We were lucky to catch up with Katie Martin recently and have shared our conversation below.
Katie, appreciate you joining us today. Are you 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?
The burning desire to live entirely on income from your creative work can feel like a pipe dream sometimes. Pie in the sky.
But – it’s based on a few factors that I’ve learned throughout the 23 years I’ve been in business for myself.. Number one – decide how much you need to make in order for it to feel like FULL TIME INCOME. Until you are clear on your financial needs and budget – it’s hard to know how much you need to not just survive – but THRIVE.
Second… how do value your time and creativity? This might be the hardest factor for so many – especially early on in your career. Since most of what we make – falls in the “nice to have” or “luxury” spending category for nearly all of our potential customers – and its not a life-sustaining necessity it can be difficult to put a price on it. It’s hard to place a value on art – which is so subjective. If it took you 6 months to create a painting or a sculpture – but it’s trash – you may not get the $$ back for your time. OR – if it’s amazing – you can sell the original for $$$$$ and also replica prints for $$. The price for art is really dependent on what someone is willing to pay. My best advice is this… brand recognition matters – so focus on growing your brand as you grow your body of work. Air Force Ones can run ya $150 until they do a Louis Vuitton collaboration and then you 10x the cost. That’s brand recognition. Let your target audience learn about YOU – what goes in to creating your work – and what happens behind the scenes. Use social media (FREEEE!) to facilitate this. The more people learn about you and your medium – the more they will connect to it and be willing to spend.
Third…. know and expect seasons of feast/famine and plan for them. Don’t make a lean season mean that you are failing at your craft. This is just the cycle of things. Once I understood that a lot of my work/income as a photographer was seasonal – and took off my ARTIST HAT and put the BUSINESS OWNER one on – I tracked the sales data across a few years to understand the landscape of my sales…. I could adequately forecast that Jan-March would be slower months – I could plan to execute other projects during that time – or work on my internal systems – to increase productivity/efficiency/sales during the busy season.
Fourth – whenever possible – find ways to eliminate trading TIME FOR MONEY. Learn to create some residual income streams. This could be from authoring an online course where you provide some value to your audience – maybe by TEACHING a skill you are inherently great at. This will serve two purposes – it will build your brand recognition and create additional income. Having these kinds of extra income streams running on automation in the background of your business will help you scale your income and make money while you sleep. Then – you can relax and just allow yourself time to play and be more creative!
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?
Hi I’m Katie. I’m 45 years old. I’m a single mom of 3. I live on the Emerald Coast of Florida. I’ve been a creative my entire life. From the time I could pickup a crayon I have been compelled to MAKE something out of nothing but my imagination. I was a singer in a band for 6 years in my twenties. I started a jewelry design company around the same time. Because I needed to photograph my pieces – that evolved into a 13 year portrait photography career.. It was in that genre of work that I bloomed as an entrepreneur and really niched down to working primarily with women. Getting divorced taught me a lot about owning your mess – living authentically – and really BECOMING WHO YOU ARE MEANT TO BE. I also observed a lot of women in my demographic really playing it safe. To a point that they were hiding in plain sight. I could see so much of my old self in them. The one I was just breaking free of. Afraid to come out of the cage that they had build around themselves. Walls to keep out the BAD. But effectively keeping their own light from shining. This is the main problem that I knew I was in a position to try and solve. To help a woman realize who she is and effectively prove to her through the process of a killer photoshoot – providing a supportive unique environment to allow her to experience herself in a way that maybe she had forgotten – or never had before. The proof of her badassery would be in the images I would present to her after. HERE… SEE? LOOK AT YOU. It was powerful to witness this metamorphosis in my studio.
Then, in 2017 – I was doing a nine city US tour – photographing women outside of my local market – and happened to stumble on a makeup brand that really knocked my socks off. It was camera ready and still perfectly natural and suitable for everyday – so I said yes on a whim. I figuring this could just be one more way for me to pour love and confidence into the female clientele I was building. A compliment to the photography business I already had. Little did I know that “yes” would be very transformative as it provided runway for me to connect with women worldwide via the power of social media. Makeup became my catalyst for reaching them… and my photography career proved immensely helpful in my own ability to make compelling quality content. Essentially, I became my best client when it came to shooting/editing/publishing.
When COVID hit the world in 2020 – I kept hustling – trying to reach more and more women who had more time to be online during the pandemic. Now – I have a very loyal community that I LOVE – primarily on Instagram – where I share as much positivity and authenticity as I can. And because SEINT is a direct sales business – I have the privilege of coaching and mentoring other women to do what I do – building businesses and income by sharing makeup to their networks. It’s been 6 years – and my team is over 2600 strong. Wild.
I was signed to the Wilhelmina Modeling Agency in NYC in August of 2023 and I’m excited about the opportunities that await there Who would have thought – 45 and a model. HA! Never say never!
I am also currently working on launching my first online course meant to guide women through a fun exploration of uncovering their true personal style – and at the same time turning over some revealing personal development stones. The course is aimed to launch Black Friday week this November. Stay tuned!
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
Oh man. Being misunderstood is something I learned to accept early in childhood. I was adopted by very loving – but very practical non-creative people. My mom was a high school accounting teacher with a masters degree in business. My dad ran a successful wholesale distribution company. They operate on checks and balances. I was a wildling. I was dreaming in technicolor and they looked at me like I had three heads. They paid for my college education – but I remained a gypsy in their estimation into my early career. Singing on stages – designing jewelry. Traveling from city to city participating in fine art shows and not making much of a profit. As much as I wanted to please them and make them proud – I couldn’t take the desk job with the safety and security of a pension, health benefits and a 401k. To do so would be to counterfeit my very existence. I was certain I would wither and die. I know that seems dramatic… but I tried it and almost did. I got Mono so bad my first desk job out of college – I thought I was dying. Turns out – I was just allergic to cubicles. Instead I “adulted” and paid for my own healthcare bought and sold real estate with my singing money at the right time and squirreled away my extra pennies in a SEPIRA. More than one way to get there Mom + Dad. :)
It was a long road, but I did it my way. Lots of weaving my way through various mediums (stage performance, jewelry design + manufacturing, professional photography, makeup artist, and now content creator). And. you know what – it’s OK! It takes as long as it takes. And even though it’s “unconventional” – that doesn’t diminish the work. The world needs the misfits and rebels the same as the doctors and lawyers. We paint the world with empathy and passion and love and heartbreak and healing and the courage to go against the grain. And it may take a million tries to write that #1 hit song… but the journey in writing the other 999,999 was worth it.
Do I feel like “I’m there!” I’ve arrived? HELL NO. I’m just getting started. There’s plenty big dreams left up in this stargazing brain of mine… so much I still want to accomplish. So many lives I want to impact. And THIS MOMENT IN HUMANITY more than ever before is the TIME. Its the renaissance we have truly needed, I believe. The birth of social media and the idea that content creators and community builders with influence can dictate spending trends and impact the marketplace and our culture at large is FUCKING AWESOME. The idea that big companies now pay attention to non-celebrities and their networks and their ability to express themselves when budgeting their ad dollars is so cool. The age of seeing OURSELVES – the real people – on billboards and runways is pretty incredible. Representation is everywhere. And I love that! So long as we don’t lose sight of the aspirational value of what makes a certain special few a cut above. We can’t water things down to a point where that ideology is lost. We have to keep striving for EXTRAORDINARY and therefore need examples of that to look up to. Participation medals and gold ribbons for mediocrity can SUCK IT IMHO. I’m still old school that way.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
Getting divorced was a really big turning point in my life. I would assume it’s pretty pivotal for most anyone. It forced me to confront the fact that 1) life doesn’t always work out the way you had planned – and 2) it’s better to live authentically than to play “pretend” for the sake of keeping up appearances. It was scary as hell. Felt like walking through fire. Knowing full well I was going to disrupt and disappoint a lot of people I really cared about. I also knew I was inviting a buttload of judgment and being utterly misunderstood my way.
However… on the other side of all that drama is FREEDOM. And once you taste it you know damn well it was worth the trip. And honestly – that’s what I want for everyone. Not drama and divorce and hardship and walking through hellfire. Its courage and confronting yourself. It’s about radical honesty. It’s about finding the YOU that’s at the core of who you are and handing her a microphone. That’s my mission. You can be YOURSELF and have it ALL.
It’s about dropping what’s accepted, polite, filtered and safe. And stepping into the freedom of being unique and weird and awesome. The world really needs more of that.
We are so conditioned. I wanna shampoo that shit right out and let you just go become who you were always meant to be.
And if makeup helped me build a platform online to reach women across the globe – and now Wilhelmina offers me a way to amplify my voice – then I am grateful beyond measure to connect with these guarded women who remind me a lot of myself and help them unlock the cage.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.katiemartinstudio.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katiemartinstudio/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KatieMartinStudio/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb68M_PHnw2CiyY1VIhGxMQ
- TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@katiemartinstudio
Image Credits
Katie Slater