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Do you ever feel like your business is drowning in a sea of sameness, especially with AI making everyone’s copy sound alike? In this episode, I chat with Miriam Schulman, author of the best-selling book “Artpreneur” and host of The Inspiration Place Podcast (ranked in the top 0.5% of all podcasts globally). Miriam shares some truly refreshing insights about how entrepreneurs and creators can stand out in our increasingly noisy, AI-saturated world. If you’re tired of sounding like everyone else and want to connect with your ideal customers in a way that feels authentic and effective, this conversation is packed with practical strategies you can implement right away.
Standing Out in an AI World: Authentic Messaging That Connects
In a world where AI tools are making everyone’s content sound increasingly similar, how do you ensure your business stands out from the crowd? That’s the question I explored with Miriam Schulman in our latest episode of the Agents of Change Podcast.
Miriam is the author of the best-selling book “Artpreneur” and host of The Inspiration Place Podcast (ranked in the top 0.5% of all podcasts globally). Having generated over $2 million from her coaching programs and helped countless artists break into six-figure earnings, she knows a thing or two about cutting through the noise.
The Customer-Focused Messaging Mistake
One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make with their messaging is focusing too much on themselves and not enough on their customers.
“They’re talking, they think they’re talking to other artists or whoever it is that they are. And they’re attracting people who do what they do. And instead of attracting the people who want what they do,” Miriam explained. “They’re focused way too much on their own why and not the why of their customer.”
This resonated deeply with me. How many times have we seen businesses (including our own) talk endlessly about their passion, their mission, their story—without connecting those elements to what matters to their customers?
The Who, What, and Why Framework
Miriam suggests using a framework that considers both sides of the equation: your creative side and your customer’s side.
Your creative side focuses on:
- What you do
- How you do it
Your customer side focuses on:
- Who they are
- Why they care
The mistake happens when businesses focus exclusively on their own “who” and “why” without connecting to the customer’s perspective.
“Whenever you’re writing any copy, whether that’s a post on social media, whether that’s your about page, anytime you’re talking, you have to think about what is their who, who am I talking to and what is their why,” Miriam said.
She shared an example about a hypothetical bakery owner who might be tempted to write: “I was really stressed out during the pandemic, so I started baking and that really relaxed me. That’s why I founded Eddy’s Edibles.”
The problem? Your customer doesn’t care how much baking relaxes you. They want to know what’s in it for them.
When Your “Why” Matters
This doesn’t mean your story is irrelevant. Miriam points out that your personal “why” becomes powerful when it overlaps with your customer’s “why.”
“If I was a baker who saw that there weren’t enough inclusive wedding cake toppers because I had that experience… then your why does overlap with your customers’ why,” she explained. “That’s when it’s very important to tell that story, but it has to matter to your customer.”
As business owners, we need to ask: does my origin story actually matter to my potential customers? If I’m a business coach who left corporate America to start my own business, that’s relevant to clients who dream of doing the same. If not, it might be better left unsaid.
Embracing Your Inner Weirdo to Stand Out
In her book “Artpreneur,” Miriam has a chapter called “Embrace the Inner Weirdo,” which helps entrepreneurs unpack what makes them special and different.
“AI is great, but it’s like you put bad stuff in, you’re not gonna get good stuff out,” she noted. “So you really have to train that robot to understand what makes you different.”
This is a crucial point in an age where more businesses are relying on AI tools for content creation. Without first understanding your unique voice and perspective, you’ll end up with generic, soulless copy that sounds like everyone else’s.
Miriam challenges business owners to ask themselves: “What makes you the most interesting baker/digital marketer/web designer that they can find on the internet?”
“The more you can dig into what makes you tick as a person, what makes you tick as an artist, what are your values, and not being afraid of alienating people along the way, because there’s just no money in the middle,” she emphasized.
That last point is particularly powerful. By trying to appeal to everyone, you often end up appealing to no one. Your unique perspectives, experiences, and even quirks are what will attract your ideal customers—and naturally repel those who aren’t a good fit. That’s not just okay; it’s necessary.
Avoiding the AI Pitfalls: Hesitant Language
If you do use AI tools in your marketing (and let’s face it, many of us do), Miriam warns about one common trap: hesitant language.
“No matter what prompt you give it, even if you give it the prompt do not use hesitant language, it will still use it,” she said.
What exactly is hesitant language? Phrases like:
- “I believe that…”
- “I strive to…”
- “I aim to…”
- “I hope to…”
These phrases significantly weaken your messaging. Instead of saying “I strive to make good website design,” simply state “My website design is…” or better yet, focus on the benefit to the customer.
This is something I’ve noticed in my own experiments with AI tools. Even the most sophisticated models tend to inject cautious phrasing that dilutes the impact of the message.
The Surprising Truth About Email Marketing in 2025
While much of our conversation focused on messaging, Miriam shared some eye-opening statistics about marketing channels that I think are worth highlighting.
“Email marketing is one of the biggest needle movers for all of my clients,” she revealed. “So many of them have been taught to rely on social media and Instagram, and I don’t have to tell you how that has been declining year over year over year.”
The numbers are striking:
- When Miriam first wrote her book, Instagram’s average engagement rate was 1%
- By the time she edited that chapter, it had dropped to 0.6%
- Now in 2025, it has fallen to just 0.4%
To put this in perspective, she explained: “If you want 24 people to see your email, open your email, and we have a 24% open rate, you only need 100 email subscribers to get that same effect. On Instagram, you would need 6,000 followers to have 24 people engaging.”
This reinforces something I’ve been advocating for years: don’t build your business on rented land. Social media platforms will continue to change their algorithms in ways that usually don’t benefit businesses, while email remains a direct line to your audience.
The Creativity Fix: Working With AI, Not Against It
So how do we use AI tools effectively without losing our unique voice? Miriam suggests a process she calls “The Creativity Fix.”
First, do the deep work of understanding:
- Your unique quirks and values
- What makes you different from competitors
- Why people want what you have (which might be different than you think)
Then, when using AI tools like ChatGPT (which Miriam affectionately calls “Hal”), give it specific prompts that incorporate these insights.
For example, instead of asking “Why does somebody want a cookie?” ask “Why does somebody want a cookie who shares these values?” and then list values that might seem unrelated to your product but are important to you.
Miriam shared how she helped an abstract landscape artist who valued women’s empowerment. By incorporating these values into the AI prompts, they developed powerful messaging about creating “a woman’s sanctuary” through art—connecting the artist’s work to deeper emotional benefits for buyers.
The Bottom Line: Be Authentically You
The thread running through our entire conversation was authenticity. In a world where technology makes it easier than ever to create content, the businesses that will thrive are those that remain distinctly human.
As Miriam put it, “There’s just no money in the middle.” The more you understand what makes you and your business unique, the more effectively you’ll attract your ideal customers and build a sustainable business.
Whether you’re an artist, a baker, a digital marketer, or any other type of entrepreneur, the principles remain the same: focus on your customer’s why, embrace what makes you different, avoid hesitant language, and leverage direct marketing channels like email.
By doing so, you’ll stand out in an increasingly homogeneous digital landscape and create connections that translate into real business growth.
Stand Out in a Noisy Digital World Episode Transcript
Rich: My next guest is a business coach, speaker, and the founder of The Inspiration Place, where she helps artists and creative entrepreneurs build profitable businesses. She’s the author of Artpreneur, a bestselling book with over 400 views on Amazon, and a 4.7-star rating, proving its impact on artists and entrepreneurs worldwide.
As the host of the Inspiration Place Podcast ranked, by the way, not in the top 5%, not in the top 1%, but in the top 0.5% of all podcasts globally. Her insights have reached thousands of creatives looking to turn their passion into sustainable income. Her podcast was recently featured in the debut issue of Igniting Creativity Magazine, and her expertise has been highlighted in Forbes, The New York Times, Art Journaling Magazine, and many more.
She knows firsthand how to monetize creativity and scale an online business. She’s generated over $2 million from her coaching programs and has helped countless artists break into six- figure earnings. Her expertise in email marketing, personal branding, and high-ticket sales, makes her a sought-after voice for business owners who want to attract their ideal audience and sell with confidence. (It almost sounds like the intro to this podcast.)
In today’s digital landscape, standing out is harder than ever. But she teaches creatives and entrepreneurs how to sell without feeling salesy, grow an engaged audience beyond social media, and leverage podcast appearances and PR to boost credibility in sales. In fact, she’s doing that right now. So let’s discover how you can stand out, with Miriam Schulman. Miriam, welcome to the podcast.
Miriam: Hey, Rich, and thank you for reading that entire introduction I wrote for you. And a little improv put in.
Rich: No problem. Absolutely. I always have to make it a little bit my own. So yeah, I’m excited about this conversation because I think you and I talked about the fact that I have talked about the Remarkability Formula, and how to stand out online has always been important. I think it’s more important than ever. So let’s start with the pain point.
You say a lot of people struggle to stand out in a noisy AI saturated world. What are some of the biggest mistakes that you see artists and entrepreneurs – and going forward, I’m just going to call them “entrepreneurs”, because all artists are entrepreneurs in my mind.
Miriam: Correct.
Rich: What are the mistakes they’re making with their general messaging, and maybe specifically about their “about” page?
Miriam: Yeah. So one thing that pops up for me, I see it in artists, but we see it across all people, is they think they’re talking to other artists or other whoever it is that they are, and they’re attracting the people who do what they do instead of attracting the people who want what they do. And that is definitely a key difference. They’re focused way too much on their own ‘why’ and not the ‘why’ of their customer.
Rich: And I’ve definitely seen that, certainly outside the artist world as well. But can you give me some examples that maybe you’ve seen out there, where artists are talking to other artists when they should be talking to art buyers?
Miriam: Yeah. So I want to just circle back a little bit just talking about the framework that I like to use when I’m helping people with their ‘about’ page. And this is looking at the who, what, why, but you have to think of yourself and that of your customers having two sides.
So your two sides are your creative side that cares about ‘what’ and ‘how’. And too many entrepreneurs focus on their ‘what’ and their ‘how’. Oh, it has five modules, and really there is the ‘who’ and the ‘why’. But the mistake that I see is that people are focused on the ‘who’ and ‘why’ of themselves. Now the customer also has the ‘what’ and the ‘how’, and the ‘who’ and the ‘why’.
So whenever you are writing any copy, whether that’s a post on social media, whether that’s your ‘about’ page, anytime you’re talking, you have to think about what is their ‘who’, who am I talking to, and what is their ‘why’?
So to give a more concrete example that is a little outside of the art world. If I was somebody who started a bakery, you can’t be talking about, I was really stressed out during the pandemic, so I started baking, and that really relaxed me, and that’s why I founded Eddie’s Edibles or whatever. Because your customer does not care how much baking relaxes you. They want to know what’s the big thing. What’s in it for me?
And I see this over and over again across every industry h I look at ‘about’ pages, bios, they’re so focused on that Simon Sinek ‘why’, but not their customers ‘why’?
Rich: And I don’t think you’re suggesting that we shouldn’t share our why at some point throughout the process. But what you’re saying is people come, they have a short attention span, and we immediately have to talk to their pain points and explain to them why our bakery or digital agency or our art is going to change their lives, improve their lives in some way, shape, or form. Is that correct?
Miriam: Sometimes your ‘why’ does overlap with their ‘why’. That’s when it’s really important. So if I was a baker who saw that there wasn’t enough inclusive wedding toppers, because I had that experience. I as pretend baker had that experience. Like there wasn’t something that represented me, and that was important behind founding this company. Then your ‘why’ does overlap with your customers ‘why’.
So that’s when it’s very important to tell that story, but it has to matter to your customer. That’s my point. And I see too many people go off into tangents about, “I was so burnt out from corporate”. You know what, nobody cares. You care. Unless you’re a business coach. Like for me, I’ll talk about my story, how I was in corporate and I left that to become an artist. And that’s interesting to my clients because many of them do have day jobs and they fantasize about leaving that and becoming a full-time artist. So that’s why that story now is relevant to who I’m helping.
Rich: Makes a lot of sense. So you developed something called, The Creativity Fix, and can you break it down? What does it do and how does it help us stand out in a world where everybody’s copy is starting to sound more and more alike?
Miriam: Yeah. So you can do this with or without AI. And I just want to circle back to my book, Artpreneur. I do have a chapter called, Embrace the Inner Weirdo, which really helps you unpack what makes you special and different.
Because Rich, I don’t have to tell you, AI is great, but it’s like you put bad stuff in, you’re not going to get good stuff out. So you really have to train that robot to understand what makes you different. So again, this is with or without AI, anything I’m going to be talking about. So you really have to understand, what are your quirks? Amplify those quirks and using the kind of language that nobody else is going to use.
What makes you the most interesting baker that they can find on the internet? We talked about one thing, but it could be a many number of things. What makes you the most interesting digital marketer? What makes you the most interesting web designer? What makes you the most whatever it is, and if you’re just asking AI to help you without a deeper understanding of that, you’re going to get back generic solace copy.
So the more you can dig into that, what makes you tick as a person? What makes you tick as an artist? What are your values? And not being afraid of alienating people along the way, because there’s just no money in the middle.
Rich: I love that, “there’s no money in the middle”, and it makes a lot of sense. So it sounds like whether or not we’re going to use AI for any of this sort of content creation or ideation is, we need to ask ourselves some questions before we even get started to basically I forget the exact phrase you used, but embrace this inner weirdo Yes.
That we hopefully have all. All inside of us and our own individual ones. What is the process like? I’m guessing that this is some of the work that you do with clients, plus it’s probably in your books, but can you talk me through? If I’m literally confused and I’m like, I know I want to stand out, I feel like I’m different and I’ve got something different to offer the world, but I’m not exactly sure how to communicate that, what are some of the steps that we can take to crystallize those ideas?
Miriam: Okay, so one of the prompts or messaging exercises I put all my clients through, is understanding why people want what you have. And usually it’s different than you think. But also to throw in some things, so it’s kind of like the ‘who, what, why’ formula. And you can, again, you absolutely use AI to do this. But again, you really have to be explicit when you’re asking. Not just, why does somebody want a cookie, but why does somebody want a cookie who shares these values? And to use values that you think has nothing to do with baking cookies.
So for example, I helped an artist who is an abstract landscape painter, and I was asking her about her values, and she’s saying that she really believes in woman empowerment. Now she’s an abstract landscape artist, so it’s not like she’s painting activist art. But when she started putting in her values and explaining what her values were, and we did use AI for this, then AI was able to help us come up with language, such as ‘a woman needs her sanctuary’. So you can unpack some very powerful messages using AI when you put in your values.
So the two things that I like to do, just to give… and I’m not going to get the exact prompts, not because I don’t want to share it, but just because I didn’t prepare to have that with me right now. You don’t even need it. If you just talk to your robot and just say, hey, these are my values. And say, what is it that you value most in the world?
And then the second prompt to give it is, what are the things that you’re most unhappy with? So with that one, it more sounds like this, what are some time sensitive reasons people want your service or product? And then say, especially given the fact… and then go on a rant about things that you don’t like about the world. Don’t worry about what you’re ranting about has to connect with your cookie baking business. AI will figure that out for you, and it’ll come up with some really interesting messages that kind of act as dog whistles to pull in those ideal clients.
Rich: And we often talk about the fact that it’s not just about attracting your ideal clients. Some of that work is pushing away the bad clients, the bad fits. It’s like there’s no bad dogs, there’s no bad clients, but there are clients that are not a good fit for you, who will never appreciate your work, your approach, whatever you deliver. Being as authentic and true as you possibly can will push people away who would’ve just wasted your time and you would’ve wasted theirs. So I think that’s absolutely an important part of all this.
So you don’t need to use AI, from what I’m hearing, but it is a tool and it can certainly make some leaps of logic that you might not come up with on your own, and discover something in abstract landscaping that can tie into feminism, or whatever the case may be. So that makes a lot of sense.
Once you’ve gone through some of these exercises, what are the next steps? Okay, so I’ve got a tagline, or I’ve got some mission statements, or some language from my ‘about us’ page. How do we proceed from there to continue communicating our remarkability to the rest of the world?
Miriam: Okay. Once you have all of those statements, and whether you’ve done this as a brainstorming session with your own genius mind, or you’ve used your I call my ChatGPT, ‘Hal’. By the way, do you have names for your robots?
Rich: I do not. I usually I just call it Claude or ChatGPT, but I’m going to look into it. Obviously, I won’t steal Hal. I might go with Herbie, who is the fill-in robot for the Fantastic 4 when the artist couldn’t draw the Human Torch. But I digress into my nerd self, so you please go ahead.
Miriam: All right. I call ChatGPT ‘Hal’ in case I forget and start referring to him as Hal. And my Fathom, like I see yours is “Rich’s fathom note taker”, mine is M3gan, M three GAN.
All right, so Hal, so once you’ve done the brainstorming session with Hal, if you’re doing this in AI, now you can put in your bio and ask it to help you write it. But there are certain things that I’m going to caution all our listeners to avoid. Rich, you may have gone over this, but this is a great time for us to reinforce. There’s some bad habits that are almost impossible to train Hal away from. And one of them is hesitant language. Have you come across that yourself?
Rich: Let’s talk about that a little.
Miriam: Okay. So first of all, let me just explain what hesitant language is. So that is if your ‘about’ page is filled with things like, “I believe that”, “I strive to”, “I aim to”, “I hope to”. And no matter what prompt you give it, even if you give it the prompt, “do not use hesitant language”, it will still use it. And the reason why is because of the guardrails. It is not a hundred percent sure how you really feel, so it will put all those words in on purpose.
So whatever you get back from ChatGPT, from Hal, from Claude – actually I haven’t compared to see if Claude is better at this than Hal is. I’m just going to assume that these LLMs are all going to work similarly the way we are right now in April 2025. But they all seem to have this hesitant language in it, so it’s your job to edit it out. Whether you’re doing a social media post, a blog post, a podcast script, or an about page, is get rid of hesitant language. It’s going to be so much stronger if you say things, “Every woman needs a sanctuary” rather than, “I believe that” or, “my art is”, or “my website design is’, rather than, “I strive to make good website design”. It’s like, well let us know when you get there.
Rich: Yeah, exactly right. I’d like to think that you could train Hal or Claude to be able to avoid that hesitant language by working on that, but I have not experimented with it. So I will get back to you and see if I can come up with some way to make it a little bit more confident as it talks about us and our inner weirdos.
Now, so we’re going through this process, and is there an end game to doing this? So we’ve got some good content. It sounds like we can use it to write some of the content on our pages. Are there other places that we should be focusing on, or is this kind of like laying the groundwork for the rest of our work?
Miriam: I find that when it comes to messaging, you always need to start here with your ‘about’, like you’re creating who you are based on your customer’s ‘who’ and your customer’s ‘why’ they most want you with those dog whistles built in. As we talked about both attract and repel people who are not a good fit for what it is that you offer or who that you enjoy working with the most.
Rich: All right. Now we’ve talked a little bit about AI and some of the shortcomings in language. You’ve actually said that AI might be making copy worse. So what do you mean by that, and how can we avoid falling into those traps?
Miriam: Okay, so this is very interesting, Rich. They actually had a study that showed across entrepreneurs that it in 30%, wait a minute, I’m going to get this wrong. Okay, in most of the cases, it made your copy worse, 30% worse. And it was only high-level people that it made it better, like 10% better. So how do you know if your copy is becoming better or worse using AI?
So that’s why you really need to listen to people like Rich, or what we’re talking about today. If you don’t realize, oh, you just think the robot is spitting out, this must be the way it should be, and you’re not recognizing “I aim to” or “I strive to” is hurting your brand, that’s when your copy gets worse.
Rich: I think at the end of the day, obviously, where we are today at least, there needs to be a human intervention before that copy sees the light of day. I also remember reading a study recently, and I don’t have the exact stats, but they were showing that when they did a study with a group, AI would enhance the creativity of individuals. Like if you were struggling and used AI for ideation, you ended up with more ideas than you came up with on your own versus the placebo group or the standard group.
But when they looked at the group as a whole, the entire class, there were actually fewer ideas. Which in my mind says that AI might be good for helping you come up with some ideas you wouldn’t have come up with. But if everybody’s using these tools, there’s this homogenization of ideas. There’s fewer ideas. Because you may not have come up with as many, but you would’ve come up with some that AI never would’ve come up with.
So I think that we always need to make sure that we are injecting our humanness into this content. Which is why I don’t use AI for writing, but I use it straight up until when I start writing, and then I use it after I write to further enhance it. But I do think that whether we’re artists, entrepreneurs, business leaders, marketers, we always have to be injecting our own creativity into these pieces of work.
Miriam: That’s a really great point. And just to circle back. When it makes you more creative is, like I said, those prompts earlier. Like, why would somebody want what I am offering? Because of my values. That will help you come up with some ideas you didn’t think of. What will make you stand out from somebody else is, we assume, that your values and belief systems are different than your competitors.
Rich: So let’s say that we’ve gone through this process. Whether we’re an artist, entrepreneur, marketer, brand strategist, what have you, we’ve got our website, we’ve got some emails in the can, we’re posting to social media based on all these sort of things. At some point, we’re going to end up face-to-face talking to people. And at that point, until we get ‘how’ in our earpieces, we can’t really use it like a Cyrano de Bergerac kind of situation here.
So how do you help artists talk to the art buyers in the real world? How do we stay on point? Any tips around that?
Miriam: I do. Okay. So I talked a lot about this inside my book, Artpreneur, and I even gave an ‘overcoming objections’ chart. And this works. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the art world. And my book is really, it’s not just for painters, it’s for anybody who considers themself a creative businessperson.
But the way that I structured this chart is not so that you’re memorizing a bunch of scripts and acting like a robot, acting like a ChatGPT, but that you understand what’s going through the mind of your customer when they present an objection to you so that you can step into compassion and empathy to where your customer really is at any given point. Because that will help you answer their objection the right way.
Because a lot of us, we make it all about pricing, because oftentimes when that is the objection, that’s not their real objection. That’s just their knee-jerk response.
Rich: Right. So it’s always easier when you can see an example in the real world. And I hate to put you on the spot, but do you have any case studies or examples of people that you’ve worked with and taken them through this framework, this process, and a before and after story for us?
Miriam: Absolutely. So Lynn Samis is an artist who was working with galleries. And in 2023, she had made $13,500 from gallery sales. In all of 2023. And she read my book and came to me in January of 2024, which is great to have a case study the whole year. She came to work with me, and she had made by the end of December, over $90,000 in sales from her artwork. And that January, she even got an additional commission check for $20,000. So meaning by working with me, she added an additional $100,000 to her bottom line.
Rich: What was the shift for her? What was she doing wrong before, and what did you help her get to, that could make that kind of shift?
Miriam: Okay. So in addition to all the messaging that we’ve already talked about, so I’m not going to retread that again, email marketing is one of the biggest needle movers for all of my clients.
So many of them have been taught to rely on social media and Instagram, and I don’t have to tell you Rich, how that has been declining year over year. When I first went to write my book, Artpreneur, the average engagement rate on Instagram was 1%. By the time I went to edit that chapter, it had dropped to 0.6%. And just so people understand, that’s six people out of a thousand. And now it has dropped to 0.4%.
So if we compare that to social media, if you want 24 people to see your email, open your email, and we have a 24% open rate, you only need a hundred email subscribers. To get that same effect on Instagram, you would need 6,000 followers to have 24 people engaging. So what’s easier? A hundred email subscribers or 6,000 Instagram followers. That’s been the biggest needle mover for all of my clients, are the ones who lean into email marketing.
Rich: So if I’m hearing you correctly, there’s base work to do. And that work, whether you’re using an AI tool or not, is really about getting a clearer picture of who you are and the ‘why’ of your audience. Once you’ve done that work, and AI can certainly facilitate that, simplify it, streamline it for you, you’ve got that content ready go. Might even help you write rough drafts, at least of your emails.
But the bottom line is what you’re saying is, then it’s actually where the rubber hits the road. And email marketing, in your experience, has been one of the biggest movers of product services, what have you, at least with the clients that you’ve been working with.
Miriam: Absolutely. But I’ve seen it in my own business. So not just with the art world, but then when I did online classes, I thought all I had to do was… I started doing online classes back when there was traction on Instagram, I thought, oh, I just have to post a few times on Instagram. No, no. You have to do social media advertising, and do a lead magnet, and generate an email list.
Rich: So I’m curious, because you work with a lot of artists, and maybe I’m mistaken here. And I know you use a broad term for artists, it could be really anybody who does creative work, but painter is the first thing that comes to mind.
A lot of artists are probably selling products that are one-offs. I might fall in love with an artist and buy multiple products, but very often I’m just going to buy one piece and that’ll be it. I tend not to think of email marketing when it comes to those one-off things. So what are some of the tactics that you’ve seen work for building your list and then staying in front of that audience in a meaningful way after they’ve already purchased one product?
Miriam: Okay. So for my audience, which is very high touch, high-end, the clients that I work with for artists, one of the easiest ways to build your email list is just the invitation. Because so many artists, they’re like saying, “oh yeah, follow me on Instagram”. And it’s like, good luck with that. So I tell them to make it personal, “Hey, would you like to be invited to my next show?” So you make it very personal.
Now, for somebody who’s not in that world, that might look differently, “Hey, would you like an invitation to my webinar?” Now, I scale this – and we had this conversation before we hit record – I scale, I do use Instagram to scale this by using ManyChat. “So if you’re interested in so and so, DM me this word”. But the end game is always to get them onto your email list.
And the same thing with my artist. Other things that have worked for visual artists are a free postcard print that gets mailed to them if they sign up for the email list, a free art, digital art buyers guide you. You can see how that would work for many different industries. That is one that is a digital giveaway that works very well for my artists and will work for many other different industries as well.
Rich: Awesome. Now before I ask where we can find you online, I do know that you’ve got a chapter of your book that you want to give away for people who are listening. Where can people go or how can they get that free chapter from you?
Miriam: Yeah, so two reasons to get this is not just to get the free chapter, but you’re going to love the way we’ve programmed our bot in ManyChat. So if you DM me the word ‘believe’. And my Instagram handle is @schulmanart, which is S-C-H-U-L-M-A-N-A-R-T. So DM me the word “believe”.
If you don’t want to do that, you can go to schulmanart.com/believe, and enter your name and email the traditional way. But if you DM me the word “believe”, I think you’ll like the process that we set up and you may want to copy it yourself.
Rich: So there is lessons to be learned. Even if you’re not interested in the chapter, you’re going to learn just by watching. And of course, if you missed any of that, we’ll have those in the show notes.
And now if people just want to check you out a little bit, Miriam, where can we send them online?
Miriam: Okay. So if you like what I shared with you today, there’s more of that over on my podcast, The Inspiration Place, which you’ll find wherever you’re listening to Agents of Change.
Rich: And again, we’ll have links to that.
Miriam, this has been great. I really appreciate all your time. Give my best to M3gan and Hal, and thanks so much for stopping by today.
Miriam: Thank you for having me.
Show Notes:
Miriam Schulman is an artist, business coach, and founder of The Inspiration Place, where she helps creative entrepreneurs build thriving, profitable businesses. She’s the author of Artpreneur, host of the top-ranking Inspiration Place Podcast, and a leading voice on using values-based messaging to stand out in a crowded, AI-saturated world. Don’t forget to grab a free chapter of Miriam’s book and follow her on Instagram.
Rich Brooks is the President of flyte new media, a web design & digital marketing agency in Portland, Maine, and founder of the Agents of Change. He’s passionate about helping small businesses grow online and has put his 25+ years of experience into the book, The Lead Machine: The Small Business Guide to Digital Marketing.