Happy New Year from all of us at Make Art That Sells! The start of a new year is always so exciting, isn’t it, like the start of a new page, or a new sketchbook? And maybe a little overwhelming too. You want it to be perfect, right? We say: play. Get messy. Have fun and make mistakes. We can’t wait to fill the year right up with your amazing art.
Make Art That Sells manifesto by student Kara Kramer. When you play and have fun, you make better art. People buy your joy. That’s how you make art that sells!
We’ve got loads of awesomeness coming up, from Assignment Bootcamp (the perfect way to start filling that new-year-new sketchbook!) to Lilla’s new Editorial Live to Illustrating Children’s Books and so much more.
First off though, we’re kicking off with three FREE fab days of MATS prep to launch our first course of the year, MATS MBA (Money BadAss). If your new year resolution was to kick your creative business into gear this year, then MATS MBA is just what you’re looking for. Co-taught by top art agent Lilla Rogers alongside award-winning entrepreneur and bestselling author, Beth Kempton, it’s a three week crash course in building a thriving career doing what you love.
What’s a MATS Prep? It’s a daily set of free exercises to get prepared for class, or just to have some creative fun, and they’re a great way to see what Lilla’s playful, kooky teaching style is all about. MATS Prep starts Tuesday, January 8th and we’d love you to join us! Each day we will post the prep onto the MATS blog here. Don’t forget to share your work and use #MATSprep on Instagram!
PLUS we’re also hosting a FREE Facebook Live with your MATS MBA co-teachers, Lilla Rogers and Beth Kempton, on Friday, January 11th at 2.30 pm EST/7.30 pm GMT. With the theme “Blurt out your dreams”, Beth will be sharing some of her cool career stories and master teacher Lilla will be translating them into teachable moments that you can use. RSVP for the event here.
Your MATS MBA co-teachers: award-winning entrepreneur and bestselling author Beth Kempton and top art agent Lilla Rogers
For example, we caught up with Beth recently and she told us about one of the first times her entrepreneurial spirit shone through!
She told us: When I was seven my parents were called in to school to speak to my teacher about my bad behaviour. It was the first time anything like that had happened, and they were very concerned.
We had just been on a class trip to the local farm. On the way in there was a small shop, and I noticed a basket full of stripy treat bags filled with feed for the animals. But there were not enough for all the class, so I thought it would be a good idea to use my pocket money to buy them all. I persuaded the shop assistant to give me some extra paper bags, reallocated the feed so there was enough for one bag per child, and sold the lot at a small profit. I think that’s what you call a win-win, right? Wrong. It turns out some of the other children had gone home and told their parents about this, and those parents had complained to the teacher, hence the phone call from school.
The entrepreneurial spirit is in us from a very early age. We don’t all nurture it, sometimes others try to put it out, and sometimes we quash it ourselves in favour of more convenient societal roles than ‘business owner’, especially as women. But the truth is, it is a flame that burns brightly when we feed it with ideas, confidence, community, strategy and a sensible approach to money. I’m pretty sure that’s why I spent the first ten years of my career working with big brands and businesses, to learn the ropes on a global stage, and this past near-decade running my own business, implementing everything I had learnt to do something that really matters to me.
If you want to make your creative career a success, you need to take your business seriously, nurture the entrepreneurial spark inside you, keep on investing in your own growth, be to learning practical tools to help you, and keep on going. But that is not easy alone. That’s why we created MATS Money BadAss (MBA), where Lilla and I team up to bring you the best of our knowledge from our combined 50+ years working in and around businesses, to help you craft the business of your dreams, while you make money and have fun along the way.
But the best bit is this. When my dad heard the tale, he roared with laughter and apparently said, “That’s my girl. She won’t be getting a telling off from me.”
One of our previous MATS MBA shared this graph in our exclusive MBA Facebook group. MATS MBA will help you create your own formula for success – and it works!
Or Lilla told us about one of her favorite jobs when she was working as an illustrator in NYC in maybe the late 80s or early 90s. She says: I was in my mid-30s and living in Brooklyn and my studio was an unfinished space in a Noho storefront loft that I shared with two architects, it was a complete happy mess actually.
Anna Wintour, iconic editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine, called me up and asked me to go to any restaurant I wanted in New York city, so we went to Indochine, also in Noho. It’s a very cool restaurant that is still there today.
Indochine restaurant in NYC, where Lilla was taken for lunch by Anna Wintour when she was working as an illustrator
I took a few friends with me, spread out my pastels and ended up doing a sketch of our waitress and some of the food we had. The piece was for the Brooklyn Academy of Music program for Phillip Glass’s new opera.
Lilla’s sketch from her lunch at Indochine that was used in the program for Phillip Glass’s new opera at the Brooklyn Academy of Music
What an amazing opportunity to learn from two badass entrepreneurs! What’s so cool and useful for you about Lilla and Beth is their huge wealth of experience and success. Lilla is a top art agent who has also been an illustrator, she runs VIP retreats and is now an ecourse magnate, while Beth has written two books alongside numerous articles plus TED talks, she coaches, and is the founder of four ecourse websites. Between them they have so many different income streams that they are able to talk to you about and pass on their knowledge, experience and recipe for success! Class starts January 14th – don’t miss out!
Lots of love
The MATS team xxx
P.S. Don’t forget, if you want to spend a whole year with art agent Lilla and her inimitable wit and wisdom, as well as all our other wonderful teachers, there’s still time to grab our amazing My Year of Art School bundle at 20% off! With our unique LIVE classes giving you motivation, inspiration and accountability, they’re a new year’s resolution you’ll definitely keep!