Jodi Ohl is an abstract painter and mixed media artist who has taught live classes and sold her artwork at a studio and gallery in North Carolina. We originally spoke way back in September of 2018 in Episode 31. When we recently talked again, it was in early April near the beginning of closing down stores and businesses. We talk about how these changes have affected her art business and how she’s focusing now on online classes.
Listen here or use a podcast app, such as Apple Podcasts, Castbox, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Jodi Ohl
You can find everything you need on Jodi’s website.
You can also find her on:
Her studio and some of her art can be found at Art Works Vass in Vass, North Carolina.
Her online group classes are on this page of her website.
Jodi is offering a special discount for my Left Brain Artist listeners for her Abstract Bundle of classes. Through 5/31/20, use the discount code lba15bundle to receive $15 off the sale price.
Here are some great takeaways from our conversation:
- Jodi shows some of her art at a local gallery called ArtWorks Vass. The owner of the gallery, Jean Skipper, has put a lot of the artwork right on her website so people can see it and purchase it. Buyers can go right to the store to pick up their purchased artwork. If you have your art in a gallery, encourage them to put the art on their website for sale.
- Jodi uses the online teaching platform called Thinkific. This platform doesn’t sell your classes for you, it’s just the mechanism for setting up your classes that you then sell through your own website. One aspect of Thinkific that she likes is they don’t hold your money for 30 days and you get it right away.
- We also talked about Skillshare as an online class option. They put your classes on their website and they will market them to thousands of students, but they do take a cut of the sales, something that Thinkific does not.
- Another benefit of Jodi offering her classes from her own site is she doesn’t have to worry about someone else going out of business and losing the place for her classes. Having them on her own site allows her to keep control over them all.
- As Jodi says, diversification is key to success. Offer multiple things from your website, like original art, prints, as well as classes. It’s not too late to offer something new. Jodi has experienced live art classes cancelling because the venue doesn’t want to offer them anymore. You need to have other sources of income available in case something gets cancelled like that.
- Instead of focusing on how many live classes Jodi has had to cancel, she’s focusing on what she still has. That’s a very positive attitude to keep.
- She’s also thinking about painting and marketing smaller pieces because she doesn’t think people are interested in the large paintings right now.
- Now is the time to keep your face and your art out there so people don’t forget you. Keep doing the Instagram and Facebook posts, stories, and videos.
- She also says it’s a good time to give back if you can to charities and others who are helping right now.
- If you’ve been teaching in person, you’ve already got the content that you need for an online class.
