Handling Criticism as a Small Business Owner w/ Special Guest Revisionist Studio As a small business owner, our businesses are our pride and joy. To be rejected from an opportunity or critiqued for our brand - it can hurt.
In this special episode of the Small Owned Business (S.O.B.) Marketing podcast, we talk with Caroline Clark from Revisionist Studio about handling rejection. While we do focus our conversation around rejections from artisan markets and craft fairs, this conversation is a must listen for every small business owner - whether you participate in markets or not.
Caroline shares with us her opinions on imposter syndrome, how she handles rejection, and offers tips for small business owners on how to move past rejection and criticism.
Thank you again to Caroline for speaking with us! Go check her out, we will add her information below. If you’re interested in coming on the podcast, let us know! Email us at Help@TheSeasonedMarketer.com.
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Chapters:
00:00 Thank You For Listening & Please Leave us a 5 Star Review
02:28 Meet Caroline Clark: Revisionist Studio
09:55 Handling Rejection and Criticism as a Small Business Owner
15:42 Understanding Imposter Syndrome
22:44 The Importance of Finding the Right Market
43:56 Objective vs. Perceived Rejection
50:18 Reframing Rejection for Growth
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𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐓:
Revisionist Studio:
Instagram handle: @revisioniststudio
Website: http://revisioniststudio.art/
𝐒.𝐎.𝐁 (𝐒𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐎𝐰𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐁𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬) 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲: https://www.skool.com/sob
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COLLABORATION REQUESTS TO: vivian@TheSeasonedMarketer.com
Vivian: What's his name - Daniel from Karate Kid? Okay, you're a Kung-Foo master and you've mastered rejection. You've mastered how to reframe rejection.
Caroline: I'm really good at getting rejected.
Vivian: That's right! You're excellent. You're the best at getting rejected.
*Intro* Chelsea: Hey everyone and welcome to the S.O.B. Marketing podcast. Where we celebrate to S.O.B. you are, and if you haven't figured it out yet - we mean Small Owned Business, we don't mean S.O.B...
Vivian: Listen, we know that as a small business owner you are working hard on the daily to keep your business fully operational while trying to promote it. And while some days it may feel like the business is owning you, if we're being honest with each other I bet you would admit that you wouldn't give up the insanity for anything.
Chelsea: Our commitment here at the S.O.B. Marketing podcast is to give you the real talk, what works when it comes to advertising, marketing, and promoting your business. And then what doesn't really work.
Vivian: And Chelsea and I promise to always keep the conversation real.
*Beginning of Episode*
Chelsea: Hey everybody and welcome back to the SOB Marketing podcast. SOB as in small owned business. We would never call you guys names. Before we get started, just a little bit of housekeeping. If you're listening right now and you haven't followed us and you haven't left to review...
It kind of feels like you're a fake friend. What are we doing? Come on.
Vivian: No fake friends allowed.
Chelsea: Yeah, no fake friends allowed. We're a community here. We're a bunch of fellow SOBs. So make sure that you're following. Make sure you leave a review. It helps us get in front of other small business owners and we just want to share marketing tips to help you guys feel comfortable handling your own marketing.
Vivian: Chelsea, remind us, are we doing a TLDL for this episode?
Chelsea: We are not doing a TLDL for this episode because, ooh, heads up, we have a very special interview today. So, we don't do TLDLs for interviews because you just need to listen to the whole interview, guys. Vivian, who are we talking with today?
Vivian: All right. Very special guest today. You guys, I'm going to tell you right now, you're going to be inspired and wowed. So you're going to want to go be sure to follow our guests on all of the social media platforms that she's on. But today with us, have Caroline Clark with Revisionist Studio. Now you guys, before I let Caroline introduce herself, I want to read you what her Instagram bio says because I think it hits the nail on the head. Perfectly describes her. Mud Witch making joyfully detailed functional ceramic sculpture as Revisionist Studio. Cultivating beauty and magic in the everyday. Hello Caroline, welcome.
Caroline: Hey guys, thanks so much for having me on.
Vivian: Yes. So what did we leave out of that? That was a very concise and detailed sentence that sums you up.
Caroline: Yeah, and a tongue twister.
Vivian: Yes. We know people are multi-dimensional. Do you mind telling us a little bit more about you and how you got into this business?
Caroline: Yeah, I came about it very roundabout. My background, my educational background is in English and Spanish. I have no art education background. I was living in New York City. I actually owned a small business there. I was a professional organizer in New York City. Yeah, I've had like 12 different lives.
This is what undiagnosed ADHD does, is you just have a whole bunch of careers.
Vivian: You're basically saying you're better than a cat though, right?
Caroline: I've never tried getting run over, but we'll see. When my son was about two, I met my husband in New York City. When my son was about two, my mom, I grew up here in South Carolina and my mom got diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's and so we made the choice to move our family back down here to be with her. So we were living with my parents in the house I grew up in, with our young child. Building a house in the woods on the farm I grew up in. I was teaching online from home and I was like I gotta do something creative and get out of here.
So I went and took a ceramics class. I had kind of taken a class once every five years up until that point. We have an amazing ceramic studio in Camden, which is the next town over from, I do not live in a town. I literally live in the woods.
Vivian: I'm a fellow wood girl too. I live out in the boonies as well.
Caroline: Wood living for life. It was exactly what I needed at that time. I fell in hard and it really, really just, it just clicked. In 2021 is when it became business for me. My first ever market was Soda City Market up here in Columbia, which was just named the best farmers market in the country by USA Today, which is very exciting.
Vivian: Amazing!
Caroline: I don't actually vend there anymore. I quit vending there a couple of years ago, but that's really fun that that was my first ever market.
Vivian: So can I ask you something really quick? We're coming off of Mother's Day and I know you had an article that was, you were featured in the Free Times Columbia. This was the headline to the article. It said, "told her art was too pretty to be important. Sculptor carves out own path for Columbia artists". But what was striking to me is you mentioned your mom and how you really found this passion and love for art again because you came home to take care of your mother, is that correct?
Caroline: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Vivian: What's interesting to me and what you just said too is this wasn't necessarily something that you thought you were going to be doing at 10 years old. This wasn't "I strive to be a ceramicist when I grow up."
Caroline: No, absolutely not. Art and creating had always been something that I did, but I was like a serial hobbyist, you know, again, undiagnosed ADHD. I would pick something up, do it for a while and then throw it back down, and ceramics was something I had always done, but it was once every five years, I'd take a class here and there. I was never something that, you know, ceramics is a tough medium. You have to have a studio to go to. It's very equipment heavy. It's very expensive to do on your own.
But when we built our house, I was able to set up my own studio. That gave me the ability to really dive deep into these themes and explore and experiment in ways that I couldn't do if I was working out of a community studio on somebody else's timeframe.
Vivian: I do want to encourage every single listener right now, please go, can you share your handles? Where can they find you, on Instagram?
Caroline: Yes, Instagram is the only social media that I currently use because I can only handle one. That is Revisionist Studio. My website is revisioniststudio.art.
Vivian: Kudos to you.
The reason I want you guys to go look her up right now as you listen to this, I want you to scroll through her Instagram because I think you're not going to truly appreciate the conversation today until you look and see what types of ceramics she's actually sculpting and putting out there and selling at these markets. Because one of the other things I noticed is when they had written this article about you, you said,
"I grew up on this farm in the middle of the woods and was always surrounded by nature and natural processes, a lot of which seem like magic, especially fungus."
Okay, first of all, that's a little strange. People are not going to be inspired by fungus very often.
Caroline: Oh my god, it's amazing.
Vivian: Then you go on to say, "there's nothing, and then it rains and all of a sudden you've got all these magical shapes". What struck me is, that right there is small business ownership. If you are listening to this, you have done exactly what Caroline described in that sentence. You literally created something out of nothing. So you're basically a mushroom. Congratulations.
Caroline: Well, and if you want to run with this metaphor, I'm an English major, let's go. So one of the things that where mushrooms and fungal networks come in in my work is that it's these mycelium networks, these connected networks, they run through forests, they connect all the trees, they send signals. It's these hidden networks of communities. That's where I have found so much help for my small business is connecting with other small businesses, other small other makers like that. We support each other. We run ideas by each other. We raise each other up. We share when applications open. So connecting each other, like the fungus, has been really important and I cannot emphasize enough, finding your people, finding people who are going to raise you up and who are going to when you get those rejections, give you the pep talk. Or as I sometimes am the role in my group, the person who's like, they're dumb, let's move on.
Vivian: I think Chelsea relates to that.
Chelsea: I'm that one in this relationship. But I'm glad you brought up rejection because Vivian, that is...we do have a topic, y'all. We do have something that we are talking about today and we're talking about rejection and criticism and how to handle it as a small business owner because y'all, we get it. Your business is your baby, right? Like your art is your... I don't want to say your children, but I'm going with this metaphor now. It's your children. Like you don't want to face criticism. You don't want someone saying, your child's ugly.
Vivian: I mean, I would take offense. I'm not a mom, but I would take offense to that.
Chelsea: Well, and that's why sometimes criticism hurts so much as a small business owner. So today we are talking about how to handle criticism, how to handle rejection. And specific, I don't want to say specifically, but we're going to focus more on rejection when it comes to markets. Just because I do know Caroline, she has so much experience in the market scene. I think this is the perfect opportunity to talk about specifically criticism and getting rejected from markets.
Caroline: And I've been rejected from a lot of markets.
Chelsea: Yeah, let's talk about it.
Vivian: Let's start there. Caroline, what is your experience necessarily with using or leveraging markets or craft fairs to sell your products? So that way people know what type of experience you have and maybe give some context to just how many times you have been rejected and why you know a thing or two about how to deal with it.
Caroline: Yeah, so markets is my primary way that I sell my work. Like I said, I started out at Soda City in Columbia. That was in 2021. So over these past four years, I've been spreading out both geographically and in terms of the well, let's call them levels. I've been doing more and more juried art fairs, which are more high end. You know, it's very tough when you're starting out because you just have to apply and try a bunch of markets until you find the ones that work for you. It's a numbers game. You're going to get rejected from a lot of stuff and you're going to do a bunch of markets. I've done markets where I did not make the fee back and you're going to have to do that. You do feel rejected, but you know, we'll talk about some ways that you can process that in a healthy way and not in a, " oh my God, I'm going to go crawl in a hole way". That helps nobody. So through these years, I've kind of learned to, learn ways to assess markets, which ones I think will be better for me. I've learned ways to take feedback from markets. I take criticism from markets. I want to make sure that we also, as we talk about rejection that we make a distinction between objective rejection and perceived rejection because I think that's really important.
Vivian: Yeah. So let me ask you this. Did you kind of feel like you were already, because I'd imagine some, if you're taking something from a hobby to then saying, maybe I can sell this. Maybe I can make a living doing this. For you, like we said, this wasn't some dream you had since you were a little girl. Instead you found something that you loved and then you were like, possibly this can be a avenue.
Caroline: Oh, I have too much of this now, I've gotta sell it because it's taking up too much room in my house.
Vivian: Yeah. She was like, I put too much money into this. It's got to reimburse me somehow.
Caroline: Ceramic is really expensive as a medium.
Vivian: Well, so, okay. Do you already then feel a little bit like a, what is it? Imposter syndrome because you're like, am I even an artist? Can I call myself an artist? Then who am I to be out there asking someone to pay?
What is your typical price range? What's the price range that you sell your products at?
Caroline: So I love that you brought this up because I hate imposter syndrome so much. I have so many thoughts on that. So my mugs range from: the lowest end of my mugs, I believe right now is $65. That's for the much more simple ones. My highest mug is $115 right now.
Vivian: I'd imagine there are times when you're like, how am I going to, you know, when you're first starting out and you're like, great, now I'm ready to sell...
Caroline: They did not cost that much when I first started out. Absolutely. I joke that I feel really bad for the people that brought my first mugs because I look back at them and I'm like, "oh God, no girl. No". They weren't that bad. They weren't that bad, but that is something that to balance between, feeling like your work is ready and delaying too much, you know? There's no good answer to that. You just do it and like, sorry if you got a bum mug, guys.
Chelsea: Yeah, I love that you said that because that's true across the board. You got to just do the thing.
Y'all, if you go back and watch the first episode of this podcast, we're also sorry. Okay.
Vivian: I'm still sorry if you're still watching this. Hopefully we'll be better in a year. Well, okay. So let's go back though. Touch back on the imposter syndrome. What kind of helped you sit in it for a while? Cause I'm sure you just naturally feel like that the first couple of times.
Caroline: I don't. So I struggle with imposter syndrome because I don't get it. I don't get why people have it or feel like they have it. I know my work is dope. It is. I think that too often women are told that we have to be humble. You know, we're not supposed to say, "My shit is amazing". I worked really hard on this. I've spent four years every day teaching myself to sculpt, doing things that I've never seen anybody else doing because I made it up. I don't feel like an imposter because I'm not. I wonder how many of the women that think they have imposter syndrome are reflecting that societal expectation on us that we are supposed to feel like imposters.
Vivian: So I want you to right now verbally give people permission. Tell them, if you're listening to this, tell them.
Caroline: Yeah, your shit's dope. Your shit's dope. You don't have to feel like an imposter. If you make a bunch of stuff and you take it to a market and nothing sells, well, there's your data, okay? You're not imposter. I don't get the whole concept. Like, you're an imposter of what?
Vivian: Well, and I think that's where for me, I'll tell you, I agree with what you're saying. It's weird because I actually have learned to be okay with failure, because at the end of the day, I think I value the process of things much more than the actual end result, right?
My husband sometimes will ask me to go outside and throw a football with him. He used to play football. I'm not very good at any of that, but I still go out there and I was telling him yesterday, it makes me feel good when he says, "wow, you actually throw pretty well" because I've practiced enough now that I've picked up little pointers. I think that's what I value. I just want to see improvement on my end for anything, right? Whether it's not knowing how to make a ceramic mug, and then suddenly I've created a ceramic mug, and now I get inspired by the nature around me, and now my ceramic mugs are pieces of art. Right? So it's like the progression. I think a lot of people miss that satisfaction that you get out of that. Instead they're just so focused on, what will everyone else think about me or what will they think about my product?
Caroline: It's that fear of rejection. Part of what I've done at least, is asking myself, if I get rejected from this, what is the worst thing that happens as a result of that? I feel sad. Well, okay, I can handle that. You know, go to like the worst possible scenario. What is like, Doomsday, what is the worst possible thing? I get rejected from this. If you can live with that, do it anyway.
Vivian: Thank you for saying that. I tell people this all the time and they literally think I'm crazy. I'm like, no, I've conditioned myself to where I play out the worst case scenario just in case that happens. I know what I'm going to do. Then I'm like, great. I somewhat feel prepared if the worst thing happens to me.
Caroline: Yeah, and if you can live with that as a consequence, go ahead.
Chelsea: Let's talk about criticism being data. Since we're talking about right now changing the way you're thinking about things, you know, your mind's framework. I want you guys to stop taking criticism so personally and viewing it as data. Take a look at what's happening during these markets. Are you selling out of products? That's data. Are you not selling any of those products at all? That's also data. Did you not get into the market? Ask the event organizers why you didn't get into the market. I'm serious, y'all. If you're not doing this, then you're never going to get into more markets.
You need to find out what is going on, on the back end. The reasoning why you're not getting into all the events you're applying for. Don't take it personally. It's just data. If they're telling you, I need to see better professional photos from you of your products, then do it. If that is the problem and they tell you to fix the problem and then you fix it, you can get into the market the next round.
Caroline: I want to add on to that. Ask for feedback very, very nicely. Come at it from, thank you so much for looking at my application. I'm really trying to grow. How can I do this?
If you follow all of what they said and you still don't get in, don't send a nasty email after that. These are things that people actually do and it blows my mind. It's like, no, you walk away then, okay? That's not the market for you.
Chelsea: Yes. Thank you for bringing that up. Y'all please be nice to event organizers. Please be good, decent people. I like to think all of our listeners are kind, but if you need a reminder, let's not. These are also people and they're trying their best as well, so.
Vivian: I think the other part of it too is I know it's, and Caroline, you could speak to this. I know it's super competitive, but at the end of the day, when you think about the purpose of any event, so when a group or people put together these events, their ultimate goal, if they're good at what they do, is to A, get really great vendors that are going to bring people and draw people out to spend money or to promote their products or businesses in general. But I think that at the end of the day, they also have a purpose. So they're trying to find the best vendors for the thing that aligns with what they're doing. Especially with, I know Caroline, some of these events are probably more geared towards a very specific type or group of people, right?
Caroline: Yeah, and my work is very tricky to apply to things for. It's ceramic and it's, I'm very like cuspy in terms of being accepted as fine art versus craft versus it's also very quirky. So I do have trouble figuring where I fit at certain markets. That for some people can be very tricky. There are some markets that I've applied to multiple years and I just live on that wait list. I love to live on a wait list. Just park me there. Give me a drink, I'll sit on that wait list. You can decide whether you want to keep living on that wait list. It's not an outright rejection, but it is a rejection.
For one, are we naming markets?
Vivian: Yeah, you can name markets.
Caroline: Okay. So The Big Crafty in Asheville is a very big, very good craft fair and I just park my butt on their wait list. I finally have decided I'm done donating to them because there is an application fee for them. I have looked at everything. I think my work is a good fit for their market. They do not want me there and that's okay. I don't need to keep applying. You do have to decide when to just cut your losses.
Sometimes you'll get feedback that isn't so helpful from those things. I've gotten feedback before that's like, "we really like your work, but we just already have too many ceramic artists." That's not real feedback really, because my ceramic work is not like any of the other ceramic artists. So you chose other ceramic artists over me for a reason. What I need to know is, what was the reason? Don't expect to get some sort of a skeleton key to what's going to fix everything with these market feedbacks.
The headline that you read from the article about me in the Free Times. That was from a piece of feedback that I requested.
Vivian: I didn't even know that! And it was too pretty to be important?
Caroline: So this was, I had applied, and this was not ceramic work. This was when I was still working primarily in polymer clay. This was a sculpture that I had submitted to Art Fields, which is a very big art festival here in South Carolina. And I had checked a little box that was, yes, please give me feedback because I want to learn, want to grow.
The feedback that came back, there were a couple of things that were like, I just wasn't sure about this thing, what you were saying with this part or this part. Then the last line was ultimately it was pretty. That was why it wasn't accepted. I was like, well, this is the least helpful thing.
Vivian: And I really hate to... Well, and I hate to hear that. I love though that you bring this up because like you're saying, it's not anything you can, you can't do anything with that. There's nothing. So there's this very distinct line, and I think Chelsea in your notes, you had written this where it's like, what type of feedback do you actually want to take action on?
That's not something that you can, so what are you going to do now? Make everything ugly and then it's going to get in next year?
Caroline: Right. This is where your mindset comes in. That actually was helpful feedback to me, not for changing my art, but for understanding just how subjective the process is for getting into these things, particularly where art is concerned. This particular man, you know it was a man, did not like my piece. A different person on a different day, with a different mood might have. That is something that definitely reminds me, I remind myself of that. There's a huge craft show in Baltimore run by the American Craft Council. Two years ago, I got waitlisted for it and actually got pulled up off the waitlist for it. But it was too close to the deadline. I didn't have enough work to be able to do it. Then the next year, I didn't even get on the wait list. Total rejection. It's because it's different people doing it. So you have to remember that this is subjective, that this is not necessarily about you. It might just be the particular person who looked at your application that particular day.
Chelsea: Yes, and I love that you said that. I have here in my notes, sometimes it's not you, it's them. Sometimes it's not you, but the market. I'm not saying it to say, absolve yourself from criticism because sometimes, I mean, sometimes they give you actual helpful advice. But other times it could just be that you're applying for a very, very, very popular market and there were just people who were better than you. I mean, it's true. Sometimes you're just not the best small business that's there. I'm not trying to say that your small business isn't good, y'all. That's not what I'm saying.
Caroline: Or just people who are better suited to the taste of the organizer.
Chelsea: Absolutely. Sometimes it's preference, it's whoever's looking at your application. There are so many different variables going on.
Vivian: I think the other one that we don't mention enough of too is, for example, when you're talking about how you had been waitlisted for that event or that art fair in North Carolina, you don't know what type of pre-established relationships they have with other vendors already. So you're already up against an even more competitive market because they have some booths that are already slated without them saying it for people they know or people they've allowed in year after year. That's the other part. You just don't know any of that on the back end. like you're saying, take it with a grain of salt, but I like the approach you have. Even when they're not giving you the best feedback, you're still pulling something from it.
Caroline: It all comes down to how you receive it. Nothing is in your control except your reaction to the information. I can't control whether I get into the market. All I can control is what I do with that information.
Chelsea: I also want to remind everyone that picking the right market to apply for is going to help you one, actually get invited to come to the market. But I bring this up because if you're a brand new small business, if you're just getting into markets, you might be strapped for cash, right? A lot of these markets have a vendor fee. I don't want y'all applying to markets and spending money on applying to markets that are not going to accept you. Right.
Take the time and be very specific about the type of markets that you're looking at because if you apply to let's say a very, very popular market, but it doesn't really suit your vibe, but you know it's very big. So it'd be a good chance for me. You're kind of setting yourself up for failure.
Vivian: Yeah, I mean, I think it's important to..so let me let me frame it from this perspective.
Chelsea: Vivian's like Chelsea's wrong. Let me fix...
Vivian: No. Well, this is what I'm thinking.
Caroline: And I have a third perspective after Vivian.
Vivian: Yeah, so I'm a small business owner that's just getting started with all the markets and I spend time filling out these applications, which Caroline, I'm sure you could tell us these applications are not like five minute applications, right?
Yeah, so you're spending this time and energy to finish these applications. Do you really want to waste that or put that into markets or events that aren't aligned with your target audience, the type of people that are going to love your product and service? I think, at the core of marketing, we always tell you guys, you know, great.
Followers on Instagram are excellent, except what is your conversion rate? How many of those people are actually your target audience and how many of them are actually buying and spending money with you? That's your goal. Markets and craft fairs are not any different. You're looking for people who are going to be your community, who are going to love your product and service. Don't waste your time on just because something's big doesn't necessarily mean it's right for you.
Caroline: Yeah, and I think that that is excellent advice.
I think that's harder when you're first starting out because you may not know who your audience is. I feel like when you're starting out, it's a lot of just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. I didn't know who was going to buy my stuff and I've been surprised. So something I started, I did it last year, I'm doing it again this year and it's a modified version of it. Have you guys ever heard of a hundred rejections?
Vivian: Is it basically where you're trying a hundred things just to see?
Caroline: Well, so it's something that writers do. You're trying to get rejected from a hundred things. So you are trying to get rejected from a hundred things. The way that I've done it, it's basically asks. So it could be you applied to something and got rejected. You contacted a store and were like, Hey, do you want to sell my stuff? They were like, no. That counts.
So, this has been absolutely fantastic. I love doing this. I got nowhere near 100. I didn't even do 100 asks. That's fine. I would be broke if I had applied to 100 things. Because application fees are out of control, especially for art fairs. Art fair application fees are usually $35 or $45 each. So, yeah. So you don't want to be trying to apply to 100 of those.
But what it did do was pushed me. It pushed me to apply to things I didn't think I could get into. A lot of the time I did not get into them. But I already knew I wasn't probably going to get into them. Then I got into some things that I didn't think I was going to get into. I'm going this fall to St. James Court art show in Louisville, Kentucky, which is one of the best art fairs in the country. I had no thoughts that I was going to get into that. I'm so excited. Without doing the 100 projections without being like...basically the goal that I set set for myself was apply to 10 things each month, was what I set for myself.
Vivian: Yeah. So is there also another aspect to this where it's, I don't want to use the word desensitized because that has a negative connotation to it.
Caroline: Yes, you should use that. Yeah, it is.
Vivian: Yeah. So it desensitizes you to the, not the fear, but the actual feeling. I will say this and I'm just going to share with you guys. Worst feedback I've ever gotten, but it sticks with me to this day. Not going to name my boss's name, but I had a boss that told me, he said, you are too sensitive. Because when he would give me feedback, I'd internalize it.
My thing is, I don't really know how to separate the two because I do feel like it's a form of artistic expression. Unless you're giving me some written feedback that's cohesive or is detailed, you telling me you don't like something without anything else after it doesn't really guide me too well because I can't change anything. So I do wonder if maybe I could learn something from doing this because then I wouldn't feel as invested when it does come back negative.
Caroline: Absolutely. I would write down, okay, these are the 10 things I'm going to apply to. I would put a little mark after I applied to them. Then when I would get the rejection, I would write, Nope. In capital letters with an exclamation point next to them. Nope. Got rejected. All right. It helped so much. And you're right, absolutely. If we only choose a couple of things that we're going to apply to, we get so invested in those couple of things working out. If we are like, I'm just going to apply to these other things, again, a million application fees notwithstanding, it is a numbers game. You apply to enough things, you're to get into something. It does desensitize you in a way, because what happens is you get rejected and you realize that the world doesn't stop spinning and you realize that your work doesn't start being bad.
Vivian: Yeah. Nobody cares. Nobody knows.
Caroline: Yeah, but if you try to control, shut yourself off from the possibility of that pain. You try to protect yourself from that. A, you're shutting off the possibilities that you're going to get into an awesome market. And you're just going to make it worse when it does eventually happen because you're never going to shut yourself off, you can never protect yourself from that. It's going to happen. But the more you try and protect yourself, the worse it's going to feel when it does. So just do it, rip off the band-aid.
Vivian: Let's go back to, I love that you in that article, you were talking about magic, right? Just how you see it in all of nature and everything. So I wonder too, if you guys are listening to this, if you are not putting yourself out there and doing what Caroline is talking about and opening yourself up to rejection, you are also closing yourself off to magic, to allowing the art fair in or the art show in Kentucky to come to fruition, right? Just because you're not even thinking about that kind of stuff and you're not willing to say, let me just throw my name in the hat and let's see what happens.
Caroline: Yeah, for sure. This is a quality that I got from my mother, that my mother taught us. I never saw my mother ever break down because something went wrong. She would always go, huh, okay, well what are we going to try next? That was it. I mean, it was always, okay, what's plan B? How are we going to rig this? My mother is a champion rigger of things.
That is the greatest gift that she gave me, was the ability to just go, okay, plot twist. What are we doing with this now? This 100 rejections has helped me really hone that. I don't think that I would be able to stay in this as a business if I didn't have this mindset of being secure in the knowledge that the work I'm making is good and that I know who I am as an artist. I know what my work is and I will take feedback, but I'm not going to melt down because somebody doesn't like what I'm doing.
Vivian: Have there been any other advantages or, have you taken any or abstracted anything else from these rejections and applied it to your business? How else has it changed? I know you said, you feel like you wouldn't be able to do what you do without being able to learn how to take it, right? When you're rejected, but has it had any other effect on your small business?
Caroline: I started taking better photos of my work. For sure.
Vivian: Really?
Caroline: Yes, that is something that definitely I learned early on. Especially with starting to apply to art markets. Definitely stepped up my photo game, big time. That's something that if you're going to be applying to markets, you need to have good photos and you need to also, I've started now and I need to do more of. Trying to do two sets of photos, photos for art fairs, which is one vibe and photos for markets like Feminist Magic, which is this amazing market in Charleston, one of the absolute best markets, love it so much. That has a different vibe. So that's something that you can think about too.
If you apply to a market and you get rejected, go to that market's Instagram page or whatever, look at their feed of the vendors, look at those photos, what kind of vibe did those photos have? Are they just the product with a clean background? Are they more integrate, see what the vibe is. See if your photos are along those same lines or is there something you need to adjust? Take the rejection and see where you might adjust things without compromising your vision and who you are and your products.
Chelsea: Absolutely. There are times where you're rejected for things like photos. Taking a second, taking a step back from your small business and saying, well, where can I improve without breaking down and saying they hate my small business, is going to help you because at the end of the day, there are just some ways where you can present yourself better.
Vivian: Yeah, it goes back to always and I hope as a big sister I've instilled this with you where I constantly, I feel like I'm a constant work in progress. I'm in my 40s now, I hope that that never changes. I think I've told you before, the minute I think I've stopped growing, please just make sure I'm in my grave. Life gets so boring and I think if as a human, if you're not consistently just looking for small things that you can do to improve yourself, improve the work that you're doing or your contribution to the world, like what are we doing? We're not being introspective enough. Chelsea's like, sure, whatever.
Chelsea: Well, I'm just thinking every year for the new year, I always put, I always say I don't have any resolutions because I'm already perfect the way I am. So I mean, I don't know.
Vivian: I mean that that's a different approach for sure.
Caroline: My resolution is always to try and hit fewer curbs. It never works out.
Chelsea: That's a pretty good one too. That should probably be one of them.
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Caroline: I feel like objective rejection is "I applied to this market, they said no". You're objectively rejected from that market. But I feel like we do a lot of things where we, "I emailed this store and was like, Hey, I would love to talk to you about carrying my products and they never email me back". I'm rejected. That's not a rejection. They didn't email you back. You have no response. Okay. So many things could have happened there. You could have gone to spam. They could have seen your email and been like, I'll get back to that, and they got busy. I lose emails all the time. So I want people to start thinking about, what's in your head? What stories are we creating that make us feel bad, and just cut that shit out. That is unnecessary. Stop it.
Vivian: Yeah. There's a gentleman I follow. He does this thing where he calls them soundtracks. I love the way he says that because it's kind of like when you got a catchy tune in a song that you can't get rid of. That's what he says. Exactly what you're saying. Whatever you keep repeating to yourself in your head, that thought that you have or that perception you have about yourself, that maybe somebody said flippantly to you and now you're just sitting there mulling on it over and over. It's a soundtrack.
Caroline: Yeah. I've had multiple conversations in the last couple of weeks with friends, small business owners about Instagram. People being like, oh my God, I posted this thing and nobody liked it and stuff. It's just, Instagram's trash.
Vivian: Yes. Thank you. You said it. We didn't.
Caroline: It's trash. It's trash. The algorithm's trash. People will be like, I posted this thing. I'm like, well, I didn't see it because I don't know what's going on because posts come, they go, blah. The number of likes on your post, that is not data for you. That is just a wild hair of who saw what, whatever. That is not objective.
Chelsea: Say it louder for the people in the back. Yes, thank you.
Caroline: Instagram sucks. That's not an objective rejection of your post. That is just random, whatever. We've got to stop giving weight to these things and giving time and mental energy to these things that don't mean anything and that cannot help us.
Chelsea: For markets and situations like that where you don't receive any response, yes, that's a perceived rejection. Can we also talk about how sometimes consumers or customers will look at your products and then walk away? I know that that sucks. You wanted that sale.
Sometimes it's just that they're going to come back and look at your stuff, you know? So making sure that you don't sour that relationship, make sure they have a card, make sure you're still being nice and polite to them. If you feel like, they're not going to purchase anything, I'm not going to make a sale, you should not switch up because of that. I've had this happen to me at markets before. I've had people decide that I probably wasn't going to purchase anything. So they just stopped trying to interact with me and that's going to turn me off even more. Now I was considering your product, now I'm not considering it at all because, y'all it's a people's game. This goes back to you need to be nice to people. You need to put the effort in.
Caroline: Yeah, for sure. You don't know who's there who doesn't have money that day and isn't going to buy anything from you. But maybe will down the line or maybe won't. I don't know. I have a weird relationship with selling for someone who sells things for a living. I've never sold anything to anyone.
I once had a guy at a a higher end art fair come in and say, "sell this piece to me. Tell me why I should buy this piece." I was just like, no, what? No.
Vivian: I don't care what you do with your money.
Caroline: I don't! I would never ever try to sell something to somebody because that means they don't want it, especially for art. Having those interactions with people and having those just be human interactions and having that warmth and whatnot, you really don't know what's going to happen down the line. I have some amazing collectors of my work who have bought so many things from me, who didn't buy anything for me the first time they saw me. Yeah, you can't assume that you know everything from one interaction and don't assume rejection. Yeah, absolutely.
Vivian: Well, and I always think of it, when I go back to just marketing basics. They're telling us now it takes seven to eight interactions with a business before someone spends money with them. I always think of it this way. I love going to markets and stuff. Sometimes I'm not looking for anything in particular, but then when I have a friend's birthday, or I have a Christmas that comes up or something along those lines, that's when I go back and I think about the small businesses that are doing something that I'm like, I know someone who would like that as a gift, right? Along the same frame, as far as like artwork, there's a lady here at Nexton that she does a lot of the markets, but she does like Marsh designs and stuff. If I know I have a friend who likes that particular style, then I'm like, that's a great gift for them. Their birthday comes around once a year. So I can't be buying it in March for a birthday in September, but then I catalog it.
To your point, you might be having people that are looking and with the thought in mind, hey, I know now that there's a business that does this, that when I'm ready to make a purchase, I could go to them and do that online.
So let me ask you really quick. I think it's important to exercise and what type of, are there any exercises quote unquote that you can do? One of the really good ones...What are you laughing at?
Chelsea: I thought you were going to ask her, does she do yoga or stuff? I'm like, where is this conversation going? No.
Caroline: Oh god, I was about to be like, no, no, god, no I don't do that.
Vivian: I feel like you're kind of like a, what's his name? Daniel from Karate Kid, okay? You're a kung fu master and you've mastered rejection, right? You've mastered how to reframe rejection.
Caroline: I'm really good at getting rejected.
Vivian: You're excellent. You're the best at getting rejected.
Caroline: I want a sash that says "best at rejection".
Vivian: That's right. You have a black belt in rejection. What is your wax on, wax off method? One of the ones you covered that was really good was that challenge of 100 rejections, right? How many ways can you of reframe your mindset with it? But is there anything else that small business owners can do that would help with taking that sting out or make it less daunting when they are rejected.
Caroline: Yeah, I mean, I think getting rejected more is number one. I do think doing the worst case scenario is helpful just because, what is the worst case scenario of getting rejected from a market that you could possibly come up with? I can't think of one other than like, they'll send me the email and I'll be so upset that I'll trip and hit my head, like what could it possibly be? It's just, I'll feel bad for a little while. If you're at this point in your life and you've never felt bad for a little while, you're going to get through it.
Vivian: Write us in and tell us how.
Caroline: Yeah. You're going to get through it. Also, I think that you have to be really clear on who you are and why you're doing this. Going back to the imposter syndrome thing and maybe one reason why I don't feel too bad when I get rejected is because I don't feel that as an attack on my art because I think my art is good.
If you don't think that your work is good, why are you selling it? Why would you sell a bad product? That's a bigger question we just need to think about. If you don't think your work is good, you need to think about why you're trying to pass it off to somebody else.
Vivian: I wonder too though if maybe we're thinking the wrong thing. It's not that we think our art is bad or our product is bad. I wonder if some of us, when we create something, we just don't know. Instead the question we should be asking is who is this made for? Who's going to buy this, right? Who is this? Who is my community? I'll say this, we have a mutual friend in Jesse, Southern Curiosities.
I love the fact she does that whimsical taxidermy stuff. I can't imagine the amount of confidence when she had the thought, let me put this rat on a stripper pole. Let me put this rat on a motorcycle and see if people will buy this. Yes, rat in a teacup. All of that, I think maybe it's not that we don't think our product is good, but maybe it's just we haven't found the right target audience, and we haven't asked ourselves that.
Caroline: Yeah. That's where the, just putting yourself out there until you find them comes in, and there's no shortcut. That's the thing is that we are so, as a society in general, we are so focused on a shortcut, a magic pill, something that will just take away the pain, make it fast. Sorry, there isn't one. I spent years going to terrible markets. I spent a lot of money on vendor fees that I will never see again. I, you know, trudged through mud, had lost things to wind. I had very, very boring conversations with people that wanted to talk to me about things that had nothing to do. You got to just go through the shit and there's no shortcut. If you want to do this, there is no shortcut.
I should not be a motivational speaker is what we've learned from that.
Chelsea: No, but you're correct.
Vivian: Well, here's the thing. I started posting on YouTube seven years ago and sometimes am I like, yeah, I should probably have 500 subscribers at this point. Yeah, sometimes I tell myself, I know it's a soundtrack. Okay, well, but the thing is you have over 7 and that's more than you had at the beginning.
You've learned how to edit. You've learned how to do all this stuff. So I guess that's the part of it, there is no shortcut for any of that. If you guys are listening to any podcast, especially a marketing podcast that tells you, just go viral. You guys need to quit listening to that crap.
Caroline: This one weird trick.
Vivian: Yes, don't listen to that crap. It takes work and you want it to take work. You want to know why? Because that's going to separate, the cream rises to the top, that separates you from other people.
Chelsea: I've never heard that.
Vivian: You've never heard of that?
Chelsea: I've never heard that, but keep going. You're on a roll.
Vivian: No, but it separates the people that are not serious about doing the thing. I don't want to be at the same level of someone...I always tell her our biggest advantage is... We know people that started podcasts. Podcasting can be boring, okay, especially when you think you're talking to crickets. No one's listening this and that. I told her, when we make the commitment to do something, we're going to do it. Even if it takes us five years or if it takes us 10, I don't care, we're doing the thing.
Chelsea: As a small business owner, unfortunately, if you want your small business to do well and to take off, you're going to have to just do the thing. Yeah. There's no tricks, there's no shortcuts. You just gotta do it and continue to do it.
Vivian: So Caroline, before we wrap up this conversation, you tell us where people can connect with you and all that good stuff. I do have an important question to ask. How many Titty Bats T-shirts do you have?
Caroline: Yeah! You know, I think I only have two. Which is not enough. It's not enough.
Vivian: Okay, I have two.
Chelsea: I also have two.
Vivian: Oh, look at that. I thought you had one. You got two.
Chelsea: I have two.
Caroline: I have "I think I might snap" with the snapping turtle, which is my current favorite, and my current mood climate. I have a "boot scootin' root tootin'" armadillo in a cowboy hat, which is very cute.
Vivian: That was the one that you were wearing, I think, in one of your either Instagram reels or your post, but I saw it and I was like, I have to ask her if she's got like a whole collection of them. If you guys don't know, Titty Bats is another fellow vendor, right? At one of the Columbia markets. Yallmart. He just makes the coolest tie dye looking t-shirts that have funny characters and stuff on there.
Chelsea: I have, "I crave violence" with the cat that has the knife. I also have, "it's always time for crime" with the raccoon on it.
Vivian: That's right. I love them.
Well, we have thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Tell us where can people find you?
Caroline: Me too.
You can find me at Instagram, Revisionist Studio, my website, revisionistudio.art. If you really want to keep up with me, I would recommend signing up for my mailing list, my email list, which is actually my number one marketing tip for people is when you do markets, have a list for people to sign up for your email, because Instagram could implode tomorrow and you'd lose all those followers. But you would still have your email list.
That's just a really great way to be able to connect a little bit deeper with the people that want to hear from you. I really love my newsletter people. So sign up for that and you can hear some more of my thoughts.
Chelsea: That was music to our ears. Let me tell you as people who I feel like...Our last guest Gretchen had said, you know, if you're listening to this podcast right now I know you've heard about email marketing because I feel like we talk about it every single episode.
Vivian: Well, to your point though, that is the only way we're really you have full control of the communication that goes out to people that want to know and you know crave more information about your business. What type of information do you share on the email list?
Caroline: So because I don't sell on my website that often, I do occasionally do like drops for things. So I'll share works in progress. I'll share just kind like what I'm thinking and what I'm feeling. My background is in English. I am a writer. I like to write. So I get a little bit deeper and more vulnerable about what I'm thinking when I'm going through this work than I will on Instagram. I also, when I do sell things on my website, I give the people who are on my newsletter 24 hours of pre-access to that sale. They usually snap everything up before it even goes live. Those are my people. Those are the people that have said to me, I really want to be a part of this, like I get you, I get this, and I want to be a part of this. So I really treasure those connections that I've made with those people.
Vivian: Well, and we certainly treasure you. We love that you're no nonsense. You will tell it like it is and you'll share your thoughts. I think there's too much pretentiousness that goes on in small businesses because we feel like we have to put on a certain type of, I don't know, vibe or something.
Chelsea: I feel like just in general, people when they're talking feel like they have to sound super smart.
Caroline: And I'm not afraid to be a dumbass.
Chelsea: No, what I'm saying is like you're using words. This is the problem that I have with a lot of marketing gurus. They're using a lot of buzzwords to make yourself sound smart. You're not actually saying anything.
Vivian: Listen, if you want to come on our podcast so that we can tell you that you're you're good at failure and you're using that English degree very well. No, I love it.
Caroline: I really enjoyed having you guys call me a dumb failure. That was wonderful.
Vivian: You guys, listen to this entire podcast. We did not. Okay. I want to, we did not call her a dumb failure. We loved having you on though. Listen, open invite. Anytime you want to come on. If there's some small business drama, some small business stuff that people are doing out there that we don't agree with. Come on.
Caroline: Alright, I'll keep my ears open.
Vivian: Okay, it was good talking with you, Caroline.
Caroline: Thanks guys.
Chelsea: Y'all, I forgot to say it during the recording. Go be the best S.O.B.'s you can be!
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