Frustrated Employee Finds Inspiration in Frida Kahlo Instagram Account

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Welcome to Saddle Cell School. This is your host, Chris Guillebeau. So glad you're here. Every day on this program, I'm telling a different story of somebody out there, somebody perhaps like you, who finds a way to create more freedom for themselves, pursue a creative outlet or passion, and make some money. All good things.

Now today's story is all about a tech employee who is unhappy with her life. You ever been unhappy or dissatisfied, discomforted, et cetera? Well, I meet a lot of those people. A lot of them end up starting projects, just like we feature here. So this tech employee starts an Instagram account inspired by a famous artist.

This account then becomes an online store and a social mission, paying out thousands of dollars in royalties to the artists who contribute their work. And it's also bringing in an increasing amount of money for the founder. She's been growing it for two years on the side and has gone from one holiday sale to now selling art and paying good royalties to female artists year round. I'll tell you a little bit more about how it works. And at the end, I'll also give you a tip about how to learn the best time to post on your Instagram account.

Now there's not a one size fits all answer. It's not just like, okay, go Wednesday at 1053 a.m. There are some trends, like some general trends for the whole population, but your followers might be more likely to engage at a different time than mine. The good news is that there's a way to figure out exactly when this day and time of the week is for you. So I'll tell you about that at the end.

The story is called Frustrated Tech Worker Finds Inspiration in Frida Kahlo Instagram Account. That story is coming right up after this message from our sponsor. [Music]

In August of 2016, Tatiana Figuero was looking for a change. She was on a tech team for a growing startup, but the fast paced all consuming nature of the job was causing her to lose enthusiasm. At some point she realized she was taking work too seriously and her life outside of work not seriously enough.

She decided to leave her job and begin a journey of rediscovering what inspired her. Tatiana thought back to what made her excited in high school and the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo immediately came to mind. When she first learned about Kahlo in her art history class, she was amazed. Kahlo was one of the only women artists they discussed in class and she was Latina, just like Tatiana. After that Tatiana spent time learning whatever she could about Kahlo's life story.

And now years later, she thought about how she could make Kahlo a bigger piece of her life. She enjoyed looking at the portraits that other artists created of Frida Kahlo on Instagram. That's when she decided to create an Instagram account solely for artwork in her image. And she named it Frida Vibes. She made the account and began to repost artwork.

Many of the artists she featured were appreciative of her giving them exposure. In turn, they would repost Tatiana's repost. This caused both the artists and Tatiana's account to reach more viewers. And soon Frida Vibes began to accumulate a following. Once Tatiana hit 1000 followers, she could tell she was really onto something.

She had already gained an audience without researching anything at all about Instagram. She had a feeling that if she learned some techniques, applied some work to it, she could grow her following even more. She began setting up and soon started implementing tactics like posting specific hashtags, learning what times to post, and discovering how to get on the popular page. From there, Frida Vibes took off. Tatiana thinks it's partly because her account is so focused.

At this point, she was posting images of art inspired by Frida Kahlo every single day. And nothing else. Instagram users knew exactly what to expect when they followed her account. She says that ultimately, to grow your following fast, get specific like she did, know your audience and post images that people will want to repost. Now, so far, it's just a passion project, but as her account grew and she began to interact with more artists, she started to build a community around Frida Vibes.

Tatiana says her, this could be a business antenna went up. She wondered what kind of struggles this community of artists face. So she began asking them what they wanted to do with their work and what obstacles they experienced. There were two answers that she heard the most. The first was that they would love for more people to enjoy their work.

The second was that they wanted to make more money from their art. Two good things, right? Well, this got her thinking. She wanted to solve these problems or at least help with them, but wasn't sure how. Then she realized she could open up an online shop.

She could sell people's Frida themed artwork and pay the artist royalties. She decided to call her store Frida Pop-Up and she used Shopify to make it. She'd never had an online store before, but her background in tech helped. She was able to teach herself how to use it. And by Black Friday of 2017, Tatiana officially launched the store.

At the time, her 10,000 Instagram followers were her first customers. Since then, the Frida Vibes Instagram followers have nearly doubled. She has been working with a variety of artists to sell their products. And she says that she measures her success by the amount of royalties she can now pay those artists. Those royalties are in the thousands of dollars.

She typically gives them 10 to 20% royalties on every product that's sold in her shop, which means that she is also earning a good profit. In addition, Tatiana's mission to support artists has continually evolved. Through her work with the community, she realized that there are huge discrepancies between men and women in the arts. Although there are more female artists than male artists, 87% of art in museums is created by men. Not only that, but female artists are paid an average of $20,000 less a year than men.

Seeing those inequalities, Tatiana decided that her shop will sell art made only from women and those who identify as non-binary. Last holiday season, that shop, now called Frida Vibes, just like the Instagram account, doubled its profits. Over the past year, Tatiana has worked to have the shop open year round rather than just during that holiday season. Not only that, but this year's holiday season profits are expected to double again. With all that growth, Tatiana is now working with even more artists.

Although she ended up getting another full-time job as a technology consultant, she still loves running Frida Vibes on the side. It helps her recharge, promote artists, and make some money at the same time. Running that shop has added more color to her life in more ways than once. [Music]

All right, so here we have a success based on something that's really specific. Just really niche, focused account.

Look at it on Instagram. It's all about artwork featuring this one artist. And that's good. It makes it so much easier to understand what it's about, and therefore attract a following. Now Tatiana took it seriously after she realized she was onto something.

That's when she started posting every day, using the hashtags and so on. And then I mentioned something about learning what times to post, because that was something that helped her. So you can sign up with a service called Later, later.com. I think there's some other services that do it as well. Some of them are free.

Some of them might have like a low monthly cost and you can just join for a month and then cancel if it doesn't work for you. And as long as you're posting regularly, like it takes a little bit of time to get the data, but if you post one photo a day for a couple of weeks, these services can do a little analysis, which they do automatically and essentially tell you, okay, actually you're getting more engagement at this particular day and this particular time. And once you have that information, then you know, okay, going forward, I need to make sure that I schedule my posts or set a reminder to post during that time. So just a little hack that you can use if you're trying to get more engagement, more likes, more followers on your Instagram. So that service is later.com.

That's the one that I use. But as I said, there's some others as well. I will link up at least that one in the show notes page and hopefully it will help you if you're trying to grow your follow. If you're not trying to do that right now, if you're thinking about ideas, ask yourself, you know, what idea could I have? Kind of like Tatiana, something that inspires me.

How could I find a way to inspire others with that? And then also hopefully create some kind of business from it. Okay, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Hope you have a wonderful day wherever you are. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1041.

Episode 1041. Wow, it's crazy. I hardly believe it, but here we are. We are approaching the end of 2019. For those listening in real time, hopefully if you're listening later, the Frida Kahlo Instagram account will still be going strong and I'll have something else for you tomorrow.

Be sure you're subscribed. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]

From the Onward Project.