Clint Watson — The Sovereign Artist era

Clint Watson: 0:00

This is part of the sovereign artists that is more tools more ways to make money more even the same ways to make money but faster, right? So you add print on demand, which didn't exist 20 years ago? Not really. Yeah. You add in FTS, you add, you add people on Patreon or other platforms, selling memberships, you know, for teaching, and suddenly, being an artist is not only viable, but it's potentially lucrative.

Laura Arango Baier: 0:26

Yeah, welcome to the BoldBrush podcast where we believe that fortune favors the bold brush. My name is Laura Engel bear, and I'm your host. Recently, I sat down with our CEO Clint Watson to discuss a new club that he's begun called the sovereign artists club. The Sovereign artists Club is a place where artists can go and share interesting information and learn about how to better their careers using marketing tips, business tips, and general tips on where to go and what to do to make the most out of your career and actually learn how to live from it. So I sat down with Clint to talk about the new sovereign Artist Club, and we discuss all the super interesting things that are going on on the website. So Clint, what exactly is the sovereign artist era?

Clint Watson: 1:09

So when I started FASO 20, about 20 years ago, I first saw what is happening now, as a matter of fact, I was probably too optimistic about thinking that we were already in the sovereign artists era, because the internet obviously enabled entirely new business models that didn't exist before calling this the fourth revolution, the information revolution. So the sovereign artists era, which we've been transitioning into, for the past 20 years or so is, I believe, the combination of information technology, the size of the network, the number of people connected, there's a number of pieces to this first was the internet, then was all the software platforms built on top of the internet, they became smartphones, which connected you know, you had maybe 100 million computer users. And then suddenly, you have 6 billion people with smartphones in their pocket. And then you have social networks. And then you have the rise of all the payment platforms. And you put all that together, and it reaches a tipping point in 2020, right? And the pandemic happens. And suddenly, we no longer live in the real world and go online. Occasionally, we live online and go in the real world occasionally. And people lose their job. And suddenly they turn to how else can I make money and they look and they say, hey, I can promote myself on social media, I can accept payments with stripe, I can set up a website with FASO, or with Shopify or whatever, if you're not in the art world, right. But all this exists. And suddenly, it's possible. And I don't need to ask anybody for permission. And in theory, I can reach every person on the planet, and they can reach me. And so this has enabled what I'm calling the sovereign artist era. And I think it was stuck in the back of my mind. In the late 90s, I read a book called The Sovereign individual. And in this book, they were predicting what would happen in the information age, and basically everything, almost everything they've said would happen, either has happened or is happening. And so this really only affects artists. I'm calling it the sovereign artists era, because we deal with artists, but this is really happening in every industry for every person. So this is what I'm calling the sovereign artists there. As of 2020, we entered it and hopefully going forward, we can show artists how to take advantage of it.

Laura Arango Baier: 3:21

Oh, yeah, definitely. And like you said, the pandemic really pushed people to figure out a new way to survive. Because with the, like you said, the technology era that we've been in, everything is so accessible now, you know, things that before weren't so accessible, and so much communication that it's it's kind of crazy. So I wanted to ask you, how specifically for artists, how social media has created this renaissance 2.0?

Clint Watson: 3:44

Well, so to think about why I'm calling it Renaissance 2.0 My theory, my idea, or maybe it's not my idea, it's I probably thought of something other people have thought of before, but every technological revolution has led to an expansion of opportunity and markets. And I'm talking specifically about markets. But I would venture to say it's all markets. So you know, the aggregate agrarian revolution, let people sort of settle in larger groups in one place, which led to the rise of the church being sort of the hub of activity, and that did expand opportunities for artists over previous eras, right? At least now there was a buyer, even if they were the only buyer for art. Yeah. And then the, I guess the technology of the printing press happened and heightened and started happening, and particularly starting in Florence, Italy, and suddenly there's a lot more art buyers, right you have the melodies you have you know not only the church, but you have patrons and you have all these opportunities, and we sort of think about that as the golden age of Renaissance art and the old master art right. But that was enabled by this another technological revolution. Then you have the era where the industrial revolution happens and the rise of nation states and capitalism is the primary market forces. and way of organizing people, you know where that it was kings and queens and city states. And suddenly it's these big nations with lots of power and huge marketplaces. And out of that you get something like a gallery system, which vastly increases the opportunities for artists right there. In theory, there can be unlimited galleries representing unlimited artists. In practice, they're still gatekeepers, but at least there's a lot more of them. Right? Yeah. And then we come to the information revolution and the technology of the internet, the network, the connectedness, things going digital first, and suddenly, we don't even need the galleries anymore. You know, now, everybody, like we said, before, everybody can read to everybody else. And I think that combined with people being stuck at home and turning into their art, whether for income or for for solace, right, yeah. And then realizing, hey, I can show this and other people can see it online and purchase it, just the explosion of art just kept making me think of the word Renaissance, like this is a renaissance this is happening, like I said, somewhere that you know, there's 1000s, of Michelangelo's on the planet today. And they all can find an audience and we can all see it. It's just, it was amazing. You probably remember the videos when the pandemic first started of people in Italy, with opera singers on their balcony, or people playing violin, or the guy that played Captain Picard, reciting Shakespeare, or whatever it was, you saw this explosion of people trying to bring beauty into this situation. And hopefully, we can keep that going.

Laura Arango Baier: 6:29

Yeah, absolutely. And then, like you said, like, in times that aren't so stable, you know, like the pandemic, for example, even now, with with the situation in Ukraine, a lot of people turn to art and to the arts in general to find meaning in the chaos. And that also helps this revolution we belong to and what's really interesting, as you did mention, how the Gutenberg Press, you know, effective this spread of information. And it's, it's very clear now, in hindsight, that with every information revolution, there's a renaissance, you know, there's like a return to, I guess, to objective truth, in a way

Clint Watson: 7:05

there is, Well, truth, truth, right? Truth is one thing. And you have you sort of have, you can even see that in sort of mini developments, right? Like, you know, the internet being developed, allowed people to connect in a way they couldn't before. But then each platform sort of adds to that, you know, when the internet first came out, this wasn't as possible because you didn't have social media yet. Social media unlocked being able to get in front of more people. And then the smartphone unlocked being able to get in front of billions of people. And then people like Stripe, and square and PayPal unlock suddenly, I can be a merchant, I don't have to go to my bank and fill out legal documents to start accepting payments online. And each one of those just expand reach.

Laura Arango Baier: 7:47

Yeah, and, and even then, like you said, like, each specific platform caters to a specific audience, too. So how we mentioned in our previous episode about the NF T's, Twitter is the NFT space, not Instagram, you know, it's it's insane. What exactly sparked the idea for you to start the sovereign artists club,

Clint Watson: 8:06

I've been living the sovereign artists life since 2005. Even though I'm artists I consider myself to be through writing and through code, which is are also very artistic pursuits. And because I'm a software developer, I was able to develop basically this stack we're talking about, right for my company and for the artists we serve. And so in my mind, we've actually been in this era for 17 years, you know, it's funny, I was somewhere the other day, and the guy said, Are you still working remotely? And I just kind of chuckled and said, Yeah, it's like, you guys go back to the office? And I'm thinking, Well, no, not after 17 years. Because he's assuming I've been working remotely for the past two years. Right, right. So for, for people that could program or for people that were in the, in the information space in the technology space, we've all sort of been increasingly in this era, because we were developing a stack and we could build the software tools, we needed ourselves. But over time, as they've been developed, and network has expanded, I guess 2020 was the first time I realized, seeing so many artists go online for the first time, when really seriously embrace it. But this is really the first time the entire world can do this. Right? They haven't all been doing this for the last 15 years. Not everybody's been working from wherever they want to be, you know, and living their whole life online and having money appear in their bank account from payment systems, right? Yeah. So you see a lot of, we see a lot of art. Until I realized it. I didn't really realize it that we'd entered a new era, you know, kept wondering what's going to happen to art galleries, are they going to survive? How do they fit in this new world and it kind of suddenly dawned on me, we have the whole stack. No wonder they're going out of business right now I mean, some of the better ones might survive, in some ways, at the high end, especially. But essentially, we're in a different era now. But a lot of the artists we deal with aren't acting that way. They're still asking us questions, how do I get into a gallery? How do I? How do I set up a good portfolio that I can, you know, that I can take with me, and suddenly, I realized they're going about this backwards, they're still thinking like, we're in the last era. Yeah. And then tacking digital on as an afterthought, but we should be flipping those we should be artists should be doing digital first, and tacking the physical part on as an afterthought, you know, once I build a social media following, and I'm selling tons of my work and selling print on demand, and, you know, now maybe I want to add a gallery or go to a physical show, right, but it becomes the secondary thing. Yeah. So then we thought, well, how can we share this information? And we already had sort of come up with calling this thing to sovereign artists who said, Well, why don't we start a group where we can share information, and artists can share information with each other? And so that was the idea. And it finally launched in the last couple of weeks.

Laura Arango Baier: 11:08

Yes. And the articles have been amazing.

Clint Watson: 11:12

If anybody's listening and is interested, it's at Sovereign artists. club.com.

Laura Arango Baier: 11:17

Yes. And we will include the link in the description of the show. So people can jump in there and sign up and check it out. Because, like you were saying, you know, a lot of people still are going backwards. And even for a time I was thinking, like, oh, you know, I'll talk to galleries. And then I'll worry about the social media part. And I know a lot of people that way, too. But at the same time, now, galleries don't take you seriously, unless they see you have a large following. Just kind of, it's flipping around. Right?

Clint Watson: 11:47

Yes. But at the same time, it's kind of like, if you have a large following, do you really need the gallery?

Laura Arango Baier: 11:52

Basically, it becomes almost like a moot point to even consider a gallery, but like you said, it becomes an option, instead of the only path which has been, it has been technically the only path for a lot of people for so long. But now it's like, no, you have more power than you think.

Clint Watson: 12:10

Right. I mean, I, the way I say it is I used to go to gallery openings. And now I scroll Instagram. Right. So but on the other hand, I do see, I mean, there is value in physical spaces and physical exhibitions. Absolutely. But I think increasingly, the artist is going to be driving her fans and followers to those spaces, rather than people discovering artists in those spaces. And then connecting online, it's gonna go.

Laura Arango Baier: 12:38

Exactly, yeah. Which brings me to, I wanted to ask you personally, because I know you used to be a gallery owner, technically, you're so gallery owner, but it's, it's a little bit different. It's like online, basically. But in the sense of FASO being almost like a gallery with, you know, individual artists existing within it, you know, and it still gets shared to collectors, you know, people's work, gets shared the collectors through there. So

Clint Watson: 13:01

it does, but we're not presenting it as a gallery per se. In other words, we're not, we don't have a site where you can come to and browse all the art and search by you know, most of these online marketplaces let you search by size and color and subject and which I always found kind of odd because I never found art. I usually just like to sort of stumble upon things I like. But yeah, I guess it's convenient. If you're looking for a piece over your sofa that has to be some specific size.

Laura Arango Baier: 13:33

Yeah, it's listen to it, though it almost it makes art, a more utilitarian thing than an actual thing to be appreciated. Which, though, it's kind of depressing, we

Clint Watson: 13:41

will probably, we probably haven't nailed it yet. But we're not really a gallery. But we are trying to build alternative discovery mechanisms. And that's an area I know we can do a lot better on in the future is how to build a way for people to find good art. Besides, like, I know, you know, besides this drill down by price and color and size, but it's a hard problem to solve. Discovery is a hard problem. And it is it in every industry. It's just like all the people on sobs. All right. So basically substack is for writers it's kind of a platform, sort of like what we do for art, right? Well, they you go listen to them interview with their founder. And same thing. He'll say, well, we wish we had more good options for discovering writers. How do we do that? Yeah. Or what happens when Instagram changes the algorithm to the point it's no longer a great option? Like how do artists get discovered?

Laura Arango Baier: 14:36

That's true. That's always a I feel like it's like a, something's always hanging over because they they switch the algorithm and then suddenly, it's harder to get anyone engaging on your posts. It's hard to get anyone on there. So yeah, it's almost like finding a needle in a haystack of needles, but you want a specific needle, you know?

Clint Watson: 14:55

And it's the same for it's the same from the collector side. I mean, And it's sort of overwhelming. It was almost mentally better before as an art collector, because you only you only saw what you saw in a magazine or in a gallery. And then you felt like you discovered something special. Right? Yeah. Can can still discover the needle in the haystack. And that's, that's part of the story that a collector connects with. It's like, hey, out of all the artists in the world, I found this person I love on the show, you show it to your friends, you enjoy the painting, it's like, I don't know, there's, there's something to it, I discovered something, right? That's a little bit of money to collectors thinking in their mind. But it's also a bit overwhelming when you go on Instagram. I mean, the amount of good art in the world is beautiful and inspiring. But at the same time, it's sort of I mean, it's as if, back when I ran a gallery, I would have been Oh my God, there's so many great artists, because back before the end, it was so hard to find good artists. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure they were existed, you just didn't see them, except for the ones that you came across in a show or a magazine.

Laura Arango Baier: 16:06

That's right. Yeah. And that's also what I wanted to touch on. I wanted to ask you how you have felt that your mindset or your world has shifted from, you know, being a gallery owner to online, everything.

Clint Watson: 16:21

Probably the main thing is that I feel somewhat, I guess, you mean in or in terms of relationship with the artist. I mean, from a very practical personal standpoint, it's kind of nice to not be beholden to a show schedule in a season, and I can just go travel whenever I want. And bring my laptop with me. You know, I don't think a lot of people realize that running a gallery is a very demanding job. And it's, you're sort of tied to that location. I mean, you always have to be there, you know, pretty much day in, day out week in week out and hanging shows, tearing down shows, right? It was always funny when art collectors would come in and say, Oh, this looks like fun. I'm gonna start a gallery when I retire. I think good luck with that. Yeah. Oh, my God. But so in relation to the artists? I don't know, I guess I feel more like, the thing that always bothered me as a gallery owner was how many artists we had to turn away? Yeah, you get into this business, because you want to be inspired, and you want to inspire people. But if you're a gallery owner, you have to turn down nine out of 10 artists, either because their work doesn't fit with your gallery. I mean, it's really more than that. But more like, you know, it's probably more like 99 out of 100. Yeah, you have to turn them down because their work doesn't fit with your gallery. You don't have the space. Oftentimes, they're just not good enough and not ready to accept that themselves. I mean, there's there's a number of reasons we had stacks of portfolios that I looked at every day and felt guilty that we hadn't gotten to them, you know. So it's, I mean, you're limited by the physical world, right? Like, you can only hang on my chart. And there's also in my, I can see now that I'm no longer in the business, there's actually some problems with the gallery business in terms of for the artist and their long term business health. Yes, for example, when a gallery sells a painting, that becomes a customer, the gallery, but the artists usually has no idea who purchased the painting. Yes. I've seen artists later in their career, have a falling out with their gallery, or have the gallery go out of business. And this might be people who are very famous with hundreds and hundreds of collectors. And they have no asset they have to start over. Yeah, you know, they may have a little bit of a leg up in that Wednesday, when they go out on their own. Some of these past collectors may seek them out. But you know, that and that that always seemed seem right to me. And as a matter of fact, I was always one of the partners that our gallery sort of saying, we should give them the names, you know, we let's just trust these guys. Let's you know, every time we sell something, let's but you know, it doesn't happen very often. Another problem is the split, you know, the gallery user gets 40 or 50% of the sell. And I think in some markets, maybe even more than 50% Okay, so let's say you, let's say you as an artist, send the gallery of painting, and you frame it, let's say the frame cost you$100 Right? Well, you're gonna you're gonna sell so let's say the painting is 900. And let's say the painting is 100. And the front I'm sorry, the painting is 1000 and the frame is 100. You're gonna double it because the gallery is going to take out so now this piece sells for$2,200 Right? In essence, the gallery makes the profit on your frame. You gotta You gotta love it. You get $1,100 and you paid 100 for your frame. So you netted $1,000 and the gallery netted 11 $100 because they got the profit on your frame, or let's say, promotion costs for a show, right? Let's say you're having a show and you decide to split costs, right? Well, for you, the only way for you to recoup that cost is for the gallery to sell your work. But for them, if anybody calls from that ad and the person decides not to buy your work, they still have a new prospect for all their other artists. Yeah. And to make it worse, you don't even get the name of the person, right?

Laura Arango Baier: 20:30

Yes. Oh, that always worried me. It's like, Well, I actually keep a very specific list of all the people who have purchased from me on Instagram. And I have it all organized, what piece they bought and everything. And then I always think like, if I sold the gallery, like, how am I going to know who it is, I can reach out, you know,

Clint Watson: 20:47

so they get the bill. So if they split the cost of advertising with all their artists, they get to build a huge list of collectors. Artists only get the benefit if actual sales are made. You know, I guess they would argue that well, they would split promotion with another artist and one of those people might become your collector. So you know, and there is some. So anyway, the difference is now I feel more aligned with the artists, you know, we're trying to build, we're trying to put tools in the hands of artists that enable this, this renaissance 2.0 idea that enable them to reach people. So we feel more aligned, that when they're successful, we're successful. And in the places we do recommend, are we all is always sold directly through the artists. Yes. So for, for example, we recently launched print on demand, this is another piece of the stack that's specifically art related, right? In a digital world, isn't it? Wouldn't it be great if you, if you could instantly expand how much you could sell and have unlimited inventory and not have to be responsible for fulfillment at all? Well, that's essentially what print on demand is, all you have to do is upload your image, set your prices, and you know, you still have to do the work to get people to buy it. But once they buy it, the rest of it is automated. Yeah, so So the way we implemented our print on demand solution is different than most other places that do it. Most other places are basically a modern day version of a gallery, you go to a place you buy a print on demand, you buy it from the marketplace, the artist gets paid, they don't, they may or may not know who purchased it. The way we implemented it is you go to the artists website, you purchase the print on demand from the artist. And because of modern technology, the split between us and the artists happens then so we take enough, you know, to make a little bit of profit and fulfill the order. And as a matter of fact, we also even include the artist on the split on the frame itself. So you not only can you make money on your art, you can make money on the frame that the user designs to fit on.

Laura Arango Baier: 22:51

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, I actually started setting it up on my website, but I haven't photographed any of my pieces yet to set it up, like properly with like an actual painting. But it's my next step. And this actually is a really good time into how earlier you know, we mentioned that Twitter is specifically like NF T's and then Instagram isn't. And in our previous episode, I also mentioned how, you know, making our mminton, multiple NF T's of the same pieces the equivalent of Prince. So how, how do you see NF TS tied into this new era?

Clint Watson: 23:26

So NF T's are interesting. And I've had a lot of obviously, I think everybody who at least pays attention to what's going on in the art world online, has probably heard of them over the last year or so. And I, I would preface this all with, there is a lot of hype around in FTS, a ton of hype. They are the whole crypto and NFV space in some ways right now is where the internet was in like 1988. Yeah, you know, there's a lot, there's a lot of interesting technology. And you can see where some of its going, but you can't see where it's all going. You know, we had a lot of systems in the early 90s Besides the worldwide web on the internet. And some people back to those right so you don't exactly know what's gonna win 15 years down the line. And in the meantime, you have hype, you have bubbles, and that happens. So I don't know if I see NFT selling for six to $9 million, you know when it all shakes out in the end. But what's what what surprised me to learn when we did the last podcast with with Francine, and I've looked into it more since then there's this sort of kind of quiet, they're not there's a community they're not quiet amongst their own community but they're not there. They don't get the headlines that all the big NF T cells get. And there's this community of artists that are just sort of quietly selling NF T's and making you know hundreds to 1000s of dollars every month which you know, which isn't getting rich money but It's another thing, it's another way they can make money.

Laura Arango Baier: 25:03

Yeah, this podcast is brought to you by FASO. If you're listening to this, it's safe to say that you're probably an artist. And you've probably struggled like most of us have to sell your work online using some random website building platform that isn't even made for artists. If this sounds like you, then check out faso.com forward slash podcast, FASO is an art marketing program specifically designed for artists to help showcase your work. And not only that, it'll also help you sell your work things too. They're really easy built in E commerce and marketing channels that help promote your work to over 48,000 collectors. On top of that, you'll also get access to marketing tips and help with your social media from top people in the industry. So if this sounds like a really great thing, and you want to take your artwork to the next level, and sell as much as you can, then go check out faso.com forward slash podcast BoldBrush but also like to give a huge thank you and shout out to Chelsea classical studio for their continued support in this podcast. If you're interested in archival painting supplies handmade with a lot of patients, go check out their Instagram ad CCS fine art materials.

Clint Watson: 26:12

And the really great thing about it is, it's the first it's really the first thing or at least the first widely available development, we're talking about every technology expands the art market. This has done that in a big way and is doing that. And what I mean by that is, until NF T's with the exception of a few centralized marketplaces, art was still sort of tied to the physical world and the physical distribution system. Right, you could sell all the art you wanted online and even print on demand, you know, it can be automated. But at some point, you have to get out of the box and ship it right. And there's there's a delay, you know, from both sides, there's a you know, I'm excited like I just I just got this piece from Chi Chi Chi Li

Laura Arango Baier: 27:09

Oh, my God, I love it.

Clint Watson: 27:11

But then I was excited to get it. But then I had to wait for a week, right. And that was usually longer. He was very gracious enough to ship it rapidly. And it wasn't frame so it didn't take as much to ship. But so you kind of like, you know, a little bit sort of takes the wind out of the sails slightly, right.

Laura Arango Baier: 27:28

Yeah, yeah, the instant gratification of purchasing something.

Clint Watson: 27:31

So every other industry affected by technology has had a digital first way to distribute the product, right? You have first you had me threes, and now you have streaming with music and, you know, even movies, you can now stream and I mean, sort of every other art form. I mean, even books I read on my Kindle, right? I don't read physical books very often anymore. But art was always sort of like, had one foot in this physical world. And so this is an exciting development, because it's it's digital first art. Right. And so I think that's why unlike other parts of the art world, that the NFT community has embraced Twitter because Twitter is by far the fastest moving social network. And it just in the way people can reshare you know, every comment becomes a new top level tweet, and every every comment and tweet can be reshard rapidly across the entire network. Like you just can't get that on Instagram. As much as as much as I love Instagram for art. You know, and I don't think things will move as fast on that network. Although they are implementing in FTS, they say, right into the but Twitter just seems to be a better fit for for digital. So, you know, arts always moved at the, at the pace of the gallery era. But within FTS, it can move at the pace of Twitter, you know, I can, I can see a piece and collect it in seconds. And share it and share the fact that I've collected it, right.

Laura Arango Baier: 29:09

Yeah, yeah. And that also creates that, you know, when you're when you're trying to sell you kind of want that feeling of urgency and competition amongst sellers where if someone says, Oh, I just bought this and it's amazing. Someone else is gonna be like, Oh my god, what is it? It looks awesome. I want one too, you know, and it creates that perfect storm of buy sell since it's so fast.

Clint Watson: 29:29

Right. So I'd like to expand on something about NF T's if we have time. Yeah. Because I know people think and I, I'm still not 100% sure of my own thoughts on this. But when I first you know, people say what are you buying? You're buying a JPEG right? I mean, you're not really you're gonna have to go read my article and NF T's are listening, the last podcast if people want if they don't know what NF T's are and want to understand the technical side Use of it. But less just this, you're you're buying a token that represents an image, right? But technically, anybody who hasn't bought that token can download that same image. Right? So what are you really buying? And it took me a while to wrap my head around this. And when it comes to the high profile hype sells, I see that why would I spend $69 million? If I had it? Yeah, we're the same JPEG I can download. But then I started really thinking about this. And I think I read an article somewhere that sort of clicked the idea in my mind, and then I further worked it into an article that's on our, it's on our fine art views.com site. But it's when you buy a painting, so if if you think about stuff, when you buy something, you get rights to it right to say possession is nine tenths of the law, right? When you buy something and take delivery, you are in physical control of that item. So you could, you could say, in a way that you have physical rights to the item, you you get to control, when you see it, you get to control who sees it, they can't see it, if they don't come to your house, right? If the artist wants to use it in a show, like they have to come to you and get permission like you have, you know, it's like the same with a book, right? You have physical control of the book. Well, in the past, the physical control and the other rights were all mashed up together. So the music industry wasn't that worried about the difference between copyrights, digital rights and other rights when people bought records, because well, you know, the physical and the act of listening to the music dependent upon the physical record. But now it doesn't. So now, you know, we have I can send you an mp3, they were very rightly concerned about people just, you know, sharing this, you don't have the copyrights to that. And then there's social rights that go along with it. And this is the point I'm getting too long winded Lee. When I buy a painting, I also get social rights. You know, we often say we often say and not just us other people who work with artists, a people by the artist and their story as much as they buy the artwork itself. And part of what we mean by that is, it's not just your story, like there's parts of the story. There's your story, of course. But if I purchase your art, I'm sort of now part of that story. At least for that piece. So there's a story between us now, and it's a story I can tell my friends and I can say, Hey, I found this guy, Kai on Twitter, and he does Star Wars stuff. And I like Star Wars stuff and check out this painting and I emailed him and he's got other pieces, like I'm telling part of the story now, right? When you no longer have physical art. Basically, when the art goes entirely digital as with NF T's you no longer have any of the physical rights, right? And you know, you don't even get any copyrights but you get all the social rights. Right? So I can say hey, I bought an NF T of grow grew from from chi and retweet that on my timeline and I can proudly now say I part of the story. I'm supporting this artists I'm so to me, NF T's represent pure social, like the pure social rights pure brand pure story. But I think that's something like a lot of people say that's nothing but I think it is something. Imagine I go on Twitter, okay, that's the first thing I go on Twitter and say, Hey, I bought the Senate seat from chi and part of story. I'm really proud to have him in my collection, and he can retweet that and you know, I've supported him with money and with some promotion, and he supported me by recognizing that I'm part of a story and everybody feels great about it, right? Okay, now imagine I go on Twitter and say, Hey, man, I just went on Kai's website and downloaded this image of grow goo and I'm not gonna pay him a cent, but I got it. Like, you can certainly do that. And you could even do it and play it privately, I guess. But you're not really part of the story. Or if anything, you're sort of part of this, you sort of became a villain story.

Laura Arango Baier: 34:23

Yeah, I mean, it's like the equivalent of walking into a gallery and taking a picture of the work. You don't, you know, buy it. You just you're I mean, you can look at it just like anyone else. But it still has that barrier between artists and patron because, in my opinion, anyone who buys an NFT or purchases an artwork isn't only a collector, they're also in a sense of patron, especially if they're paying $69 million. I know that's the hype. But at that point, that's patronage.

Clint Watson: 34:51

Now I'm sure the guy who paid $69 million is probably one of these tech multi billionaires, right? And he's probably more what you just described that you You'd pay$100. For, for the right to be a part of that story is no different. I wanted to be a part of one of the first historic sales of people. So I don't know. But I that's, I was trying to make a distinction between an NFT and just downloading a jpg there. There is a social rights difference between those two actions. Whether or not it's worth it, you know, to pay the money, each person is going to have to

Laura Arango Baier: 35:28

decide, yeah, yeah, it's almost like I want to say donating money to an artist, but it kind of is.

Clint Watson: 35:34

But it kind of is, and it kind of isn't, you know, that's it. That's the first one. It kind of is, but it's kind of I don't know, it seems a little it seems less philanthropic.

Laura Arango Baier: 35:44

Yeah. Cuz you still have an interest in, in the artists, instead of just oh, here to take this money. And let's not meet ever again. It's it's like you're building a relationship with them?

Clint Watson: 35:56

The interesting thing I find it I haven't I don't know how much this actually happens is, is there a secondary market for nfts? Like, oh, yeah, I think so. Well, I guess so because part of the part of the appeal that the NFE proponents would say is that, well, if I bought Kaizen ft, and then later sold it, you know, to someone else, that he he would actually still get some income from that.

Laura Arango Baier: 36:18

Yeah, yeah. Great thing about NF T's.

Clint Watson: 36:21

So I guess, yeah, I guess technically, this second guy does become part of the story, right?

Laura Arango Baier: 36:26

Yeah, every subsequent little guy after that, and it is, you know, separate from even in reality, when when your painting sells to one person, you don't know if they sold it again. And you don't know, for two years down the line, or 50 years, someone has, you know, bought it from 10 other people who had it, and now it's on Sotheby's, and it's selling for a ridiculous amount of money that you would expect.

Clint Watson: 36:50

But I will say, you know, we had, it's still early days, like I said, Yeah, this, this whole thing may change in ways we don't imagine. And, but, but I don't see any reason for an artist today to not take advantage of what's happening today. You know, before the World Wide Web existed, and we had Gopher, and all these other protocols, there was no reason not to use them, just because HTTP would come along Sunday and make them irrelevant, right. So there's no reason not to, you know, experiment with NF T's today, if it could provide you with some income. And as a, once you sort of back out of the height part of it, and into these people just, you know, selling NFT editions of 25 for 10 to $100 apiece, I mean, you know, people, nobody's really getting hurt, if they're paying $10 for NFC.

Laura Arango Baier: 37:39

Definitely. And it adds up, you know, you can sell an entity for 10 bucks for you, if you have like multiple NF T's are minted multiple entities have it at that price, it didn't really cost you that much to make it in the first place. And then you get a lot back. So it's like passive income, you know?

Clint Watson: 37:56

Right, which is, which is exactly what we're trying to enable with all this technology, right? It's trying to give artists this is part of the sovereign artists, that is more tools more, more ways to make money, more even the same ways to make money but faster, right. So you add print on demand, which didn't exist 20 years ago? Not really. Yeah. You add in FTEs, you add, you add people on Patreon or other platforms, selling memberships, you know, for teaching, and suddenly, being an artist is not only viable, but it's potentially lucrative.

Laura Arango Baier: 38:30

Yeah, really get rid of the starving artist idea that everyone thinks,

Clint Watson: 38:36

what am I crazy, right ideas is that technology will continue to advance until all humans are making art or making more technology. Yes, because once you reach a certain point, technology can do the rest of it, you know, robots can, robots can run a farm, and robots can drive you around, or self driving cars. You know, but unless I'm mistaken about where AI goes, only humans can really make art and art that moves us. Yeah. And only humans can invent the new technology that enables the next thing. I could be wrong about even that maybe maybe technology will eventually just do it all. But, but part but part of the art is what we're talking about is the story. And it's AI can make a painting and I've seen some pretty interesting ones. But, you know, is it interesting to connect with an AI artist? I don't know. Probably not. At least not

Laura Arango Baier: 39:40

know, and I feel like that's part of what makes art so beautiful. Every type of art is that human touch and the human expression and it's what brings us all together as a people as a spirit, you know?

Clint Watson: 39:56

Absolutely. Yeah. Now you might you might see new art form It was come out of that with collaboration, you know, where human artists are collaborating with AI technology to create new and different kinds of art. You've seen that other fields, you know, like, you've seen chess competitions where chess masters go against each other, but they are allowed to use whatever chess software they want to sound like the teams are competing, right? both man and machine. Oh, wow. So I could see anything. Or there's artists now who are doing that are using AI and directing the AI to create other types of art. But they're still involved with that.

Laura Arango Baier: 40:35

Yeah, yeah. And that's also still early days, you know, everything's still developing. And I heard a comparison that it's like, it's almost like building an airplane in the sky. We don't know how it's gonna go.

Clint Watson: 40:50

Yeah, maybe in 100 years, there's gonna be two AI's talking on a podcast talking about the sovereign artificial intelligence era.

Laura Arango Baier: 40:59

They'll be like, we're tired of humans.

Clint Watson: 41:01

And they'll dig this up and laugh. Remember when we allowed humans to still be alive?

Laura Arango Baier: 41:06

Oh, my gosh, it's like that AI who said that they would put humans in a human zoo. It's terrifying. Oh, gosh,

Clint Watson: 41:16

maybe we're already in it. And we don't know it.

Laura Arango Baier: 41:19

Gosh, that would be so spooky. It's like The Matrix. But yeah, I think in the end, what's what's really great about building this community online and building the sovereign artists and really trying to get, I guess, I'm trying to say trying to get people to recognize their sovereignty as artists, and to take advantage of these tools is precisely you know, this mission to have all this useful information in one place at the at everyone's reach, or at least the people who use the internet so that they can take these tools and apply them themselves.

Clint Watson: 41:53

Yes, yes, that's, that's the goal of the club, at least in its initial version. Well, and it was also that most of our business has been selling software, right. FASO is a software as a service platform for building an artist's website and some other pieces of that. But you know, as much as we would like it, we would like for every artist to host with us, that's just not realistic. And we wanted a way to start sharing ideas, you know, more broadly, even if you choose not to house without us. Yeah. And a lot of that we have done over the years. I mean, we do I mean, BoldBrush is a media company, we're on the BoldBrush podcast right now. And we've run newsletters, beach 10s of 1000s of artists for 10 years. But but this is a this is the next level that we're taking it to

Laura Arango Baier: 42:41

Yes. I'm really happy. I'm in the club. We are to Yeah, because it's it's very liberating. It is very liberating. And just as a final note, you know, that it almost feels like you know, even 10 years ago, when I was a, I went to Magnet High School, and I was studying architecture and studying art and art history and painting, I would always hear like, Oh, I'm, I've always been an artist. And it's like, yeah, but you end up becoming a teacher, you don't really, really do much with it. But now I actually see the possibility of actually living from the thing that I love doing and seeing other people so thrive in it. Like there's really no competition. It's everyone has their audience. Everyone has their way of doing things. And it's, it's inspiring.

Clint Watson: 43:25

Yeah, it's interesting. So one note, backing up, I'll just tell us is we're actually working on, we're actually working on a new product right now. And I'll just say the whole NFT thing is included in that. And once we develop it, it should be something that enables yet another piece of the stack more broadly, because it's something that wouldn't require an upfront investment, like building a website. But to your point about, you know, seeing this, seeing people make a living from the thing they love to do. I mean, that's just one of the that's one of the best thing. I mean, there's a lot of bad that's come out of technology, you know, every technology is good and bad, right? Yes, mastering the atom gave us the bomb and nuclear power. And, you know, Twitter gave us political fights and people getting banned and access to beautiful art. But what you're getting is the part that is inspiring about technology is seeing what it enables people to do that they couldn't have done before. Yeah, absolutely.

Laura Arango Baier: 44:36

And instead of having to buy 20 books on business, which I have done, unfortunately, you could just go one place and it's specific for you because you know, you buy these business books or I have and they aren't specifically for artists or for people who are trying to start like a product. So being able to, you know, go to the sovereign artists club and just having these specific set of things that artists can and follow is, it's so much easier than reading 20 books.

Clint Watson: 45:04

Yeah, that's that's one thing that that's one thing that the access to information isn't able, like, the good and bad again, it's all in some ways you have to be on guard about too much information. We live in a world where you can spend your life reading business books and never start a business. Right. So exactly. On point you have to say, enough is enough and start doing that's something to guard against in a world with abundant information. You know, online, you see so many people, and we've even been talking about on this podcast, you know, monetizing that, you know, I'm an artist, I lost my job in the pandemic, I'm gonna make money from my art now. But I would just, I'm not in a position to warn people of anything. But I guess I would just caution people to, you know, you don't have to monetize everything, everything isn't. It doesn't have to be this hustle business culture. And I think that's one of the things that has been sort of a negative of all this technology is people, like people don't really have hobbies anymore. Like, my hobby was playing guitar, and it still is sometimes, although I don't do it as much as I used to. But it's for pure enjoyment. And I'm sure somewhere, someone on Twitter would tell me if they heard me play would say, Well, you could monetize that you could make a video on show people on YouTube and get in a band or whatever. And I was like, at some point, it's worthwhile to have artistic, inspiring hobbies, just for the sake of doing it. And for yourself.

Laura Arango Baier: 46:37

Back that probably enjoying life.

Clint Watson: 46:39

Yeah, because sometimes monetizing it, which I don't like that word, but I don't have a better one is the very thing that can ruin it. Yeah,

Laura Arango Baier: 46:49

it kills it because you no longer you're putting the purpose outside of yourself, you know, you're putting that y outside of yourself instead of the wise because I feel like it it becomes the wise because if I don't sell this thing, I probably won't be able to eat next week.

Clint Watson: 47:08

Yeah, exactly. And that's the that's the I don't know, if this gets solved in the modern era, you know, we're tired we going back to discovery and curation. There was a The one good thing about the gallery era. And the gatekeeper was that in general, there was a hurdle that an artist had to pass to even be considered. And that's not good. I mean, I can't it came out. And I realized that sounds awful. It is both good and bad, right? Like that curation level now is incumbent upon each person to be honest with themselves. Because you'll often all this all this tool and Technology and Opportunity can't. There's still plenty of artists who are going to struggle with self, because you need to, you're going to have to be honest with yourself if people are going to want to buy that. Right. Yeah. You know, I mean, when someone first picks up a guitar, they can't be expected in a week to be able to be selling mp3. So Right.

Laura Arango Baier: 48:13

Right. Yeah. It's the same. Yeah, it is a it's a skill set. It's a skill set that, you know, has so much tied into it like, style skill. And again, it depends on what you even want to say with your work. So it's not that off, finding your niche, finding the right people to look at your work, and there's so much that goes into it that isn't just like, let me just read 20 books and ponder about life. You know, it's you had to do it, and put yourself out there.

Clint Watson: 48:43

Yeah, definitely. But anyway, that was I guess that was my point is that, you know, for people who don't, who people who don't want to get into all of this, it's perfectly fine to just do some artistic or other pursuits, just for this. In fact, not only is it fine, I'd say it's sad that people aren't doing that, you know, people people used to have people used to have hobbies, and now they scroll Twitter. And I'm, I'm guilty of doing that myself.

Laura Arango Baier: 49:09

Right? Yeah. It's tough. Yeah. Like, I think I haven't read a proper fiction book in a while, because I've been so busy reading all these other books on on business and on productivity and on focus. And now I kind of want to lose myself in a book, you know, I'll pat

Clint Watson: 49:31

myself on the back. Maybe it's because I'm a lot older. But and I've read a lot of productivity business books, and after you've read enough of them, you start realizing they all start saying the same thing. I realized reading another book isn't really going to isn't really going to teach me much new. But it's interesting because I have been reading a lot of fiction for the past couple of years. And it's kind of interesting that sometimes I do get the Isn't this ideas are right? Or you you get ideas from fiction that maybe aren't even what the author was intending that book to be about? Yeah,

Laura Arango Baier: 50:08

definitely.

Clint Watson: 50:08

There's inspiration everywhere. But it's worthwhile to just sit down for an hour and just get last book.

Laura Arango Baier: 50:15

Yes. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So even get lost practicing your guitar. You know, it's like, you're doing it because you feel like it. There's no strings attached. There's no worry about, am I going to eat? Am I gonna pay my bills? It's like, I'm just here in the present moment.

Clint Watson: 50:29

So I guess that's, that's a caught. That's my that's my public service announcement.

Laura Arango Baier: 50:35

Excellent. Oh, my gosh. Well, I think this was a very successful description of the sovereign artists era, and all of the interesting tidbits that are still being added on. So thank you so much, Clint, for this chat, this was now I'm inspired to go and do something for the hell of it.

Clint Watson: 50:57

Well, then I'll consider the whole discussion a success.

Laura Arango Baier: 51:00

Yeah. So I really want to just do like five books over there by my bedside that I'm fighting like Patricia read first, but then I never have time.

Clint Watson: 51:10

Well, thanks for having me on the show. And I guess that's kind of funny is since I'm sponsoring it was great to finally be the guest on the on the BoldBrush podcast,

Laura Arango Baier: 51:21

and yes, and hopefully not for the last time.

Clint Watson: 51:24

No, it's not gonna be the last time I will commit to that right now. In fact, we were talking earlier today. We're thinking about every other week maybe to do a short episode.

Laura Arango Baier: 51:35

Perfect. So we will see you on here a lot more and get some of this insanely good information out there for people.

Clint Watson: 51:42

All right. Thank you very much.

Laura Arango Baier: 51:44

Thank you.