Ep. 048 Say bye bye to the Bah Humbug - Part I

Episode 48 of the RockStar Mentor Podcast - Part I

Diffusing the Negative Crabby Holiday Shopper

Tis' the season for a wonderful perspective holiday season, and as much as I don't want to delve into negativity based on some questions I received from a few of you in regards to how to deal with crabby shoppers this holiday season..... ahhhhh BAH HUMBUG! It doesn't matter where you go or what you do or what kind of art you do, you could have the happiest are in the world and eventually someone will come up to you and be a naysayer, will say something negative about your artwork. So I've received a couple questions about this and I want to be able to address some of these questions, specifically what to do or how to say certain things to get your message across.
Now perhaps many of you grew up in a household where if you have nothing nice to say you say nothing, however I believe in this day and age especially with the over excessive bashing and behavior online sometimes the filters are not up and people say what is ever on the top of their head because they think it's fashionable to behave this way. Bad form indeed!

Now as you might know, I have owned a gallery (several in fact) and I have heard it all. Everything as blatant to "why does this cost so much" to "do people really buy this stuff". Now being an artist I have found positive and creative ways of spinning the comment into a nice conversation, a little detour to the "crabby person" to lighten the mood a bit, and I try to put myself into their shoes, perhaps they don't realize the way that something had come out of their mouth and that they have possibly hurt your feelings. Another thing is that they don't realize you're the artist so they can freely say whatever they want even if it's hateful or bashing.
I have gotten this several times, I simply don't I don't blatantly tell them I am the artist, but I will hint around about my creation process so that it is a lightweight way of telling them hey, I am the artist, are you serious?

Some people are more direct and they say I am the artist and you've offended me, that approach is a little too rough for me so I prefer to "kill it with kindness" and be more creative about it. The bottom line is, it's personal, and it hurts and for many... "how dare you talk crap about my art". It's almost as though you're telling someone that their baby is ugly. (Good grief, I certainly hope that people aren't doing that now and this day and age because that would be really bad.)

Simply telling someone that they're wrong doesn't make their comment less intrusive or rude. I have found that explaining the artwork typically works better than trying to prove if one is right or if one is wrong.

The top three things to keep in mind is:

1) Ask the person: "what is it about the artwork that you don't like?"

2) Ask them "Do you prefer presently collect original art?" If they say yes then ask them what kind of artwork do they gravitate towards and talk a little bit about that.

3) Then proceed to tell them a little bit about yourself, why do you create, why you create the artwork that you do, and what drives you as an artist. It gives them a sense of who you are and what you're about without being combative. You may event end up with a sale because of this approach!

Rockstars, do you feel this way as well? What do you think are the motives behind somebody's raw opinion of your work?

I would love to hear more about this. I was hoping for the holidays to pass to share something very personal with you, but I might go ahead and bring this up next week, it was an anonymous note that was sent to me from a person, that I will not give credit to because I don't want to give them the satisfaction but it was sent to me by way of my website and this

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