I'm an oil painter turned business coach.
I started sharing my oil painting journey on YouTube in 2020, and as I built my own business, I studied EVERYTHING I could about business and marketing. With my low income background, there was no room to fail. No trust fund to fall back on. Along the way, I fell in love with teaching these skills to artists and creatives just like me.
I’m an oil painter who accidentally became a business teacher.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, all of my summer internships fell through. Facing a summer with nothing to do, I started a YouTube channel where I shared my oil painting journey.
Somewhere between 2020 and now, the channel passed 300,000 followers, a few videos went past a million views, and I’ve made over $600,000 from my creativity since 2022. And as I built my own business, I realized there were essentially ZERO resources out there for creatives interested in learning the ins and outs of building a business online. So I started sharing what I was learning. It took off, and along the way, I realized I loved being an educator. Helping someone achieve their dreams is incredibly fulfilling. So I pivoted. Now I'm a full-time marketing coach, and painting is something just for me.
What I actually do all day.
I teach artists, illustrators, ceramicists, and makers how to sell their work online without turning into a content machine. Most of my content is 100% free on YouTube.
I've received countless messages from folks who have watched my content, taken my advice, and sold their work, gone viral, and even taken their business full time. That kind of impact never gets old.
What I believe.
The starving artist myth is a mindset, not a rule. Creatives don’t have to be bad at business. Most of us were just never taught.
I’d like to spend my career fixing that.
I grew up watching a creative career not work out.
I’m the result of a teen pregnancy between two severely mentally ill teenagers struggling with addiction. My childhood wasn't great. I ended up being raised by my grandmother (and would have otherwise gone into foster care), but money was always tight.
My mom was an artist.
She was often in and out of jail and rehab, but when she was sober, we’d spend weekends together making art. She always wanted to take her fiber art and poetry full time, but life kept standing in the way.
The internet barely existed then. She pushed her work to pricey galleries, never kept track of her expenses, and chronically undercharged. Everyone in my life watched her struggle and urged me to never ever pursue a creative career.
I kept wondering if they were wrong.
In college I started a YouTube channel to share my oil painting and tried to learn everything I could about running a business. Partly to prove a profitable creative business was possible, and partly because my mom still struggles with mental health and addiction, and there’s only so much I can do for her.
"But maybe," I thought, "I could help other people learn these skills."
