Peter talks to artist Willie Wong at his Edmonton-based gallery, Kamena Gallery. Willie is known for his beautiful watercolor art and his role as mentor and teacher. Willie talks about his early beginnings starting out as a student of agriculture and later an entrepreneur in the food industry, finally his journey takes him from his native home of Borneo to Alberta, Canada where he and his family opened Kamena. Willie’s journey of how he was able to make his life long passion into his profession is not only interesting and inspiring but he also has lessons to share and jokes to make along the way.

While in San Francisco, Peter Urban talks to Axel Schultze, veteran entrepreneur and founder of the Social Media Academy. Axel discusses his background and how he came to be an entrepreneur from his roots in Germany through to his immigration to the US. Axel provides insights into what made him successful and also discusses his current venture the Social Media Academy which is going global.

“People say: ‘oh ,I’m just in Linked-in, I don’t go to My Space this is not my professional part, well, if your customers are on My Space you had better be there..right…so it doesn’t matter where you are, what you think, its about them..” Axel Schultze

In this second episode with Alain Briot, Peter and Alain talk about marketing during the recession and how to be a winner selling art online. Alain shares tips about building an audience and how business in the arts is about people not just about your work. He discusses the importance of being flexible and catering to those clients who like your work rather than on trying to win with those in your audience who are critical. 

“You have to increase people’s awareness of what you do and increase your audience and then control the volume of work by the price. Its a simple marketing model but it works well, you are not trying to cater to the whole world. My goal isn’t to sell my artwork to the whole world, my goal is to sell my artwork to those people who think it is worth the money” – Alain Briot.

Visit Alain’s website – www.beautiful-landscape.com

Alain Briot’s Smibs Network profile and portfolio - http://smibs.com/net/Alain

Don’t forget to check out the first interview with Alain Briot!

Peter Urban is in Phoenix Arizona talking to French American photographer and artist Alain Briot. Briot is a very successful entrepreneur, writer and artist who developed a unique approach to photography focusing on it as an artform rather than putting emphasis on the technological tools that make the pictures. This episode tells Briot’s story from his meager beginnings as a struggling artist in Paris to his current state as a successful photographer and  businessman in the South-western US. Briot’s humor and wit are engaging making this SmibsTV episode one of our best ones yet. This episode is one of two we filmed while on location in Arizona at Briot’s gallery.

Peter heads down to Calgary, Alberta to meet up with Canadian Photographer, Daryl Benson at the Gallery for Photographic Arts Canada. There they talk about Daryl’s work, his no-nonsense business approach and why it’s best to ‘drink upstream from the herd’!