A Creative Community for Daily Art Journaling

[INTERVIEW]

 

Shelli Varela: Donna Clark, welcome to the It’s a TRIBE Thing Podcast. Buddy, how are you doing?

 

Donna Clark: Whoo! I’m doing great. Thanks so much for having me.

 

Shelli Varela: Oh, my goodness, it’s our absolute pleasure. Will you be so kind as to start with what you do and who you serve?

 

Donna Clark: Sure. So, my role in the membership that we have is I’m basically the integrator. I’m the producer behind the scenes. And so, I have a business partner who is an artist and so we have an art journaling membership called Your Artful Journey, which is basically monthly classes and lessons and prompts and helping people with their monthly art journaling habit. As it turns out, we have found that our community is predominantly a mature audience so, basically, 50 and above.

 

Shelli Varela: Amazing. So, that’s incredible. I mean, the benefits of that we’re going to get into because I’m an art enthusiast myself. So, I know the benefits of that. So, we’ll unpack that later but will you start with how did you get to be in this position like who were you before you were a membership site owner? And tell us the awesomeness that led you to the moment of saying yes.

 

Donna Clark: Okay. Well, how long have you got? Yeah. So, my first career was in the video production world, broadcasting video production. So, I did broadcasting corporate video and I loved it and I was very, very good at it, award-winning. I did that for over 20 years and I was a freelancer. So, I was still kind of in that entrepreneurial mindset but after 20 years of doing the same types of things, I just burned out. I got to a point where it’s like, “Alright. This doesn’t fill me up. This isn’t fun anymore, and there’s got to be something else for me.” So, I was kind of looking for the next thing, did some marketing here and there, but what I ended up doing is actually filling a need in my community and creating a nonprofit theater arts academy for kids.

 

Shelli Varela: Oh, that’s so great.

 

Donna Clark: I did it because my daughter liked it. And so, there was nothing in the area for me to do and that is a bit of my background. I’ve got a theatre background but it was like, “Well, let’s just try this.” And that’s still going on with the exception of the COVID pretty much shutting down the schools, and that’s where our programs are. They’re in after-school programs. Anyway, so that was that thing. In the meantime, a few years ago, I go through a divorce, and as an entrepreneur thinking, “Oh my gosh, now I need health insurance. Now, I need all this stuff,” I knee-jerk reacted and took a full-time job. I went back into the corporate world and I worked for the Michaels Corporation, which is the arts and crafts store. I was in the education department, and I still was doing some video production for their deal. And so, I was putting on this video for how to do paint parties, actually, for Michaels. They flew in this artist and she was going to be the on-camera talent. I’ve never met her before but she and I just clicked and we hit it off, and it was a great shoot, and she was awesome. Two days of shooting and then, boom, she’s on a flight. She’s gone and we never see each other again or even talk. I mean, yeah, we Facebook friended each other but that was about it. Until a year ago, July, and I was scrolling on Facebook, and then here is her post.

 

I don’t even remember ever seeing a post from her before. So, whether it’s a God thing, a universe thing, whatever you want to call it, I felt like that was a place in time that we just kind of went, “Whoa.” Because I said her post was, “Is anybody interested in doing some art classes locally?” And some people were like, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Where have you been? Blah, blah, blah, blah.” And so, I reached out to her and I thought, “What the heck. Do you remember me? And would you ever consider doing your stuff online?” And then she responded, “Of course, I remember you and, yes, I would consider doing that. I just don’t have the bandwidth to do all the things or even the knowledge to do all the things.” I said, “You want to get on a call?” So, we got on a call and we just found out that our lives had sort of taken similar paths. We’ve both been through divorces. We both felt like we lost our joy and our passion for creativity and all that stuff. Just from then on, it was like, “Do you want to do this?” We’re like, “Yes.” That was July. That September, we pushed play on our founding member launch.

 

Shelli Varela: Wow. Okay. This is a lot to unpack and it’s amazing and juicy, and I adore it. I love watching people’s paths unfold and I just think it like the timing and you paying attention to what brings you joy and what you’re good at. When you were producing video and you had that moment where you’re thinking like I don’t want to do this, what advice would you give to the people who right now are hearing this story about this membership site that you just kind of started listening to the signs and the timing was right, and then this person pops back into your life, and you’re like, “I have an idea.” And the reason you have the idea is because you have all of this vast knowledge that comes together in this like apex at the right time. For the people right now who are listening who were thinking maybe I could do a membership site, like they’re listening to your story, super inspiring, but are maybe in the position you are just before you said yes. What advice would you give those people?

 

Donna Clark: Well, I had taken the courses. I had taken a lot of things and done a lot of the research and a lot of the online education too because I just knew in my gut, I’ve always known what’s possible. I’ve seen it unravel for other people. So, it’s like I know it’s possible. It’s just a matter of just taking the step and being willing to take a risk. You know, I didn’t have to, well, I could have shut myself down and had this self-doubt saying, “Don’t reach out to Tracy. She might not remember you. She might not even want to do this.” There’s a lot of shoulda, woulda, coulda stuff that could have happened but then it was like, “But what if she does?” and now it’s just it’s a thriving member. I mean, it’s just unbelievable of what’s transpired since then. So, it’s just a matter of trusting your instinct and trusting your gut. If it’s something that’s burning inside you, then just take the next right step, whatever that is.

 

Shelli Varela: One of the things I admire so much about you is you are what I call a hybrid so completely on the one side creative and evolved and a conscious person, but also, just so like practical tactical, get it done logical project management. For the people who are in your membership site and have joined you on this journey, what do you think is the benefit they’re actually receiving? Because, yes, they’re signing up to do art classes but why do you think it is they join you? And why do you think your demographic is what it is?

 

Donna Clark: A big part of it is Tracy, who is our content. She’s our front person. So, it’s her energy and that’s what it initially attracts people to her. She’s it is what it is. What you see is what you get with her. There’s no pretentiousness and she is vulnerable from time to time. So, I think that’s where people connect with her but as far as the actual membership, and what the benefit is that people get from it, it’s less about the art and it is about the community and the support that they get inside that community. And it’s about learning how to take the time for yourself because you deserve the time for yourself, and to rediscover or discover whichever the case may be for the people that everybody’s creative and everybody has the ability to create. That when you do that for yourself and take that time for yourself, your stress level is lower and you get confident. I mean, we are seeing a lot of these members they’re just, you know, all these thank you emails and things that come back saying, “Thank you so much for doing this. I’ve needed this for this time in my life,” or whatever.

 

I mean, whether people are going through divorces or whatever they’re going through in their lives, there’s a lot of women in our group that are going through cancer treatments and things and so this becomes the light and the spark and the fun thing and the connection that they get with their community because these women are becoming very connected with each other. So, it’s less about Tracy and it’s more about the community that’s connecting with each other, which is really cool to see.

 

Shelli Varela: Absolutely. I think there is a magical synergy too with the people who run the community and are in the community. It’s not lost on me that you reconnected with Tracy and you both had been through a very similar journey, and then are saying that a lot of the people who are in your community are at some similar point for whatever reason and are connecting with you and like just what a life raft in the middle of a stormy sea sometimes, right?

 

Donna Clark: Right. We started it with let’s make some pretty art and let’s do this kind of stuff but now, I mean, Tracy will be in tears for some of these emails and texts and phone calls that she’s getting from people just saying, “Oh, my gosh, I can’t even thank you enough.” I mean, it’s just incredible. It’s very moving and it’s impactful, and it makes you feel like this is what we’re supposed to be doing.

 

Shelli Varela: Can you talk a bit about the fact that you have in your membership site, you have a front person who does the content, by and large, and then you have yourself, who is the magical ninja puppeteer on the back end that knows all the things and makes the engine happen? I know, we were talking in the pre-chat and I was sharing that many, many, many creative people and creative can be like whatever their niche happens to be. They’re dialed in, in terms of what it is that they do but when it comes to piecing it all together and turning that into a business, it seems to cause them to procrastinate in some areas. So, I just think it’s so brilliant that you have somebody who it’s like, “No, no, you take the football and run it down the field. You stay in your lane. Aces in their places,” and if you get nervous or whatever because there are so many moving pieces in the business, all that person has to do is turn around and see you behind them and you’ve got everything handled. You’re like, “No. Keep running. Run, Forest!” Can you talk to that sort of dynamic because there are so many people out there that may have something and this may be actually a smarter option for them to have an integrator?

 

Donna Clark: Well, I just absolutely love that whole analogy that you just said because that’s exactly Tracy and my relationship because when we first started talking about doing this together, she of course was like, “I know nothing about memberships. I don’t know anything about the online space. I don’t know anything about that but I do know how to paint and I know how to teach people and I know how to connect with people.” And she said, “So, if we’re going to do this, all I want to do is paint,” and I said, “Perfect. Because I’ll do all this other stuff.” So, we work together from marketing strategies and we talk things through, but at the end of the day, she just has to worry about being Tracy, doing what she does, which is connect with people and paint and create, and I keep her in that zone and then I’m back here, like you said, the puppeteer doing all the magic ninja tricks. I’m the cheerleader. Because I know talent and I know on-camera talent, and I know how people start to get like if she sees too many bad comments or whatever’s going on, I sweep in there and I just know that I have to tell her, “You’re doing fine. You don’t need to listen to that.”

 

And so, I coach her through some of that as well and she’s always like, “Oh, you’re my drama coach and everything.” So, I tried to coach her on her delivery and stuff that like, “Stop chit-chatting so much. Get to the point and just get on with it.”

 

Shelli Varela: You know what, those are so valuable because oftentimes, you can’t read the label from inside the bottle. If you’re in front of the people and you get on a breakaway, and then all of a sudden the crowd is vibing but you’re not landing the plane like I can’t even imagine how valuable that would be to have the quarterback going, “No, no, like run the ball down the field, please.”

 

Donna Clark: Well, and it’s so much like the old people on the new set where they’ve got the little IFB things in their ear and they’ve got the producer talking to them. I’m over there texting her saying, “Oh my gosh, would you stop talking? And would you just tell them what they need to know?”

 

Shelli Varela: Wow. What a streamlined process that must be. If you could look five years down the road and this could be whatever you want it to be, this incredible membership site, what would that look like? Would you expand it? What would be the ultimate ripple effect of the people that get to participate in it? If logic were not a thing and you could cast a vision, what would that vision look like?

 

Donna Clark: Well, we’ve already started casting that vision, actually. So, I was just on the phone call. We have our weekly meetings and it was like, “Okay, Tracy, I don’t want to burden you right now but you’re going to have another membership, and it’s going to launch next year.” So, there are many aspects to it. So, we see it being membership courses, teaching other creatives how to bring their business, or how to make art their business like so there are creatives that want to make money with their art. We’re going to teach you how to do that. When it’s time and people are gathering, again, totally want in-person events and things like that because that’s the real glue is that connection that people get. If people are going to have the opportunity one day to actually come together and meet face-to-face, whew, that’s a home run right there.

 

Shelli Varela: That is so brilliant. I think in this time in history, never ever more have we needed art more desperately than we do now. And so, for the people who are able to create the art and keep that creative juice alive, so valuable not just for them as artists but for all of us because we all need a little bit more of that. What I love that I heard you say that is absolutely genius because I know many artists and musicians and people like that. I often hear them say, “Well, this is my passion. It’s what I love but I can’t like it’s not realistic to make it a business.” And what you’re providing, essentially, especially from what you’re talking in the future is almost like a business in a box that allows people to understand and get taken into this online space where they can actually have their passion not only be something that causes recurring revenue potentially but also for the rest of us allows that art to exist in the world where otherwise it might not.

 

Donna Clark: Right, absolutely. You made one comment about how timing now, everybody needs art and everybody needs that kind of escape. I mean, that’s one of the things that we found out when we were launching for the second time. Actually, I mean, I hope it’s okay, that we kind of go down this road about launching and stuff but the first time we launched, not the founding launch, we did that and we got 60 members, the second launch, we kind of fell flat, and we only got 13 people. But we did this traditional sort of webinar-style launch and It didn’t feel right. It was like, “No, this isn’t working,” and it didn’t. At that point, we had pretty much exhausted Tracy’s world at that point, her existing email list, and her world. So, I was like, “You know what, we can’t launch again until we get more people on our email list and in your world. And so, I don’t even want to do that until we need to double our email list or something. I mean, it was like whatever the number was but it was like we just need 500 more people, 1,000 more people, whatever. And so, I said, “So, let’s just not do it right now. Let’s just wait.” She said, “Okay, we’ll do that.”

 

So, then COVID happened. And so, because that was in about February when we had that discussion, so then early March, the world shuts down. I wake up one morning on a Saturday really, really early to this idea and it was a 24-hour art party free and would that be something that we could pull off in a couple of weeks? Because I felt like time was of the essence that people needed something, an escape like that now and they needed sort of that release and just the escape to do some art for a while. So, Tracy is two hours behind me. She’s Pacific Time and I’m in Central Time Zone. So, it was super, super, super early. So, I was about to text her and I thought to ask her, “Should we do this?” And I thought, “Screw that. We’re going to do this.” And so, I knew some of the creative club girls from TRIBE and so I reached out initially to some of them and they were like, “Yes, yes, yes, yes,” and I thought, okay, we’re doing it. We’re going to get 24 artists for 24 hours teaching 24 different art classes and we did it in less than two weeks.

 

Shelli Varela: That’s incredible. What are the results?

 

Donna Clark: So, what happened…

 

Shelli Varela: Yes. But then what happened?

 

Donna Clark: So, then, yeah, so expectations were I had none really. You know, I had no idea. Would this be something that people are going to sign up for and register for? And with the idea that yeah, this, hopefully, we could build our email list with this. What happened was within two weeks, we had over 5,000 new emails on our list and it totally blew our minds, totally blew our minds.

 

Shelli Varela: Well, look at you go Ms. Integrator.

 

Donna Clark: And so, then it was like, “Okay. Is this a fluke? Could we duplicate this again?” And so, a few months later, we did it again but it was a smaller event because that was a whole lot of work. So, instead of 24 artists, it was 12 artists, and we still garnered over 3,500 new emails from that event.

 

Shelli Varela: That’s incredible.

 

Donna Clark: So, that’s sort of I was like, “Hm, this works.”

 

Shelli Varela: Well, and that’s the advantage of having a brain like yours, right? That’s the advantage of having maybe somebody who’s doing the art on the front or whatever, the front-end facing part of the membership is, and somebody else who can say, “Hang on a second,” and has that 30,000-foot view and the know-how and maybe is not buying into what we all feel sometimes, which is maybe the angst of being in front of people or the fear of being judged. The benefit of that is you’re not going to be so you can think with a fully clear head and say, “Okay. This is the play that we’re going to run. Now, just run it.”

 

Donna Clark: Yeah. And so, for me, it was like since it was such a producer-type thing, I was like, “Well, I know I can do this.” So, I’m the one that’s going to be doing all the work behind the scenes. I don’t really need Tracy right now so I’m just going to go and run with it. So, I’ll just tell her what I need from her.

 

Shelli Varela: Where can people find you if they’re looking for you online? Because I know there are going to be a lot of people who are, especially here in Canada, we’re back into lockdown. This is just such a welcome option for people who want to have a bit of an escape, connect with some alone time, and really just get back to what actually matters. So, if people are looking for you and want to connect with you guys and be part of your world, where’s the best place they can find you?

 

Donna Clark: The best place is YourArtfulJourney.com and there we’ve got our Facebook group and everything else that people can find where Tracy does free stuff all the time.

 

Shelli Varela: Amazing. Donna, you’re awesome and we so appreciate your time, buddy.

 

Donna Clark: Thank you so much.

[END]