#183 - Turning Creativity Into a Business with Tim Packer

0:00 If you say, don't want to do that, just replace that with, I don't want it bad enough. All right, you all welcome back for another episode. I love when we have different and unique perspectives on entrepreneurship. And today we're going to be bringing an artistic and creative bent to what we're talking about, but still founded in entrepreneurship, business growth.

0:42 And at the end of the day, how can we help people positively change their lives? So today's guest, finally someone who doesn't have a difficult name for me to pronounce. So Tim Packer, thank your parents and previous generations for making it easy on me. Tim's a professional artist, creative business mentor and founder of the Tim Packer Art Academy. Tim's a former police detective who made the leap into entrepreneurship and went on to build a multimillion dollar art business by mastering not just the creative side of his craft, but the business side as well. Today, he helps artists around the world build sustainable, profitable careers. And he's also the author of the recent best seller hitting the tops of charts.

1:23 You can sell your art. which challenges the idea that success and creative work is about talent alone. think I said that wrong. It's not just about talent alone. It's to be good. And so I'm excited to dig into the systems of mindset shifts and the real world mechanics behind turning creativity into a viable business. Tim, welcome to the necessary entrepreneur. thanks for having me. I'm excited for this conversation. So we'll get into the book at some point. I'll weave it in. You're having massive success at launch. We'll talk about where they can get it, all that stuff, and we'll tag it in the shows. But what is so wrong about creatives and artists making money and making a living and not starving?

2:04 What's so bad about that? problem is out there in the artistic community, for some reason, I don't know how this ever got started, that somehow if you are successful financially, that you are somehow selling out. That somehow it should not be about money. Money should never enter the conversation. And art is pretty much the only field where there is that kind of feeling. And then on the other hand, there's the feeling that, you can't make a living from your art because so many artists are starving. And so like... I'm here to say that yes, you can make a very, very good living from your art. And if you do so, you should be proud of that.

2:45 You should not be shy or embarrassed or apologize for making a very good living from your art. And it's the only, one of the only, guess the music it is a little bit too. You get people kind of, you know, it's like if you discover that indie band that you really love, for a lot of people, as soon as they blow up, their fans are not happy. It's like, now they've sold out. It's like, no, everyone else just realized what you did early on, that they love the music. But we don't kind of criticize any of our other people. don't criticize, you know, again, Adele for being so successful, right? Taylor Swift. We don't criticize Tiger Woods for making millions from golf or baseball players or hockey players or any sort of athletes.

3:29 But somehow in the creative world, there's this thought that money should never enter into it. ah And I'm here to say that's wrong in my belief and that's why so many artists are starving. Do you think that this has happened? We won't delve too much into mindset and philosophy and all that, but is this happened because they haven't achieved it yet and it feels like some threat or some fear that they're going to be out of that. They're not good enough because their thing isn't selling. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy almost for sure. mindset. If you don't believe you can make a living from your art, you won't, right? If you don't believe you can be successful, if you do believe you can be successful, you will. But there is a real kind of thing that permeates the whole arts. Like, I have so many people, adults now, that are in my art academy that when they were young, you know, they had a real interest in art.

4:13 And they were discouraged from pursuing it in any meaningful way because the common wisdom was you are not gonna be able to make a living from it, right? From guidance counselors, from parents, whatever. And it's simply not... Not true. What do we make though of all the, for me being an outsider in the art world, if you gave me a pencil, piece of charcoal or a paint brush, you do not want to see the outcome. I'm telling you, you don't. I'm sure if I spent more time, I would get a little bit better, but I have a brother that you give him a pencil and the things he creates is just, he was born this way. But what do we make of people in the past, these really well-known artists?

4:57 that they didn't make any money and they were poor while they were living. Yeah. But once they were dead, it caught on in their paintings became worth millions. Like, should we, should we take solace in that? Should we be okay with that? Should artists be like, well, I might be poor now, but someday when I'm gone, no, it'll be worth millions. Absolutely not. The reason those stories came about, and Van Gogh was the one everybody talks about the most, like his life was so miserable, he killed himself, right? But it's funny, he's the one a lot of artists hold up to as some kind of noble example. It's like, that's not who you want as a role model. The reason that happened, that happened many, many times over the course of the years was because there was gatekeepers, right?

5:39 There was people that had the ability to either have you work Shown or not shown. And for him, was Goop Eels. His brother actually worked for one of the biggest art dealers in Europe, but he couldn't even get Goop Eels to carry Vincent's work. But once Vincent died and his brother's wife actually went around, collected a bunch of his stuff, put a show on, once people saw his work, that's why he took off, because people loved the work. Well, now there's no gatekeepers. We have social media. We have art festivals where you just pay your money and you hang up your work. So you have the ability to get your work out there in front of people. um And then the public decides. And that's one of the biggest things, I think, too, that artists don't understand is that there's no one art world.

6:25 There's a bunch of different art villages. And one art village is the village of contemporary museums, universities, where postmodernism dominates. That's where you have a banana duct taped to the wall. That's where you have the meat dress. That's where you have, there was an actual exhibition in a very well-known gallery in London of invisible works of art, right? Where people just come and talk about it. And it's all about what did the artists think? What did the artists feel? But here, people don't actually buy the work hanging in their homes. There's government grants or when they are big purchases, it's by kind of big institutions. And I'm not in that village. I live in the village that I call commercial sales.

7:06 And that is the village where real people buy my art or buy my prints to take them home and hang them on their walls in their home or in their offices. And that is a huge village. And I think that's the village that most of us, we start, you know, if you're drawn to art, you want to start painting and drawing, that's what you want to be doing, right? You want to be going in there and creating work that you really love. And here's the thing about the village of commercial sales, that despite all of the kind of pressure over the last 50, 60 years to push postmodernism, conceptual art, know, pile of bricks with a feather on it type of thing. The vast majority of the public and the art buying public still values the things that we as a civilization have valued in artists since the dawn of time.

7:53 They value skill, they value beauty, they value craft, they value mastery. And in this world, it's not about what I thought or what I felt when I was creating the work. It's what you feel when you see it or what the public feels when they see it. And the fact now that we have with social media, again, with art festivals, all of these ways to get your work seen, that the public decides who is successful and who is not. It's not some art critic, it's not an art professor. ah And so just understanding that is huge. Because what happens with lot of artists is they're like, maybe they went to university and they got a degree kind of focusing on post-modernism. And so they're like, okay, well, I want to show a little bit of skill in my work here, but it's also some deeper meaning.

8:37 I want to comment on, you know, on capitalism or whatever. So they show work with a little bit of meaning and a little bit of skill and nobody bites because there's no village that appreciates that. You're either all in on the, on the, postmodernist village, or if you're all in on actually creating work that people want to buy, then that's a conversation now, but what do you need to do and what does your art have to do to actually get enough people to love your work? that you can make a good living. So what has to be done? oh it just aware? Is it start out with just awareness? want to know. out with awareness that that's what you need to do. And so again, what is this, what does this community value? All those things I talked about, right? Mastery, craft, skill.

9:19 um So you need to master all of the skills first. You need to master drawing, you need to master composition, you need to master color, you need to master different brush techniques, all of that kind of thing. You just have to become incredibly skillful. And then you need to find a way to create work that people absolutely love. where it stops them in their tracks and they just go, my God, I want to have that with a unique voice. And it's the same as in music, right? If you watch American Idol, you watch The Voice, there's all kinds of these people come on. They've got beautiful technical voices and they all kind of sound the same. And they end up just being corporate singers. But then you see someone that comes in that might not even have as much skill technically, but they've got a unique voice and a unique sound that as soon as you hear it, you go, my God, and if that's what you want, That's the only person that does it.

10:10 You need to develop that within your art too. So you need to have great work with a unique voice. And we define great work in this village as work that stops people in their tracks, takes their breath away. It inspires that biblical feeling of coveting, right? They just see it and go, I want to take that home with me. If you can do that with a unique voice, you can make a very good living as an artist. you until or unless you do that. It's going to be like you're always just pushing a boulder up a hill. And most artists stop before they get there and they spend their whole life trying to market their, eh, pretty good work. And the problem is there's a million artists out there creating, eh, pretty good work.

10:52 And then it just comes down to who's the best value, who's the cheapest, and that's the only way you have to differentiate. Yeah, you don't want to be a commodity, right? That's what it seems like so many are. And it's just like, think of it this way, anything, if you wanna make your living doing anything that people actually do as a hobby, you need to be great, right? You talked about mastery. You can't be really good and make a living on the PGA Tour. You can't be really good and make a living as a professional athlete or as a musician. You gotta be great, right? You can be really good as an accountant and make an incredible living because you don't have people giving away doing your tax returns for free on the weekend.

11:35 But there are all kinds of, we all know artists, friends who are hobbyists or even people early in their career who are giving art away. There's people at art festivals that are selling paintings for a hundred or two hundred dollars. So there's no lack of low cost art out there for people. You're competing with people, like I say, who are just giving it away. So you need to be great and people don't pay and they're not going to pay a lot for just pretty good or moderately competent. so that's the biggest thing. You touched on something where you said become, need to master all these different categories and areas, but then you need to figure out what people want. Yes. See that. think there would be, correct me if I'm wrong, cause I'm not, I'm not in the system of, you know, all the artists in the world.

12:18 A lot of people would say that's not authentic. Come on, Tim, that's not authentic, but you're meeting the market. There's something called product market fit. Yep. And if a business talks about product market fit. You're making an argument, correct me if I'm wrong, that an artist needs to the same thing. Yeah, that's the thing. It's not about you just doing what you love without regard to whether people appreciate it. That can be a wonderful hobby. But let's be clear, it's a hobby. If you want to make a living from your art, you need to, but you do need to find a way where three things can happen. Where you love the process of creating the work more than anything else. Where you love and are proud of the work and enough of the public, Capital L loves the work.

13:01 that they are gonna buy your work and at a rate that you can't keep up with. And there is a way to do all three. You don't wanna get into a situation where you're just kind of chasing a market. You go, oh, Western art's big. I don't really like Western art, but I'm gonna do that to make a living. No, that's not it at all. But what you do need to do is once you've mastered all these skills, you seek out influences. This is just like music, right? Some of the best people now, It's like when you talk about their history, they had all kinds of influences. They played maybe classical music when they were a kid. They took lessons and then they were in a garage band playing punk. And then they were in the university band and they played in a country band for a while.

13:43 And then they tried something else. And then all of these influences that led, because your skill, what we call talent is really just four things. It's your skill, your knowledge, your experience and your creativity. And so seeking out all of these influences and spending time there, you're increasing your skill, you're increasing your knowledge, your experience and your creativity. And then what you need to do is every once in a while you go in into what's called pure process mode where you're saying, okay, I've now amassed all of this stuff, all of these skills, knowledge, experience. Now I'm really gonna push my creativity and just try and put these things together in different ways. Try different subject matters. Try kind of just, well, what if I did this?

14:24 What if I took this thing I learned from this artist, but I matched it with what I learned over here from this artist? What if I put those two things together? And you're just playing that what if game. And that's called process. And the important thing about process mode is when you're in process mode, you're doing something you don't know how to do that you've never done before. And there's a very good chance it will fail. Um, and so what you need to know when you go into process mode is that failure is a likely outcome and it's okay. You need to give permission for the thing to fail. Right. If you go, you go, what if I try this, try this, try that, and you painted dogs breakfast. It was a successful painting exercise. Cause guess what?

15:04 You just learned what not to do next time when you end up in this situation. But when you're in that process mode, that's where you have breakthroughs, right? That's where you'll make create a painting better than anything you've ever done before. Or the painting may fail, but you go, wow, what happened in this little corner? I really like that. Okay, now I'm going to kind of focus on that. And when you're doing all of this stuff, you're keenly focused on three things. How much did I love the experience of creating that in that way? How much did I love that process? How much do I love the finished work? And then what's the reaction of other people who see the work? And you let those three things guide you.

15:46 And you're always digging deeper. You're digging deeper. First of all, where you love the process and you love the finished work. But then you put that work out in front of the public and it's like if they just go out, that's nice. Then this isn't it. So it's like back into process mode, back pushing your creativity until you reach that thing where you go, wow, I love this. I love the process. And then you put it out there and then the world goes crazy over it. And then if you want. you can ride that pony into the sunset. But that's it. You need to love what you're doing. So it is authentic. You're not chasing something else. You're just trying to find it's like, it's like if you're if you're the boss, you're trying to find Bruce Springsteen, right?

16:27 You can start out. you're trying all this stuff to kind of find out who you are, or whether it's Bob Dylan or whoever. I one time, I saw an interview one time with Charlie Rose was interviewing Phil Collins. I'm going to date myself. He's, he's, know, people now in their twenties and thirties probably don't know who he is, but he was a really good singer. um So good. But Charlie Rose asked him, and this, this actually is a metaphor for what artists should do and what you're arguing. Charlie Rose ripped off like eight of his top songs. ripped him off and all of us would know him and he said, hey, of all these songs, which one was most impactful and do you like the most?

17:09 And Phil Collins said, none of them. He said, they're just the audience and crowds favorite, so I play them. Yeah. Yeah. You could see, so I'll tell you a little thing. um You can see behind me, I've got a picture and in my thing that I'd become known for. I'm very, very big part of the business is teaching other artists, but I'm still very involved in creating painting, selling paintings, selling my prints. And I've had a very good career on that. And the thing that I have really become known for is the sun shining through the trees. That's been my motif. I am in people always say you are a master at painting a light. People often think like, you have a flashlight? Like, how do you make that shine so bright and everything?

17:51 And I do, and that's also why you need to love the thing that the public goes crazy over, because when it hits, you're going to be asked to do a lot of it. um And I remember an interview with Rod Stewart. so again, because music and painting, there's so much in there. And the interview asked him, do you ever get tired of playing Maggie Mae? um And he said, yeah, you know what? There are certain songs. that, you know, I'd be okay not playing them for a while. But he said, you know what, these people that out there that buy my music and come to my concerts, they've given me a fabulous living because they love my music. And I know there may be a person out there that's waited their whole life to be able to afford a ticket and get a ticket when I happen to be in their town.

18:36 And that person wants to hear Maggie Mae. So I am going to play Maggie Mae. And so a few buddies of mine we talk about it and it's like, you know I'll do another painting with the Sun in it and they're like Maggie Mae It's like you're darn right Maggie Mae buddy because the same thing someone may have been waiting my works not cheap and someone may have been waiting a long time It's like, okay We're ready to plunk out a few thousand dollars on an original and they've been following my career Maybe they bought prints or whatever, but they really really want what I'm known for which is the Sun coming through the trees So I'll do that it wouldn't have been a authentic if I thought, this is a motif that I think can make money.

19:18 It was something that organically happened. And when I painted the first Sun through the trees, I actually thought this might be the best painting I've ever done. And then when it got seen, the reaction was over the top. And then the first time I actually had a body of work of this subject matter in this style, I went from making about 25,000 total sales a year before to doing 28,000 sales in a weekend of this work. And that's what I mean about the public not being shy once you hit that thing. And then I'd made a very good career on kind of continuing just to kind of dig deeper on that theme and put that work out there. And then now into the teaching and the online academy and everything else.

20:01 But it's like, this is still what I love doing. Every year I give myself about three weeks or a month where I go back into process mode. often think, I don't know, maybe there's something else. Maybe there's something else that I could do that would be even better that I would love more and the public would love more. So every year I give myself about three weeks or a month where I just go into that pure process mode and I'm in the studio and I'm just trying stuff, playing around, you know, and just trying to push that creativity. And to date, I still haven't found anything that I love painting as much as... the stuff that I do. And so if I ever do, you'll never see any more of the sun coming through the trees.

20:42 But in the meantime, it's like, yeah, I'm to sing Maggie Mae. How long had you been an artist? Not saying the eight year old Tim, but how long do you really think that you saw yourself as quality and skilled from the time that moment happened to when you painted the sun through the trees and you went, wow, this might be the best painting I've ever painted. period of time? So I studied art as a kid in high school, commercial art, took graphic design in college, and then at 21 just kind of made the decision I'm not talented enough to be an artist. I should have just put a yet on the end of that. would have been a lot more accurate, because I'm a heck of a lot more talented than I was then.

21:26 But I got really serious about my painting probably around 1996. m and then started doing it as a bit of a side hustle. I was a high realism portrait painter and I actually started doing a lot of commissioned portraits. I quit the police force in 2000 and I was painting full time for five years until that force window came out. The first two years I was doing a lot of commissioned portraits. oh I started painting people because when I was getting back into art and you know. I'm an analytical guy. was a detective in our commercial crime unit investigating frauds over $2 million. So like I'm a research guy. It's like, I'm going to get back serious about my art.

22:07 What should I paint? You know, and all everything that I read and said, well, paint what you love. So it's like, well, I had two young boys who were like three and five years old. So I started doing paintings of my boys. And then that led to me doing portraits of other people. And then when I left, I thought I was going to make my living as a commissioned portrait painter only to realize that while I loved painting people, the way I wanted to paint them to create like a good piece of art. I hated painting other people's people the way they wanted me to paint them. And all of a sudden it had turned into a job. And so that was two years after I left the force. um And then I spent about three years where I was painting portraits about half of my time and the other half, was totally in that mode of seeking out influences, trying to learn what I could learn from them.

22:54 And then and then spending time in process trying to create something unique for me. And so it was like a five year process after I was full time until that happened. But the thing is too, I had no idea what I was doing. Now I can actually articulate what happened and how I got there. I've had a number of students that have been able to make that kind of leap in one to two years by kind of following this process of seeking, like mastering the skills. looking out the things that I call dominoes, right? Like what's the one thing, this isn't business too. What's the one thing that you're not really good at right now that if you could master that would have the biggest impact on you and your business and career going forward.

23:34 And we often tend to just avoid things that bring up that weakness as opposed to say, no, I need to tackle that and make that a strength and master it. And so kind of doing this process, you can really fast forward um the timeline. I spent a lot of time focused on things that really didn't move the needle at all and that really were a waste of time. And a lot of time following advice that I believe now is just inherently wrong that I hear artists getting all the time. What when you painted the first one the Sun through the trees and you said this might be the best painting ever You know why what about it that you felt that and obviously you were right What about it? What happened that you looked at that and said it's not just a feeling is it or is that all it is?

24:19 No, well, was. I just went, wow, that is so much better. Like, just know that, like, I'd spent, by this time, I was, I think at that time, I was president of the Canadian Watercolor Society. So I'd associated with a lot of really great artists, right? And I knew a lot of really great art. And I know that feeling when the painting, you know, it's just like, you know, the first time you hear a song that you often, you know, that's gonna be a hit. Right? You just know it. And it's the same thing when you see a painting that just reaches out and makes you just feel something. That was the first time I'd ever created a piece that did that to me. One of my own pieces and me going, my God, is, that's up and that's up there with the artist whose work I do put on that pedestal.

25:06 Right? And so again, I thought that, but it really, it... Whether I felt that or not didn't really matter until the public decided. And so the story there is I was doing an art festival. um And at the time, I was all over the map creatively because I was in that process mode. um And so if you came into my tent, you would see some watercolor portraits, some oil portraits. You'd see some landscapes, some still lifes, some of them very impressionistic, some of them surreal, some in casein, some in oil, some like... every all over the map people would often ask me is this all your work? And I said yeah, I'm because I'm trying to find that voice right so this particular show that piece was there and the they opened the show at like 10 o'clock a couple walked into my booth like five after 10 they bought that painting and then the best thing that ever happened to me in my career they said we've got a we just got here and we want to shop so is it okay if we just leave it we'll pay you now and we'll come back.

26:08 I could have sold that painting every five minutes. Everybody that came into my booth just went, my God. And then it's like, sorry, it's sold. Sorry, it's sold. And then, and then what happened is they were so disappointed that piece was sold. They just walk out of my booth. So I finally, about half an hour, I took it down and wrapped it up because people weren't looking at my other work. So, I mean, but that's the kind of reaction that you have to have to the work. Um, and then the next, the next thing was there was a charity auction. fundraiser for the Burlington Art Center, big art center here. And this was like a black tie affair. This was this was something that Robert Bateman, who's famous Canadian artist, famous internationally, may have heard of him, does a lot of wildlife.

26:50 His he had actually been involved in in supplying funding to get this started. And he always donated a small either original or pencil sketch for the auction that would go for like $5,000 or whatever $7,000. But so there was well-heeled people here, you know, looking to spend money. And so I put two pieces in this new style into that auction. They both sold at auction for double what I was charging for my work at that point. And the next morning, one of the ladies that was involved in the, um, the fund, the committee, she called me and asked me if she could commission a piece at the price that I put on them, not the auction price. And so was kind of like, okay, that's the, that's what it looks like.

27:33 right when you find that thing. ah And then I very quickly went from, that first year where, um again, I think that first year that the style came out, I went from making 25,000 the year before to probably making about 50,000. And then within a few years, I was up into six figures and then multiple six figures without me really doing anything business wise. It was just that. As people saw the work, more galleries wanted to carry my work. More people wanted to buy my work as the demand went up, the prices went up. So my prices went up by five times over the course of the next five or six years. So even with just doing the same amount of paintings, my income was growing dramatically.

28:14 Um, and then I started looking at, at, at, you know, but at that point, I'm still trading time for dollars, right? It's like, as soon as you stop painting, the faucet gets turned off. And so that's when I got into doing limited edition prints of my work. So we, started self publishing just small and then, and I was actually picked up by one of the big publishers, Milpond press. Um, and they were selling my work and doing well, but there had been a thing happened in publishing. was a time when, you know, the top kind of artists would do limited edition print run of 30,000 prints, right? That was back then.

28:54 Yeah. And. And so the artists only gets typically about 7%, 8 % of retail. But when you're 30,000 prints and they're selling for four or 500 bucks, 600 bucks a pop, that's good. But everybody was buying these prints thinking that they were investments, right? Almost like stock certificates. And there was actually a re-aftermarket where stuff would go up. But then it was one of the big crashes in the nineties of the stock market. And all of a sudden everybody's, everybody's in tight spaces. Well, I'll sell my Robert Bateman. prints or my Trish romance or Kincaid, whatever, only to realize everybody else had a stack of them under their bed saving for a rainy day. so the price just plummeted.

29:35 ah And then people started saying, well, if it's going to be limited edition, I really want it limited of a hundred. That's what I was gonna throw out. I was gonna throw out a hundred. Yeah. So now with the big publisher, know, they did a hundred thousand that first year that I was with a big publisher, they did over a hundred thousand in sales of my work and I got like $6,000. And I thought, yeah, this, this is not, um, this is not really a, a model that I want to support. Would you rather do 10 and you make 50? Exactly, right? So that's the thing. that's when I got, and there'd been some dramatic changes. There's been so much change in terms of like, who are the gatekeepers and who has the power here? Because at one time you needed to get this done through Offset Litho.

30:18 So it was a major investment to, know, my dad actually was a head pressman at one of the top fine art publishing companies in Toronto. Well, to get a fine art print on paper, you needed a press that was like, You know, the size of a Mac truck that took that was caught worth over a million dollars took like about six skilled tradesmen to run the press. needed the photographers. You needed the film strippers, the dot etchers. You needed all these skilled tradesmen. So it was very expensive to create prints. And it was only, it was only worth it if you were going to order them all at once, like order 500 prints or whatever. Well, then with the advent of digital printing and G clay printers now.

30:59 you can do it all on your own. do all of my own publishing and with all of the equipment together, know, the camera, computer and printer, you're looking at $25,000 and I can print stuff that my dad, he just passed away last year. He a very good life, but he used to come and look at the stuff that I did and he said nothing in his career that ever came off their presses came close to what I can do. And so now it's like, okay, why am I giving someone 95 % of this? If I can find a way to market myself, then my margins are gonna be like 90 % on it. So that we got into the whole kind of publishing side of things. And then it's like, how are we gonna market it?

31:40 So well, here comes social media. Technology is good and bad, mean, technology led to you being able to have all that equipment for 25,000. And I'm sure that's what you're doing with the book and with the art academy. But here's the question too. What do we make of a guy like Banksy these days? That's a whole different village, right? That's in You here's the question that I want you to push back a guy not from the outside. Do you think there's an argument out here that there will be someday in the future that none of us are going to live to see a hundred years, 200 years that artists and artistry and paintings, the physical won't be valuable.

32:23 I don't think so. think, and you're talking about AI, right? think that even. mean, all of it, we that I could put it in and say, make me a sun behind the trees image, similar to the way that Tim Packer would do and put Mark Perkins philosophy laid on top of it. And really quick, it's going to give me something. Yeah, but here's the thing. What do most people feel about AI? There's two ways people feel about it, right? They either welcome it as an opportunity, which I'm actually part of that too. I welcome it as an opportunity for me to create tasks that I used to have to spend a lot of time doing, or I used to have to hire someone to do, I can do very quickly.

33:08 That part is awesome. It's awesome. That's great. But people are really pushing back against the fact that was this touched by the hand of an artist? And I think that's always going to be there. I think that the more that AI gets out there, the more that things that are created solely by the hand of an artist, craftsman, whatever you want to call them, that is actually going to have more value to people. And it's the same way. mean, I could paint a painting that you probably couldn't tell the difference from a Monet. Right? Because once you get a certain amount of skills, you can do it. That painting that I do might be worth a few hundred or a thousand dollars. The one that Monet did is going to be worth a couple million because Monet did it.

33:51 Right? And so I think it's the same kind of thing is going to happen. There is a real hunger, I think, in people in the way that, and there's a lot of people are just terrified of AI. Right? So a lot of people are just like, they are not going to go near anything in terms of buying something to come into their house. that was created by AI because now that's just furthering the anxiety every time they look at that. But I use AI a lot for YouTube. This is a perfect example. I do a lot on YouTube and that's probably the best place that I've found to market my online art academy. But when I create a YouTube video, what I used to do two years ago was go through the whole video afterwards, marking out the timestamps, creating the timestamps.

34:37 creating the description, then going in on YouTube and putting the keywords in. Now, I just get it automatically, give me the captions, I'm gonna export that as a text file, then I'm gonna go on ChatGPT and I'm gonna say, here's the transcript from my latest video. It's 12 minutes and 35 seconds. Can you give me timestamps? Can you give me a description? And can you suggest keywords up to 500 characters with a comma and a space after them? That's not that used to be four or five hours of my time that was not creative at all. It was just, and so it's taking all of this from the content that I've done that's creative, but it's now that's time I can spend painting instead of doing that.

35:18 So I think that AI, especially as an entrepreneur, it is a really, really good. It can help us with copywriting if you're not good at that at creating hooks kind of ads all of that kind of stuff as long as it's layered on top of your Content your creativity not just going into AI and saying okay. Give me an ad or whatever But you know going in and and kind of uploading all of your stuff right things you believe in Transcripts from you from talking speeches whatever and saying based on this Can you suggest six hooks for an ad for whatever, right?

36:00 That's what you used to have to pay a copywriter to do. Here's what's awesome. I think that, you know, we can get into, you know, the book that you wrote in the Academy. I now know from sitting here and talk us talking for 30 minutes. You didn't just rest on being a great artist. You spent time mastering marketing systems, technology and business. There's no doubt. You've done the work. You have done the work from a marketing perspective on how do I get the word out to tell the world about my paintings, about what I can do. And I think I'm going be really honest. There's a lot of people who stop. I don't want to do that. I just want to be an artist. I don't want to have to do it. Right. And so then what you're going to do is do you want to be a complainer in life and sit here and complain?

36:43 I have this, all this great art, but nobody will buy it. Well, because you won't do the other work. Yep, exactly. If you are an artist, that's, if anybody's listening here and they are an artist or they want to be an artist, the number one thing you need to understand is that you are also an entrepreneur and everything that applies to every other small business owner or big business owner, ideally if you get there, applies to you. It doesn't matter what they're doing. And it's kind of like every time, and I used to, say that to my artists all the time that Like if you say, I don't want to do that, just replace that with, I don't want it bad enough to do that.

37:25 Because one of the things that I hate, some sayings that people, you hear them trotted out all the time, but when you're really kind of, you know, take them apart, they're harmful. And one of the worst ones is that if you do what you love, you'll never have to work a day in your life. It's like, my God, I wish I You know who says that? People who have already made a billion dollars. Isn't that just such a load of crap? Because if you take it apart, it means, well, I shouldn't have to do anything that feels like work then. I'm doing what I love, right? I like to replace that with, if you have the audacity to want the world to reward you with a comfortable living, for you doing the thing that you love the most, you had better be willing to work harder at that than anything you've ever done in your life.

38:12 And if you're not, then get a job and keep that thing as a hobby. because again, if what you love is accounting, it's like, okay, but if what you love is painting or doing pottery or stained glass or playing the guitar, these are all things that millions of people do as a hobby. ah It's like you don't get the world to reward you unless you become great at it. uh so here's what so many of the folks that are really successful in life, what they really know. Nothing is happening until stuff is sold. That's it. Right? Because to your point, if you can't sell your artwork for enough to give you a really good livelihood, so what you can, so then you can do the thing you love.

38:58 If that doesn't happen, it's going to be a hobby. Yep. It's not going to be your career. And so I think there might be some good intentions maybe from these folks saying, find something you love and you won't feel like you have to work a day in your life. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've said it just like you. It's like, I feel like I have to work every day, but there's still things about it I love. But I feel like I have to work. I just, I've never, and all those people, the reason why they're so disingenuous, show me on their worst day in business. I guarantee they weren't loving it. Yep. Yep. There's all kinds of stuff. You're a business owner, right? And so it's like, the thing is there's only one reason to want to do this too.

39:39 Um, I think because for me, when I left the police force, it was a friend of mine, young guy was murdered on the job in the line of duty. And then you, know, when that happens, you take stock of your life. And I just really realized that like I had kind of walked away from art. And I wasn't really painting and I thought, well, when I retire, I can get back to it and then maybe I can turn it into something. And then when my friend was killed and I was in my thirties at the time and so was he, I realized there's no guarantee. It's like, this is, I'm an artist, but I'm not painting. And most people who know me don't even know that I'm an artist. So I just kind of decided, well, I got to get back to doing this.

40:20 But I never ever thought that it was going to be a career. I just needed to get back to doing it because it was the thing I loved. And then I realized that when I made the decision, my wife and I made the decision for me to leave the police force, I knew that for me to reach my ultimate potential as an artist, because by then I'd actually started to become pretty good and I thought, wow, I could actually be really good. If I can do that every day, I'm going to get better quicker and I want to be able to get up every day and paint. Well, there's only three ways to be able to do that. You can have a very rich supportive spouse who just says, well, you go and be fulfilled.

41:01 I didn't have that. You can win the lottery or you can figure out a way to make a living from doing the thing that you love. But you're going to have to spend a lot of time doing things that you don't love. And you're going to have to spend time doing things that you really don't want to do that are just necessary to being a business person, right? Because you're the... You're the CEO of you, whether you're an artist or whether you run a plumbing company or doesn't matter what it is. But if you want to be able to do this and not have another job, you got to figure out a way to make a living. That's it. And I was just saying, people are like, well, I don't want to do that. That's great. Keep your job doing whatever you're doing and painting your spare time. But don't, the worst part though is like, don't come down on and disparage the people who are actually out there doing this and making a good living.

41:51 It's like, it's not for everyone, but it's a choice, right? The message here is not to say what Mark and Tim are saying. We're not saying don't do what you love. We're actually saying do what you love. But don't think it's not going to be work every day. Yeah. And don't think like, love golf. That's a perfect analogy. Right. I love golf. I, I have way over the 10,000 hours in golf. I'm still an 18 handicap. I know no one is going to pay me to play golf at an 18 handicap. Um, and it's the same thing. There are a lot of people out there have been painting for 30, 40, 50 years and thinking, well, I've put in the hours. It's like, yeah, but you're a 15 handicapper. The world's not paying to watch that. Right. It's like, because you know, You can do something for thousands and thousands of hours and just get really good at enjoying doing it mediocre, which is me in golf.

42:41 Or you can spend the time on mastering the skills and improving. Um, and you can get great really quick. There's some young whippersnappers here. We live on a golf course up, up here in, uh, Owen sound on, uh, Georgian Bay, uh, Lake Huron. And we, played with some young guys that are like 19 years old and they took up. golf during COVID and within four years they're shooting under par. But it's because they spent all of that time focusing on getting better. I spend all of my time just focusing on enjoying playing mediocre golf and having a few beers with the boys. So why spend time? You've had a successful life financially.

43:23 get to live on a golf course. mean, you're a guy when we first jumped on here, I went, you've got charisma. This is going to be a fun conversation today. You're you, you see the good in life. You're optimistic. You're you're a good friend. You're good. People like being around you. Life is good. Why spend time writing this book? You can sell your art. Why do this? Okay, I told you before there's quick questions but no quick answers. So it's a bit of a long one. I never ever, my goal was only ever to make as much money as an artist as I would have made from my pension. I thought if I could get to the point where I do that, then it's a win-win. In 2015, I'd already had a really good year going and I had a show, this was in the end of November, so towards the end of the year at a very upscale gallery in Toronto.

44:11 And it was like, the Hollywood Disney version of an artist kind of making it. So the gallery, they closed at five o'clock and then were reopening at seven in the evening for the opening of my show. So I was standing in the front of the gallery in the window in Yorkville, kind of the ritzy area of Toronto, working on a painting. And I could see half an hour before the show, people starting to line up outside the gallery. um The doors opened at seven and people piled into the gallery. had... The gallery had someone there playing live music, waiters were walking around with trays of wine, and the red stickers were going up as pieces sold. And I just was sitting there kind of mentally kind of crunching the numbers.

44:54 And I realized, holy, I'm to make over a quarter million dollars this year from sale of my art. And it was just like, oh my God, that is like, I've made it. And that is so far beyond what I was going for. And it felt really good for a few minutes. And then I had another feeling that kind of descended on me that felt a little uncomfortable. At first I thought I was feeling guilty and I thought, but it wasn't, it was responsibility. Cause I realized I wasn't special. I wasn't the kid in the class that everyone thought was going to be the successful artist. There were every art class I ever took, there were a lot of artists better than me. I always shook out at about maybe the 70th percentile.

45:35 But I knew the things that I had done to get here and I knew I was living the dream that so many people have. And I thought, I have a responsibility to share what I've learned with other artists. So literally the next day I went down to because Toronto is like a Hollywood North kind of thing. There's a lot of very high end kind of film stores and all that kind of stuff. went in and dropped about $25,000 in camera equipment, sound equipment, lighting, all that. Cause I thought I'm going to start a YouTube channel. and I'm gonna start sharing everything I've learned with artists for free. And at that point, there was no thought of monetizing it. It was just like an investment in karma, right? It's like just giving back to art that had given me so much.

46:18 So I started that. Not long after that, a good friend of mine that was a golf buddy, I met his daughter who was just finishing up her degree in landscape architecture, but she was really interested in art. m Make a long story, not quite so long. After her getting to know me, she dropped the bomb on her parents right after graduating that she didn't want to be a landscape architect. She wanted to be an artist. And they were not happy with her. Her dad was not happy with me because he's like, this is all your fault. So I said, listen, listen, I think she's got the fire in her belly. Like talent is something she can acquire. She's good, but I can, I just had a feeling that she was going to do whatever it took. I said, listen, let her know if she wants, I'll mentor her.

47:01 as long as we can film all of our sessions and put them up on my YouTube channel so other artists can kind of learn from that. So we did that. Her name's Brooke Cormier. She is a social media superstar now as an artist, but she was able to earn $30,000 in her very first year. It took me five years of painting full time to do that. And then by the end of her second year, ah she was selling prints of her work internationally. And her work was her work now goes for more than mine. But I was still just doing this as kind of a, a passion project in my spare time. And I'm still focusing on my money was coming. used, you'll find that there's a video out there me on YouTube saying I will never charge for my teaching.

47:45 I'm to make all my money off my rich clients, but I don't want to make money off the backs of starving artists. And a couple of things happened to 2019. I almost died twice. the thyroid from hell. And again, it kind of makes you think about your life. And I was thinking, you the only, I only had one regret when I was thinking this might be it. And I thought that I had, I really hadn't impacted as many artists as I wanted to. Um, so I knew I'd helped Brooke and I'd gotten emails from people from the YouTube that said, you know, they'd followed my stuff and had changed their life. But I really started thinking, you know, that I wish I could have much more impact on many more artists. Cause that was probably one of the things I'm proudest of.

48:26 was that whole period with Brooke and really changing her life. And then I had someone else tell me something that, you know, the whole thing, well, I feel really uncomfortable about charging artists. And they were like, you know, you're being selfish here. That made me feel good. Like I was being somehow noble that I was only just giving it away. But they said to me, if you were actually to treat this as a business and you were able to put a hundred percent of your effort into it and to put money into it, and you could impact 10 or a hundred or a thousand times more artists, wouldn't that be better? And I'm like, yeah. And it's like, well, you have to get over that thing. You're gonna have to create this as a business.

49:06 You're gonna have to charge artists for your teaching. And at the end of the day, the more money you make from that, the more people you're helping. And I got on and it's like, okay. And it's almost like the same sort of thing that I was talking about. People say, and if you're selling your art, you're selling out, right? I kind of felt that as if I'm charging for my teaching, I don't know. But anyway, so in 2020, we launched the Art Academy and that's gone amazing. We've had a number of students gone on to amazing success. It's been a successful business. We just passed $600,000 in course sales in five years. And then everybody, all of my students are like, we need this in a book for two reasons. People need to have this in a low ticket, something that they can spend 10 or $15 on and have.

49:50 But even all of my students, even the ones that are in the mastermind said, we want to be able to just flip through to the chapter on pricing your work or on mindset or on entering jury shows or whatever. We don't want to have to go through 40 hours of course material to try and find that little bit. So I kind of said, okay, I guess, I guess you're right. And so anyways, that was last year. About this time I decided, I guess we're going to write a book. uh So we did. So a couple of things, they're throwing something at me. I said earlier, but you said one thing that I would love us to take away is you said you recognized him, Brooke, when her dad was mad at you and her parents are mad at her.

50:30 You told her dad that, it looks like she's willing to do what it takes. She's got the fire in her belly. It's you can spot that, right? And I knew that even going in because we, her parents were members at the same golf club we were at. And so I'd run into Brooke at social functions while she was still going to university. And sometimes her dad would come over and say, leave Tim alone, right? Because she was always asking me about art. I'd always asking me, this is while she was still pretty, she still had two more years of university to go. But anytime we were together. She always brought the conversation back to art. was picking my brains about my business and kind of, she's like, you're an artist, but you're at this private club with my parents, right?

51:14 It's like, well, what does your wife do? It's like, well, she was able to retire early because things went so well. And so she's like, all of this based on just your art. And I'm like, yeah, I could see the wheels turning. When she said, know, you saw it, she has it. You said the fire in the belly. Yep. Can we think about not Brooke, just think about in general. It's like how you can see it. What is the, what, what's the thing? Like, is it 25 characteristics? Is it, what is it? So it's, first of all, it's a passion, right? But passion is not just loving the thing. Passion is having an overwhelming burning compulsion to master everything about it.

51:58 And then being willing to do the work to do it. I talk, people ask me all the time, like how was Brooke able to be so successful? We met every month and every month I would kind of. critique what she had done that month. we'd look at kind of, first of all, for the first six months, it was all about developing her art. And then it was starting to get her art artwork out there shown and all that. And then it was doing art festivals and social media and all that. But I can tell you the one thing that had made the one most important thing that made her successful is not once in that two year period when I said, okay, this week I want you to whatever. She never once said, I don't want to do that. She just said, Yep.

52:40 And then she went and over delivered. And so it was like, yeah, if you find yourself saying, I don't want to do that, then you may as well just say, I don't want to be an entrepreneur in this business because it's like, well, that's it. It's kind of like saying I'd like to be a doctor, but I don't want to have to take chemistry. It's like, yeah, well, figure out a way to do that. And you'll make $10 million, but you have to, you have to pass chemistry if you want to be a doctor. so it's like, if you want to be an artist. You need to understand business. You need to understand marketing. You need to understand all the other stuff that go in business. Tell us where to go buy this book. can sell your art. So we have the Tim Packer Art Academy, but where do we go to find the book?

53:20 Amazon. So it's available on Amazon now. It's on Amazon, wherever you are, .ca, UK, everywhere. We've gotten so far. So we've hit number one bestseller and I think three different categories already, which I'm very thrilled at, but I'm most thrilled about the reviews. We've gotten 40 reviews so far. And it's like from the U S from Canada, from Sweden, from the UK, I think from Australia, but all the reviews are five star. And that's That's the most important thing for me is that the people that are reading it are really finding the information helpful. So good. All right, we're going to promote it. They're going to kick my butt if we don't get off of here. Hey, uh Tim, thanks for being, thanks for being so authentic about not only a great artist and talking about your paintings and that process, but just see, you're a good business person, but the reason why you're all these things is because you've got the passion.

54:12 The same thing that you saw in Brooke, you could identify it because you have the same attributes inside of you. And I don't believe that this is just passion for art. I bet when you were a detective in the police force and tell your friend from when you knew died, I bet you were really passionate about being a really good detective too, were you not? Not really. I was good. I was I was good. I so again, I all yes, I I advanced up through the rank structure and everything else. But I liked my job. I didn't love it. But you Didn't you still put in the time to do it really well? I put in the time to do it really well, but I didn't put in the time to become great at it.

54:54 Okay. I, right. spend all of like, so I was passionate first about art. Then just, can tell I'm passionate about business. I'm passionate about teaching. I spend my day. I don't take days off. I spend all of my time. If I'm not painting or if I'm not actually working on the marketing or something else, I'm watching YouTube videos to learn what it is I need to know to do whatever it is better. Right? Like I didn't do that on the police force while I was at work. They got a hundred percent out of me. And I always had like amazing performance reviews, but I didn't spend my six days off studying on interviewing techniques or kind of like whatever, right? It was a job. And that's what I'm saying. The reason to want to make a living of the thing you love is that it's the thing you spend your time off doing.

55:40 It's like that's, and you're spending all your time trying to get better at it, master it. But I was really good. as a police officer and I really liked my job, but I wasn't passionate about it. I didn't have the desire to be the best detective on the police force, right? Whereas I have the passion to be, think I'm in the top comfortable place as an artist. But I think in terms of as a teacher who's able to actually teach artists how to make a living from their work, I think I'm one of the best in the world at that. That's a great way to end. The man just said it. Packer, Tim Packer Art Academy, go buy.

56:22 You can sell your art on Amazon. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me.