Today's post is dedicated to people that are at the core of College Pikasso, its mission, its culture, and its success.  I'm talking about the artists. Ever since we started to hit the ground running 6 months ago with the website, its been our main goal to find very talented and interesting artists in order to stock our virtual shelves with the best stuff around.  We wanted to get to this point and then begin sharing it with people.  And now, that's exactly what we 're doing.  So how did we get to the point where we have 7 published artists, our virtual shelves full of great art, and getting local media play?  Let me tell you.
    Well, it started off with my girlfriend, Margot Osmundsen (our resident jeweler).  She introduced me to a guy named Justin Roberts (sick artist) at one of his live paintings for the Lorax Tree in Cleveland.  Apparently this guy was some kind of legend around the area.  She kept telling me that Justin and I needed to meet! She said he was a really talented painter and drawer.  Turns out, like most other things, she was right - Justin and I hit it off immediately.  I saw the live painting at that concert then checked out his facebook page afterward to see his art.  A little while later we published about 60 of his paintings ranging from inches to feet and tens of dollars to hundreds.
    After getting Justin on board, everything kind of snow balled as I prompted him for some referrals to artists he'd recommend.  He gave me a list of names and I followed up on them.  One of those names was Kevin Smalley.  Smalley ended up being the first person to sell a piece of art to a random customer (not a family member or friend) on College Pikasso.  Smalley also designed our first real marketing material which was called "We Want You" a parody of the old army recruitment campaign where instead of Uncle Sam, Smalley drew Pablo Picasso pointing out to the viewer telling them "We Want You!" to sell art College Pikasso.  We paid him $100 in cash for his much appreciated efforts.  I interviewed Smalley early on for the video series and he made it known to me that he was willing to help out the College Pikasso cause in other ways besides just being one of our featured artists.  And so the ball kept rolling. 
    Smalley referred us to Aaron Kyle (or at least thats what I think his name is - we are not really sure as he goes by different aliases all the time).  Roberts, Smalley, & Kyle all went to the Columbus College of Art & Design (CCAD) together so they all knew of one another.  Although Roberts and Kyle didn't really know each other, Smalley and kyle did.  CCAD must be a great school because all three of these guys are alumni and are also very talented. These guys are legit artists, very devoted to their craft and now they were all on College Pikasso. Exciting....  And the ball kept rolling.
    About a year earlier while College Pikasso was still pretty much an idea, I was taking classes at the nearby University of Akron and one of them was "an introduction to acting: acting 101".  I was and am still training in the craft of acting, which sounds way too serious, but moving on. I met a fellow acting student, Taylor.  Taylor was a 19 year old from Cleveland.  We hit it off pretty quickly as I thought his acting was hilarious and definitely the most entertaining in the class, and we had some shared interests (smoking the reefer).  Besides being a hilarious actor and fellow toker, Taylor and I talked about College Pikasso a little bit and it turned out that he draws and paints, and was taking classes making art too.  Since that semester, we have stayed in touch.  I interviewed him one time out at a dorm in Akron, he helped me hand out and post up flyers at 3 separate schools in Cleveland, resulting in 2 more new artists.  We also recruited at the University of Akron together.    We used the campaign poster that Smalley drew up for us. Taylor also came to a local concert that we were promoting in Akron, Ohio for our friends: Throne Gone Down (which is a band I used to sing for during the summer of 2010). He set up a table with his sketches and also sat down and sketched in a big notebook live to the music.   It was a fun time although it wasn't very productive at all considering all of my friends who were there already knew about College Pikasso.  This is the point I realized: stop doing unproductive bullshit.  Time to focus on more effective marketing techniques...  Hence, blogging, and developing relationships with cool media people.
    But to put an end to the whole artist topic for today, here is what I have to say.  We will continue to accept new artist submissions and maybe only actively recruit artists if we catch wind of some incredible talent.  We  look forward to an ever increasing amount of submissions.  It has proven to be a difficult and challenging task to get in touch with artists let alone getting them to trust in my vision and put fourth a little effort.  The stereotypical perception of artists as being reclusive, anti-commerce, etc, is often somewhat true. Some artists were very hard to get on board the CP bandwagon and were generally not the quickest moving individuals on earth . I have had to call some people many many times without ever getting a call back.  Asking for pictures, prices, descriptions, etc for their art takes time.  Some people communicate only through email. Other people communicate only through facebook.  Some people hardly communicate in general.  Communication itself with our artists has definitely been a process.  And most of the time these days, I am appreciated the good ol' fashioned phone calls than anything else because I see how much quicker things can get done over the phone rather than through some online medium.  Instead of emailing, texting, or messaging each other back and fourth for weeks, phone calls rule.  Unless you write extremely effective emails (which I am working on).  I have also learned that persistence pays off too.  Without it, we wouldn't have any art on the site besides my shitty sketches and photography (i'm not trained).  And one of the main lessons I have learned through this process is that people who don't call you back are usually a.) disorganized, b.) forgetful, c.) lazy procrastinators, or d.) generally unaware of how great what you have to offer them really is.  So instead of taking it personally when you have to call multiple times before finally getting a call back, take it as a part of the job - because it is.  And this is for any job or anything that you really, really want, you may have to make a few calls.  So stay persistent, stay hungry for what you want, and don't take things so personally.  Call/email persistently until you get an answer.  Force people to make decisions instead of dragging them out for months and allowing procrastination to hold up the development of your product.  In our case the product was a diverse collection of art. We needed artists to play along with us for awhile and trust us while setting it all up. We came up with a "artist incentive program" to encourage our artists to lead us to other great artists. An existing artist may receive 5% more of the sale price for each artist they refer to us who in turn ends up selling art with us.  This program has been a major success for us thus far.  Margot Osmundsen, our first artist now only pays out 20% commission to us instead of the original 30% because she received 5% for each person she directly refers and 2.5% for each artist she indirectly recruits (i.e. an artist she referred refers us to another artist).  And a few other artists take a bigger cut of their commissions because of this referral incentive.
     I also realized something else recently that is interesting.  For the entire process of starting this company, I have, for the most part, been alone in a sense. In the sense that there was nobody else actively working on College Pikasso but myself.  There haven't really been any meetings, shared work spaces, or dialogue between team members. Just me.  But I did realize something that made me feel comforted recently.  This was the realization that all the artists are my team members.  They are the people who's happiness and success my company depends on.  They are the people whom I support, appreciate, and learn from.  I want to make all of them a lot of money.  I also hope to give them a ton of exposure. Some things we do on the site for our artists are: creating a profile page for each artist with a mini bio, links to connect on social media sites, a picture, and their artist interview if we have done one.  Speaking of interviews, doing them was a blast!  I plan on doing them more frequently from here on out.  They give me a good opportunity to just relax and get to know the people with whom are of great interest to me and college pikasso friends, fans and families.  I'll write a post soon expanding on the subject of interviewing artists.  This post is long enough already.  But back to my sappy statement of having the artists as team members, I truly do mean it and appreciate their support of my vision and putting up with me for the past several months.  Good times are ahead and I look forward to them. Its been fun these first few months focusing on following artist referrals.  Its been an exhilarating experience celebrating each new artist who joined us.  However, as fun as its been, I do look forward to the upcoming months where more and more artists will be coming to us and seeking us out.  The problem I then look forward to is having to curate more.  There will be sooo much art coming in that we'll need to work hard to sift through it all and find the best.  It seems like a great "problem" to have!  I suppose that this is the journey of a business going from completely unknown and gradually working up the ladder of being very known and sought after.  The journey is intoxicating.  Here is to working up the ladder....
Cheers!
-Mike, Co-Founder & Lead Team Member @ College Pikasso