't continue with this then you know evidently you want to stop but we don't want to stop business halfway there you could just be you could be that far away from that big gallery calling you and saying hey I'd like 10 pieces of your work you could be that far away from the biggest commission of your life you could be that far away from you know a magazine contacting you and say we'd like to slap you all over the cover like you just don't know so my rules are really simple number one have a really clear vision of where you want to go be really really clear and I talk about this is a lot of videos talking about this on my youtube channel so if you haven't watched those make sure to check those out you know if the vision doesn't light you up enough if it's too small or too insignificant then you're not going to be excited about it you don't need to know how you're going to get there but you need to have it and then you need a plan to get you started on that journey and that is a business plan an artist business plan and I teach that again and again and again and I kind of want to give it a new name because I feel like people hear the word business plan and they go which is what I did by the way the very first time my mentor back in the day he said to me you need a business plan and he gave me I'm not kidding a print out of a document like that slapped on the desk in front of me said come back next week with that done and I went home and I cried because I looked at this I didn't understand there were pie charts in there there were endless figures there was always paragraph of writing I'm not great with a paragraph by the way anyone else here doesn't get great with a big email or a paragraph I just I'm so visual I find that really challenging so I didn't want to read it I didn't understand the pie charts and all the maths in there and so I felt like I was going to fail before I even got started and I went back to him and I said I actually don't understand any of this and he said okay no worries and he got out a single piece of paper and he went year one year two year three and I was like I'll get that and he drew it out for me how much money do you want to turn over in these years and yeah not by yourself yeah absolutely right so so he made that really simple plan and I got it and then over the years obviously now I've created I've got a little course that walks you through but I've got seven really simple steps that enable you to create a plan that works for you right you've got to work out where you want to go you've got to decide well what am I going to sell am I going to sell original art online courses workshops and you keep it simple we always suggest just three products start with one and add the two in after you know how are you going to get in front of the ideal customer that we're going to be talking about shortly you know who are they going to who are the people that are going to buy what you have on offer how are you going to get in front of them from a marketing perspective and then how are you going to make the sale and then of course how are you going to look after them and look after your money it's super simple but it's essential because if you don't have a plan it's like saying what did I used to say back in the UK I'd say I used to live on the south coast so I'd say it's like wanting to go to Scotland you know really sure how to get there there are multiple ways and you start out in the car and without a map you look before you know you've gone off to Wales it's pretty it's lovely it's got mountains and sheep and all the nice things it's going to take you a really long way to get to Scotland right so actually if you had a road map that said I need to go here stop for petrol there stop for lunch there you know a nice view there more petrol there here's my route to Scotland and that's what you need with your art business the vision where do I want to go don't need to know how you're going to get there yet but the vision that lights you up and a simple path of how you're going to get there this is what I'm going to do this is kind of the sort of ballpark of time I want to do it in so it just gives you something to follow who here feels like they need a step by step thing to follow right is enough isn't that making what we do without having to scratch your head and go oh my god what do I do somebody said there's so much information out there it's overwhelming I absolutely agree there is a huge amount of information out there some of it good some of it not so good some of it quite confusing right and at the end of the day you've got to find someone that you resonate with and you've got to perhaps follow cred the path that they've trodden before but a step by step path is something you don't really have to think about right you're creating your art you follow the step by step path so a simple plan gets you there I like a step by step Jota yes absolutely like um you know need that Wendy says absolutely it's just it's one less thing to have to think about so business plan is essential now I've got so carried away I forgot what the question is yep how long do you keep trying that was the question wasn't it until you get the business plan that's what I want to talk about and then you know that bumpy road so here's what will happen on the bumpy road you make the business plan and you start off and sometimes it can you can hit that that bump that challenge you're like this is not quite working out how I plan so then we need to step back and go okay is there another way I could do this so to go the roadmap analogy there's been an accident on the motorway and the motorways changed so closed right and now we need to go okay I need to take away round it should I follow the sat-nav never a good idea is it and follow that and go around there or should I go away I know to bypass through a nice village and go back on the road again right we have to stop and consider I got okay this is not working I need to find another route to get me back on plan maybe I need to do this instead right and that's when you try something different and if that works it gets you back on the plan if it doesn't work again you step back and go okay I've tried that I've tried that let's try this and by then hopefully you should be back onto the road again all right I think that's pretty much as the switching things up is super super important all right time to talk about that ideal client because I feel like this is a huge huge part of the problem you know there are so many people out there making incredible stunning beautiful original art prints designs patterns courses workshops and they sit there on platforms not selling because of well a few things that I'm going to talk about a little bit later but one of which is not knowing who that audience is who wants to buy your thing all right so Tracy asks I'm stuck on my ideal client and email list we'll come to that in part two no clue I love it all right so let's talk about the ideal client so I have kind of two pronged attack with this so the audience sector who's going to be your audience is kind of the big picture part so for example if you let's give a really easy easy example I've got dogs lying here so you're a pet portrait painter so your audience sector is going to be pet lovers right you might narrow that down because that is a huge audience so you paint dogs like these smelly things down here so your audience will likely be on your what it to be dog lovers all right that's a section of the whole world the audience comes down now you've got a segment of people who are dog lovers that's your audience but from within that audience there are going to be people who specifically want a painting or a drawing however you work and they're going to be more what we call an ideal customer they are people looking for what you already are creating right so your ideal customer so if you create for example I don't know beautiful line drawings line drawings of my lovely Labradors here and and the customer really would love just a simple black and white line drawing and they're looking for line drawings of Labradors right if that's what you do these people are your ideal customers why because they are looking already for what what you want or what you offer okay does that make sense yes it can be so confusing not to mention never ending yep absolutely trust me so you have to start by with the big picture first all right so if you create abstract landscapes for example you're looking for a group of people who are art lovers who appreciate abstract art all right so you've gone from the wide the wide audience everyone you definitely can't market to everyone by the way because you don't have the money or the time to do that so you want to build it in and build it in so your audience sector kind of will be people who love buying original art and are particularly interested in abstracts right it's still a really large audience if you've chosen the physical route they might be in a different continent to you right you're going to have to narrow it down and say within 100 miles of where I live for example so in order to get more into this ideal we need to use a few of the few of these things now some of you might have got my free worksheet I should have had a link ready to pop in here I'll pop that underneath here so that's got several pages where you can fill it out so yes yes yes so it's over I'll find it in some under a couple of videos on youtube I'll find it Tracy and I'll pop it underneath this video once we've finished so you can download that and you can fill that in yourself so you'll start off with thinking about what typical age are they and again normally people say to me are they can be any age Sophie I know they can but who's your ideal are they people who are you know they're bringing up a young family they are um perhaps they haven't got a family they're single people or their couples or they've brought up their family and now they're in that period of life where they're redecorating their house and they've got a bit more income because the kids have grown up and moved away you know who are those people what typical typical age are they typically men or women or non-gender specific or both or any is that relevant where are they location local national global if it's global english-speaking countries specific continents that you want to target or you think are going to be relevant um employment so what typical sort of employment what they have so now you're going to get in the head of let's go with the abstract art lover all right so my abstract art lover and what's a typical employment like where do I work am I am I climbing the corporate ladder and I've got a modern house that I want to put modern artwork in or am I somebody who's self-employed right got their own business works from home really appreciates working in the right moment home environment so perhaps I don't know perhaps they work in well who knows you're going to guess it doesn't matter you choose a sector you're guessing right when you don't know and you don't have customers appear as ideal you're making it up you're profiling the person so you choose um income what sort of income do they have this is really important folks right because if you have high-priced artwork and you're targeting the sector of the of the whole that is perhaps not somebody who's got a big amount of income they're not turning over a hard amount that large amount of income or they don't have much disposable income there's a mismatch right so you need to make sure that your target audience has disposable income enough to easily be able to purchase what you offer if you offer low price point items kind of it's a bit easier right so that you can put a bit easier with the income so you need to work out roughly what income 100,000 200,000 a year what are they turning over what sort of job so if they're climbing the corporate ladder they go and work in in a big office somewhere in the city and they're on a large salary take a number write it down okay children they got the children they're at home they're bringing them up their teenagers they're beginning to leave home they've left home your decision right according to so if you're doing the labradors it could be that you go more for a family because perhaps the dogs belong to the kids or the teenagers right so you might be going for somebody who's younger 30s to 40s um what's their lifestyle are they work from home people and they go out a lot they walk the dogs a lot they um enjoy going i don't know to local events they go to theater they go to the movies they love classical music they i don't know they like to do outward bounding things they go on foreign holidays local holidays you need to build out the picture of the lifestyle that they live all right it's really important because you need to speak to that if you haven't decided who those people are you're going to be really struggling with the marketing side and you're saying general things like i have this work for sale it's perfect for a light bright room most people have a light bright room that's not going to help you right hey are you work from home why not have this vibrant you know a piece from my new vibrant collection of abstract landscapes perfect for the background if you're going to be doing that zoom call with your clients right you need to be able to speak to your ideal audience what else might you want to know yeah hobbies specifically right are they going to art galleries do they travel abroad a lot what do they do do they play sports are they into fitness where do they go where do they hang out what are their spending habits are they big spenders like they do a lot of shopping every month do they shop online or do they prefer to shop local they're like i actually really want to support local artists i'm going to go to an art trail i'm going to go to a local gallery or i'm not interested in doing that i'm going to sit at home i'm just looking online because it's so much easier i can click buy and then it gets shipped to me your decision right you've got to decide and build out the profile of that person what are their wants and their desires they want to fill the house with art they're desperate to have that original piece on the wall to look at every day what is it going to be for you so if you download the worksheet there are those questions are expanded and you've got a whole empty page at the end where you could write a whole description of like your ideal person's day they get up they do what they fill the day and you might be saying to me Sophie why do i have to do all of that the more you write the easier it is to market the more you understand that how that person lives their day the easier it is going to be to you know if a magazine calls you and say hey we'd like to you know we've got a double page spread we'd like to offer you an advertorial would you like to write a piece and maybe put you know an advert in for your local show now if you know that that magazine is going to be delivered in the area where you know your customers love to sit in a local coffee shop and grab a local magazine right that's a win-win but if that magazine they they ring you up and you say well no hold on i'm selling online globally this is not relevant to me then you can say no thanks that's not where my audience are thanks but no thanks right this is why making these decisions is critical is this making sense do you have questions on this because this is so crucial the more you write the easier the marketing is you can decide where you're going to offer your your your products and services how you're going to speak to the audience etc etc can we use several characteristics instead of being supposed so specific the more specific you are the easier the marketing is example landscape painting for young couples yes just starting a life perfect yes retired couples between 50 and 80 yes 50 and 80 is a really big gap you're going to have different things going on on those two i probably narrow it down um single person who loves nature that's probably too wide i would be more specific loves Australian nature like you know just make it a bit more specific it needs to be specific enough that it's really clear what you do and you have that marmite effect people will just go i love that oh that's not for me hate that it's not for me right because you need to get you need to find your tribe the people that are going to follow you for what you do if it's too wide and too vague you know it comes down to things like on your on your phone having your insta bio right it needs to describe what it is that you do so when someone sees it they go oh yeah you do that great that's what i'm looking for i'm going to follow you but if it's too vague it's like i'm really sure what you do so next yes though i'm still not sure my spiritual artworks jota yeah absolutely well you've got a whole niche there of people who are totally into the spiritual you've got all the what we call the woo woo people i mean that's a perfect niche and a perfect audience all the people that you know love all of those sides and also do you know what immediately comes to mind joty what about all the practitioners who have home offices places where they work where they see their clients wouldn't they love a piece of your artwork you see that's what i would be doing i know joty and i know her beautiful artwork i would probably be targeting all the holistic practitioners who work for not even just work from home they could even even if they're doing zoom they could have that painting behind so that people go wow that's beautiful and you could match the painting to what the people offer etc etc that's what i would be doing i would be going after holistic practitioners because there are thousands of them all right and i'd be actually contacting them saying hey this is what i do i think this could be a really good match for you and your workspace for your customers food for thoughts um what places of people do you recommend to review a business plan um you can always get me to review a business plan so it you know the other way the other person you can ask is a friend a friend a friend can be sometimes too kind um another artist or somebody sometimes i think somebody who doesn't really understand the art world because if you then say hey look at my plan then they can look at it and go oh i understand what you do that makes sense or they can look at it and go i don't understand what you're trying to achieve here the other place i mean if you're looking for funds you can take it to a bank and you can say i've got a business plan do you have a business advisor who can look over my business plan so um i worked with a couple a few years ago and they wanted to make a a loan we did an initial plan and then they went to the bank and the bank helped them flesh it out a little bit more so a bank will will often look over it um i'm happy to look over it and yeah somebody you know who perhaps doesn't know what you do could be a really good person um joti great idea i'll have a go at that for all the new ones i think that just is an easy route joti you know again do you see what i mean the more specific you are the easier is to just go well i'm going to just target those people i mean that's just so saving so many hours of putting out social media posts hoping they're going to reach the right people right if you've got a clear niche by the way super easy to market it's it's those you know those people that just have a little bit broader that the broader you are the harder it is to market there's just no doubt about that all right let's just switch to the next part of that and that's about email list so because tracy says stuck on ideal client once you've assessed who your ideal client is you want to make sure that you have the opportunity for the ideal client to join your community in form of joining your email list so an email list is the central part of your business why it's the only thing you own all right you don't own facebook you don't own instagram pinterest youtube any of it so if all you ever do is try and get more followers more followers more followers if the man that we know so well decides to shut facebook and instagram tomorrow your entire business is gone all right so you have got to focus on encouraging people off any of those platforms and onto your own mailing list the platform i recommend to get started is mailchimp i have no affiliation with them you can start for free i really recommend that you pay though because you have a lot of the mailchimp branding at the bottom and you have a few more extra things that you can do but you can definitely start on the free plan you can set up a really simple list and then you can set up what we call a landing page so if you don't have a website you can set up a really simple page it's all within the platform where somebody can pop their name and email address with you've all seen it right and it links to your list and you can have that page you can use the URL of that page and add it to for example your instagram so that somebody can start joining your mailing list before you have for example your own website so when should you get an email list going immediately immediately immediately um trace this a little bit finished before i push send let's go once getting client to google them and then google what sites they're on post to that site oh yeah how do you find them how do you find is that the question whether it was the first bit of you ah once you decide you're perfect client then what do you do google the people so no you're not really googling the people so for example if we profile somebody who loves landscape so let's let's do a quick profile so um young couple in their early 30s they really love nature they do a lot of walking a lot of tracking a lot of kind of outward bounds they love art they like to i don't know support they rather support local they're into environmental sustainability they'd rather promote they'd rather what's what i'm looking for they would rather support local artists right we already know there's some places they're going to be showing up right there's some certain perhaps magazines they might buy social media accounts they might follow certain things they might be doing so if they're into that kind of profile they're more kind of local they like to go out they may not be looking online so you know if you're offline then you want to think about well where are they going what are they are they buying magazines what magazines are they buying could i put an ad in those magazines that they're buying so you want to try and show up where they're showing up if you've decided it's an online they're shopping online then again it's down to the person are they somebody who was like gonna like a more local website a local gallery or is it someone who's going to be using one of the big kind of they're going to go looking on etsy for prints or they're going to be looking on some of the big art sites for prints so you've got to think where they might be looking for things where are they shopping where are they hanging out so you don't need to start googling them that gets too specific i would also follow accounts that they might follow so if we go down the kind of nature follow some example instagram accounts they might follow and look out for comments they might be making you can always click through and look at the type of profile and go ah okay that's interesting this is what they're interested in they might even be some hashtag that they're using that you could incorporate with your paintings specific areas they like walking in countries they visited etc etc so i wouldn't be googling that's kind of too specific that i would certainly be thinking like that right hopefully that makes it a little bit i do a deeper dive i've got a huge training on this but it's in my membership where i actually walk a few people through and we do an actual long real example and we dive really deep into it so it's it's more about thinking through your answers to those questions and how can you show up in the places where they're likely looking or already hanging out that's really the best way to go um yes okay cool and then google what sites they are and you're just kind of you're having to guess initially once you've got some sales you can always ask them hey you know do you typically buy art from this site for example i know a lot of people are using blue thumb blue thumb started in australia it's now in the states it's going to be global that a lot of people would say somebody's bought something you might contact and say hey do you typically buy from blue thumb or where else do you look you know there's all sorts of ways of finding out those questions once you have buyers okay once you've set up your mailing list you're going to need to do something to fill it so just setting it up is not enough so you're going to do some marketing strategies to drive people to where they can sign up you might run a simple competition you might do a local market or art fair where there's loads of people coming through and you say hey win a print join my mailing list in order to sign up and get a print you might just do things like run ads or use pin trust or youtube or blogging you need to be actively doing marketing strategies to send people to grow the list otherwise six months down the track you're going so if you have got five people and they're all my family on the list so sometimes you can start with friends and family that's okay but ultimately you want to be doing something every month to get people to that place all right let's move it on okay Sharon asks about pricing that's our next question um pricing how to price she says i've lots lot i've watched lots of youtube videos and they're all over the place all right so i have a clear six steps to pricing and that youtube video is on my site i think after years and years of being in this industry i personally think is the best way to price something of course it's up to you if you watch it and go that's not for me i'm not the kind of um you know square inch type of person so i have a specific and i will link that like that down what have i said the ica otherwise i'll be like i promise things ica and the six steps to pricing but basically i go through so my six steps to pricing go like this you're going to work out base costs of what it costs you roughly to create say a canvas put on a workshop etc you're going to assess where you are on your career ladder at the beginning super advanced in the middle you're going to research your competition and find out what they're charging for something similar so you have some ballpark amounts you're then going to work out your maths are you going to be selling through a gallery who's going to take 50% are you going to be selling yourself and therefore you're going to keep all the profit and you basically take away your base costs and any kind of selling costs away from that rough number you've got from the competitors so you end up kind of taking three and then getting an average of the three you take it away from there and you'll be left with a number and then that number i use something called the gut calculator that's where i look at that number and i go i'm happy receiving that after losing 50% to a gallery for example or giving gallery 50% for beautifully selling my artwork or i'm not happy that takes me a long time to do i don't want to walk away with that amount of money in which case you need to go back a few steps and you need to eke the price up till you get to the point where your profit is good enough for you you go like yeah i'm really i'm happy with that i'm happy to get profit like that and then you end up making a pricing scale so you start from small to large and you infill and you simply have a scale it's really simple so i will link that as well now have a clear vision awesome thank you tracy um do you put your prices on your website absolutely otherwise no one can buy them 100% clear transparent this is the piece this is a description about the piece here are the benefits of the piece here's how to buy it and here's how much it is and here's how to click and put it in your cart and this is how long it's going to be before it arrives at your home super important all right you yeah listing our listings is another whole topic because most people just put the artwork up and put a title and a price and there's no incentive for the person to buy it we're on that later um you ask the next question best um web page developer so web platform website platform do you mean so listen they're all out there i think we had a discussion within the membership on this the other day the consensus was wix there are a lot of template based sites and a lot of people are building on wix because it's easy it's flexible it's reasonable price it's a good place to start so from what a whole collective is saying i reckon wix is a good place to start if you have if you're selling small products and you have lots and lots of them then you want to use something like Shopify because it's built as a shop it's a larger amount going out every month because it has all the facilities you know someone can land on there and go i'll have that artwork on a phone case on a pencil on a bag on a cushion or buy a couple of prints and some cards right they are mass a lot of shopping in their car and Shopify is designed to do that really well or you've got your artwork on a t-shirt i'll have one in small medium large pink background green background right it's designed for that don't lose Shopify if you're just going to sell a few prints it's a larger amount going out each month probably not the best fit and then if you like to do it yourself and you like the tech and you want ultimate freedom then you would choose WordPress do not do that if you do not know how to do those sorts of things or you're not confident online so WordPress you'll just pay the hosting wherever you pay the hosting and you'll set up the WordPress site and you'll have lots of templates that are free templates you can buy and you can pretty much do anything you want it's the most flexible way however it's complicated it's a big learning curve right when things go wrong it's tricky to get them fixed so if you just want to get something up quickly and easily we think the consensus is we recommend Wix hopefully that helps how to drive traffic to that webpage you're going to answer that in just a moment that is Kerry's question and your question as well i know and several other people's questions driving traffic to my website and converting them into sales i used to be able to do this organically Kerry says super easily with Pinterest in the last three years Pinterest has completely stopped driving traffic for me all right so there's a few different elements that question that i did want to cover because i'm a massive believer in Pinterest for driving traffic so number one Pinterest is still right up there for driving traffic to your website however it has completely changed in the last three years so i would say that if that's been working for you simply really get educated on the changes how the algorithm works now the different facilities it has how to use it now because it check you know like all these things it changes but if you ask most bloggers lots of artists who use sites like Etsy and Shopify most of they're going to say they're most of their traffic that's the people who go and land on that space they're mostly coming from Pinterest so do not give up on Pinterest just get reeducated on what's working now and go for it again that would be my number one thing to say find out what's not working and fix it all right so yes is that the other thing i wanted to say here driving traffic so sending people to your website and then converting those into sales are two very very very different things and i think there's a myth out there that if i do lots of marketing i'll make lots of sales there's marketing and the sales two different things folks all right so marketing is about putting out messages and and marketing materials so that could be social media or it could be blogs or could be press releases to that audience that you've defined so that they gain awareness of you so they find out a bit more so they decide they want to hear more and they join your mailing list so they read your emails right they're not the unsubscribers they're the readers of emails they start to come to your events they start to look at the website that is building your trust and connection with your audience but that's not sales all right that's just marketing building awareness trust and connection gets them to the point where you are going to make a sales offer so again mostly the mistake is the artists are not making an offer listings on the website folks over there you go and buy it there's no incentive right there's thousands of websites for these people to choose from how are you going to make an offer this is where your email list comes in all right so i'm going to tell the story of the lovely lady who lives in Wales actually so when we started working together she said oh my goodness me you know i get sales over here and sales are here but i want something a bit more consistent i said if you've got a mailing list she said yes so i said here's what we're going to do we're going to run a series of emails for that mailing list where you're going to make an offer to people first who've just i mean this is a little bit further down the track so you can aspire to this people who've already bought from you so if you've already got customers you'll be like great people who've already bought from you you're going to give them a five day window where you're going to give them 20 off the original pieces only for those five days with a clear deadline only current customers so she's like she's a bit resistant she's like not really sure but we did it we made a series of emails talking about the artwork talking about the collection you know just building excitement and anticipation something was coming something was coming and then only to that segment for those few days she made that offer and she sold 18 paintings in those five days why specific audience very clear message and an offer here's the 20 off because you've already bought only for those five days and at that point then she opened up the collection to other people all right so using your email list and you might say so yeah i've got five people and then all my friends and family you want to build the email list so that down the track you can be saying okay i've got something coming up it's easter i'm going to give you a discount code or if you buy an original piece from my studio over the next three days i'm going to ship it to you for nothing or if you buy two of my prints from my online store i'm going to give you a third for free but only for 48 hours only from my new collection all right because you're a valued customer you stayed on the list etc etc so you have to make sales offers you're not always discounting because i'm not a lover of discounting unless we're being very strategic with it and you've built it into your pricing right so um those are two very different things you need to bear that in mind how are we going to drive traffic to the website paid for ads like google really good source of traffic if you've got a marketing budget Pinterest definitely things like blogging a bit of a slower build but when you publish a blog really good to also use Pinterest along with the blogging that's again it's really good for your site to have new content on it then you can let people know by your email list to have a new blog send them to the site send them to the site you can do a joint venture with somebody else right who's offering something similar to what you offer so perhaps you could key up even with a local art store and say i've got a new collection you know really i'm using your materials i'd love to you know get a few more eyes on my new collection i've got a sales offer coming up they might say do you know what because you shop from our shop and you buy these materials we're going to send an email out on our list to let our shoppers know that you've used the materials and here's your artwork right that can work really really well you can also work well for you if you run workshops and you send them back to the art store another whole strategy right obviously social media is another way not the only way right to send people to your website so you need to be actively marketing every week you need to be doing consistent marketing i like to have a simple marketing routine where we just do things consistently and going back to that very beginning question when do you give up right you don't give up you just keep being consistent keep being consistent you know keep being consistent okay hopefully that's answering that i'm aware that we're already hitting the hour and i've so much to say i think this was the last question i wanted to do oh this was the juicy question so hang in here for this all right so marina says trying to figure out whether to stick with my current style slash subject that i'm still loving but i've only sold one of in over a year or develop a new style subject that might be more appealing and you know what my heart just went out to you there and everyone else who feels the same i can't work out if people don't like my current work or if i just need to promote it more and to a different audience so marina and everyone else who has the same question because it's been asked such a lot and before you throw the baby out with that bath water there are a few key reasons why your artwork is not selling three that i like to think of immediately number one not knowing the specific audience i think we've probably talked a lot about that today not knowing who that audience are so defining that audience number two not doing enough marketing to that specific audience i imagine that everybody on this call today can work on those two things for sure and then not making a clear sales offer to that audience once you've kind of warmed them up and got to know them i promise you if you do those three things you will make consistent sales now here's the piece please please please do not change what you're loving doing the only reason you change is if you're not enjoying it anymore all right you need to build a business around what you love doing because what you love doing lights you up you get in creative flow all you need to do is find that audience find that match the audience that loves what you do all right and then you need to encourage them on to that mailing list send them weekly emails with what you're doing what's in the studio what's happening latest updates gone up onto the shop whatever it is that you're doing and then you need to make them a really clear offer over easter you can buy this and get this right really simple that's as simple and somebody asked for a blueprint and i was like okay a blueprint i suppose that's kind of a blueprint isn't it in a way define your audience right create a mailing list create a series of simple strategies to get people onto that mailing list communicate with them regularly build trust you're not selling on every email by the way that's the other actually just throw that in you want to be selling sending weekly emails let them know what you're doing studio updates you know when walking the day and took these amazing photographs turned these into floral prints they'll be coming soon at the moment i'm working on them here's something that happened today whatever it is for you and your art business and then at specific times in the year you make specific sales offers and that's when you make the sales right all right so that's what you want to want to do so you there's plenty of people out there who buy art plenty of people who buy all the different sorts of art that you offer you've just got to get clear on who are the right people for you who is your tribe and then you want to get your work in front of that tribe in the sort of ways that we've mentioned today so do what you love don't forget to improve what you're doing it's really important i think there's somebody set about watching and getting all the free trainings and all of that and you know they're all seeding for something else it's kind of how these businesses work but there's a reason behind it when you invest in yourself and your education then you really get the learning that you need you know there's a lot of free information out there i give a lot of free information other people give a lot of free information but the end of the day if you want a step by step path to doing something we want you to kind of we want to encourage you to join a smaller group of people who are committed to doing that right and then investing in yourself is the best investment you can make whether that's taking an art course to improve your art skills so your artwork gets better and better and better or whether that's taking a business course so that you can shortcut all the time and money that you're likely wasting and get straight to taking those step by step path that you need in order to get where you want to go so hopefully that kind of answers some of those questions over the years i've invested a lot of money and i don't regret any of it i've learned something from all of it and remember when i said at the beginning i want you to take away one key thing that you can put into action from this call because i've given you a lot of information i'm going to put links to other videos that you can watch where you can gain more information i'm pretty open over on youtube i'll give you lots of six steps to do this and how to do this and how to do that of course if you want the real detail and you want the accountability you want all those things in a minute with your permission i'm just going to go over my membership a little bit some of you might be interested in that some of you might not but like i said at the beginning it's important you showed up here today and you shared this time with our fellow artists and myself and i'm very grateful for you for having done that thank you so much make sure that you walk away with something that you can action so i want you to look through your notes if you've been scribbling and scribbling and think what's one thing that i could put into action now going forwards rather than oh my god i've got so many notes from so if you just think what was the biggest challenge for me was it the email list i'm going to do the email list it's a good thing to action by the way if you haven't got one that's the thing i'm going to focus on i'm going to focus on the email list that's what i'm going to put into action so i would love everyone to do that i'd love you to share your commitment in the comments below what is the thing that you're going to commit to doing going forwards from this video and if you're watching the replay whenever you're watching the replay add to it as well just let us know below the video if you're watching the replay what it is you're committed to doing because you're not just committing to me committing to the other people on this call but you're committing to yourself i'm committing to myself and my art business to do this specific thing next rather than a million things that Sophie's just talked about all right i'd love to do these regular q and a's i think it's something i'd like to start offering now on youtube i might make them a bit shorter but more regular i think that could be a lot of fun because i get asked a lot of questions all the time so if i might i'm just going to take five minutes to talk a little bit about my membership because some people might be interested in joining that if you want the deeper dive and the step by step path so my membership is called the art business academy and what it offers it offers a couple of things so number one it offers monthly routine so every month there is a new business training art business training um so this month i think we've got how to how to sharpen do a video how to sharpen live video next month for example it's going to be a complete online course training so how to completely make your online course it's a big training but we've got all trainings like that business trainings and every month we have a live q and a where i specifically help you with your business issues inside our private facebook group and then every month we also have live zoom calls where i coach you and work with you in that kind of coaching capacity we review the month before how's it gone what have you learned what were your wins what can you take forward people share what can we do and then we look at planning the next month what are you going to focus on and then i help people focus on the right things we look at the path where are you etc etc so we have that time together and then there's the part of the membership where it's kind of in the back is a sort of back end part where you can watch all the back trainings all the back q and a's all the back coaching and if you really want to immerse yourself if you say i'm struggling with marketing you'd go to the marketing section and watch some of the marketing trainings if you are struggling with that email list you'll look for that email list training and then underneath all of that sits our art business success path and that is they step by step how to build your art business from zero to full art business that you can fully pull a full income from and all the steps in between there's a pdf download and there are lots of tiny videos so that all you do is you work out hey i'm at stage zero i'm at stage one you watch the little tiny videos and you take the action on that step that you are on and you just focus on that so you know when you think just if i don't know should i be building a website right now should i be doing this should i be doing that you simply look at the path and you say i'm at stage one i'm at building my business plan i'm just going to build the business plan i'm going to do this do everything else even if sophie's got a live over there i'm going to ignore that i'm just going to follow step by step i'm going to get my business plan then i'm going to do the next thing and then the next thing and once you've got going you can look over and go i've got a question for the q and a i'm going to post my question i'd really like to connect with other artists and and get some coaching i'm going to come on the group coaching call it's available 24 seven it's just for 32 australian dollars per month which is about half in british pounds and it's actually pretty good in american dollars right now i think exchange rates in your favor so it's a really small investment there's no contract you can join today and if you don't like it you can go i'm cancelling this and i'm out you have access to all of it there's a little welcome video that kind of walks you around where everything is so you can watch the back things you can look at this month there's a monday email that reminds you what's happening that sort of stuff i've got the link actually i think i've got the link here no i haven't got the link there all right i'll put the link i thought i've got it already on my mouse but i haven't i'll pop the link to that actually i have it just here i have it i have it i'm more organized than i thought i was if you want to check out the page with all the information on it you can save a couple of months by joining on the annual membership as well if you like and you know what if you don't want to join my membership that's okay too if you want to keep showing up on youtube and in the facebook group i love that as well let's keep in touch let me know what you've committed to because for me it's about action right we can sit on these calls you can join the membership you can watch the information any of it but the important part is when you take action when you actually do what you said you're going to do and you do it consistently that's when you're going to stop getting the results so i hope you've enjoyed today's call apologies it's gone a few minutes over i'm going to send a newsletter to my email list yes go joe t fantastic thank you thank you and i've been watching for years oh thank you probably a year thank you for starting subscribing i learned so much oh thank you so much i want to thank you that's bless you thank you so much tracy and my commitment is going to go forward working on my ideal client's great commitment when i get them figured out i'm committed to building my email list perfect i need to work on my audience yet absolutely ideal customer email list one thing at a time absolutely audience and ideal customer kind of link together do that first and i will post the download for you guys to grab as well currently working on art business plan of yours awesome right i've got all these things on youtube you can go and grab them so um and those people who i think you've joined the course actually awesome brilliant i've got a course as well on business planning if you want to take that as well but that's great thank you so much for watching in both places hello to my shout out to my youtube followers and shout out to the business for artists group i love you both let's keep being creative together and if you've got questions or you want feedback just use the group post below this video whatever you need stay in touch and um i'll look forward to doing another one of these very next month i think i'm going to do them every month probably not as long as this a little bit shorter so keep asking your questions and i'll pick the juicy ones and we'll work our way through them together all right take care oh what's we've got focusing on Pinterest yes perfect i love it keep posting them thank you so much for joining me today and um if you've got any any questions about the membership you can shoot those to me any which way you like on any of these platforms and i look forward to seeing you again very very soon take care everyone bye bye


Okay, it looks like we are back live. This is a joint meeting with Senate Health and Welfare and House Health Care. And before we introduce our guest, I'm going to have my Senate committee introduce themselves and then I'm going to turn it over to Representative Howell in the House. So good morning everybody. This is Martine Larocke-Ulich. I live in Burlington and I represent Chittenden Central. Good morning, this is Dave Weigts, representing Rotlin County. I live in Proctor. Ginny Lyons, Chair of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee from Chittenden South East and I live in Willisburg. Terry Williams, representing Rotlin County, from Portland. And joining us in just a bit will be Senator Hardy from Addison County. So Representative Howell, I'm turning it over to you and your committee. Great, thank you. So we'll do introductions as well. I'm going to start with Alan. Alan DeMar, representing Innesburg and Montgomery. Alyssa Black, representing Essex. Lori Houghton, City of Essex Junction. Toppy McFawn, representing Barri Town of the Pot of Williamstown. Marie Cordes, Lincoln, Moncton, Starksboro and Bristol. Leslie Goldman, Window 3, Rockingham, Westminster and Brookline, which is the Bellas Falls area. Our Peterson, representing Rotlin District 2, which is Clarendon, Wellington, West Rotlin and a piece of Rotlin Town. Great, and we'll be having a couple others join us in a couple minutes. So welcome, Dr. Holcomb. I had the pleasure of meeting with Dr. Holcomb earlier this year. And for anyone who's had experience in the University of Vermont Cancer Center, like my family has, they really do amazing work. And I'm going to turn it over to you, Dr. Holcomb, to introduce yourself and tell us about the cancer center. Great, thank you very much. Well, my name is Randy Holcomb, and I've been here for about a year and a half as director of the University of Vermont Cancer Center. I'd like to thank the chairs and members of the committees for the opportunity to speak with you today and tell you a little bit about the exciting things that are going on here at the cancer center. I do have someone here with me off camera, so to stage right is Kate Stropmeyer, who is our director of communications and community outreach. Really, I just hope that this is informational for you to tell you a little bit about the cancer center that you may or may not know about. And then to leave plenty of time for Dr. Holcomb as well. I want to start as I usually do with our mission, and our mission is really to reduce the burden of cancer through research, clinical care, community outreach, and education. We actually serve the entire state of Vermont and Northern New York. So that's about 18,000 square miles that we have, that we feel is the area where we really need to make an impact.  We have four pillars to the cancer center. Each of them is really equally important. The first is clinical care, and that's to provide the best clinical care possible for people that are affected by cancer and to bring new and novel treatments to bear so that patients can benefit from. Just as an example of that, we'll be launching our program with cellular therapy and CAR T-cells sometime later this year, probably in a few months. This is a new therapy that hasn't been available to Vermonters in the past unless they went out of state. And it has the potential to provide long-term permissions and perhaps cures for patients with refractory leukemia and lymphoma. Our second pillar is education. We're part of the university here. And our mission is to provide cancer-related educational opportunities really from high school all the way up to junior faculty and junior professionals. Just as an example, we have a summer research program which is available for undergraduates, graduate students and medical students to spend some time in our cancer center laboratories and learn about cancer research. We also this year had our first career days in cancer where we invited over 100 local high school students to come and learn about different career opportunities related to cancer care and cancer research. Our third pillar is community outreach and engagement. This is especially important to all of us here and especially for me because my feeling is that there's no reason to have a cancer center if we don't serve the community where we're located. And so reaching out to the community and providing to their needs is of utmost importance. As an example of that, we partnered with Dartmouth to do a statewide lung cancer screening program over this past year. That was also a partnership with the Department of Health and the organization for Monsters Taking Action Against Cancer to encourage people to get lung cancer screening if appropriate and also to provide education about lung cancer screening. We've also formed a community advisory board here at the cancer center with representatives from across the state and also some of the representatives in the Vermont legislature to provide input to us about what the needs of the community are so that we can address those. And as an example of their utility, we recently presented options for a research program providing nutritional support for cancer patients which would be statewide. And the community advisory board has endorsed that proposal and we'll be submitting that for funding to the National Cancer Institute. Our research spans from fundamental laboratory research to population-based research focused on cancer screening and cancer prevention to clinical trials, which takes us back into the clinical arena. Clinical trials really represent the opportunity for patients here in Vermont to get tomorrow's therapy today. And so we know that this is an essential component of cancer care and the way that we make progress in developing new cures and new clinical trials.  The cancer center has all of these things going on at the same time. It has a significant impact across the state and economic impact. We recently had an economic benefit analysis performed by a national organization which showed that the cancer center activities generate about $65 million of economic activity from its clinical component. I think what's even more interesting is that our research component generates an additional $20 million of economic activity for the state of Vermont. And this research component is really funded by dollars that come from the federal government. So these are really a tremendous benefit to Vermont because it's generating a lot of economic activity here without having to put the resources in locally, bringing the resources from Washington to DC. You may have heard that the University of Vermont Cancer Center used to have NCI designation. They lost that designation in 2012. And I have been asked by President Gueramella and the Dean Page to reclaim that designation for the cancer center here and for the people of Vermont. We are working to improve the quality of the patient care that we deliver, including clinical trials and offering tomorrow's therapies today. We're building our research base and targeting problems related to cancer that are specifically a concern of our population. But looking at breast cancer and lung cancer and melanoma, these are very significant problems here in the state of Vermont. We wanna make sure that our research focuses on those along with other aspects of cancer development. We're expanding our education for students and junior professionals. And as I mentioned, enhancing our community outreach and engagement so that we can respond to the needs of the community. So the cancer center, most people think of the cancer center as a clinical entity. Some place where people come to get care and we definitely are that. But I think we're much more than that. We're also an educational entity. We are a research entity and here an entity that strives to serve the community where we are located. And so that's a little summary of the cancer center. And I didn't wanna take too much time so I could leave lots of time for questions and I would be more than happy to answer any questions that you may have. Great, thank you, Dr. Holcomb. That was a great overview. I have a couple of questions I'll start with. They'll let our committee ask some questions and then we'll turn it back over to Senator Lyons. So I do just wanna say, when I met with Dr. Holcomb, we spent a lot of time talking about nutrition and cancer. And so I am thrilled to hear that the advisory committee is endorsing that and hopefully it will move forward. You had talked a little bit about it and I don't know if you wanna share a little bit your history, the fact that there's no research like this happening, am I correct? With nutrition and cancer? This is an area related to cancer care and cancer research that really has major deficiencies and people have not been doing a sufficient amount of research to understand the benefits of nutrition for cancer patients. The trial that we're proposing to the National Cancer Institute which is actually a $4 million grant that I'll be submitting next month is to provide nutritional counseling for all newly diagnosed cancer patients. We have only 2.4 registered dieticians who are serving 2,500 new cancer cases across the state that are receiving ambulatory or outpatient cancer care. It's definitely not sufficient and it's impossible for them to provide the nutritional counseling to all cancer patients and only those who are having specific difficulties with swallowing and digestion really get those consultations at the moment because of the shortage in the workforce. What we wanna do is create an infrastructure so that we can provide that counseling for all newly diagnosed patients. And we're also going to partner with the economics department here at the University of Vermont so that we can do a cost effectiveness analysis of this program and hopefully show that it will actually be cost effective provide this nutritional intervention upfront. And with that kind of information we may be able to impact cancer policy and also insurance reimbursement for registered dieticians. So that's our goal, that's our hope and we'll keep our fingers crossed that the National Cancer Institute is interested in supporting this program here that will be proposed. Great, thank you for that. Any questions, Joe? Yeah, Joe Andreano from Orwell. I'm curious about, you'd mentioned this five year plan to achieve National Cancer Institute designation just in sort of a broad overview what sort of steps should be taken on that and is there any support you would need for that? So I wanna be in full disclosure I'm not asking for any support here today so I'll just start with that. It will definitely take resources and I've been working with both President Caramella and Dean H to make sure we have the resources to do this. We have a few things that we need to do we need to build our research base and expand the activities in basic laboratory research as well as population-based research to qualify for NCI designation. We need to expand our clinical trials activities and enroll more patients onto clinical trials. Part of how we're doing that is working to expand our clinical trials network to other sites across the state so that people can get care locally and have access to some of these clinical trials close to home rather than having to travel to Burlington to the cancer center here. This does, when you get NCI designation it affirms that you're in the top 4% of cancer centers in the country. It allows you access to an additional approximately $5 million a year of NIH funding that otherwise would not be coming into the state of Vermont. It helps us attract talented clinicians, researchers, and educators. So it is a very big step and I think it will be extremely beneficial if we can reclaim that designation. I think I've been through this process a few times when I was deputy director of the Cancer Center at Mount Sinai and director of the clinical cancer program there. We got our first NCI designation. Mount Sinai invested $100 million to get that NCI designation. I was also at the University of Hawaii where we renewed a designation that was very much in jeopardy when I was director there. There was a lot of investment that went into that as well and supported there by the university as well as the legislature. So it does take resources. I think that we're on a path where we've identified the resources that we need and we can get there. I think it will take about another three to four years before we're ready to apply for that NCI designation because it does take some time to build those programs, recruit some new faculty. Thank you. Any other questions in this room, Leslie? Thank you and thank you for this work. It's important, I'm interested in what you're thinking about prevention. And we know that prevention, that would be ideal, right? So no one got cancer at all. There's been a ton of work on cigarettes and smoking and I know that lung cancer is the number one cancer in Vermont, colorectal cancer. So I'm wondering what you're thinking about, what does prevention mean to you on the population level? Where do we see that impact? So we see lots of things in that area. And I think prevention and screening which goes hand in hand with prevention in reducing late stage disease by finding a disease early are critically important from a population standpoint. The tobacco researchers here at the University of Vermont are part of the cancer center. We work with them closely. We work with our clinicians that are focused on lung cancer screening. A lot of that involves education and education about risk factors related to the development of lung cancer. We've had some extensive discussions in our community advisory board about that. We have a representative, Chief Stevens, from the Abinaki tribe. And we're discussing whether we can create a program for them, for example, that takes into account their cultural significance of tobacco but also reduces their risk for development of lung cancer. One of the things that we're also trying to do is create what I call an outreach fan where we can go out into the community, into rural areas across the state and provide cancer education. We're already doing that locally here but I think it's more important that we do it across the rural areas of Vermont because in rural Vermont, people who develop cancer have a significantly higher mortality. Than the people who develop cancer in a more urban area. And we need to reduce that disparity so that we can achieve equity in cancer outcomes. And a lot of that has to do with bringing information to the community about risk factors and how to reduce the risk for developing cancer. So I think cancer prevention is critically important. Part of the component of that will be early detection through screening. All of those things can reduce the burden of cancer and really we'd like to put ourselves out of business and get all of this done so that we don't have to worry about difficult treatments that people have to undergo. And we'll be working to try to reduce the disparities, especially for our rural areas in the state. Thank you. Great, Senator Lyons, so we'll turn it over to you. Terrific, thank you Representative Houghton and thank you Dr. Holcomb for being here with us today. This has been terrific, it's good to see you again. And I'll ask a couple of questions. Our committee, just FYI, our committee will need to disappear at 1115 so we'll be able to go until then. But I do have a couple of questions and then ask the rest of the committee if they will also have questions. So I understand the interest in looking at the cancers that predominate in the state, is there anything that is gender specific, for example, prostate cancer or is there anything related to pancreatic cancer? Every time we read obituaries, we see pancreatic cancer or we see prostate cancer. Are those interests of the Cancer Center or how do you deal with maybe an increase in those particular types or others? Yeah, so we have a few cancers that are particular relevance. Obviously lung cancer and breast cancer are the leading causes of cancer in the state where we have some focus there. Pancreatic cancer is less common than those other cancers but it is, we do have a higher rate here in Vermont and incidence rate than most states across the country. So this is something that we are particularly focused on and also trying to understand the genetics of pancreatic cancer because there are some genetic predispositions and we have a robust cancer genetics program here and we would like to really take that out into the community so that we can understand what contributions the genetic factors may have in development of pancreatic cancer. Another cancer that's a very high rate, incidence rate here in Vermont is melanoma. The reasons for that are not completely clear and so we're doing some laboratory research on that as well as some population-based research to try to understand what the etiologies of that are. Prostate cancer is a very common cancer for men. It's not one of the leading causes of death because a lot of men can live with prostate cancer for quite a while but it is a significant problem here and we are working to build our program. I would say that that's one area here in the cancer center that I've identified as one that we need to have more strain and build because we don't have the fundamental or population-based research focused on prostate cancer that I think we will need to have. So that's one area of growth that's been. Thank you. Just one other quick question. It's probably not a quick answer but the question about the cost of chemotherapy, I mean it just seems so unfathomable that someone has to spend 30 or 40,000 or 50,000 or $100,000 a year for a cure. Are you engaged at all in looking at prescription drug costs for chemotherapy and treatment overall? Well, that's a tough problem because the new therapies that come out generally have a cost set and approved by the FDA and we pretty much have to pay that and insurance has to cover that to provide those therapies for patients. One of the things that we've tried to do is to expand our clinical trials portfolio so that we can get some of these medications that are so very expensive, paid for by the pharmaceutical industry as part of a clinical trial and this actually will reduce the cost that has to be paid for care. I think that overall there are a lot of changes that can be made in cancer care delivery. That's an area of my personal research and we are trying to expand our health services research component of the cancer center to try to address some of those issues like cost and health policy and how we can better provide cancer care across a broad geographic area. Thank you. Senator Gullick has a question. Hello, thank you, Dr. Holcomb. As you know, we have many buildings, especially in our cities and towns that were built in the 60s and 70s that are riddled with toxins and poisons ranging from lead to asbestos to PCBs. And I'm wondering if you ever weigh in on ridding those buildings of cancer-causing toxins or if you are at all active in ensuring that new construction is safe. We aren't directly related to construction. I would say that we are doing research on environmental contaminants that may contribute to the development of cancer. We have several researchers who've been looking at polyphenols and PCBs and other compounds that may be present both within Lakewater as well as the soil across the state. We're trying to see how that relates to the development of cancer. And we've actually published some recent articles about the risk of childhood leukemia related to exposure to some of those compounds. I think the more research we do, the greater the base of knowledge we will have so that that can affect policy in construction and hopefully make safer buildings in the future. Questions? Senator Harding. Thank you. And thank you, Dr. Mulcomb. I was struck by the comment you made about the disparity in outcomes for people living in rural areas versus more urban areas. And I was also happy to hear that you're working with Chief Stevens. So I'm wondering how else are you sort of applying an equity lens to the work that you're doing to make sure that we can narrow the gap between those outcomes for people based on where they live and their race or ethnicity, et cetera. I would say that almost all our population-based research which is pretty robust here at the Cancer Center has a disparities and equity focus. We understand that we have a large rural population here that we serve and that the mortality rates are just far too high in those areas. Some of that has to do with late diagnosis but a lot of it has to do with other factors and may have to do with some environmental exposures as well as they relate to agriculture. So we're partnering with the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences on some projects as well to look at some of those issues about soil contaminants. We know that the rural population is something that we can particularly address here that other cancer centers in the NCI portfolio cannot address because many of them do not have such a large rural population. And so it's a major focus of almost all the research that we do. That's great. And if you have any policy recommendations along those lines, whether they're related to toxins or healthcare access, et cetera, that would be helpful because as someone who represents a rural district, it is really discouraging to hear that there's that disparity. I will bring forward the policy recommendations as we get them. I'm happy to do that and very much welcome that request. Great, thank you. Terrific, that's terrific. Any other questions? Okay, unfortunately, Senate Health and Welfare is going to have to sign off. We have another talk. We do as well. Okay, so we are finished.  Great, thank you Dr. Holk over your time. On behalf of both of our committees, thank you for the work you're doing and we look forward to hearing more from you in the near future, I'm sure. Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you today. Thanks, have a great day everyone. We can go off air, Claire and Alex.


The portfolio, like you can think of it a little bit as a, maybe as a business card in some ways. And with the right business card, what it does, it's like it opens a door. A portfolio is essentially a body of work that represents the kind of point of view and the skills and the breadth of an artist through a designer. My name's Cameron Neate. I'm faculty in the design program at Emily Carr University. My name is Birta Fjontek and I teach in the Faculty of Art and I am an assistant professor of photography. It is not so important that it's technically fully resolved. I'm looking for more unique ideas, experimentation, that a person is really having fun or is dedicated to what they're doing. And I mean, that's amazing if you kind of feel like, oh, this person is not only practicing their artistic skills, but they really have something to say. I generally do like seeing creativity or originality and how those skills are being applied, right? Something surprising, innovative or different is always a standout. I do not expect anyone to be a master when they're entering design school. That's the reason we want you here is to develop those skills. So a certain level of commitment and growth and a certain technique is looked for, but we really look at potential. My main advice is just like you never want to pull this together just like three days before the deadline or something. I definitely think it's worth getting a portfolio review for a couple of reasons. You want to get great feedback on your work. The other thing that is helpful is it will help you learn about the school you're applying for. You will know from that review what kinds of things the school is looking for, what kind of culture and what kind of educational environment and values are behind that. So it goes both ways. You're going to get advice about how to present your work and maybe some things that you may want to work on, but you also will learn more about whether it's a good fit for you. A key thing that I want to see is some process and development. And what I'm looking when I view that, it's not simply like a sketch, but how do those things build into the final piece? Also, you can tell if it's a strong edit. If you feel like everything was done with a purpose and it has its place there and if you would take it out, something would be missing. Students who may have over-prepared where we're only seeing very polished final work, right? And I'm not seeing maybe the parts of the work where there was risk-taking, parts that may be a looser, sketches, free-thought coming out. I do really like to see sketches in a portfolio. And also, work that I can see was either heavily coached by someone else or prepared by someone else, I usually can tell. And I really want to see how the applicant is actually curating and putting themselves forward. That's very important for me. I really appreciate it when applicants are able to maybe include a little bit of write-up or even have a title that kind of refers to something that I understand, this is what the work is about and this is what they want to see with this. I would encourage students as preparing the portfolio to really have fun with it, to not be fearful, to put yourself into it. We love seeing the work. We love seeing young artists developing and we really are looking at the work with joy and kind eyes. We love seeing young artists and what they do and helping them find their path.