Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Eric Nash. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Eric, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

Success is often an external idea based largely on money, image, ego and cultural ideas. Real success is personal inner happiness and contentment – knowing and accepting yourself for who you are and building your life accordingly. It’s also essential to have some sort of spiritual truth that’s bigger than yourself. Just something that elevates you and gets you past your ego. I know many fabulously successful people who on the outside look like they have it all. They don’t. Money and attention does not always mean success and happiness. In fact it often means dissatisfaction and endless problems.

When I was growing up I knew a man who was a door-to-door salesman. He loved people. He walked his route daily. He and his wife owned their simple well-kept home mortgage free. They had one child. Every two years he treated himself to a new car and he always dressed to the nines. He lived on a cash basis with no debt. He was an individual sales entrepreneur without a staff and problems. Simplicity and walking daily made him a rare example of a male who lived to be 100. He was robustly happy. He was a huge success in my mind. He was kind and fun to be around with a great sense of humor.

Many wealthy “successful” entrepreneurs allegedly follow their so-called passion or are on a mission often times do it because it is a status based endeavor and not born of their personal truth. And now they are encased in countless problems, massive debt, high stress, rage and frustration and they treat people like crap. That’s not happiness or success. That’s just sad. You have to do what you truly love deep down or you die spiritually. You have to be yourself, your true self.

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

I’m involved in multiple businesses and always have been. I’ve been an entrepreneur since age 14 when I started a house painting business. I’m a lifelong artist and that is the core of my business. I also have a retail art + design boutique called Wolf in Palm Springs with my partner of 30 years, Mark Rose and I am a large scale generational farmer and recently started working with non-GMO soybean crops.

At age 4 I looked down at a finger painting I was doing and distinctly remember that this was something I loved. I liked making images and art. I never thought twice about it. I just kept drawing and painting throughout my childhood. I took community art classes for kids, checked out library art books, went to museums and just did what I loved relentlessly. I couldn’t stop myself. I think it was because it took me away from some very negative realities in my childhood. It was both a coping mechanism and it also rewarded me with attention and personal satisfaction. But I never saw it as a passion or a mission. I saw it as a life, a life of love. As something that would allow me to wake up every morning happy and ready to create. I wanted to avoid drudgery at all cost which so many other people chose because of money or status. I have never wavered.

As a young person you need to project yourself in the future because there eventually comes a time when if you don’t choose the right life you are trapped and just going through the motions. That’s miserable. That was my father. His favorite quote was by Henry David Thoreau from 1854 which says, “Most men (people) lead lives of quiet desperation.” How true! I wanted to be happy. So I made decisions based on that alone, not money or status.

I eventually went to college for art. I can’t tell you how many people told me that I wouldn’t be able to make a living in art. But I thought, what else can I do? I can’t stand anything else so this will have to work. And it did. I focused on being so good they couldn’t ignore me. After college I went into graphic design, advertising and branding to make a living but in the background I never left behind the idea of being a fine artist. I slowly made the transition back to pure art and here I am, happier and more financially successful than I would have been had I chosen another path that didn’t suit me. I knew who I was and accepted it. It became about building a life of contentment. Do what you love and the money will come. That is so true. And if you’re happy you’ll make other people happy.

I don’t have a brand. I have a life. My work created by that life has become my brand or image. It’s taken on a life of its own organically in the art marketplace. I do have a look or style but ultimately the only thing that sets me apart is that I took the time to learn and nurture something that few can do and that I love.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

In 2008 I was in multiple businesses aside from art. That included a retail boutique and a production company. The writer’s strike in LA happened and then recession hit and I was clobbered. I was $500,000+ in debt and nearly lost everything. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I pivoted quickly and jettisoned everything that wasn’t relevant to art and only focused on art 100%. Before then I had balanced art with these other businesses, some of which I had no business being in because I wasn’t interested or passionate about them. It taught me that you have to be focused. You can’t multitask effectively and everything you do you have to love. I narrowly averted bankruptcy, doubled down on art, did anything and everything to build that aspect of my business and life and within 2 years I was robustly stable just through focusing on one single thing that I loved. I’ve since gotten into other businesses with partners but now with a much better understanding of what my interests and capabilities are. I’m much more careful and smarter as a result of near failure. And my art career is center and has taken on a life of its own. Had I not committed wholeheartedly back in 2008 I would not be as happy as I am now. Sometimes you just have to admit defeat and not go down with the ship. You have pivot, scale back and reinvent.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I only have 2500+ followers on Instagram. As an artist that’s not many. I feel that with social media you get a much better return and effect if you focus on quality over quantity. I know many creative people and artists with 10,000 or 30,000 or even more followers who only get around 200 likes or less on a post because so many of those followers are fake, not interested or not really into you and your brand or product. That means they are getting a tiny percentage of responses from their posts, almost nothing in comparison to their audience size. I get about a 10 – 20% response rate for posts and multiple sales via Instagram because the people who follow me actually know me or are truly interested in what I’m doing. Less is more too. Over posting is a disease. Quality posting yields results.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ericnashart.com
• Instagram: ericnashart
• Facebook: Eric Nash Art and Eric Nash (Yucca Valley)
• Other: With my partner Mark Rose we have a retail boutique in Palm Springs… www.wolfcontemporary.com

Image Credits
Mark Rose