We caught up with the brilliant and insightful MJ King a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
MJ, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with a hypothetical question – if it were up to you, what would you change about the school or education system to better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career?
I would change the perpetuated myth of the starving artist that starts to be taught extremely early in children.
I knew I wanted to be an artist from a very young age and I was incredibly lucky to not only have supportive parents but also many artistic opportunities available to me that the vast majority of students don’t have. From kindergarten through 8th grade I was taught and tutored by my elementary art teacher. I attended all of her summer art camps and went to her house on weekends where she taught me personally how to draw from life. She really helped me build a strong foundation and love for art and art history that I still carry with me to this day. From there I was accepted into Booker T Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts where I spent four years exploring every medium imaginable and building a strong portfolio for college applications. I believe I ended up applying to 7 art colleges total, with absolutely no backup plan, and was thankfully accepted into every single one. I chose to accept my place at Ringling College of Art and Design in 2017 where I studied Illustration with a focus in Visual Development. I grew astronomically at my time in college and it seriously prepared me for my life and career afterwards. We not only studied drawing, painting, design, etc but what to do with these skills in order to make a living after graduation. We had an entire class on starting your own shop, social media management, contracts, marketing, etc that has proven to be invaluable to my success today.
I decided to tell this recap of my education journey to highlight just how privileged I was and how, despite this, it still took me until I reached college to learn that the starving artist narrative was a lie.
I’ve had quite a few “a-ha” moments throughout my life as an artist but one of the biggest ones was realizing just how many job options there are. Take an animated movie for example. Of course there are the obvious jobs like animators, background designers, character artists, visual development artists, etc. But even apart from the thousands of artists it takes to create the movie itself, you can’t forget the artists that created the movie trailer and advertisement posters, the fashion designers that dress the actors at the movie premieres, the musicians who compose and perform the film’s score, the artists that design the toys and merchandise sold based on the film, among so many others. Once you start to see it, you can’t unsee it. Absolutely everything you see around you was made by an artist.
I have many friends whose families are openly unsupportive of their choice to become an artist professionally because they believe it isn’t a good career choice and that it’s unrealistic. Essentially this all comes from a place of fear, fed by misinformation and lack of education in the world of art in general. Too often when people imagine an “artist” they only think of fine artists that make modern or classic art and hang it in a gallery. There is nothing wrong with this of course but gallery/fine artists are only one small segment of the artist population! I believe if students were taught from a young age all the different and amazing options out there for creative people there wouldn’t be such a horrible stigma. We could get rid of the starving artist myth and the world would be a much more colorful place full of all the artists who otherwise never would have known it was an option.
MJ, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I graduated college in 2021 when Covid was still rampant and jobs in the animated film and entertainment industry were quite hard to come by. I was struggling to find work and was slowly realizing I was completely burnt out from college. I worked myself to the bone on my senior thesis and I was losing passion for the thing I loved most in the world. While living back at home I eventually got a job offer to work as a concept artist for a local company that designs and creates themed play interiors for kids spaces. While it wasn’t exactly my dream job, I got a paycheck and the work was actually quite easy for me after the intensity of my college education. The job allowed me to “reset” so to speak. I could mindlessly create what they needed me to, while internally I was recovering from intense burn out. It actually ended up being the thing that saved me. Honestly, if I had jumped into a job at an animation company right away I probably would have been miserable.
During this time of extreme burnout I was also going through a lot in my personal life. It felt like my career wasn’t going anywhere, my life was falling apart, and I had absolutely no energy to fix any of it. The only thing that brought me happiness was books. Reading used to be one of my biggest passions but when I became too busy with school it simply fell through the cracks. I saw on TikTok that everyone was reading the book series A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas and decided to give it a try. Long story short that decision changed my entire life.
I was immediately hooked and for the first time in a long time I had the urge to create something. It felt like my creativity, that had been so dormant for months and months, was finally waking up.
I was very active in the bookstagram/booktok communities and noticed that there were only a few main shops that sold bookish merch. As an artist that loves epic landscapes and illustrations, the market was seriously lacking diversity. Most of the shops sold minimalist, simple designs on apparel or candles, which is fine, but I wanted to create designs that were much more colorful, detailed, and unique.
I made a few friends in the community and they encouraged me to make a shop of my own. I figured that I already wanted to make fanart anyway, why not try and sell it to make a few bucks on the side?
It turns out I made a bit more than a few bucks because about a year after starting my business I was able to quit my concept artist job and take on the shop full time! I won’t lie and say it was easy, there were many times I considered shutting down, but I was too inspired to stop and eventually came up with the idea that truly took my shop to the next level: the windows.
My best selling product, by FAR, are my Fantasy Windows. Essentially, they are small gothic style windows that sit on your bookshelf (or hang on your wall) and allow you to “look” out into your favorite fantasy world, like a portal! I design each window frame and landscape specifically with a fantasy location in mind, hiding easter eggs wherever I can for the most dedicated fans.
If you were to ask what the three main pillars of my personality are I would probably say fantasy books and worlds, landscape painting, and architecture, specifically gothic, so this product is probably the most perfect representation of who I am as a person. Coming up with the idea felt like everything fell perfectly into place, like it was meant for me. I’m honestly so proud of it and I’m overjoyed at the response I’ve received from customers.
The main thing I would love for people to know about me is that my mind is an endless well of ideas. I have so many ideas for future designs and products it would literally take me a decade to complete them all. I’m so happy and beyond grateful that people enjoy my windows but they are truly just the beginning.
Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?
At the very end of my first fiscal year, despite having a hundred or so orders, I was down about $200 from where I started. This was incredibly disheartening because for months I had worked 40+ hour weeks on top of my full time day job. I was with family for Christmas, exhausted, and seriously considering shutting down my shop, when I suddenly had the idea for the windows. It was like spark went off in my head and I knew I had something big. I remember thinking to myself that this was my last hope, if people don’t like this then that’s the end for my shop. Luckily enough it went completely viral and I sold over 1,500 windows in my first round of preorders! It was enough to not only keep my business alive but I was able to quit my day job and take on the shop full time!
How did you build your audience on social media?
It took me a year before my shop hit 1k followers but in 2023 alone I got to over 22k with the help of a few viral videos. There isn’t exactly a formula to make a post go viral but there are definitely things you can do to help. I created a list of my best general and specific social media advice, I hope it helps!
My number 1 piece of advice is patience. Social media is the most frustrating thing on the planet but getting angry at it will do nothing but harm you in the long run. The algorithm is the kind of bully you can’t push around, but instead you have to be clever. Do your absolute best to play the game and not break rules. The last thing you want is to get shadowbanned as your account may never fully recover.
Similarly, don’t pay for ads. I know it’s tempting but it’s a way social media platforms trap you into paying for engagement. Once you’re flagged as an account that is willing to pay for it they will artificially limit your reach to pressure you into paying for it again. Building a following manually takes much longer but is infinitely more reliable and safe.
Actually be familiar with the social media platform and how it works before using it, they’re all different and you won’t get good traction with your posts if you don’t know how to post “correctly”.
Find a niche and stick to it. I sell in the bookish community by using bookish hashtags and curating my posts to look like ones made by popular bookstagramers. If my posts looked like ones marketed towards people who love sports for instance, my posts wouldn’t get nearly as much reach because my target audience would scroll on by. It’s also totally fine to look up accounts similar to you and use them as inspiration.
On Instagram, aesthetic is everything. Cúrrate your homepage so it looks cohesive and put together. People will want to follow you based on that more than anything else. Editing photos can take a long time but it is absolutely worth it.
You will have good weeks and bad weeks. Don’t let your good weeks make you overconfident and don’t let your bad weeks discourage you. If one of your posts pop off, run with it! Try and keep the engagement going.
Interact with your followers! Respond to comments and dms, post on your story often, create polls and question boxes for people to interact with, show behind the scenes content so people can see that you’re a real person running the show. Nowadays people don’t want to support huge companies, they love to see the small business owner their money is supporting. It’s also very encouraging when someone receives a response to their comment or dm, it will make them want to do it again in the future.
Be as kind and genuine as possible. People are attracted to those that radiate positivity, if you can achieve this with your shop you won’t have a problem gaining/keeping followers. Of course it’s okay on occasion to discuss deeper topics but on the whole try and keep it light.
Make sure your icon is simple and easy to remember. Color especially is the main thing people will think of when trying to recollect your shop so having an icon that’s a solid bright color with a simple black or white logo is perfect.
Make sure your hashtags aren’t too big or too small. If you use hashtags such as #artist or #art, your post will never be seen because it will immediately be taken over by the thousands of other posts that used that same hashtag at the same moment you did. On the contrary, if you use a hashtag that’s too specific there won’t be anyone following that hashtag and no one will see it. Using hashtags with 10k-100k is a good range and every now and then I add relevant hashtags with a larger following as well, just in case.
I should mention that hashtags on tiktok are different and I would recommend using the biggest ones you can find combined with a viral sound. For both reels and tiktoks, the sound is EVERYTHING. Use trending sounds to boost your reach. Occasionally I’ll scroll through the discover/for you page just to find sounds I like.
Find or start engagement groups! This was what really helped me when I first started my Instagram account. I had a couple hundred followers at the time and joined a small group where we would all go like, comment, share, etc each others posts to help trick the algorithm into thinking the post was doing really well. It can seriously help your reach as Instagram decides whether or not your post is worth promoting in the first 10 minutes.
Giveaways are SO helpful, especially if the prize is something unique that a lot of people want. Having people like, save, share, comment, etc is the perfect combination to have your post do really well and gain a lot of new followers.
I know this sound incredibly overwhelming but take it one day at a time, you don’t have to have it all figured out right away!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.shopambrosiaandhoney.com
- Instagram: @shopambrosiaandhoney
- Other: Tiktok: @shopambrosiaandhoney
Image Credits
Kayla Izzo Elizabeth Aydlette MJ King