39. Expand Your Revenue Through Live Event Artistry

Clients and brands are seeking out live event artists like never before, creating a booming new revenue opportunity for calligraphers, engravers, and other creative entrepreneurs. If you're looking to add an income stream that can bring several thousands of dollars per month, this is it.

In this training, you'll learn how to add take your calligraphy, engraving, bottle painting, watercolor portraits, or other art form from your studio, to performing in front of guests. 

We'll cover:

• How to find and reach your ideal live event clients (including corporate clients, brand activations, and weddings)
• The best pricing strategy for live events, which increased my rates by 30% without losing bookings
• The steps to making your first live event a success

Whether you're a calligrapher looking to diversify, an engraver wanting to break into events, or a creative entrepreneur exploring live art as a business, this episode will show you how to turn your artistic skill into a scalable, sustainable income stream.

Download the Freebie: Live Events Supplies Guide

Get the best deal when the Live Events Course launches: Join the Waitlist

Transcript

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Introduction

0:29

Welcome back to Calligraphy Biz Corner. I'm your host, Xiao Qian. Today I wanted to share with you a talk that I gave for Elizabeth Stuckey's Stationery Biz Summit at the end of July about expanding your income streams by offering live event calligraphy or other types of live art like bottle painting, watercolor portraits, basically live art that you're doing for guests. If you've been thinking about offering live calligraphy, this episode's a perfect overview for you, and I also talk about the first steps you can take to getting into this space. If you are already offering live events as a service, you'll still find this episode helpful because I also share how one of the changes I made in my pricing strategy allowed me to increase my pricing by 30%, without losing clients at those higher rates because they more clearly understand my value. I also talk about how different types of clients have different goals for their live events. Like, retail clients, for example, have very different goals than conference clients. And by understanding and being able to speak to those goals of our clients and not just saying that, "Oh, I'm here to create a memorable guest experience", which is what we do, but oftentimes that's actually a secondary goal and not our primary goal for our clients. So if you understand their primary goals, you're going to be far more likely to be able to book those clients. This training was originally recorded as a video, so I'll make this episode available on YouTube as well. So hi, YouTube friends, if you're watching right now, in case you wanna follow along with the slides that I put together. In the show notes, I'll also link my live calligraphy supplies guide, which is a really handy packing checklist for your events. I go through mine before every event and also includes my trusted supplies guide and links to all of the tools I use for hot foiling and engraving Okay, before we get to the good stuff, I have one quick request. I'm creating an in-depth live events course that goes deeper into what we cover here, and also topics that I don't have time to cover in this, like, 30-minute talk. Things like how to close leads, the steps that I take after I book the client, subcontracting, multi-artist events, and lots more. What I would love to know right now is, is there interest and a need for a resource like this? So please, if you feel like a live events course would be really helpful for you, can you please go to the show notes and join my course waitlist so I can decide if this is the right place to invest my time in for our community. All right, let's jump into the training

Stationery Business Summit - What is Live Event Artistry?

Shaochen 2:56

Hi, I'm Xia Chen of Monstera Gold, and I am a business coach for calligraphers and creatives. Thanks so much for spending some time with me today at the Stationery Business Summit. I'm going to talk about how to expand your income streams into live event artistry so that you can complement your stationery business for year-round cash. My goal today is to help you understand the live event space, the huge opportunity that it presents for you right now, and then help you feel comfortable moving your art from an in-studio setting into a live event setting. Let's get started All right. First of all, what is live event artistry? It's art literally in action. If you take a look at this video from one of my on-site events here. So forget watching videos that people see on Instagram for, like, the behind-the-scenes. Now they're there, they're watching the art being created right in front of them. So some examples of art that we might see done live, watercolor portraits that you see here on the left side of the screen, live engravings. The video was showing me doing hot foiling. Bottle painting. I've done some vase calligraphy, like customizing vases with calligraphy before. They all fall into this experiential space. I personally am a live calligrapher. And I've also included a couple pictures of work from my talented friends. You can see their Bowtie Brush and Aquamarine designs with their permission. Live wedding painters also fall into this category, where one artist will create, like, a masterpiece painting of your wedding day live. But in today's presentation, I'm going to be focusing on live events where we create multiple pieces and focus on guest personalization, so it's a little bit different than live wedding painting. With live event artistry, we combine live entertainment with custom experiences, both which are individually trends in the wedding industry. And live experiences have also been cited as top trends by wedding planners, blogs, and magazines. But the great thing about this is that the audience for live art expands beyond weddings as well into retail and corporate. And that's where we see a lot of opportunity to kind of expand your revenue, again, beyond those, like, stationary audiences where you might be focusing on weddings

Why Live Events are Hot Right Now

Shaochen 5:01

Now there's a noticeable shift towards live art and live experiences right now, which means that there's a huge opportunity for adding live event artistry as an offering. So I'm gonna give you a couple stats that I found and also share some experiences from my personal business. According to G2, B2B, business to business companies, spent an estimated thirty-eight billion dollars on experiential marketing two years ago, which was already an eleven percent increase from the prior year. And the trend is continuing. We're seeing more and more growth year over year. And it makes sense because for businesses, the ROI is there. According to EventTrack, which is the world's largest annual research report on experiential marketing, eighty-five percent of consumers are more likely to purchase after attending a live marketing event, ninety-one percent have more positive feelings about brands after those events, and then seventy percent become regular customers after attending an experiential marketing event. And personally, just as consumers, as guests, between just the sheer amount of digital content that's out there, the rise of AI, spending time on our phones, people want things that are more human, things that they don't have to question. Was this done by a, a computer or a robot, by an AI, or was it done by a human? They want more of those real-life experiences and seeing things with their own eyes. In my own business, I've also seen all of these shifts in action. I haven't made a significant change to my website or my marketing in recent years, but I've seen the live calligraphy page on my website gain more and more popularity starting around twenty twenty-four, resulting in more leads for live events for my business, and it's really only skyrocketed from there. So this is a a little chart I made based on, like, the leads that I got over the last couple of years. And so you'll see that, like, in twenty-twenty two, twenty-twenty three, live events weren't really a thing. I'm in the Denver, Colorado, market here, and I wasn't getting a ton of inquiries. I also wasn't super actively marketing, so but my... Again, my marketing hasn't changed a ton over the y- these years, so I don't attribute this growth to anything that I've personally done or changed. I think this is really attributed more to what we're seeing in the industry. Twenty-twenty four is where I started seeing more of a uptick in getting live event inquiries. In twenty-twenty five, I got triple the amount of live event leads I got in twenty-twenty four. This year, in twenty-twenty six, I'm projected to basically double that because we're about halfway through the year. I've already almost surpassed the number of live event inquiries I had in all of twenty-twenty five And not only that, but I'm also sending out proposals that are not just four figures, but five figures, $10,000 and more, which I honestly would've never imagined in the early days of quoting $100 an hour for live calligraphy. So live event clients really are looking for you right now. And during this training, you're gonna learn how to find those ideal clients who are already looking for live ar- artists, how to price your live events for maximum revenue, and your first steps to booking a live event. I'm also going to give you a freebie, so make sure you stay tuned for that, or just check the link on this presentation page for my freebie. It's a live calligraphy supplies guide, everything that you need for your first live event to make sure that you're not missing anything when you head on site, including all the small but important things that you may not think of and things that I certainly didn't think of for my first live events. And it includes all the links for specific supplies that I trust and use on site, including for hot foiling and engraving as well

Meet your Teacher, Shaochen

Shaochen 8:30

Now, if we haven't met yet, I just wanted to quickly introduce myself. I'm Xia Chen. I'm a business coach for creatives, And I've helped hundreds of calligraphers and creatives start and grow their businesses through my courses, coaching programs, and also my podcast, Calligraphy Biz Corner. I primarily do live events as far as client work now, and I spent over a decade in corporate and tech. In 2019, I had a bad concussion from a fall while snowboarding. My work wouldn't slow down. I realized I was in a really stressful environment. It wasn't conducive to my physical or my mental health. So without really a plan in place, I quit my job, and three months after that, I started my business, Monstera Gold in 2019. And at that time, my calligraphy was still very much at the beginner level. I picked up, like, a brush pen about six months before I actually started my business. And since then, I've made hundreds of thousands of dollars through weddings and live events. I've had my work featured in national and international publications, And now I get to help calligraphers and creatives grow their dream businesses, again, through my courses, my coaching programs, and my podcast, which really is my absolute favorite thing and my passion to see calligraphers go from feeling overwhelmed or lost in direction to having clarity, confidence, and really thriving in their businesses. Most importantly, I'm building a business that feels aligned to this season of life where I have two young kids and a business that allows me schedule flexibility, so I can continue to support my family while also doing the work that I love.

  Find Ideal Clients Who Want to Connect with You

Shaochen 9:59

All right, let's jump into today's lessons. So I've done live calligraphy for all types of events, for retail stores, for a movie premiere, for a jewelry line launch, for various conferences and trade shows, for retreats, and it feels like these days the great thing is that live calligraphy and live events are for everyone, for all types of different events and celebrations, which is so great. But what I wanna do here to start is to really break down the primary types of clients that are looking for live events and what their goals are, because everybody wants to create a memorable experience for their guests, but there are often more specific goals as well for your client of a live event. And if you can speak to their goals, if you can speak to the benefits of live artistry when you reply to the lead or when you're pitching to them, you're gonna be much more likely to close your sale. So we're gonna start by talking about how to find these ideal clients that wanna connect with you, and really understanding them and understanding your audience so you can speak to them when you're in that sales process All right, first we're gonna talk about a couple of clients whose goals are around marketing and sales. So this first one is like brand activations, launch parties, influencer events. And so a couple examples of things I've done that fall into this category was this picture is of me doing live calligraphy at a movie premiere where they invited a number of influencers to come watch the movie. And so they had this like themed bar, and they had me doing the live luggage tags, like hot foiling luggage tags. And then they went into the movie while I finished their personalizations. They came out, and they could pick up the luggage tags. I've also done a launch party for a jewelry store when a new line came out, and so again, inviting influencers to come, take videos and really, like,, generate buzz through that, like, live personalization that was part of the larger event. Basically having, like,, user-generated content and marketing for them um, that they would post on Instagram. And so the goals for these types of events are really around brand awareness. They may not have, like, specific sales goals right away, right? Like, the people who came to the movie premiere did not purchase tickets. I'm pretty sure that they were just invited to the premiere, and they didn't have to pay for the movie. But now they're gonna be, like, talking about it now that they've seen it. They can give a review on it. They can talk to their friends. They can talk to their audiences and use their platforms. And so their goal here is really about brand awareness. And as a live event artist, you're there to help generate buzz so that they're gonna take videos of you, take content of what we're doing as part of that event and share more about it. The second type of client that falls into this space is conferences and trade shows. I've done more and more of these lately with live calligraphy, and their goal is primarily gonna be around lead generation, meeting more potential clients that are looking for their product or their service. And one of the ways that I've really been able to help my clients in this space when it comes to live calligraphy is by putting some of the fields that they need on their order forms, so in addition to, like, the guest name, having their email address or phone number. And so now all of a sudden, the personalization order form also becomes a lead gen mechanism for them, people that they can call and follow up with after the event. By talking about this during the sales process and making these suggestions, I'm really demonstrating that I understand what their goals are when they are booking a live event artist and simply by having our presence there, they're gonna get more leads coming to their table. I've seen this in conferences that I've done, where the time that we're on site is when they get the most leads at their table or even, like, comparing year over year, a year they didn't do an activation compared to the year where they did. They've been able to generate more leads because of us being on site. And these are all great talking points to bring up when you get leads for conferences and trade shows For retail stores, a lot of times they are looking to drive more sales. And so being on site, the live art is meant to be an extra incentive for people to purchase. So a lot of times the personalization is going to be with purchase. After they buy a perfume, they can get it engraved. After they have leather products they can get it personalized through hot foiling, things like that. That's what I'm doing here in this picture. And so their goals are gonna be around sales, more time in store, more spend in store and they typically book around holidays, major holidays like Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Christmas, and some smaller holidays and promos throughout the year as well. And so knowing that is also important because now you can proactively reach out to retail-type clients during those types of year and explain how you can help them achieve more sales Now there are also events that are more focused on like continuing the relationship with employees or attendees or guests, and they're not trying to sell anything. So their goals aren't around marketing and sales, but more like the client experience or the guest experience. So they just really want to focus on creating that like fun, memorable experience for guests. So this example here, I did a company party. It was like an anniversary party for the company. And so this was just a treat for their employees to get something for free, but also just like see the experience in action, something they might not have seen before and just make it a really fun experience for them. This is the same thing for weddings. The goal here for someone who books live art for weddings is again to maybe showcase something that their guests haven't seen before, have a favor or memento from the wedding that is special, is personalized, doesn't just get tossed. And so if you're already in the wedding industry, this would be a great additional service to pitch to existing clients as like an upsell or even planners that you work with to further expand the deal

How to Price Live Events for Maximum Revenue

Shaochen 15:32

Now that we know who is looking to book your live event services, let's talk about the best way to price live events in order to showcase your true value and in turn maximize your revenue. I've been booking live events since 2019, and pretty much everyone I've known until the last few years has quoted live events by using an hourly rate, and there's still a lot of artists that quote using an hourly rate. And so for example, maybe you have a three-hour event, your rate is two hundred dollars, and so you quote the project at six hundred dollars. There's not anything wrong with this, but I do think there's a better way to actually communicate your value to your client and thus be able to charge more for your live events. And so let's talk about like this old way of pricing as I say it. So we quote based on the hours that are on site. and sometimes the travel time and expenses are quoted separately, which can lead to some client confusion. So let's say for example, you put your rate on your website as $200 an hour, and so they come in thinking, "Okay, this is gonna be $600 for this event", and they don't realize that there's actually an additional charge for your travel fee. And so there can just be some misalignment in expectations. And then often people don't set a minimum. So for example, if you get an inquiry for one hour on site, you quote them for $200 on site because that's your hourly rate, even though the amount of time it takes you to drive to the event and back, the admin and the prep time, that's all often the same as if you were to be working like a three-hour event, which just means that you're undercharging your time for shorter events. But the biggest thing I experienced after pricing dozens of live events through just using this hourly rate is that it really doesn't take into account or compensate me for all of the prep work that happens before you even set foot at the event. So coordination on details with the client, testing and creating samples of what you're going to be customizing on site, removing hundreds of plastic packaging from m- your personalized materials like luggage tags, training team members if you have them. Even day of activities like packing up and getting ready for the event can take a bit of time, and so that's why you gotta grab my freebie too, my Live Calligraphy Event Supplies Guide. It is a great checklist that'll help speed up that process, and then just showing up for the event early for setup as well. So when you are reducing your package down to really just thinking about the hours it's really easy for your client to think, "Oh, 200 an hour, that's expensive." Because you're primarily positioning your value as only your time on site, not everything else that you're doing to make the event successful. Starting last year, I started quoting my pricing as a package, and I've seen an increase in both my conversion rates and the amount that I'm able to charge for events. And so at the end of 2024, I was quoting basically this example that you see here, $600 for three hours of on-site work. Now my minimum is $1,000 for up to three hours on site, and most of my proposals for live events are actually bigger than that, and I've even sent out several $10,000 plus proposals this year. So how did I actually make that shift? Let's take a look at really tactically what that looks like. So here you can see that by positioning it as a whole package, it's much more clear to the client in terms of every single thing that they're getting and the true time that they're spending on this event other than just the three hours on site, and the value that you're bringing with your expertise and preparation before you even set foot on site. So when you have it all laid out like this, you're able to really price out all the components of work that go into this event. You'll likely find that your quote is going to be higher than if you just looked at your hours on site. These numbers are just illustrative, and pricing is personal, but even if you kept your hourly rate for your on-site time the same, you might f- find that your total quote is more when you consider all these different factors. So you can see that, like, in this example, my package pricing is $800 for the same amount of time on site. Now, I will be coming out with a live event course later this year, and I will have a more detailed pricing calculator to help you figure out how to price your own custom packages, because again, like I say, pricing is personal. And so we wanna make sure that it's a price that makes sense for you and you understand what's going into it. So these numbers, again, are just meant to be illustrative. Now, when you layer this package pricing strategy on top of being able to speak to your client on how you can help them reach their goals, which is what we talked about in the previous section, you're going to be much more likely to book the leads that you get

Your First Steps to Booking a Live Event

Shaochen 20:02

Now so far we've talked about how to find clients for live events and the best pricing strategy for maximizing your revenue. So let's talk about how to put all of this into action and go through your first steps for booking a live event. Now this sounds so silly, but step one is literally to see if you like doing your work live. Because you may find that you absolutely love it and you thrive on connecting with people, you thrive on the energy from being at the event, but truly, like, it is not for everyone, and that is perfectly fine. It's your business, and you should enjoy the work that you do. But live art is different than working in studio because it is often high volume. When I do on-site calligraphy, I'm spending one to two minutes per piece typically for personalization if it's a single word or initials. There's minimal to no drafting. If I'm doing a hot foiling event, I don't usually tape the foil down. There's definitely a different process than I take on site versus when I work in studio. Someone is also going to be watching you work, and that is part of the experience. A lot of times my guests will wander the event and come back for pickup, but people will be taking videos of you as you work. Some people will choose to stay, if the event is slow. I love... One thing that I love is to have people peel off the foil to do the reveal as well. So there's all these kind of interactive elements and components when you are on site. And obviously a big component is also, like, chatting with the guests, explaining what you're doing. People are really curious, um, about this because often they've never seen it done in person before. So it's important to practice what it would be like to work in a live environment. Look for opportunities before you offer this as a service. One thing you could do first in studio is to really time yourself on how long each piece can take you while you are still maintaining the level of quality that you're still happy with. Other ways you can kind of prepare yourself for this environment is, let's say, at the next girls' night, Bring some key chains you can engrave for them. If you're a watercolor artist, do a watercolor portrait for them. See how you could do, like, a, a quicker style for them in person. And then a bonus when you do things like that is make sure that your friend is getting photos and videos of you that you can use to then build up your portfolio. You can also approach your friend or a small business and maybe have them pay just for the cost of what you want to personalize for them and then donate your services, your art services for free, for the actual personalizations. So think baby shower, birthday party, maybe a small promo for a business that isn't expected to be super high volume to ease yourself into this type of work. The first time that I did live personalization, I did it through a market. Um, and so people purchased these dog bandanas from me. This was like a event focused towards dog lovers. I partnered with a bandana company to sell these bandanas, and then when people purchased the bandanas, I would personalize them for them for a little bit of an extra cost. Now, I wasn't really focused on the revenue here. I was really focused on learning and figuring out the experience of doing this type of work live. And it definitely gave me a good feel for this work before I booked my first live event, and there were definitely some lessons learned. So I think it is important to give yourself opportunities to do the work live in an environment that is a little bit more, like, forgiving and slower paced before you pick up something that is a little bit more high volume Step two, build your portfolio. This ties in a little bit with what we were just talking about in the previous step. Make sure that you are getting videos, and photos, especially if there is an opportunity to do things in front of people. I think one thing that people don't realize is that you can also use photos of your work that you do create in studio to help build your live events portfolio., And so for example, this picture of luggage tags, these are the exact luggage tags I like to use on site. It's the same technique I use on site, which is hot foiling. I happened to do a small batch of these for a wedding planner who wanted to gift these to her clients. And so I took the opportunity to take pictures in my studio where there's, more time, where there's better lighting because oftentimes when you're actually on site, the lighting is terrible, and it's actually really hard to get good pictures of your work. So if you're taking pictures in studio to represent your on-site portfolio work, just make sure that these are actually pieces you would be able to do on site. So for example, you might not be doing a super elaborate bottle illustration design when you're on site. You're probably not doing a seating chart live or signage live, right? And so don't use those types of pictures to represent your live portfolio. But as long as you are showcasing things that you can do live, mostly people just wanna see, like, the style of your work and get a sense of what they could do in a live environment. The third step, and this one's really important, is to create a page specifically for live events. The large majority of people who book me for live events, they find me through my website. So SEO or search engine optimization is really important, and now also increasingly through AEO, which is answer engine optimization. So basically, they're asking ChatGPT, Claude, or some, uh, other AI tool to help them find a live artist like me. And that means that having a webpage that's specifically dedicated to live and on-site events is really important. One of the biggest mistakes that I see calligraphers make on their websites is having their webpages organized by technique. So, like, pointed pen, hot foiling, engraving, rather than by audience, like having a corporate or brand activation page or a page separate for weddings, Because the marketing manager who's booking you for this event from corporate, they have no idea what the difference is between engraving and hot foiling. Trust me, because I've definitely seen hot foiling called engraving multiple, multiple times. So if your webpages are organized by technique, they're not really gonna know what to click on, versus if you have a page that's dedicated to brand activation, live calligraphy, on-site calligraphy, they're going to land on your website and know exactly where to click. And this is also why it's important not just to have a section for this under, like, your services page or something. You wanna actually have a separate website page for this service. And so you can see an example from my website. This is a screenshot. Live calligraphy is, is right up there in the top navigation, and then I have keywords in there around, like, brand activations, conferences, and things like that, the different use cases that we talked about, like the different goals for those clients, and also the different things that I see personalized or people requesting to be personalized, leather embossing is often an inquiry that I get, and those are the words they use, and so those are some of the words I use on my website as well for SEO purposes. I definitely know that there are some improvements I can make to this page to help me get even more leads. But like I said, I haven't really made much changes since 2022, And I'm just seeing so much demand in the industry that I'm naturally getting more inquiries. And so the page is working for me so far as is, even though I know there are other ways that I can optimize for

Grab the Free Live Calligraphy Supplies Guide

Shaochen 27:01

it So I can't share everything that I've learned in the last seven years about booking and working live events in this short presentation today. But I am planning to launch a more comprehensive course that does share everything I've learned about growing in the live event space, and I'm hoping to launch it before the end of the year, since we mentioned that holiday season is big for retail live events. And so I'm hoping that with the course, you'll be able to get in on those opportunities. In that course, I'll go over not only the clients that are looking for you, but also how to engage with them, the strategies that have gotten myself booked within a day of getting the inquiry and seen as a category of one versus people shopping around, for other live event artists. I get booked even when my prices are some of the highest in my market for live events. I'll include my email templates for how to respond to an inquiry, my exact post-booking checklist for a client that creates a great experience right off the bat and instills confidence in your client that you know exactly what you're doing. And we're also gonna talk about subcontracting artists because we're not only seeing more demand for live events, but also demand for live artists to accommodate more people, and so now we're often booking a team to come work alongside us, and we'll talk all about how that works and so much more in this course. But in the meantime, I do have a freebie for you. Make sure you scan that QR code and grab it, or click the link on this presentation page to grab it. It's my live calligraphy supplies guide. These are all the supplies I bring on site. It's literally the checklist that I use to help you make sure that you don't miss anything for your live event, includes things you might not think about, I also include my favorite tools for hot foiling and engraving that I've used on site that are trusted, you'll get some bonus tips on pricing, and you'll also get first dibs and the best price on my new live events course when it comes out. Thank you again for spending some time with me at the summit. If you enjoyed this presentation, I would love to connect with you. Find me on Instagram at monstera.gold. Send me a DM or tag me in a story, and enjoy the rest of the summit