The January Reset: One Metric, One Goal, One Plan
Release Date: 01/17/2026
The Art Marketing Podcast
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ou know how sometimes you discover something so powerful, so game-changing, that you almost want to keep it to yourself? That's exactly what I've been doing with today's topic. But recent developments have made it impossible for me to stay quiet any longer. Look, if you're an artist who's tired of posting on Instagram and feeling like you're shouting into the void... if you're frustrated with how hard it is to get people to actually click that link in your bio, or start a real conversation, or – heaven forbid – give you their email address... then you need to hear what I'm about to...
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Coming up on today's Art Marketing Podcast, I'm talking with Kristen Harvey - an artist who went from designing video games for Sega to hand-making greeting cards that essentially run her local Arizona market. Not prints, not originals - greeting cards. She's cellophane-wrapping each one, taking custom orders from shops, running what amounts to a mini factory from her studio. And here's the kicker: she charges $3 wholesale because for her, it's not about the card money - it's advertising. She worked full-time for five to six years while building her art business on farmer's market tables that...
info_outlineINTRO
It's January. Everyone's planning. But most artists are tracking the wrong numbers—followers, likes, email subscribers, website traffic. In this episode, we cut through the noise and focus on the ONE metric that actually predicts everything else in your art business: new customers acquired per year.
We'll cover:
- Why this single number matters more than anything else
- The "lineup problem" that keeps most artists stuck at 7-8 customers per year
- The 10x challenge: compete against your 2025 self, not other artists
- The compounding math that turns 70 customers into 1,500+ over 10 years
- Why "tending the garden" is the marketing shift you need to make
- A copy-paste AI prompt to build your entire 2026 plan in minutes
THE PROMPT
Copy and paste this into Art Helper, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Grok:
I'm an artist planning my 2026 business growth. Help me create a customer acquisition plan. Here's my data from 2025: - Number of NEW customers acquired: [X] - My current product lineup: [list what you sell - wall art, prints, cards, originals, etc.] - Average price points: [list your price ranges] - How I currently get customers: [social media, art fairs, gallery, website, etc.] Based on the 10x framework: 1. Calculate my 2026 goal (10x my 2025 customers) 2. Break it down into monthly targets 3. Identify gaps in my lineup that could help me acquire more customers at different price points 4. Suggest 3-5 specific actions I can take each month to hit my target 5. Create a simple tracking system I can use Keep it practical and specific to my art business. I want to treat this like a real business, not a hobby.
SOURCES
Statistics cited in this episode:
- Repeat customers generate 300% more revenue than first-time buyers — Gorgias/MobiLoud
- Only 27% of first-time buyers ever return — RevolutionParts/MobiLoud
- 75% of purchases happen within 24 hours of discovery — Nielsen Norman Group/Guiding Metrics
- After 12 days, 90% of your conversion window is gone — Guiding Metrics
- 70% of online carts are abandoned, 80-90% never return — Baymard Institute (50-study average)
- Increasing customer retention by 5% increases profits by 25-95% — Bain & Company/Harvard Business Review
- Repeat customers account for 48% of all ecommerce transactions — SalesLion