#133 Suzanne Redmond: Artist and Podcast Host

Suzanne Redmond is the creator of this podcast. Each week she interviews an artist from all over the world. For this episode, the tables are turned and Suzanne is interviewed about how she came to art, how she developed her artistic style, and why she started this podcast. She also reveals who her dream artist interview would be. Suzanne is interviewed here by her son, comedian and fellow podcaster, Michael Springthorpe.

Listen here or use a podcast app, such as Apple Podcasts, Castbox, Spotify, or Stitcher.

Suzanne Redmond

Wildflower Path
Ribbon Garden Moonlight
Walking the Butterfly Path
Suzanne Redmond and Michael Springthorpe
Suzanne Redmond and Michael Springthorpe after his New York City improv show Batsu
Morocco was filled with colorful inspiration.
Watercolors in Morocco at the rooftop terrace.

#132 Jane Davies: Collage Artist and Workshop Instructor

Artist Jane Davies lives in Vermont. She started her art career in ceramics, and eventually specialized in painting the designs on the ceramics. Now she paints abstracts and creates collages on wood panels. She teaches her techniques locally as well as all over the United States.

Listen here or use a podcast app, such as Apple Podcasts, Castbox, Spotify, or Stitcher.

Jane Davies

Who Knew it Could Be So Complicated? 19”x25”, acrylic and collage on paper
Muddying the Waters, 12”x12”,acrylic and collage on paper
Structure in the Headlights, 24”x24”, acrylic and collage on wood panel
Fact Check #10, 12”x12”, “Radical Layering” (collage, paint, sanding) on wood panel
Fact Check #12, 12”x12”, “Radical Layering” on wood panel
Fissure #1, 36”x36”, acrylic on canvas

Her website is janedaviesstudios.com.

You can also find her on Instagram @janedaviesart.

Her 2020 workshop in Tucson is hosted by Madeline School of the Arts.

Here are some great takeaways from our conversation:

  1. When evaluating which aspect of your business is most profitable, compare the income that is generated to the time involved. Jane spent a lot of time licensing her designs, but after a while when there were lots and lots of freelancers out there, she didn’t get as many acceptances. When she tried her hand at teaching, she realized that she could easily book many teaching classes that were profitable.
  2. She first started teaching at venues that she could drive to. That makes sense when you’re first starting out and you’re learning about and improving your teaching style.
  3. For each class that she taught, she would analyze it after the fact and think about what she could learn from it and how she could improve it for next time.
  4. Teaching at a large art retreat such as Art and Soul is a great way to get a lot of people interested in your classes and to build your mailing list.
  5. When teaching at an outside venue, you should be doing your own marketing for your class. Don’t rely on just the venue’s marketing because most likely, you’ll be paid per student, and the more students you can get to sign up for the class, the more income you’ll make from the class.
  6. Marketing can include tutorials on your website or videos on YouTube. That way people can see what your teaching is like and decide if they’d like to take a class from you.
  7. When doing collage, Jane likes to work on wood panels because it’s a sturdier surface for adhering papers and it’s a smooth surface for making marks.
  8. You may do classes by planning and organizing the venue yourself. Or you may do classes where another party runs the venue and preps it for your class. Be sure and ask the right questions when looking into teaching somewhere so you know what to expect from them and just how much you’ll need to do.
  9. Jane offers online workshops where the student can interact with the instructor, or they can take the class at their own pace. Consider both methods when offering classes and make sure you understand the differences when you’re taking these classes.

#131 Deborah Engelmajer: Helping You to Start and Grow Your Handmade Shop

Deborah Engelmajer has a vibrant online community called Tizzit where she helps creatives develop a successful handmade shop. She offers lots of free resources on her blog and through her Youtube videos. She’s also created The Maker’s Roadmap, which breaks down the steps needed to dream, start, grow, and scale your handmade business.

Listen here or use a podcast app, such as Apple Podcasts, Castbox, Spotify, or Stitcher.

Deborah Engelmajer’s business is called Tizzit and her website is tizzit.co.

Click here to go to the Tizzit HQ membership community.

To get your own copy of The Maker’s Roadmap, click here.

To join her free 5-day Challenge for Makers and Handmade Shop Owners (January 6-10, 2020), sign up here.

You can find her Youtube Channel here.

This is her Tizzit Facebook page and her Instagram.

Here are some great takeaways from our conversation:

  1. A great way to share knowledge with artists is to create an online summit where you interview experts and then post those interviews over a week. You’ll gain many followers and then you can take that information and offer it in videos or courses. Deb did her interviews with video so you could see who she was talking to.
  2. You can offer the original interviews for free during a certain time period, then charge for the replays later.
  3. Offering free content to people enables them to see what you’re capable of, and they can decide later if they want to pay for your next level of content.
  4. If you build a community where people can have access to all of your content, you’re also giving them a way to ask questions and get feedback on what they are doing.
  5. Deb has put her community on a separate website, so it acts as a forum where people can talk to one another. That website is where they also get all the content and educational courses. She chose this platform rather than a Facebook group because she didn’t want people to get distracted by everything else that’s on Facebook. When they go to engage with her community, they are focused on the community.
  6. Deb actually blocks her Facebook feed so that she doesn’t get distracted by it. She uses News Feed Eradicator for Facebook, which is a Chrome extension.
  7. When you’re trying something new, like making videos, don’t worry if you’re nervous at the beginning. That’s what makes it real. Remember that the more you make, the better you will get at it.
  8. When you set up a community, the members will pay a monthly charge to be a part of it. When you’re in the community, you have access to all the content. If you cancel, then you don’t have access anymore.
  9. Deb offers The Maker’s Roadmap, which is a list of steps in order of what you need to do to start your handmade shop. She includes a list of don’ts at each level to remind you not to get ahead of yourself. So for example, when you are at the Dream stage, you are trying to clarify what products you will sell. That’s not the time to work on your logo or marketing.
  10. Deb believes that for every maker, there is a unique shop type that will work for them. It could be Etsy, it could be Shopify, or many others. She can work with makers to help them determine which shop type is right for them. There are a lot of choices out there and she can help you understand the pros and cons for each.
  11. Deb also offers resources to help you with the photography of your artwork. Remember that people are buying from the photo because they’re doing it online and they can’t see it in person. Your photography has to be great before you can have a great shop.
  12. People also want to get to know you and see who is behind the brand. Instagram is great for this because you can post photos and stories about yourself.
  13. If you’re uncomfortable putting yourself on camera, you could just show your hands showing the process making the product. You can also just do audio and describe what you’re doing and why.

Remember to listen to my special December 25 episode where I will be interviewed by a guest host. That will be Episode #133.

#130 Mary Beth Shaw: Artist, Instructor, and Stencil Girl

Artist Mary Beth Shaw creates abstract and collage art from the St. Louis, Missouri area. She also teaches all over the United States her art techniques, often using the stencils that she designs. You may know her from her very successful stencil business called Stencil Girl Products. Not only does she manufacture thousands of stencils designed by her and many other artists, but she also offers online classes and has created a community of stencil enthusiasts.

Listen here or use a podcast app, such as Apple Podcasts, Castbox, Spotify, or Stitcher.

Mary Beth Shaw

Mary Beth Shaw with Danny Gregory from Sketchbook Skool

Mary Beth’s website is mbshaw.com.

You can go to her Stencil Girl Products site from her website or you can use stencilgirlproducts.com.

Her online classes can be found at stencilgirlstudio.com.

You can also find her online classes on the stencilgirlproducts website through the Tutorials tab. You can also find lots of free instructional videos there.

You can sign up any time for her class through Danny Gregory’s Sketchbook Skool.

Mary Beth is also teaching through Wanderlust 2020 with Kasia Avery.

As of December, 2019, there are still a few spots left in her 2020 Italy Art Retreat.

Mary Beth can be found on Facebook at Stencil Girl Products.

Stencil Girl Products is on Instagram.

And Pinterest.

And Twitter.

And Youtube.

Here are some great takeaways from our conversation:

  1. If you’re looking for a way to put creativity into your life, see if there are any classes in your area that you can take. Mary Beth took one that she thought was a crafting class, but it turned out to be a study about a creativity book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. That helped her to get started making collages. She later took classes from a local artist named Ann Baldwin.
  2. Try to make your art different than what else is out there. When it became popular to use words on collages, Mary Beth went edgier with the words and phrases that she used.
  3. When Mary Beth started applying to outdoor shows, she didn’t start with the smaller local shows. She applied to the bigger name shows, and because her artwork was so different, she got in. Don’t limit yourself to only what you think you should do; go beyond that and try something bold.
  4. The outdoor art show circuit can become like a family situation. You travel from show to show with the same artists, and you get ideas from one another. It’s hard work but you can make many lasting friends.
  5. Large art retreats sometimes have vendor nights where you can buy a table space to sell your art or supplies. This can be a very lucrative option, whether you are teaching there or not.
  6. When Mary Beth did her first vendor night where she sold her first stencils, she gave some of the instructors who were teaching at the art retreat stencils to use in their classes. By the time vendor night came around, everyone was looking to buy her stencils because they had already used them in the classes. She sold out that first year. Remember that people often want to try supplies first before they buy and give people the option to try the technique first.
  7. The artists who design the stencils for Stencil Girl Products are adequately compensated and they maintain rights to their designs. This was important to Mary Beth when building her company.
  8. Mary Beth offers online classes through her Stencil Girl Products website. If you’re selling a tool or supply, it’s a great idea to create classes that show how to use them.
  9. Many artists, including Mary Beth, had blogs years ago and posted regularly. Some artists have kept these blogs linked to their websites, and they’re a great archive of some fabulous stories. If you see an artist that has an old blog, take a look at their past content. 10-15 years ago, artists wrote great long blog posts that are a wealth of some really cool information.

#129 Hope Barron: CPA and Artist Gives Accounting Tips for Artists

Hope Barron is a CPA in Wellington, Florida. Not only that, she’s an artist in her own right, so she understands when artists need to buy more equipment before they’ve even made sales, and when they need to hire an assistant to help them with their administrative tasks so they can concentrate on making art. Hope makes beautiful fused glass, and she uses that as her creative release to balance her time with her thriving tax accounting and consulting practice. We’ll talk about her glass for a little bit, then we’ll dig into the world of business and accounting. We talk about:

  • how to set up your business
  • how to keep track of your sales and expenses,
  • how you will report your taxable income to the IRS
  • the tax benefits of having a home office or studio
  • what you need to do when you’re ready to hire employees
  • and how you can set aside some money for retirement.

Listen here or use a podcast app, such as Apple Podcasts, Castbox, Spotify, or Stitcher.

Hope Barron

This is her glass piece before it is fused in the kiln.
The top one is the piece after it was fused.

Hope Barron is located in Wellington, Florida. Her firm is Barron and Kogan CPAs.

If you are not in the Palm Beach County, Florida area, Hope suggests that you talk to your artist friends and small business owners to get recommendations for local CPAs in your area.

Here are some great takeaways from our conversation:

  1. Hope has taken fused glass classes with a local glass studio called Northwood Glass Art and Gifts in West Palm Beach, Florida. She has established a relationship with the owner of the studio who has become a mentor to her. Local shops are a great way to find experts in your art medium so that you have a source for answers and an opportunity to learn more advanced skills.
  2. Local stores are also a great way to use larger equipment that you may not be able to afford or fit in your own studio. Hope has a small kiln for fusing glass in her home studio, but she uses the larger kilns at her local glass store to fire bigger pieces.
  3. Fused glass is fun for Hope because it’s a very forgiving medium. It’s also a nice surprise when you see the finished piece. If you’re looking for an art medium or technique to try, search for classes in your area so that you can try it and see if it gives you as much joy as fused glass gives Hope.

Now for the accounting and business tips. First of all, we’ll about how you set up your business.

  1. When you start making art, and then you start selling your art, you need to first decide if your artmaking is a hobby or a business. Even with a hobby, you could be selling your art, but it may just be that you’re wanting to sell enough just to keep you in supplies so you can keep making more art for fun. It becomes a business when you have a profit motive, and you want to make a profit from the art that you are selling. And keep in mind, that when I say selling your art, that could also mean selling your classes if art instruction is a part of your business.
  2. Even if you are making art purely as a hobby, you should report on your taxes the income you are receiving, but your expenses will probably match your income. You can’t record a hobby for tax purposes as a loss. You can only do that if it’s a business.
  3. To make yourself a business you need to first do these two things: set up a separate bank account for your business, and set up a separate entity for your business.
  4. You’ll also need to set up an accounting system for your business. That can be as simple as recording your sales and expenses on an Excel spreadsheet.
  5. When naming your business, it doesn’t have to be the same name as what you’ve been using for your social media names. You can use your own name for your business, but it helps if it sounds more like a business. So instead of naming it Suzanne Redmond, you may want to name it Suzanne Redmond Studio or Suzanne Redmond Art.
  6. You can google your name to see if someone else is already using it. You can also search how to set up a corporation in your state, and when you do the set up, they will tell you if the name is available or not. For the State of Florida, the site where you set up your company is called sunbiz.org.
  7. There are two ways you can set up your business entity. Either as an LLC or as a Corporation. An LLC is a Limited Liability Company, and is a good choice when you are a solo business owner with no employees. You can start as an LLC and later if you get larger and have a few employees, you can convert it to a corporation.
  8. You’ll also want to check with your City or County to see if they have any requirements for setting up a business. They may require you to get a business license or permit. That’s usually pretty inexpensive. It’s just a way of registering with your local jurisdiction so that they know you exist as a small business.
  9. You also need to find out what the sales tax rate is for your State because you need to charge sales tax for products you sell. When you collect the sales tax, then you need to pay that sales tax to your State at the end of the year. Again, just google that to find out what’s included in sales tax for your state, what the rate is, and how and when you have to submit the sales tax.

Now here is how your business income will be taxed:

  1. When you have an LLC, at the end of the year when you do your personal taxes, you’ll just add a Schedule C to your 1040 tax return. The Schedule C is the Profit or Loss from Business, and that’s where you’ll include everything related to your business for the year.
  2. Your Schedule C income is what’s called Self-Employment Income. You will be taxed at the Federal level on this income and in most states you will also pay State Income Tax on this income. Florida is a state that doesn’t have State Income Tax, so we don’t need to worry about that. There will also be self-employment tax taken from this, which is the social security and medicare tax. Essentially what’s happening there is that’s how you are contributing to the social security and medicare systems for the income that you’ve made.
  3. Because you are paying this self-employment tax, as your income gets higher, say $5-$10,000, then you’ll want to talk to a tax preparer so that they can help you estimate what your end of the year taxes will be. You don’t want to be surprised by that and you want to be prepared and able to pay this tax when it becomes due.
  4. For your first year, you’ll want to put aside some money during the year so that you’ll have cash available to pay your taxes at the end of the year. Hope suggests putting aside a third of your income. For the next years, you’ll want to do quarterly payments to the IRS on your estimated taxes due. Because you are self-employed, and you don’t have an employer taking taxes out of your monthly paychecks, you’ll need to make those payments to the IRS yourself. A tax preparer can tell you the rules related to that. But basically, if you owe a large tax bill at the end of the year and you haven’t made partial payments to the IRS during the year, you could be charged penalties for not doing so.
  5. An accountant can look at the income and expenses that you have and advise you on whether it would be a good idea to buy a bunch of art supplies at the end of the year and expense them then, or wait until after the first of the year to buy them. This is because your expenses will offset your income on your Schedule C of your tax return. Your accountant will look at your income and determine when it makes sense to make a big purchase and therefore incur a lot of expenses.

Here are some tips on how to keep track of your income and expenses.

  1. Throughout the year you want to keep track of all of your art income. That would be any money you’ve received for selling an original piece of art, a print, a mural or art demo, a lecture, a class you’ve taught, or an online class you’ve sold. Those are just some examples, and I know there are lots of other ways artists can make income.
  2. The easiest way to keep track of your expenses is to count them as an expense in the year it was paid. That’s what’s called being a cash basis taxpayer. So for example, if you buy 20 canvases in October because it’s cheaper to buy them in bulk like that, you will count all of them as an expense in that year. Even if you haven’t painted on them yet, you’ll still count them as an expense the day you’ve purchased them. Of course, you won’t count the painted canvas as income until that canvas is sold.
  3. Income will count on the day you had constructive receipt of the income. That means that if someone bough art from you on December 28 and paid with a check, but you didn’t deposit that check until the new year, you still have to count it as income in the old year because that was the year that you had access to the money.
  4. Depreciation is a type of expense for expensive items that are expected to last for longer than a year. So for example, if you buy an expensive kiln for $2,000 and it’s expected to last for at least five years, then you can expense a portion of that price over the expected lifetime of the kiln. This is a benefit for business owners because instead of putting all of that expense in the year it is purchased, you can spread it out. You’ll get the benefit of that expense being offset against your income for many years. Think of it this way. The more income you make, the more taxes you will owe on that. But if you can offset the income with expenses, then your net income will be lower, so you’ll owe less taxes. So if you bought something for $5,000 you could expense all of that in the first year against your income. But what if you only made $2,000 in income that year? It would be better to depreciate that $5,000 piece of equipment over 5 years, and expense $1,000 per year for 5 years. Now, I’m just using this as an example. This would be something you’d talk to your accountant about and they’ll look at your income and tell you the best way to handle your expenses, and of course, the proper way under IRS tax guidelines.
  5. For anything that you think might be a business expense, you need to ask yourself if that expense is ordinary and necessary. You can’t deduct something unusual for a business expense. For example, if your business is making and selling oil paintings, but you want to try acrylic pour paintings, you’d have to decide if the expenses you have for buying the supplies for acrylic pouring are ordinary and necessary. They would be necessary if you’re trying to add acrylic pouring as another aspect of your business, but they would not be necessary if you just want to try it for fun.
  6. QuickBooks is an accounting software that is a fairly easy way to keep track of your income and expenses. You’ll have to pay a monthly fee to use it. You can find online classes or local adult ed classes that will teach you how to use it. You can also find assistants who can input all your income and expenses for you at an inexpensive rate. You’ll have to evaluate if your can afford an assistant. Realize that data entry clerks or accounting assistants have many clients. So if you’re just hiring one for a few hours a month to keep yourself up to date, that’s OK. You may find that what they can do for 2 hours might take you double that, so it would be a good use of your money to hire someone who can do it much quicker than you.
  7. If you’re using a Square or something like that to record sales at an art show, for example, it’s not necessary to handwrite a receipt for the purchase. But for your expenses, you should keep all your receipts. Just throw them in an envelope and summarize them using QuickBooks or whatever method you choose.
  8. And remember, it doesn’t need to be done on an accounting software like QuickBooks, especially when you’re first starting out. Keeping a list of income and expenses on an Excel spreadsheet would be sufficient.

We also talked about the rules of a home office. Essentially, the expenses you incur for a home office or studio can offset the income you make in a year, and therefore you’ll owe less income taxes for the year.

  1. You can call a portion of your home a home office if that area is solely used for business purposes. You can’t call your dining room a home office if you make art there during the day but your family eats dinner there at night.
  2. The biggest benefit for having a home office is that any time you are doing work for your business away from that office, you can deduct the cost of the mileage to that outside place. So for example, if you have a meeting with a client somewhere other than your home office, you can deduct the round trip mileage for going there. If you are showing your artwork at a gallery, you can deduct the mileage for going there.
  3. The other benefit for a home office is you can write off a portion of your home’s expenses for the cost of having a home office. So if your home office takes up 10% of your home’s square footage, then you can write off 10% of your home’s expenses, like utilities, homeowner’s association fees, etc. Please consult with your tax advisor for exactly what things and how much you can deduct for a home office.

Here’s what you need to do when you’re ready to hire employees for your business:

  1. First decide if you will hire an employee or an independent contractor. An independent contractor is someone you would send a 1099 to at the end of the year, and they would only be doing work for you on an occasional basis. If it’s someone who works for you on a regular basis, then they are an employee and you will pay payroll taxes for them. You will also issue a W-2 for them at the end of the year.
  2. The biggest thing about having employees is making your payroll tax deposits timely. There are payroll companies who can help you do that work for you. You can also check with your bank and see if they provide payroll services for their customers.

And lastly, we talked about the retirement options that are available to small business owners.

  1. You are able to take advantage of a SEPP, or Self-Employed Pension Plan. This is a pre-tax option for saving for retirement. Another option is a solo 401K. You can find out more about these options when you speak with your tax advisor.
  2. You can also take advantage of a Roth too.