When the risk is worth it
Thurmanovich Gallery was born out of a passion for art and conservationism. With the right tools and business training, former tech manager Karen Thurman is turning her second act into a success story.
Karen Thurman spent 30 years working as a high-powered project manager in tech. It was a career that offered financial stability, but little creative outlet. The lifelong nature- and art-lover was itching to do more. So she left it all behind to venture into the wild — literally. Over the course of 13 weeks spent camping and taking photos throughout the Western Highlands of Scotland, Thurman found her purpose: To show people the natural beauty just outside their doors.
She started with a traveling art exhibit that turned into a digital magazine that paved the way to her pioneering art gallery. Thurmanovich Gallery is a fine art gallery for nature photographers — a place for artists to showcase their work, tell the story of the nature that inspired it, and earn a living from its sales. “Everything we do is about using art to inspire the protection of nature,” says Thurman, who reinvests proceeds from art sales into environmental causes.
Growing a small business can be an overwhelming task for anyone. But when you’re doing it from home as the sole operator, organization is essential for survival. From her home office outside of London, Thurman spoke to us about how she has grown her business from an idea into an inspiration, and how she stays on track while never losing sight of her mission.
Can you talk a little bit about your history with art before deciding to leave your first career to start Thurmanovich Gallery?
I’ve been a photographer since my teens. But I’ve only been a professional artist for four years. When I worked in technology, I always had a feeling it was never quite right for me, but I never really knew what to do about that. In April 2014, I left and never looked back. I jumped with no plan, no parachute. My husband and I packed the car and the dog, and went camping and photographing for 13 weeks in Scotland. That’s when I became a professional photographer; it’s been a constant evolution since then.
How did that adventure turn into a business?
Travel and photography have always been very important to me. I needed to not be in the same place all the time. I needed to be able to stretch my legs and see the world. But we didn’t actually go very far. We were living just north of London and just started to drive. We found some incredibly beautiful places along the way. When we went into nearby towns to get provisions, we’d show the people the photos we’d been taking. They would say, “Wow, Canada is really beautiful!” And I’d say, “No, this is just down the road.” A project called On Your Doorstep was born. Over the course of two years, we travelled to eight locations across the North and West of the U.K. and photographed what we saw. After each month, we’d go home to produce the photos, and come back to show people what we’d discovered. It was a way of introducing people to the world just outside their doorsteps.
After two years of doing this, it dawned on me that I wasn’t going to be able to reach that many people with face-to-face exhibitions. So the idea of doing On Your Doorstep as a magazine came about. Because it’s digital, we can feature artists and natural locations across the globe. Each story is written by the artists whose work is featured in its pages.
What financial hurdles did you face as you were starting the business, and how did you overcome them?
We are funding On Your Doorstep from our own savings; it’s distributed for free. My husband keeps a day job so that we have a roof over our heads, but he is an artist as well. This is our shared passion. But we knew we needed to monetize it. The idea of an art gallery came about because as emerging artists ourselves, we found it really difficult to get representation. So we started our own agency — a gallery that represents only emerging artists, and art solely focused on nature. We focus on photography and textile art for two reasons: I know a lot about both, so I can talk about the mediums, and I also believe that these forms are both highly underrated as art. The art of painting has been around since forever. Photography only really started in the 1850s.
What were the biggest challenges you immediately faced?
The lack of some of the entrepreneurial skills you need was an obstacle. I could work with people and write a business plan, no problem. But I had never done much marketing and sales before. And now I was in charge of it all. So it’s been a very long, steep learning curve for me the past year. I’ve had to learn how to build my own website. I’m now learning to build my own database because I can’t find systems that do what I want. I spent a lot of time learning tools. Learning one or two is okay, but when it’s learning 10, you start to feel over-challenged.
What digital tools did you find that help you the most in your daily work?
I use Smartsheet to manage my projects, Squarespace for my website, and Joomag which hosts On Your Doorstep magazine. Zapier helps me move data around, and I use Slack for team communication and MailChimp for email distribution.
I use Airtable for everything else — to manage all my data, CRM and analytics, and the day-to-day running of my business. I love that I can use it to manage social media, and easily add contacts and client data. For example, when I meet potential clients or buyers out at events, I can use the mobile Airtable app to add their information to our mailing list. It’s about having everything centralized and not having to pay for or connect to a variety of systems that don’t do everything I want them to do anyway.
Can you give me an example of how you use Airtable to manage workflow?
We have artist and artwork tables within the bases. I sign on new artists through a digital form, link it to Slack via Zapier so I get an alert every time a new artist is onboarded. Each artist uploads their artwork, and then we enrich it. One of the beauties of Airtable is their gallery view, which helps me visualize artists’ images and curate them. You can see it all there. I can filter it to see one artist at a time, I can customize a card. And all of this can be uploaded onto our website, where we sell the artworks, and into Artsy.
You don’t even have to be technical. It’s so easy to link fields and have all the information you need right there. If you were doing this in SQL or any other database, you’d have to know how to write code. And I don’t want to do that. I want to spend more time in the art world.
How did you seek out new artists to represent and projects to work on?
I find artists for the magazine by word-of-mouth. I scour websites and Instagram. I meet people when I travel or at conferences — very organic. The artists I represent in the gallery come from long-term relationships I’ve cultivated over the years. We represent eight artists now, and I’m in conversations with several new potential ones. It’s a slow, thoughtful process; the fit needs to be right for us. We look for the best combination of beautiful artist and beautiful nature conservationist.
What challenges have proved to be valuable learning experiences for you?
One of the things I found really hard initially was “discipline,” and then I discovered it wasn’t discipline I was lacking, but clarity and focus. When you spend the whole morning watching daytime TV, it’s not necessarily a sign that you’re lazy or lacking discipline, it’s a sign you don’t know what to do next.
I spent the first three months literally chasing my tail with new ideas. I was exhausted and got nothing done. So I went through various productivity trainings and studied how to be more efficient. I ended up designing my own planner for a 98-day year, based on Todd Hermann’s 90 Day Year plan. I plan my business in 98-day increments, breaking it into two-week sprints. I write it all down in a paper planner, and follow my plan religiously. Here’s where the discipline comes in. I don’t do what’s shiny or new or interesting. I only focus on what’s mapped out for those two weeks. At the end of the two weeks, I take a couple of hours to review what worked, what didn’t, where I need to put the emphasis for the next two weeks, how it all fits into the 98 day goals, and in the larger one-, two-, and five-year plans we have.
What advice do you have for other entrepreneurs starting businesses a little outside of their comfort zones?
Going into something you’ve never done before, you’d better be prepared for an awful lot of learning. Make sure you’re doing something you love enough to keep you going through the hardest days. Celebrate! One of the productivity gurus I studied with was all about celebrating your achievements. We’re trained to be forward looking, to never look back. But that can feel like climbing a mountain with no summit. You sometimes have to look back at what you have achieved, what you have learned, what you have overcome, in order to appreciate where you are. Any entrepreneur will face challenges. In those times, it’s important to look back and say, it’s okay, we’ve been through this, look how much we’ve achieved! If you can’t do that, you’ll forever be disappointed.
I also write a gratitude journal on every single page of my planner, recording what I’m thankful for each day.
Who inspires you?
So many photographers inspire me, but I will name two: Ansel Adams, not just because of his brilliant photography, but because of his unceasing commitment to fighting for the environment — and his success in doing so. There’s a Brazilian photographer by the name of Sebastiao Salgado. His work is extraordinary, and the sacrifices he’s made for his art are extraordinary. He travelled for eight years for his Genesis project, leaving his family behind, and facing incredible physical challenges. And he is a committed environmentalist, leading a nonprofit to restore the Brazilian rainforests. From an artist’s and conservationist’s standpoint, those are my two heroes.
What motivates you?
I am finally doing something that completely aligns with my values. Even the very worst days over the past four years haven’t been half as bad as the 30 years I spent doing something that was not aligned with who I am.
When you’re your own boss, it’s important to keep learning no matter what. If you look at the most successful people in any field, you’ll find that they are the ones who are super curious about things. It’s a choice you have to make, and if I knew it would be this fulfilling, I would have done it years ago.
This piece was written by Heather Wood Rudulph, an author, journalist, and media professor living in Sacramento. Follow her on Twitter @hwrudulph.
