BONUS: Kait and Caro on What's Worth It and Intellectual Property in Art

Guests - Kait Klusewitz (she/her), Muralist/Artist | Caroline Lampinen (she/her), Artist

There was so much goodness in our conversation with Kait and Caro that we couldn't fit it all into the full episode. This mighty bonus episode continues with the artists discussing the very real costs of stress and short turnaround times on last-minute, jobs and the true value of your time when being an entrepreneur.

Our co-host, Joan Kanner, also tees up important questions about intellectual property for artists and start-ups in general. While it may not be top of mind at first, our guests demonstrate that there can be a lot to say on the topic, and that it's never too soon to think about the kind of business you want to be in relation to protecting your work.

Enjoy this bit of extra tasty content from Proofing Stage.

You can also hear more from Joan about IP and the restaurant industry on the Novel and Non-Obvious podcast.

Theme music by Thorn Haze
Podcast cover art by Lisa Orye

Executive Producers,  Joan Kanner and Michelle Bond
Editing and mixing by Joan Kanner

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Transcript

Joan Kanner (00:00.238)
Bonus, extra, stuff that you get, whether it be extra ounces of cereal, of soda, then why is my mind coming up with a lot of sugary things right now? Just know you thought you were getting one thing and here you are getting more of the goodness that we already know that you like. Fuck shrinkflation. Here's some time for bonus.

Caro (00:35.47)
And one of my most proud and powerful moments was I was asked to do a chalkboard for a commercial with a very famous football star involved. And they asked me to do it with one week warning. And I priced it at $4 ,000. And it's like the easiest, you know, like the most easy chill, whatever. But I was like, also though - rush me. Asked me to do it on site with the stress of a literal celebrity over my shoulder. Like that is stressful. And I charged to the point that could accommodate the stress.

And all of that, and they didn't hire me. They like got to the point of having a contract and they didn't hire me. And I felt amazing about it because I didn't care about losing a commercial or working with the football star or whatever. I was like, "thank God." And that is when I knew like my boundaries and my pricing and everything was at a place where like "this is okay." And that my business is doing well enough to, like a $4 ,000 contract, like it's still very substantial for me, but like I'm also totally fine, and it wasn't worth bending over backwards to make; their budget was half of that. They were like, "can you do it for two?" And I was like, "no, goodbye." 

Michelle Bond
Yeah, because there's all these other... and I think especially as you're, you know, self-employed - though all those other things have such value - that can be translated into a dollar amount, the sanity, the extra pressure, the other things that you're saying "no," to the time that you're staying up like thinking about how to do it just like all of that has money attached to it.

Caro
Yes. And yes.

Michelle Bond
You know, at the beginning, or there are certainly times where you have to eat those costs. But getting to a place where you don't is what makes you sustainably, you know, sustainable for the long term. For sure. 

Caro
Everything is cost benefit. Like every single thing is cost benefit. I feel like again, please, I want to have 15,000 episodes about that. 

Joan Kanner
But I and I will just for people listening in when she said "football," she meant "soccer," and was referring to David Beckham, she just turned down David Beckham and his A-frame.

Caro (02:53.998)
That quote would have been way more than $4,000, Joan. I'm just saying. 

Michelle Bond
Yeah, add an extra zero. 

Joan Kanner
But when it comes to pricing, since this is a show for small business owners, I think I want to on our behalf, of the people who are an artist, please know that when it comes to your pricing, I've never paid for a mural before. You folks, you know, a lot of things are for the first time. So, I think it's also good to understand and have people know that if we [non-artist small business owners] seem like we're lowballing, I've said to you, like, "I have no clue how [much you charge] so how's X number of dollars." So, I think people need to understand to that. Unlike this corporate example, or David Beckham, for whom she denied an A-frame. 

Michelle Bond
[laughs]

Joan Kanner
It's like we I mean, there has to be some sort of... 

I hope that. yourself and your colleagues understand that like we never come into it, most folks don't come into it with just some intentionality that's negative, right? We know our budgets. We're willing to stretch but like, there's really like, there's nothing insulting. I mean, there's plenty of different folks we interact with who are vendors and like, I could not tell you what I think that like - research but there's, it's hard to kind of like... you can Google plumbing jobs way easier than you can Google on your own. 

Caro
And that's where... 

Kait Klusewitz
Wait, I mean, that's something. 

Caro
Go ahead, Kait.

Kait Klusewitz
No, I was just going to say that is something that is very, very well-known and understood in the mural world - is that people just don't know. And that's fine. And that's why, you know, usually those first conversations that I have with my clients is always like, "FYI, this is what a typical range for a mural is and know that it could go over that." 

Michelle Bond
Yeah, that's great. That's great. 

Caro
The transparency is so important. And it goes, both, often both ways. And like it's a lot of being a mural artist, or really being anybody is just education, educating people about what the cost is. And again, back to the boundaries of standing firm, being like, "wow, okay, so you can't afford this service. Do you want something else instead? Or let me refer you to somebody else." A huge, maybe like all of it, I will, a huge part of Kait and I growing our businesses has been other artists being too busy...

Caro (05:14.574)
... or charging more than us and handing us projects. It's because like they're at a different level than we are. And that like we're all in an ecosystem and you build yourself up. And the more well-known you are, the more your name has clout attached to it, the more you can charge because the more in-demand you are. And it makes sense that, like when you're small enough and up-and-coming, you're going to have different boundaries and make less money. And then you increase just like anybody else. So yes, yes. 

Joan Kanner
Michelle, do we have time for the IP question? 

Caro
Time? Time is good. I have a feeling I'm going to have no answer to this question. 

Michelle Bond
Well, I mean, I know there's also the wrap up. 

Caro
I saw the bullet point. I'm like intellectual property... 

Michelle Bond
Cause I have like a general closing -ish question, but yeah, we can, if you guys are good for another 10 minutes, well, I just want to honor that. 

Caro
So that's fine with me.

Kait Klusewitz
Yeah, that's fine.

Joan Kanner
this is a sign we should probably continue it [this conversation] in person at some point over chicken and bubblies. The four of us - not to exclude people, but yeah, let them watch on; look at our table. And we'll just laugh and laugh and enjoy. [laughs]

Caro
Excellent, excellent into it. 


Joan Kanner
So for many years, I worked for universities and I had the pleasure of working with brilliant tech transfer attorneys and other people in that world. So they worked on the intellectual property matters, including patents. I'm happy to say that at Bottoms Up Bagels, we have our own trademarks and my trademark attorney keeps pushing me to do a patent on something that we created, but it just seems like so much money. So I need to like get over that at some point. 


But I've noticed in speaking with different folks we've worked with, including The Bazarre, which is a small firm, a small but mighty firm based out of Baltimore, as well, who designed the outside of our shop. We've also done some video work together. Unfortunately, in speaking with their lead, it happened to be that sometimes on Instagram and other places, people have tried taking credit for his work. And I wasn't quite sure in your world, and [given] what you've created, if you watermark things or have a process of checking the internet for things that reference what you've done.

Caro (07:32.526)
I have so many thoughts about this. First of all, I've never come across it personally. I also, I know there are tons of resources there about how to properly legally protect your work. And the bigger of an artist you are, the more you're going to see it, and the more you need those things. And also it can be so inevitable.

And I think one of the big ways is to like charge enough and do enough to cover your own bases where if it happens... And I think a lot of the time for an artist of our size, fighting something like that financially is not worth it. And it's like, this is where I'm like, I don't agree with myself and I don't take this as great advice, but my true hot take opinion is like the greatest flattery is imitation. 

"Like, wow, I can't believe I did something that you love this much." Also, I am forever evolving. I'm never going to create something like that again. And like if you if you need something that badly, if you really can't be unique and you need something that badly, then like I'm just going to keep evolving past that. I'll do... And if I get big enough where I can fight people to protect myself, I definitely would. I'm not of that size right now. I think I would be like "good riddance." 


And like, yeah, the resources are out there, I think down the road, maybe that'll come into play. And so far, we've been lucky. That's my two cents. 

Michelle Bond
Fair. Yeah.

Kait Klusewitz
Yeah, the only thing that I would add to that is I have found that with a lot with murals... The reason that I love murals so much is because they are so calm, like contextual, like they often are so much about the space that they're in. To the point that I think a lot of the murals that I've painted, that I've designed, wouldn't necessarily, like you could copy them, but like they wouldn't necessarily work the same somewhere else, which is something that I love about murals. Also, a lot of what we do with things like signage is so generic, that it's like everybody's doing this anyway. Like, you know, like hand lettering, it sort of looks the same no matter where you look. So like, we're all just kind of doing the same shit anyway. 

Caro
Yeah. Yeah.

Kait Klusewitz (09:52.718)
We do... I mean, Caroline and I use really similar contracts and in the contracts, one of the stipulations that we have is that with murals that we produce, you can't use - like you own the wall, but you don't own the image. So like you can't get, you know, the design that we've produced printed on a t-shirt. So that's the only place where I can see it maybe being an issue as if a, you know, a business that we've done a mural for starts using the art from that mural in a way outside of, you know, the the intent of it being on a wall and maybe in the back of an Instagram photo or something like that. But beyond that, part of why I love murals so much is because I feel like they don't necessarily always work as art outside of the context where they exist. So I don't know. I'm sure that this is a thing that artists do, like that mural artist specifically, I'm sure that it's a thing that some artists deal with, and maybe it's something that we'll come across eventually.

Also, I mean, like, I think I'm still new enough and haven't produced enough work that it's something I've had to think about too much. 

Caro
Yeah. Yeah. I will... My other two cents is that I very intentionally at the beginning decided to not become a product-based business and never say never, but I have no real interest in ever being a product based business because of issues like that. I think if I was somebody that sold my designs on t-shirts and cards and a lot of physical items, that's when companies like Temu or Amazon, or whatever, comes out and they plagiarize all of your stuff - change it enough where they can get away in the court of law. And as the small business, like I see these stories constantly on Instagram with a lot of the product-based and graphic design-based artists that I know. And that's something that I just don't ever want to deal with. And I do, I think the bigger you get, I do know some people that have gone into legal issues with murals specifically, instead of, and, and that do copyright and that do, like give a lot of guidance about trademarking and copywriting. And I think the more corporate your client is, design-wise, the more important that becomes. Because if they do like a photo campaign that brings them in hundreds of thousands of dollars and your mural is the backdrop for it, that's when I think it starts to become an IP issue that we one day will become big enough to worry about that. 

Michelle Bond
Well, and that's where attribution...

Michelle Bond (12:20.302)
I think attribution is like the bare minimum. You know? It's like, that's, I think some things too, that we've experienced people not necessarily stealing work, but taking credit, taking full credit for something that was like a collaborative effort and things like that, which I think is part of being in the ecosystem. But, you know, you know, credit your people, people. 

Joan Kanner
I have two counterpoints. Credit your people. You know, [even if] it's a work for hire. You still credit them, like we do for the designer of our Proofing Stage logo.

My two counterpoints will be - one, when it comes to legal protections, it's always cheaper to be proactive in terms of fighting stuff later. And I'm happy to bring on one of the many IP attorneys who are fucking brilliant, and straightforward, and they won't bullshit you, on the show at some point later this season. And then two - like I really do appreciate what you all were saying about the bigger you are, the more likely this will happen. But as a food business, actually you're way more fragile when you're younger.

It was, I think, around like a year, maybe like [in] year two of our business, which is now over eight years old. But we had someone we thought was a mentor. This comes up on season one, by the way. We had someone we thought was a mentor bring in this dude who's going to open up his own bagel business. And in a meeting, many gross things happened. The dude asked us for our...

Michelle Bond (13:43.918)
Say it again, Joan, you broke up. 

Joan Kanner
This. Sure. We were in this meeting with someone we thought was a mentor, this woman, so if it was especially gross, and she brought in this guy who was going to be opening up his own bagel business, he already had a pizza business. And he asked us point blank for our recipes.

And afterwards, she wasn't like, "man, that was gross." Or "are you okay?" I mean, we wholesaled to this guy once, and then he ended up ghosting us. And then, you know, he's a, he's a nepo baby, and he has like all the money and all the things, and kept going. So it happens that we were small because like, who would give a shit about Bottoms Up Bagels in year two? Like, who really knew of us outside of like the Waverly Farmers Market per your earlier points, Kait. So there was that. 

And then later on, I think probably around like year three, we ended up wholesaling to a woman who had a cafe in Westminster [MD]. And then she used our stuff once. Her check got bounced. 

Michelle Bond
Recalled her check. Twice. 

Joan Kanner
Recalled her check twice. I had to drive to her place because she was posting [online] that she still had our bagels and cream cheeses. But she was getting them from Safeway. And then she was naming things slightly different from our named stuff. So we have sesame sriracha cream cheese, which is not trademarked.

So she called them sriracha sesame cream cheese and she would just, I have no idea how she made it. 

Michelle Bond
She had our Jocus Pocus [cream cheese]. She had all kinds of stuff. She just lifted our menu, which again, but to your point, like what it would have costed to fight that, you know, cost us to fight that then, and even now, you know, it's like... 

Joan Kanner
So the guy didn't get our recipes, and that woman, I don't know if they're [her cafe] still open because I remember, I remember like driving there... 

Michelle Bond
No, she hasn't been in business.

Joan Kanner
So, that wasn't gonna last. But it was important because getting things like Jocus Pocus, our smoked jalapeño cream cheese, getting a trademark makes it easier, especially when you're gonna be in a market that's pretty close [geographically]. I mean, it's still Maryland, it's not too far away from here to be able to fight those things. So that happened early on. Not to say we haven't had other challenges going forward, but when you're young and small, people just think "I'm gonna go ahead and like take that thing because I'm the top dog and people will think it's my idea, no one will question it."

Caro(16:00.046)
Yeah. 

Michelle Bond
It's just good to be aware of that possibility. 

Caro
Brutal out there. Brutal out there. Yeah. And yeah, yeah. 

Joan Kanner
This has been a bonus episode of the Proofing Stage pod. 

Michelle Bond
Listen, subscribe, share it. Thanks for supporting the show.