We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Emily Burpo. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Emily below.

Emily, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear from you about what you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry and why it matters.

I feel that Corporate America gets a LOT wrong in the art world. They have giant machines to mass produce flashy graphic design on a whim, and when you get to mega pass production sometimes the designs are actually stolen from small business owners. Mass production means usually a cheaper price, considering the people running these giant machines are often underpaid to begin with. This leads to another big issue which is devaluing the creative people and the price small business owners put on their hard work. A good example of this is something I have experienced first hand. Part of my small business is designing and selling stickers, I sell my stickers at live shows for $3 each. I design everything myself, make the sheets myself, print from my own printer, use special laminate to keep them shiny and waterproof, cut them with scissors by hand, make the listings, advertise myself, and so on and so forth. At craft shows I sell at, I hear people making comments that $3 for a single sticker is “outrageous” because the table next to mine has stickers for $1 or sometimes bundle deals 10 for $5. Those stickers are usually the ones bought in giant packs from giant online websites that offer special overnight shipping with memberships, so people will flock there for the cheap price and not realize that this is a problem in the creative community. Nobody seems to realize the amount of work a small business owner takes to design “silly little stickers” so they see $3 for 1 sticker as a rip off when they don’t realize how much work is put into making that special hand cut sticker.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I run The Best Ginger Ninja on Etsy, but I’m also a content creator on YouTube and Instagram under the same name! I’ve been drawing original characters since I was around 10 years old. I started drawing with coloured pencils and worked my way up to alcohol markers and watercolours, while I mostly draw with gel pens in my sketchbook, I was heavily inspired by other art YouTubers to make a channel, which I did, then watched them all start making products for conventions and so on. That’s what heavily inspired me to create my small business. I got the supplies and got working. I started off by just making stickers after investing in a new computer, printer, and sticker paper. As time went on I bought a button press to expand my products, and as my business grew I branched into art prints of my illustrations, acrylic charm keychains, and even enamel and acrylic pins. Designing stickers and other products is one of my favourite things since I get to share art pieces of mine that can be appreciated in ways other than on a phone or computer screen for more than ten seconds.

I used to work in retail/food service for five years, so jumping into a small business gave me a head start on learning how to deal with negative feedback and criticism, If any of my clients or customers have any issues I know exactly how to address the situation and help them out. I find that I luckily have a very good target audience/ customer base in the terms that the people who shop from me have the same taste as I do and there’s little negativity, Everyone is usually very relaxed and on board with me trying to fix any issues there may be.

I’m so proud to have found a calling to my creative side that isn’t just fun, but can make other people happy with the items I make. The fact I make things people are looking forward to so they can give as gifts to friends and family, and they will be happy and excited seeing that item, honestly makes me the happiest girl in the world. All I want to do is make others happy and if my pun stickers and cute keychains make someone smile when they receive it as a gift, I feel I’ve made my goal.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

My honest view on NFTs? A total waste of time. Not only do they have a negative impact on the environment, I just feel they’re a waste of money. The way I view it is that, you’re gonna pay X amount of money to buy a picture on your computer. I hear stories of people spending MILLIONS on NFTs, when you can just commission artists for ACTUAL ART! Plus a LOT of NFTs are unfortunately like those “get rich quick” cash grabs that often end up failing in the end. Coming from an artist’s perspective, I like to break down NFTs as this:

If you have X amount of money, and you can afford one thing, either the Mona Lisa, or a scan of the Mona Lisa on the computer for a status symbol, which would you pick? Something that someone made and spent time on, something PHYSICAL in your hands you can have on the wall and show off, or a picture on the computer that can be wiped away in seconds, as well as the value of it just because a computer program said so.

Physical art will forever and always hold it’s original value, there’s no gamble there’s no risk, plus you’re supporting an artist or small business who is an actual person, while an NFT along with every other crypto is constantly at risk of being meaningless. Anything digital such as NFTs can be wiped away faster than people realize, while physical art is there for centuries. Physical art is inspiring and creative, NFTs are carbon copied with minor changes for quick money that means nothing and at the end of the day, you just look foolish dropping hundreds to thousands for a digital mock up of a monkey wearing sunglasses. It’s not cool.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

An important lesson I had to unlearn is friends will always be supportive of your journey. Back when I was working retail I had this “friend” who I’m gonna refer to as “Crystal” for this backstory.

Almost three years ago when I started my business I had several coworkers literally make fun of me to my face about a “sticker business” and how it’s not gonna be successful. At that point I tuned out their negativity and did my job. Fast forward a year and we get a new employee, Crystal who I graduated high school with. She was a friend and we did our job together like normal. She had asked me if I ever did anything creative since I was the art girl in high school. Since I got laughed at by other coworkers I was hesitant to tell her about my business, so when I did tell her and she was happy, I finally had that thought that I wasn’t making a mistake. We added each other on social media and I advertised my products, and every day when I came into work Crystal would compliment the product I had put up the night before. She would gush over how pretty it was, how much she loved it, and she would say she wanted one. I never had offered and said “hey do you want one for free?” since my stuff is relatively not expensive and we worked together so I could just give it to her. Months of gushing over the same sticker and how much she wanted it, but never once made an effort to place an order or ask me “hey if I just give you cash can I get one?” She fully expected me to just give her product for free since I was her friend. Over time we drifted apart and we’re no longer friends, but I did wanna mention this advice: A customer will become your friend faster than a friend will become a customer.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheBestGingerNinja
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_best_ginger_ninja
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebestgingerninja98