We were lucky to catch up with Brittany Torres recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Brittany , thanks for joining us today. The first dollar your business earns is always special and we’d love to hear how your brand made its first dollar of revenue.
My first client is the reason I started my entire business. I had been working in the fine arts industry in Seattle and had the chance to work alongside Juliette Aristides, a renowned classical realism painter. She approached me for help in reviving her damaged website. Instead, I offered to build her a more secure website that fit her brand better and represented her properly online, while also setting her up with social media accounts and email campaigns. I was so excited to offer my services in this way; I had slowly accrued this wide range of seemingly random skills that all led to me being able to build these things for her – and get paid for it! After this experience, a conversation was sparked about how artists really need this type of support, especially in the fine art world. We talked about how overwhelming learning marketing skills can be and how helpful it would be for artists to have an additional level of education in the world of self-marketing and personal branding. With her encouragement, I left my 9-5 desk job and set out to create a business that would cater to artists getting online, and called it The Social Atelier. It was absolutely nerve-wracking, since I was almost literally building my own niche, and I remember asking her on many occasions if she thought this was a crazy idea. But thanks to Juliette’s endorsement, I was able to secure my next few clients and then organically grew from there. I am so fortunate to have had her support over the past four years, from her initial business to our continued work together to this day. What started as a simple service offered grew into a beautiful friendship. These days, I get to support her in return as she continues her career, from providing marketing coaching to traveling with her to art shows across the country. You never know where one client might take you, it could be bigger and better than you ever imagined, and bring you opportunities that inspire you to new levels.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My name is Brittany Torres and I’m the owner of The Social Atelier, an online marketing and coaching business catering to artists and creatives.
As a coach, I help artists navigate the maze of online marketing, create stress-free systems, and develop a mindset that will propel artists forward without having to sacrifice time in the studio.
‘Atelier’ means studio or workshop, and so creating an area where artists can come build their social online presence in a guided way was how we arrived at the name. So often, the business advice we hear about being online is just that – business advice. I like to say that I translate the business mind for the creative heart. Artists can be overwhelmed often by the task of not only creating their artwork, a physical and emotionally demanding process on its own, but also the time and energy required to maintain an online presence needed in order to market and sell their artwork. Many artists are taught everything they need to know about making the art, but fail to receive help in navigating the next steps once they’re out there on their own.
Over the course of the past four years, I’ve explored many avenues for helping my clients. Sometimes it’s focused on techniques, like the group online courses I taught as an Academy where I showed artists how to identify and build all the pieces of their online brand. Other times, it was a social aspect; after the pandemic artists were in desperate need of engagement and so I launched a monthly social group where we met up for drawing events, gallery walks, and group critiques. Some artists need more specific help flushing out aspects of their brand, career, and next steps, and so I offered one one-on-one intensive coaching programs. From workshops to free workbooks, I always loved the creative process of finding where I could continue connecting with artists in new ways. Everyone has a different learning style, and while I find most often that artists have the enormous capability to learn and do the work, they often need the emotional support and accountability of a coach along the way.
I have worked with so many types of artists, from ones straight out of art school, to those mid career who are looking to the next step, to those who are switching things up after a long career. I’m so proud of the work they have all achieved. Because of their hard work, and the help of solidifying their online brand, I’ve seen them get accepted into shows, sell online art classes, start a podcast, switch careers entirely, explore new avenues of revenue, and so much more. One thing they all have in common that excites me the most is seeing their confidence rise in leaps and bounds, start celebrating their successes, and get back to being in the studio with so much less stress.
I think one of the main factors that set me apart in the business was that I wasn’t offering a social media and marketing service – instead, I was teaching artists how they themselves could run their art business. How an artist talks about their work and the relationship they have with their audience isn’t something a marketing service can ever capture, so teaching them how to manage this role instead of hiring it out was what helped me create a niche audience. What also helps me immensely is that I am an artist myself, and so quite a lot of my program topics and issues that I help solve all stem from my own personal experience. Thanks to this, I speak the language of creatives and can share in my client’s hesitations or insecurities. To be a good coach takes trust, and I am always grateful for the trust shared in me by my artists.
I truly believe that when artists are fully supported and embrace their art business, they find their full potential as creatives and gain independence and focus. Over the past few years, I’ve had such an amazing experience coaching artists through this journey. Right now, I’m focusing on continuing to provide that support through free content such as my workbooks, social media, and my podcast.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
I love using my own social media platform as an example when working with my artists. My clients are always shocked that I’ve had such a well-running business and client number with less than a thousand followers on Instagram. While having more followers does mean a bigger reach, that won’t help you at all if they’re not your ideal client. Followers don’t equal sales. Being able to separate yourself from chasing vanity metrics is so important as a business owner starting out on social media, and instead spend energy investing in creating a die-hard niche group in your audience.
I did this by focusing on two things: authenticity and providing solutions. These days on social, people’s attention spans are short and they don’t want to buy into a version of you that’s just a facade. I can’t tell you how many clients I’ve brought in due to my personality. By investing time into being my authentic self, but also by investing in truly reaching out and supporting my followers, they could see I cared, and often that is what helped sell them on investing in me in return more than any sales pitch could. Providing solutions for free sounds like a crazy idea for a business owner, but I firmly believe that the more you give, the more you get. I focused on providing content to my clients that would solve small and immediate frustrations, which helped build both trust and interest. I needed to show them what a coach could offer them, and seeing how helpful it was on a free small scale often created interest in my higher ticket offers.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
I’m actually currently in the middle of a pivot, and it’s been such a crazy turn of events. This time last year I was injured in an accident; I fell and broke my dominant wrist severely. The resulting surgery dealt with a bone plate, soft tissue and muscle damage, as well as nerve damage. I wasn’t able to use or feel my hand for months and went through an incredibly hard recovery that included 9 months of physical therapy. So it was bad. It all happened right at the moment I was about to launch into the next phase of my business, and I felt on top of the world. And then the world titled and everything came to a halt. As an artist and business owner, losing the use of your dominant hand, let alone the trauma of surgery and recovery, was pretty devastating mentally and emotionally. I was forced to come to a sudden halt with my business and focus on myself and my recovery, which was so difficult because I didn’t know who I was if I wasn’t working. Since my recovery, I have been in the works now, a year later, to re-evaluate my business. What worked? What didn’t work? What do I want this to look like going forward? They’re big questions, and reshaping a business that you love is never easy, but learning to put your own needs first I think is always hard for us women entrepreneurs. Being brave sometimes means pulling back and making moves quietly. As I move forward, I’m embracing the fact that my business has never been one-dimensional; it’s been evolving consistently since the day I created it, and that it’s going through another reiteration now isn’t a reflection of failure, it simply is following its natural course.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thesocialatelier.co/discover
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.socialatelier/
- Other: The Social Atelier Podcast with Brittany Torres (I will be starting this podcast back up here in the near future, very excited!) Apple-https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-social-atelier-podcast-with-brittany-torres/id1606457376 Spotify- https://open.spotify.com/show/5q1smZ81qXLDOTrN7X4QzE?si=a319654573734377
Image Credits
By Lila @bylila.ph (this is her Instagram handle for the image labeled A-2)