We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Eleanor Rhinehart. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Eleanor below.
Eleanor , appreciate you joining us today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?
I knew that I wanted to be a full time artist since childhood but I had no idea how to do that. The only options I saw in my small town were teaching, children’s book illustrating and gallery/wall art. I went to Skidmore College for art and concentrated in painting, hoping to be one of those coveted few gallery artists that we studied in school. After graduation I moved to NYC to be a part off the art world there and I worked in a few galleries, even showing my work, but the environment wasn’t an inspiring celebration of art, it felt more like car sales to me. I didn’t love it. A few years later, when I had been working in the corporate world for some time (and hating it) I started to research artistic career options. I stumbled upon Make Art That Sells, an incredible resource of courses led by the extremely successful Lila Rogers Agency. One of the classes I took was an overview of artistic careers with resources and assignments in each area – gift market, greeting cards, editorial, home decor and pattern design among others. I immediately fell in love with the Gift and Home Decor markets. At the time I was painting pet portraits on commission, and used the information I learned in that course to launch my official business, my own website and used companies to produce and drop ship products featuring my artwork directly to consumers. I got started by making artwork based on trends that I noticed and loved from different industries like fashion and home decor, and then producing products using a few different drop-shipping websites. I would take my products to craft shows and started selling on platforms like ETSY, Society6 and Redbubble.
My breakthrough moment was when I started selling a line of products featuring artwork of my home town. I sold mugs, tea towels, coasters and art prints at a local craft show and did extremely well. One of my friends managed a boutique, so I had a few select items produced for them to sell in store. As I focused on the gift items that I could sell in stores, I continued to offer commissions as an income while I was figuring my wholesale business out.
Now I have been able to move away from commissions entirely and focus on expanding the wholesale side of my business. I also invested in equipment to manufacture most of my products in house which allows me to have a faster turn around time with no leftover product. It’s been better for me, my clients and the environment!
Eleanor , 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?
Hi, I am Eleanor, a full time independent artist. I design and manufacture gift items based on specific locations and historical icons to sell online and wholesale at boutiques. My design philosophy is the “delight is in the details” and I love to use historical research and anecdotes from the local community to add insider elements and hidden surprises in my designs. I sell mugs, tea towels, coasters, art prints and Christmas ornaments among other items, manufactured by me in my studio. In this way, I can make products to order, minimizing any unsold product and providing myself, and clients, with cost efficiencies.
I offer a wide range of designs based on towns in my geographical area, and I have worked directly with several shop owners and Museums to create exclusive gift lines for them based on their history and locations.
While I mostly focus on selling wholesale, I also enjoy participating in craft shows and art fairs, especially around the Holidays.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
One of the most difficult and rewarding parts of my journey as an artist has been the internal mindset work I had to go through to shift my beliefs holding me back from pursuing art as a career. Growing up in a small town I only knew of one professional artist, who was a children’s book author/illustrator at the time, other than school/college art teachers and the historical artists we learned about. Even in college these were the only artistic careers discussed, along with the narrative that it would be near impossible to make it. My college career advisor warned me that less than 1% of artists could make a living from art (yes, this was at art school). I didn’t understand the many incredible and profitable careers possible in our industry and so I spent many years frustrated and giving up before I even got started. I bought into the narrative of the starving artist and resigned myself to a corporate marketing job in NYC. Because I didn’t feel like being an artist was a valid career choice I rarely made or even talked about art. What I did do, was make myself completely miserable for more than a few years, almost completely abandoning my passion to make art for the sake of the corporate hustle. In spite of the years, my desire to be a creator never died and I started to seek out ways to bring it back into my life in a more meaningful and joyful way than ever. Eventually I started working on my mindset, what it meant to be an artist and how I was holding myself back, with books like The Artist’s Way and courses like Make Art That Sells and Make It In Design. I started researching professional artists in different industries, following them on social media to understand how their work could translate into products and really getting inspired to take artmaking seriously. When I started painting professionally I also took many business courses online to really understand the opportunities to generate revenue from artwork. In 2018 I lost my corporate job, which was the biggest blessing in disguise, forcing me to focus 100% on generating income from art. To this day I am constantly taking business and art courses online to find new growth opportunities. The reality is I spend about 75% of my time working on the business side of my career with only about 25% of my time spent designing. I would encourage any artist to ignore the starving artist myth because it’s completely untrue, and look to any of the courses I’ve mentioned for growth. I also love helping other artists as much as I can, and they are free to message me anytime on Facebook or Instagram.
How did you build your audience on social media?
I have a very love/hate relationship with social media so I will give all of my advice for creatives who don’t always love it. The good news is you don’t have to have a big following. I launched my business full time with less than 1,000 Instagram and about 700 Facebook followers. Don’t overdo it, focus on the one or two channels where your client is. For me that is Facebook. Posting consistently is the key, you have to keep reminding people that you are there and what you offer. It doesn’t have to be perfect and you can repost images that you’ve used in the past. It’s better to repost than not to post at all.
I use the posting platform Later to schedule posts in advance and have posts go to Facebook and Instagram simultaneously.
I have a small audience but they are the RIGHT audience for me. This is how I got to them:
1. Giveaways either on my own or with a partner where the winner has to follow you and tag a friend.
2. Collect emails at every event you participate in. At events I always host an enter-to-win where entries have to give an email address to win a free item. Sometimes I get over 100 new emails this way.
3. Link your social accounts and have an email sign up link on your website. I offer 10% off the first purchase to new email subscribers.
At the end of the day only 2-6% of your social followers will actually see your posts, so it is much more important for you to connect with your shoppers in other ways like at art shows and through building and using an email list. The best email business course I’ve taken is by Jenna Kutcher, it covers your basic social media approach as well with the end game of building the more critical email relationship.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.eleanorrhinehart.com
- Instagram: @eleanorrhinehart
- Facebook: @ERFStudio
Image Credits
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