Marketing Art and Managing Success with Daniel Cohen
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I love taking trash and turning it into treasure. No one likes chemistry, no one likes the nutritional fact label, but they see it and they're like, I recognize that. What is that? Why does it have a drug or something that's a cell phone? Why does it say social media?

And now, Escaping the Drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm Jon Gafford, and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start right now. Back again, back again. Man, I got to tell you, I was at dinner last night.

And one of the guys at the table said, you know, people that tell you to chase your passion, they're all rich people. That's bullshit. You just got to go work and do your job. And it was just very serendipitous because this is a cat in studio today that I met. I don't know, man, call it six months ago through some friends. And this guy has taken his passion and there's no other way to describe it than passion because it's art, but he has taken his passion into an incredibly lucrative fashion.

Art business. His pieces are hung all over the place in some amazing places. They are incredibly sought after. Celebrities are after him. I mean, he's like the cool hipster guy's artist. And he's a super cool guy. But ladies and gentlemen, we want to hear his story today about working your passion into money. Welcome to the studio. This is...

Daniel Cohen. Daniel, what's up, buddy? John, thanks for having me. How are you, man? I'm good. Just living the dream. Living the dream. Good to see you back in Vegas. I'm glad you made the trip in for this. I appreciate it. So tell early Daniel, let's talk about early Daniel, because I always like to start here because you always wonder, is it nature? Is it nurture? What caused, what caused you, man? Great, great question. It started probably at a young age and just kept evolving. Was

Was definitely inspired by a lot of great teachers that kind of grew me to appreciate art, understand it. And then Instagram came along and realized I didn't want to just sell fitness tea. I wanted to actually follow my passion. So kind of left my job. Never really shared this part of the story before, but I was addicted to a drug. The drug was actually a salary drug.

And it was stealing me away from my actual dreams of becoming something in a creative field. Because what did you go to school to do? What was your initial thought process for Colin? The goal was to always try to do something in the creative field, whether that was be a graphic designer, photographer, do marketing, something that I could use my creative skills and assets and my...

you know, my left side of my brain or my right side of my brain to, um, to allow me to enjoy what I actually do and not just, uh, you know, just miserable with what I'm doing. So, um, was, was fortunate enough to leave a job working sales and marketing, um, and moved to Los Angeles, uh, for another job. And then, um,

Out of spite, I left that job to become an artist and Instagram kind of blew up. Well, hang on. Let's slow down. So did you go to college? I do. I have a degree, a bachelor's of science degree in communications. In communications. Arizona State University, online. Never went to the actual school. Right. Yeah.

So no Sun Devil flag hanging in the old house. I go to the graduation and everyone as they're walking is throwing up the trident. And I'm like, why is everyone throwing up the shocker? Is this a joke? Is this...

I never knew about the Shocker or the Trident. And I get there and I had this great moment. Okay, now I understand it's the Trident, the Sun Devil. So I am a Sun Devil. I do have a degree. I paid probably $15,000 or more for a piece of paper. It was an insurance policy. I already knew I was going to be an artist, but yeah, it was just a backup plan in case, you know, this is to make a living in this career.

It's like you got to be in the 1% of the 1% to actually be doing it and doing it well. Oh, yeah. So I wanted to do that one for my parents as well as for myself just to get that goal accomplished. You did have a little bit of a safety net there is what you looked at it as. Yeah. A little bit of a safety net. I mean-

I didn't want to be in my forties or fifties and say, I tried to be an artist and then whatever doesn't happen. And then I ended up like, why didn't I just spend the two years to get the degree? Well, see, I love that because this weekend, this, this last weekend, I was in Seattle at a, at one of my mastermind groups and I'm in, and you know, the kids were there. We always take the kids and we travel to cities and they've never been to Seattle. So we took the Seattle underground tour.

And our tour guide was very boisterous and very animated. And she announced towards the end of the tour guide that she had got a theater degree in college. So this was just about all she was qualified to do. And I was thinking, not really a safety net, not a good safety net for an artist that wants to be something. So yes, lesson one, kids, if you're chasing your passion, set yourself up for success because if I'm correct, right?

If you get an art degree from college, no gallery has ever asked you, what college did you attend to receive your art degree? Has anybody ever asked you that, Daniel? No. Okay, no. Pretty sure if you're in theater, pretty sure no casting director has ever said, wait a second, what theater school did you go to? What college did you graduate from? Never, right? No. No.

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The creative fields, they really focus on what are you doing? What can you actually do? What are you actually doing? Like, how are you actually using your creative skills? And it doesn't matter. I mean, a piece of paper is just a piece of paper. There's so much more to actually how are you using your creative arts to kind of show

share, share those gifts with other people to get to where it was. Okay. So we get our piece of paper, we got our communications. Great. The whole time through college, you still, are you tinkering with your own stuff? Are you doing your own things? I mean, obviously because you know, it's hard to jump on the computer and throw up the shocker symbol. Yeah. And yeah, but you were still doing, so you were already in the process of doing art while you were doing these. So what percentage of time were you focused on study? So bartending during the day, school during the day, stripping at nights. No, I'm just kidding. But yeah,

I was tripping the paint off houses. Maybe. Yeah. Nobody's paying money to see me or you dance to do it. Uh, so I was, uh, yeah, just, just grinding. Um, and the, the,

The greatness of social media at the time is I started with pieces at $250. I was selling 10, 20 a month and making a living as a bartender during the day. So that was able to give me like this little leap starting at great, easy entry points. Was it the same style you have today? Yeah, very similar. I started with the nutritional fact label and I stripped that.

and replaced all of the total fat, sugar, and descriptions of what's in your food with describing what is the experience of smoking cannabis or of what mushrooms are like. And in the same format, taking something boring and turning into something brilliant. I would have loved to have seen the DMT label.

If you did one of those, I would have seen that. So for those of you that don't know, and a lot of you are probably meeting Daniel for the first time, describe your art to the folks. Obviously, this is an audio media. You can watch it on YouTube. And if you watch this on YouTube, I promise we'll put some clips in that shows what he does. But I would almost describe it as like nerd art.

Sure. Yeah. Has it ever been described that way? Cause I love it. It's like science art. It's very cool. I love describing it. I love taking trash and turning into treasure. Yeah. Not, no one likes chemistry. No one likes the nutritional fact label, but they see it and they're like, I recognize that. What is that? Why does it have a drug or something? That's a cell phone. Why does it say social media? And, and they get,

drawn into it. The average amount of time that someone spends in front of an art piece at an art gallery museum is less than three seconds, where with my work, they really get captivated. They get sucked in. There's humor, there's irony, there's playfulness. It's relatable. That's different than most work. You go into a museum, you see a bunch of paint splattered on something. You need to read a description on the wall to tell you what the artist was going through in that time period to understand what the context is of that art piece. With mine, you just instantly get it. So my artwork, to answer your question,

is under a collection called This is Addictive. So I like to make commentary, play with commentary on the nature of humans and their vices, what we're addicted to. It's very zeitgeist. So I love capturing the spirit of the time, really analyzing our culture through the lens of art. And the way that I've done that is the periodic table. Love the periodic table. Because when we wake up,

What's the first thing that some people do? They get their phone. They're addicted to their phone. What's the next thing they do? They might have sex or they might get coffee or both. These are the addictions. So I have an element for social media. Until they get kicked out of Starbucks. I mean, that's a problem.

keep going. It happened to me today. Uh, but yeah, so I, uh, by the, by the, you know, the third hour of the day, you're thinking about money. I need to work. I need to get, you know, there's so many driving forces, the hustle, the entrepreneur, the element, um,

like all these things are the elements of today. So I like capturing the spirit of the time through the, these elements that I've created. And like I said, they're just relatable. The, for me, art should not need, it doesn't need to be so, it doesn't need to be so about like the times of, of like, what's, what's,

What's challenging? Like, I don't want to make art about climate change. Yeah. That's, that's not for me. I don't want to make art about how my ancestors were oppressed. That's not for me. I want to make art that's relatable, that people are going to love, that they're going to remember. That's going to outlive me and, and stand the test of time and always just be remembered. It's, it's iconic. No one's done it. And that's, those are the things that I always like chasing and creating. It's, it's, it's so when you see it now that now, and if you watch this video on YouTube, you'll see some of the pieces and then when you see them in very famous places, it's,

that some of the stuff is hanging now or on very famous people's Instagrams as they've gotten them and hung them on their walls. You'll see that. And again,

It really is, man. It's just interesting to stop and look at. There's no little card required to say what you were thinking or what it's about. It's very self-explanatory, but it's just so interesting the way that you do it. Thank you. Let's get back to the journey of getting to that place. You've always kind of been doing this stuff. You started marketing it on Instagram is how you first started marketing this stuff. The way that it started was gifting pieces. That's been my secret sauce. Yeah.

putting a piece on someone's wall, putting on a piece on someone's, you know, a wall on social media or on their physical wall and having those dominoes fall or having a breadcrumb show that always leads back to me. So gave a couple of pieces to some influencers early on 2014, 15, 16, when the algorithm was very, really, really good, excellent reach, ridiculous lifestyle was, was a huge supporter of me early on.

and set up a Shopify store, had a website. Like I said, $250 pieces, 10, 20 a month. My rent was covered, easy money. Those went from 250 to 500 to 750 to a thousand, started getting representation by galleries. The price point had to double at that point because galleries take 50%. - A chunk, do that.

So obviously there's different levels of art fairs. You have your local art galleries that are just working with local artists or sometimes artists around the world. There might be doing group shows.

There's also other galleries that take work on the road to different markets and different destinations with what are art fairs. Some commercial art fairs that are trying to sell work that is from emerging mid-career artists, sometimes artists that are dead. But if you find a gallery like I did that takes your work on the road to the Hamptons, Aspen, New York, Chicago,

Miami, obviously, at the end of the year.

So marketing, obviously that way, social media kept growing, found unique creative things to do in the artistic world that kept marketing, kept pumping, kept investing and just have not stopped. It's been all gas. Well, there's so much to unpack from what you just said. There's so much to unpack.

So the first thing I'm going to say is if you're trying to start something, if you're trying to get it going, right, getting it in the hands of those that can make it cool and get it exposed is clutch.

So however you get it in their hands, I think is important. So, you know, very similar to like, you know, travel at Binsky. I don't know if you know, Trav or not. No. Trav is the founder of flex watches. He's been on the show. Okay. And Trav stumbled across the filming of the real world, San Diego, when they were filming in a bar and he just inserted himself into,

struck up a conversation, talk about what the product was, and then ended up getting Flex watches just injected into the show. That's where the kids worked. I mean, it was wild, but he did. He goes, yeah, this was just, I just strong-armed my way into this production in real time. Like in real time, I did it. But getting yourself in front of people, I think is clutch. The second part, I think I would say that is important is a lot of people can't swallow the idea of giving up 50% of

of their work. They just can't. Like, why am I going to give you 50% of the profits? Well, dude, here's the deal. You have to look at it as a symmetrical risk. You have to say, okay, if I give up 50% of my bottom line, but they can grow my top line by 5,000%,

and your net is six times what it was, then you got to get out of your own way. And I've done deals before with people where I'm like, look, we can get you from A to Z, but it ain't free and it's going to be here. And they couldn't get out of their own way with their ego to give up that much of a piece. Ego always gets in the way. You got to find people that want to build with you. And 50% is a lot of money, but 100% of nothing is nothing. So you got to find...

People that want to grow with you long-term, the gallery, within the galleries and a lot of industries, you got to pick your poison of who you're working with. Are the people you're going to work with pay on time? Are they going to be honest? Are they going to be loyal? Is there long-term growth? All of these are things that can be challenges within any industry. And within the art world, it's historically has a lot of corrupt characters that are always going to be around. So you got to do your diligence, really find people that are trustworthy that you want to work with. Well, tell me about a time you've been banged out.

How much time do you got, buddy? Pick the worst one. Pick the best one that's going to air. No, no, luckily. Leave the names aside. I don't need the names of people. But tell me about the scenario because it does happen. And how'd you deal with it? And how'd you move forward from it? Well, there's times where I've elected to do work on my own. And there's a guy comes from a very wealthy family. I won't say his first name, but his last name is DuPont. Yeah.

Okay. Just a little, a little, a little wealthy. I got it. Ironically, he wanted a piece of art, which was an oversized receipt that was from a bank that had a statement balance of a few million dollars. It's, it's a flex. It's the concept is, is,

People have so much money. Sometimes they get these ATM receipts that have million dollar balances. They just crumple them up and throw it away. So it's a giant oversized crumbled up receipt. So he commissions one. I get the wire after seeing the receipt a few days later, hits the account.

make him the piece, get it framed, let him know it's ready to be sent. He sends me a screenshot of a wire receipt. It's a Friday. I go, "This guy, he's wealthy. Seemed like I can trust him last time. Got this screenshot. The wire is being sent." I release it to FedEx. All of a sudden, no wire, no wire. Send him, "Hey, what's going on? What's going on?" Weeks go by. He's playing the game. Red flags are popping off.

So, long story short, I had to hire a collections attorney, amazing guy, David Kahana, legend, legendary collector.

lawyer who does collections, he was able to ruffle some feathers, put some heat to this guy and got me paid. So he was the savior. But the story of this is sometimes the benefit of the galleries is they have these protocols of how to actually do business. So I have been burned by collectors directly. I have been burned by gallerists. But these lessons along the way have taught me a lot about

Yeah. It's, it's, it's fun. It's, you know, it's so funny because it's been my experience too, that sometimes occasionally ultra wealthy people will do shit like that just because they think they can.

Just because I think they can't like, ah, it's too much, but I'm just not going to pay the guy. What's he going to do? What's he going to do? What's he going to do? And I think that it's so funny because, and I think as a person getting into business with people that are ultra wealthy, if you've never done that, you just assume because they're ultra wealthy, they would never do some shit like that. What about their reputation? It's, you know, it's going to be terrible if this happens. No, no, no, dude. You gotta, you gotta cover the, uh, cross the T's and dot the I's as they say. Yeah.

Yeah. So shout out to my DuPont friend. So the great thing that I did for the collections attorney, David, is made him one of the same receipts and wrote on it, fuck you, pay me.

And he's got that hanging in his office and he loves it. He's got a great story out of it. And now he tells the story. How many pieces do you commission that you find, commission pieces that are designed to tell a story in a way that way? A lot of stuff or are they coming to you with a creative idea or are they depending on you? I've had some interesting ones. I had a collector ask me to make him a Panda Express element. He was addicted to orange chicken. Which is pretty solid at the old Panda Express. Sure.

Yeah. Yeah. I would never expect that that is someone's guilty. I mean, I can understand this comfort food. It's guilty pleasure. That's what some people just love. It might be McDonald's. But for him, it was it was that. But I do get some interesting requests. That one was

A strange one. Um, okay. Cause you are dealing with addiction. Has anybody asked for things, something that you were just not comfortable producing or not? I mean, I have put some real substances in pieces by request. Yeah. All right. Typically it was, let me find some replica stuff, but there has been requests for, for authentic stuff to, to create the, um,

It just makes it so much more. My mind just goes to like the worst things you can be addicted to, right? Like, like weird German pornography or something. And all of a sudden you're like, you know, I'm just not comfortable with this. I'm just not comfortable. Yeah. But nothing so far. No, no, no pedo stuff.

Okay, no, of course. Look, we weren't going that far, right? I'm going to assume that you weren't okay with that. Of course, I got morals. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and assume there's some sort of a moral compass going on. Yeah, of course. I'm not just an art whore. So when it comes to your pricing with these folks, do you take who they are and what they can pay? I don't know if you want to answer this. No, no, no, no. The market price is the market price. It's just market price. So your pieces now sell for how much?

They range. I mean, as an artist, I like to create some diversity and allow collectors to buy in at like an affordable price point. You know, not everyone has $5,000 to spend on a piece of art, but they might have a couple hundred dollars. So I have sometimes limited releases where it might be something that's a hundred bucks to 500 bucks, 500 to a thousand. But right now the elements started at $2,000 in 2017. That's your periodic table. Periodic table. Now they're selling for 5,000. So they have

the early investors that got in had have seen a good significant increase. They continue to sell at that price point. I have large periodic tables that are eight feet wide by four feet high. Those are selling, selling,

For a great price. I'm very grateful. The last one just sold for close to six figures. That's amazing. I'm grateful that people are continuing to invest. They see the vision. It's unique work. And that's what is one of the most rare prices things that you can buy today is uniqueness. You know, it's so funny, man, that in your business, especially, it is 100% opinion driven.

Right. There's no, I mean, I guess everything is the reason gold is valuable is because they say it is right. There isn't diamonds are valuable because De Beers says they are. I mean, but at the same time, art is just so subjective that, I mean, do you wake up every day? You got to wake up on two sides of the bed. I'm guessing you got to wake up thanking God that the world thinks that this is the cool thing. And also part of you is part of you sort of terrified that somebody might wake up one day and be like, this is not cool anymore. Right.

No, I can't stop. You can't stop. You just don't think that way. There's so many ideas up here. It's really just a matter of like...

who wants to keep buying in to keep funding this dream that's going is is i i could keep going i'm going to fill some museums i got great great concepts it's um some of them just come with a price tag my artwork is not paint on canvas it can get expensive to make the work that i create because you use real elements use like the periodic table of luxury was my highest ex my most expensive piece what did that cost it that piece cost me 9 500 to make yeah so and that

That's, you know, that sometimes adds up when you make two of them, three of them. So...

Here's a question. So all of your art is based on addiction. Is that something you struggle with in your life or what makes you fascinated with addiction? I think it's relatable. Everyone today is an addict of something, whether it's a fringe addiction, like they're addicted to tennis or they're addicted to their dog or their family, like we're just straight up addicted to something literally. And, and the people who have gone through those struggles, there's relatableness. Everyone's first addiction as a child is sugar. I remember growing up

Halloween was the holiest holiday because I was not raised in a household where there was a lot of sugar or candy or soda. So I would, I always loved the idea of being able to get candy out of sweet tooth. So maybe it started then, but today, no, I didn't have like a history of addiction. I mean, is, is the addiction of money or the addiction of, of success fueling me? Yeah, absolutely. I think so. That's what I'm chasing. You know, it's, it's,

One of my favorite stats is life doesn't change that much after I think the number's like $85,000 a year. Life doesn't exponentially change that much. I mean, I think it changes from $85,000. I think after $500,000 a year, it changes a lot. But after that, it doesn't really change because you kind of get to a point when you start making really great money that like there's some things you've always wanted to go buy. And then you go buy them and you realize very quickly, okay,

shit. It was the idea of buying this that made it desirable, not the thing itself. And now I've bought this thing and now I'm over it. I love David Spade tells that story about buying a Ferrari and he just felt like an asshole. Like the first day he never drove it again. And I've had similar experiences with that. So, but I tell people all the time, you know,

The thing now is when you get to a certain point of success, you're just chasing a scoreboard against yourself. It's really what it is. It's just how much more, how much the next level, it doesn't really meet. It doesn't, you don't need anything, but you just want to, you just want to push, continue to push the goalposts farther out. It is a re there's relativity to this situation. It just is a nonstop thing that you're always trying to chase the next goal, the next mountaintop. So I get it. You know, when,

I just recently moved to Miami and I moved there obviously for three things, the hurricanes, the humidity and the BBLs. But I moved there actually for the American dream. I'm grateful that I was able to buy a condo there. And so now that I'm there, I...

What's next? - Where are you? Are you downtown? Are you at the beach? Where are you? - I'm on the Miami side in an area called Edgewater. Great view, but it's like being on vacation every day. So I've had this balance, work-life balance come from Los Angeles, going to Miami, having to

really refocus and hustle and find some new goals to go after. So it's a great environment to be in. I like Miami. It's one of the best places to live right now in the United States, in my opinion. - So as somebody that continually chases the more, more, more, I got more ideas in my head. Do you ever allow yourself to feel like you've made it? Or did you have a moment where you were like, fuck, right, I made it? - I think that's what most people struggle with. - Yeah. - Is that exact paradigm is you get swept up

and not celebrating the little wins along the way. You got to celebrate the dubs. Yeah. If you don't, then you're never going to be satisfied. You're never going to have fulfillment. And for me, I have had to be more conscious of that because for my first year, it was six-figure sales. I was like, great, hungrier. Yeah, more. Next goal, hungrier.

And now it's like, now my next goal is six figures, one art piece. Yeah. It's that's the addiction. It's, it's not the best addiction to have. The best thing to have is fulfillment. Be grateful, have gratitude. Those, those things that keep me grounded, keep me sane. So the balance is everything. A lot of artists and people in general can get swept up in the lifestyle, especially in places like Miami, like Vegas, like Los Angeles. So it's, well, I was going to say like, if you look at how many people, um,

get addicted to likes, shares, comments on Instagram posts. Like their whole life begins to rotate around what people think of what they're putting out there. You are that on a rocket ship because it is literally what you do. I mean, like what people think of what I create is what I do.

I mean, that has got to be, have you ever, have you produced something that maybe you put up for sale and it didn't sell as quick as you thought it should and it started fucking your head a little bit? Absolutely. How do you deal with that? I, I realized it's not the right timing. I got to be patient. I got to be more, uh, effective with the execution of how I'm releasing something. Um, it's the, it's all in the storytelling. Uh, there's, it's,

Maybe it's just, yeah, the, the, not, not the right timing, but I have, um, I have been, um, I'm trying to continue to grow in exactly that way. Um, and yeah, sometimes things you gotta, you gotta throw shit on the wall and see what sticks. Sometimes not everything does. Um, but I'm grateful that a lot of the stuff that I have has stuck. One of my bestselling releases was called Benjamin's bread. It was the simplest idea.

Slang for money is bread. I put a hundred grand in a bread bag. I designed it. I boxed it up, shipped it out to a hundred people, gave them away. People posted them. It led to some of the most amazing relationships today. Just paper printed plastic bags.

That was the concept. That's it. And people loved it because everyone loves this idea of you got to wake up and get that bread. People are chasing the bag. They put it on top of the refrigerator. Maybe their other bread is, or maybe they have it somewhere significant or special, like their office just as that reminder, like, go get it, go get the bag, chase the bag.

But just the simplest idea of taking an old saying and turning it into something that's relatable that you've never seen before. Bread, money, together, done. - You know, I tell people all the time, I said one of the biggest mistakes you can make as an entrepreneur is because we're not creating art, but we are creating concepts, products, sites, funnels, all of these things that you have to create to be a good entrepreneur in business.

And I tell people all the time, don't fall too in love with your own ideas. And the reason you can't is because you can't think objectively about them. How like you, you have to fall in love with what you do. So how do you, is that, that's gotta be very difficult to reconcile sometimes. It's a love, hate relationship, just like social media, social media is love, hate relationship, especially lately. But I do, you do have to kind of fall in love with what you do. And once you lose that, you start to question, what am I doing? Yeah.

And sometimes when things flop, it hurts even more because you have that strong love for something and other people don't share that same love. So you just got to kind of double down, triple down, sometimes on your vision, focus, sometimes pull back. There's projects that I'm pulling back now on that I released that I thought people were going to get really excited about, see the vision, but it's too early. It's AI generated stuff that I know is going to be a hit.

It's just, I need to be more effective and find a better way to communicate that love and explain it to people. So they fall in love right now with social media, the challenges, everything is storytelling. That's what we're doing. Yeah. You're constantly telling your story. You're having people like me come in and tell their story.

it's the same thing with art art is essentially a story for someone whether it's paint on a canvas or something like a periodic table of luxury or las vegas or whatever there's a story that's behind every artist every art piece every piece of real estate so um it's it's relative uh i as long as you're chasing what you love that's the best thing and i'm i'm grateful that's what i get to do you know

it's so funny that you say that and loving yourself that way because you're

there's gotta be haters that look at your stuff online a lot and they just hate. So, you know, my thing is I'll never forget this. So millions of years ago when I was on, on the apprentice, there was a website called television without pity. And it was a blog site where people could interact. This is before Facebook, right? Yeah. Yeah. Kids, there was a world before Facebook, get over the blog, get over the single block. And it was just a chat board. Right. And on this television without petty chap, or they would discuss like reality shows and,

And there was a whole blog with thousands of people discussing nothing but me, me just, and dude, it was such a mind fuck. Like it was so like when things were going good, all was great, man. My head was the size of this room, but when things went bad, it sent me spiraling. And I think that when you do something as personal is art, like for example, right before I walked in this room, right before I sat down with you,

You know, I just crafted a new marketing message and sent it out. And we, you know, I always A-B test everything. We send a marketing message out. I sent it out to 5,000 homes, small, small, small send out on it. And one of the things that it said within the mailer was it talked about just putting our last listing in escrow. And we had taken the listing over from a less experienced agent that could not sell it. And we got it sold in 30 days.

I walked in right before you and there was a piece of hate mail on my desk from somebody that took the time to mail it back to me. A love letter. They sent me a love letter. And they said that they were basically saying that this was so egotistical and I needed to find some humility and they would never hire me.

And my assistants were like, did you see that? I go, yeah, because they knew I would think it was funny. Because for me now, going through that experience before where it was picking at me and you're so personal with your art, it's got to be similar to that experience. But now I've kind of gotten to the point where I want to be polarizing. Like, I don't want you to ever run into anybody that is 50-50 on John Gafford. I want people to be like, that dude's a dick.

Or I love that guy. And I look at this like anything I can do to make myself polarizing where we're either you and I are best friends or you're going to walk out. You're like, what a douche. Like, I don't want it anywhere in the middle. Do you find yourself caring similar about your your crowd that follows art? Like either like I'm your guy or I'm not. Go fuck yourself.

Forget who said this, the quote, but he said he's a former president. Like if you don't have enemies, you're doing something wrong. Yeah. Which is so true. And there is the polarizing nature. There's the comments, there's the haters, there's the internet trolls, or there's just the people in real life that just want to talk crap and, and, you know, try to throw shade on you. But yeah, if you're, if you don't have that, then you're, you're not doing something right. For me, I like being provocative. I like pushing the envelope.

Of course, it's going to come with some of those things. So, yeah, you've got to find a way to kind of like have a little thick skin. And it's not easy, especially artists. Artists can be sensitive. Yeah. And people in general today are more sensitive than they've ever been. So for me,

Yeah, for artists and people in a lot of industries, that's relative. Well, I think that's one of the reasons that makes you so appealing to people. I think you do come off...

with swag to that point. You don't come off like the super sensitive, emotional, starving artist. You come off like, this is cool shit. I make cool things for cool people and that's who I am. Yeah. I'm here to have fun and make art and live a good life. Like, is that so much to ask for? Like, it's...

It shouldn't be that hard. Like the, the work that I create, I'm putting my energy and love into it. And that's what people get. And that's what I think a lot of people don't focus on is, is the intention of why they're doing what they do. And when you actually have like a good heart, a good intention of what you do, whether that's real estate, whether that's, you know, trying to be an entrepreneur with a specific type of product that you're trying to, to, to share with other people, you're,

People can get lost along the way. And for me, I'm just grateful that I got this opportunity. People keep showing up, people collecting, emails keep coming in, people keep calling. I mean, opportunities are good. I have worked in the Delta Lounge at LAX, New York Stock Exchange for the next year, Resort World has the periodic table of Las Vegas.

Where is that in resorts? Well, just cause our local folks could go see it. Whereas I've seen it. Where is it exactly? Right now it's currently at the entrance where the valet pickup and drop off is. So it's not the valet entrance for the hotel. It's the Uber and Lyft pickup entrance. So it's over by where the sports betting area is. Yeah. That was a big deal when that happened. That was cool. You got that. There's a stock exchange. Yeah. The New York stock, same Benjamin's bread. Yeah.

One gift, $25 investment to a guy named Peter Tuckman. It's the Einstein of Wall Street. Led to another gift to him. Then brings me in one year for a periodic table in New York. Sixth floor, some of the biggest CEOs, executives, heads of state, cultural ambassadors walk past my art every single day. So I'm going to say, but all that art is doing is sitting there appreciating because the longer it's there, the more valuable it becomes, yes? Yes.

Not all art appreciates. Some artists, some collectors do like a depreciating asset and then they get to claim a little bit of a deduction. But I'm saying, but I'm saying the fact that that's hanging in the stock exchange when, when your run there comes up, when your commission gets over and it comes down, I believe, I just want to believe that makes that particular piece worth more for sure. Yeah. Cause it was there. Whoever buys that piece gets, gets a great piece. And there's,

I'm a dyslexic artist, notorious for making spelling errors. So if you like baseball cards, some of the most rarest ones were the ones that had the mistakes and errors on them. So there's some collectors on there that have a nice little spelling error that probably will be a rare piece down the line. And I'm fine with that. I accept that I've made mistakes. I ironically, I have a bachelor's of science in communications.

and I'm dyslexic and I chose artwork with all words. Yeah, maybe that's why, maybe you thought you were signing up for art and it just happened to be communications and because you were doing it online, you didn't figure it out until it was too late. I don't know, either I'm autistic or artistic or a little bit of both. Or a little bit of both. So,

You mentioned earlier that you just moved to Miami and you're trying to find work-life balance there. Is the new city because literally it is like every night is go, go, go, and every day is paradise, right?

What do you do outside of the art to find work-life balance or is work-life balance even a thing that's important to you? Yeah. Socializing is, is absolutely very important for me, obviously for networking. I love to be rich in relationships. I'm a farmer is what I call. I'm a farmer of friendships. I'm always planting seeds, meeting new people. That's what you have to do in any, any field, especially in artists. You can't just be stuck in your studio. It can be very lonely. But yeah, in Miami, I mean,

going out dinners i'm jewish so i like to do shabbat dinners every friday um but it's there there is a slippery slope in miami where a lot of people do end up going out to dinner and then they go to the club and then they go to the after hours and then it's 5 30 at 11 you're like what just happened yes exactly why is the sun coming out oh my god geez yeah so um luckily

I'm not, I don't like that. I don't chase the clubs. I don't like that. I will go out. I do like to go to those things, but on occasion it's, it's not for me all the time, every week. That's my liver. No, I'm, I'm like 36 going on 65. Yeah, dude. I like, I like a nice dinner way more than I like a club ever, ever probably did. You know, it's, it's so interesting.

Because when you talk about that work-life balance, like I've had, I've had guys on here like Ryan Serhan that like, I was like, tell me about your work-life balance. He's like, there is none. It's work. It's all I do. I told my wife we got married. I'm going to work. You can go vacation in France with the kids and I'm going to work and I'm going to do that.

And for me, like I do work a lot. I do folk. I'm always thinking about work. I'm even when I'm kind of home and I've tried to get much better with that. Cause the whole concept of like 18 summers with your kids really hit me hard. Like the time you spend with your kids, 90% of it is over by the time they're 18 years old. And I'm like, dude, I got two summers left with, with my dude. Yep. And, uh, and my daughter got four left. So I'm like, I'm maximizing all of that. So I, you know, I think I made that switch smart. Yeah. So, I mean,

is this i mean obviously aspiring kids is this something you're aspiring to or yeah of course yeah girl first travel maybe dog kids absolutely i'll split make sure you don't kill me exactly i hope the the olive tree at my house is fine right now i'm neglecting it i've been traveling but absolutely kids are definitely in the cards um i mean some people today they don't want kids i do um it's uh but yeah that work-life balance is is so important i i was watching a podcast

It was a short and the guy was talking and said, how often do you see your parents? I said, one or two times a year. He said, okay, hypothetically, say they got five to 10 more times a year.

That blew my mind. Jesse Itzler said that. Yeah. Shout out Jesse. Same thing, dude. So you, you're with your kids. You're like, I got a couple more times where there's still kids before the emptiness really starts to occur. You want to really spend, spend value with them. You, you can replace work. Yeah. You can't replace family. I love that you're figuring this out at 36. Cause dude, cause here's the thing. Something weird starts happening. I don't know when you hit like 48, I'm going to throw it out there. And this is what happenings.

You'll have some stupid Facebook group or whatever social media is at the time when this runs around. You're going to have some sort of a group that you're tagged to all of the people you went to high school with. You don't want to talk to them. You never talk to them. But for some reason, you're in this group. It just is what it is. Right. And then they start dying.

And he started going, whoa. And then, you know, at first, what happens? Probably starts happening, honestly, about 42, right? They start dying. And he's just- A lot of fentanyl. You open it up and you look at it, you're like, oh, dude, I hadn't seen a gym in 10 years. Yeah. Not supersizing me hardcore for 50. You're like, yeah, I can see that happening. But then you kind of cross this age where you're like-

Dude, if I die, there's no candlelight vigil. People are just going to be like, yeah, it's a good run, whatever, blah, blah, blah. And when that starts happening, right? As my good friend Kent Clothier says, he goes, here's a great exercise for you. He goes, take your age. If you're a man, subtract it from 78, then multiply it by 365. That is how many days you statistically have left on this earth. Then take that and divide it by 66% because you're asleep one third of the time.

That is really how many days you have left walking the earth. And it kind of puts perspective in things in those things. And it's about chasing what's important. So when you can do what you've done and turn your passion into money, now that's great. And I think sometimes it's very obvious that what you're doing, art, passion, money, very obvious. But I think people also can find passion in whatever they do. I think if you look at like what I do, somebody says, what do you do? It's not we sell homes. It's not what I do.

I teach people a skillset on how to make an incredible amount of money if they're good at it. And I have done that a thousand times in my life. So if you take all of those people, a thousand people out there, probably they're running around making six figures or more. I think that's a pretty big impact I've made on a lot of people.

So I think it's just about perspective of finding, if you're not working your direct passion, like if you're, my passion is to be a major league baseball player, but you can't throw the ball five feet. I'm sorry. You're not going to make it. Yeah. But you need to find something passionate about what you do. Yeah, I totally agree. And right now, 20, 30, 50 years from now, people are going to watch this and someone's going to get inspired. The content that you've created will outlive you.

And that will make an impact on other people when you're dead. And that's what I love. Same with my art. My art's going to outlive me. I got to make sure my quality is there so that people, the caretakers of my work, it's going to get passed down to their children and their children, or it's going to change hands and it's going to keep constantly growing in value.

things that you've done, the homes that you've built, the lives that you've impacted, there's that domino effect, that trickle down effect that happens, which is beautiful. And going back to passion, I think that that's what people need to find a passion that they actually care about. Um, and, and there is limited time. Time is money.

And you have to value your time sometimes like a currency. And if you make more money, that can sometimes give you more time with your family, with your friends. So it's four. Yeah. So it's relative. That's why I made this watch. It's got all the currencies on the face because time is money. And it's a reminder for me when I look down every day. I don't really, I mean, obviously I have a clock on my phone, but this is more of a symbolism reminder of exactly what you're saying.

You only have a limited amount of time. Look at it like money. Now, dude, I couldn't agree more. And I can't think of a better dude. If there's no lesson, we're going to tell it's better than that one. I can't think of anything better way to wrap this up on. Dude, if they want to find you, how do they find you? How do they find this is addictive? How do they find you? How do they find you? Instagram. This is addictive. Daniel Allen Cohen.com.

Personal Instagram is Daniel Allen Cohen. You can see my work at the Delta Lounge at LAX. That's a public space if you're traveling through that lounge. Yeah. Social media is the best place. And yeah,

yeah it's uh grateful to be on here and great to talk with you a pleasure no dude ever since the first night i met you at that event started talking about this i'm like bro i gotta get you on this is just so fascinating to me and and i love it so thanks for coming in and thank you let that be a lesson to you dude everybody that's listening to this let that be a lesson you know here's the deal like the podcast says you got to stop drifting along with the currents of life man you've got to take control of your own life because nobody is coming to save you

Chase your dream, chase your passion, but you got to chase something. See you next week.

What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list. But do me a favor, if you wouldn't mind, throw up that five-star review, give us a share, do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully, you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.