Hey coaches! I’m so excited to be introducing to you the amazing Lene Fredriksen and she is an artist who paints the most gorgeous oil painting. She’s also a coach, and she’s been my client for the past 6 months. 

Lene is all about expressing herself and what she loves through the visual language and she’s an absolute wizard at it. I also just want to say that this is a super laid back conversation and we had someone renovating just downstairs. So there’s some banging and weird sounds in the background. I also got my dog snoring in the background, so bear with us.

Life happens – but the most important thing is that you get to hear about the amazing journey that she has had over the past 11 years as an artist, but also the past six months coaching and what she has achieved in her business and marketing through working with me. She’s alsp sharing her amazing advice as to what you can do in your business. So without further ado, let’s jump into it, shall we?

Alright, so I am here with the amazing Lene Fredriksen. She’s an artist and coach – and she paints gorgeous paintings with oils. And it’s so funny because it turns out we have quite a lot in common. We both have lived in Australia. I used to date an Aussie bloke for like six years. She’s married to one now, and moved to Norway. And we would just love to share with you her journey as a coach and through her painting and her own achievements and how she’s developed along the journey. 

Martine:
So welcome! It’s so nice to have you. 

Lene:

Thank you, Martine. I’m really excited to be here. 

Martine:

So tell us about you, what do you do, who you are you, what’s been your journey to becoming an artist and just what do you do now? 

Lene:

Yeah, okay, so I’m an artist and art coach. And I also work as a research assistant. So I’m a biologist. I work at a research facility here in Norway as well. Sort of half and half artists and research assistant. I have two kids. One of them has just turned one. So I just got back to work really officially this week after my maternity leave. 

Martine:

Yeah, but you’ve been at it with the art for 11 years worth it? 

Lene:

Yeah, so I got into oil painting in 201, while I was living in Australia, I was in love with drawing as a kid but somehow just kind of forgot to do it during my teens. I just found back to it while I was in Australia, and got totally hooked. So I’ve been doing it ever since. And I’ve just been growing from there. 

Martine:

Yeah, it’s so amazing to see your journey on your Instagram account as well; how you started out with stilleben, and how you’re now really sort of solidified into your own unique expression and gorgeous paintings.

Lene:

Thank you very much. I appreciate that. 

Martine:

Yeah, so you first found me because you were referred by my ex colleague and your good friend. And it was so funny because I always give my clients a free consultation upfront just to see what they want help with and how I could specifically help them and then we’ll get into if it’s a potential yay or nay for working together. And I just remember you were saying that: “I didn’t even need the consultation because I was already a YES” from the beginning. Can you tell us a little bit about why?

Lene:

Yeah, I was so ready. Up until a few years prior to that I had so much confidence that I would make it as an artist. And then I was kind of lost in my circumstance like I was fighting the circumstances. And so I just had a premature baby. He would not sleep much at all other than just on me. So I felt really trapped. My mother had just died and, throw the pandemic in there as well. I just felt like I was losing my power to make this thing happen for me. I knew it was a mindset thing. I just couldn’t quite grasp what was happening and why I kept losing my belief in it. And yeah, I remember being nervous for our consultation because I was afraid that you would say it wasn’t a fit. I was listening to your podcast for the last two days. And I was just hooked. 

Martine:

And just a little side note to the listeners here. I know there’s a lot of coaches that are listening to this as well. And, you know, we don’t know what’s happening behind the scenes. We always try to control you know, post this post. And when we don’t get an instant, conversion then something “might be wrong”, but we never know what’s happening if someone’s like indulging in your content and you know, being in the process of convincing themselves that it’s the right thing to work with you. So that’s amazing. And so, yeah, so we’ve been coaching for six months now and what would you say are the biggest takeaways from that coaching? 

Lene:

So, something that you helped me with early on… I discovered the value of creating what excited me, like, to look for answers within me and what to do and how to do it. And when I’m genuinely excited about what I’m doing, then that feeling is contagious for whoever’s consuming what I create. So it kind of allowed me to just keep creating and painting what I want to paint. I know a lot of artists struggle with this. Like we get a lot of advice on what sells and kind of looking for answers and what the audience wants. And that can really disturb the growth into your artist self. If that makes sense. 

Martine:

Yeah. And you know, being an artist is such an expressive, personal thing. 

Lene:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because when you’re an artist and trying to fit yourself into a box that already exist. Yes. Yes, exactly. 

Martine:

And it’s such an expressive path as well. And,self expression comes from within and moves outward. It’s like it’s an explosion rather than an implosion. So when we try to fit ourselves into a box, then not being inspired is going to turn into not wanting to actually create and when you don’t create you don’t develop and you don’t create. It’s just this negative spiral.

Lene:

Exactly. It’s the recipe for eventually quitting. So that was one of the biggest takeaways. But I think THE biggest thing was realizing how much I was holding myself back with perfectionism. And I also didn’t actually believe in the value of art before working with you – in terms of marketing, particularly. Yeah, I think those are the biggest takeaways. 

Martine:

That’s amazing. And we did work a bit on that because I think that’s a huge thing for a lot of artists AND coaches as well, you know, the worth of their work and, and what people get out of it. I used to paint a little bit as well. We get so much joy from it. So it’s almost hard to just understand that others can get joy from our work as well just by watching it you know, it’s almost like, can it really be that good? 

Yeah. So you said that you were really quite stuck on perfectionism and not really believing in the value of your offer, or, you know, the painting in this circumstance, and not really having the confidence of actually marketing it. So how do you feel about all of that now? Like, where are you at?

Lene:

I’m so relieved! I feel relieved and incredibly fulfilled because I’ve been unable to let that go. And I’ve understood what it’s been about and why I was spinning in circles. Yeah, it’s just really opened up to me and like, I really wanted to create videos before but I wanted it to be perfect and I you know, you see all these high quality videos on YouTube. And I really thought that the only way to get people’s attention these days was to have it that way.

I think also this is where not believing in the value and the message and the art made me compensate for wanting the packaging to be amazing. So I wanted it to be edited music, I wanted to blend animation like a good blend between processes in the studio and PowerPoint presentations. I wanted it to be interactive, like I had this blog idea of a scrapbook that was interactive, so you could click through the pages and then would animate the page flip. And I wanted animations to run across the page. I even envisioned a hologram at one point!

Martine:

Well, your creativity is there, no doubt about that!

Lene:

Yeah, it’s lots of ideas. Yeah. And so I thought that was the only way to keep people’s attention these days. And like I said, I think I was compensating with not believing in the value of what I wanted to communicate. 

Martine:

Yeah, so it’s almost like yeah, try to make the gift wrapping super pretty and shiny and sparkly. Instead of working on what was actually inside of the gift wrapping. 

Lene:
Yeah, and I tried a couple of videos, and that took me a whole month to make, so it wasn t sustainable. But I really wanted to have this creative outlet of videography but I didn’t have the time to do it to a level that I wanted. 

Martine:

Yeah. And just looking at the rest of your life as well. You already have a daughter and now you have a young toddler. And as you say, it was a few complications, just with some health things that kept you awake. So, circumstantially you had a lot going on. You were even having your baby on your lap while we were coaching sometimes. And so one of the main things that we talked about in the beginning was how to create a strategy that would both get your beautiful art out there in a way that creatively fulfilled you, and felt good to you. But also didn’t take so much time because I think that that was a major thing that you thought. In order to get a good video out there that people are going to like it’s going to take, I think you said 70% of the time was going to go to marketing and the remaining is going to, you know, painting and other things. But what would you say the ratio is now after we’ve worked on your marketing strategy for your strengths?

Lene:
I’ll say it’s about 50/50 at the moment, but I think my circumstances up until now still made it a little bit hard to paint as much as I want. So that will change now, because now I have a bit more time from now on. I’ll have more time every week that is dedicated to painting, but it’s much much easier for me to prioritize painting. Yeah, that’s one of the things that’s happened with having so little time and working with you. It’s really decluttered my business. I’ve been able to just pinpoint the most essential things and I used to down-prioritize painting. You know, like that’s why when Yeah, that’s the heart of my business. 

Martine:

Yeah. So there’s actually quite a few people that, you know, have objections around time. Thinking that, working with a coach is going to take so much time and that they don’t have time for it. Whereas you’re just saying that it actually made your business leaner so that youe got more time for your business. 

Lene:

Yeah, it’s exactly it! It does resonate a lot with those thoughts of having, like I had those same thoughts when I was considering working with you that I haven’t been able to, yeah, “can we work together in half a year or so”? But then we ended up starting right away and it’s because I had so little time. It was the perfect time! Because we had to decide on the most essential things. And now that things are opening up, time is opening up for me again, I can kind of extrapolate what I learned in the little time windows, like if you start with a lot of time, it’s kind of hard to focus on the most essential things, because it teachers you have more time so you can do more stuff. 

Martine:

Yeah, but the funny part is that often, especially if we do have a lot of time, we end up procrastinating if we don’t have the right mindset and tools to get ourselves into it.

Knowing how to manage our time well is so important. You know the saying, “if you want something done, give it to the most busy person”. So that’s pretty funny. 

So I also want to touch on your own coaching practice a little bit as well because you also offer coaching and you saw some amazing breakthroughs for your clients as well. So tell us a little bit about how coaching helped artists that you supported. 

Lene:
Some of them started at a place where they actually completely avoided the studio and were overwhelmed by self criticism – internal and external . And yeah, just being close to giving up and then turning around to start loving what they do. Yeah, on the right path to finding themselves as artists and have joined the studio again. What I see for a lot of artists and for me as well, is, you know, we as people, we as humans, we have this urge to achieve and grow skills. An urge for self expression. To grow and thrive as a person and what we often do is to achieve skills we attach success to self love, self esteem. We use external circumstances to sort of try and prove things for ourselves so that we’re good enough or so that you know, we will be accepted or that we’re legit. It often comes from childhood, something that we’re trying to prove or make up for, like previous judgments, for example. That’s really when you kind of get in the wrong lane for when you’re motivated by the wrong thing to achieve skills you want to get to a place where you chase those skills, the technical skills in order to express what you want to express and not chase skills in order to make you feel worthy. 

Martine:
It’s like an internal motivation to work and develop versus external motivation.

Lene: 

Exactly. You’re trying to create results that will change some sort of circumstance. Like if I just get to this level, then they’ll take me seriously. 

Martine:
Yeah. And that is never going to be a positive experience for anyone.

Lene:

No, it’s not, and that’s exactly how you get your self criticism fired up. When you want to criticize yourself, that’s just your fear. If your head is all in that mental chatter, when you focus on the process, and kind of just allow it, allow the painting to fail. Let go of trying to control that result. Just be in the process. That’s when you get to the first stage, which is when you’re having more fun. And, you get better results. And I just think that’s where all the magic happens. That’s when you inspire others as well. That’s what people get hooked on. When they’re looking at your process. 

Martine:

Yeah, totally. And this is true for artists but also in, you know, all other professions and all other areas in life as well. We’re almost conditioned to think that if we’re going to achieve something that means that it has to be hard and we have to fight for it. And the thing is that neuroscience has actually proven that when we’re in a negative mindset, we’re more in fear. And when we are, we actually close off certain areas of our brain. One of them is the creative areas, like what, what is associated with creativity. So it’s definitely really important for art and that sort of stuff as well. But also other all other areas, you know, like having content ideas, brainstorming and so on. It’s a physical and chemical limit to your brain when you’re always in the negative. So we want to be playing, we want to have fun, we want to loosen up and not take everything so seriously. Not taking it seriously doesn’t mean that we’re not real about it that we’re really, you know, doing our best and creating amazing results because I think that a lot of people think that it’s one or the other, like either you’re just wishy washy on having fun playing. But you have to be “serious and do it properly and perfectionistic” and all that sort of stuff. But if you can just allow yourself to have fun and loosen up, you’ll be surprised! You’ll have better results, and you’ll feel better. 

So you were talking about control and I want to tailor that into marketing as well. I remember that at one stage, we were looking at your Instagram feed and you were saying that you weren’t completely happy with it and you’re trying to sort of control it a little bit. But then, once you let go and just posted everything that you did – like documenting rather than almost like white knuckling your way to putting it nicely out there. Then, you ended up loving your feed even more. So, can you tell us a little bit about your mindset by letting go and implementing the things that you were learning from coaching? 

Lene:

Yeah, so I just want to then say where I was before with that. I used to hoard my content. I had this idea that the perfect sales funnels, everything has to be matched up, so like in my video, I was referring to my website for example, and I felt that I had to then have a post that was corresponding with the video. Just everything had to be matched up and I didn’t post for a whole year because the only way to stay consistent was to have everything planned out beforehand, but it just didn’t did not work. So what I wrote my discoveries, I had already moved on from and I wasn’t excited about it anymore. You mentioned the “content graveyard” – and my notes were truly a graveyard for my ideas. I have to first of all believe in the value of what I do. Make it more authentic like just posting it as I’m discovering it. 

Martine:

You know, it’s great with the principle of storytelling in marketing because it’s powerful to actually just take people along with you on your journey on your development. And yeah, there’s going to be content that you cringe over. It’s almost like it’s a “rite of passage” to have cringe worthy content from, you know, a month ago or five months ago or five years ago. Like it’s actually something that you just have to accept and that’s something that I’ve had to work on as well. It’s just like, yeah, loving and accepting where we were and I’m sure you can relate that to your art as well that you know, like “oh my god what did I do back then”? It’s actually a badge of honor to look at what you now create versus what you did create before, and we’re always going to develop so there’s no destination. 

Lene:

Yeah, there’s no magical place in the future where you can share everything. And it’s always going to stay that way. We’re always developing, so our content is always going to grow with that. And the other thing is that perfect doesn’t really resonate with people because no one is perfect. So just opening up to being vulnerable and transparent. And that’s what people connect with. Absolutely, yeah. Because if we’re too far ahead, we’re not human. Then it’s like, well, they’re so much better than me, so I could never do that and we don’t feel inspired by them. 

Martine:

We are humans we do right things, wrong or stupid things or get lost for words. It’s just like, we’re humans with a human brain. No matter what profession we have. We’re all going to stumble and it’s okay. Are you joining – Okay, let’s go.

Lene:

Yeah, and the value in the message isn’t gonna go away just because it’s not packaged in a perfect way. Yeah, you know what’s perfect for you might not totally be optimal for someone else. So yeah, let’s just throw it out there. And you know, if we try to aim for perfection it’s just going to end up in the content graveyard anyways. Might as well put it out there. It’s not serving. It’s not serving any of us to aim for perfection.

Martine:

Now, you had a certain price for your paintings that you would love to charge when we first started out working together – and you blew straight past that quite reasonably with some portraits. Would you like to tell us about that?

Lene:
Yeah, I think my mind was just coming from looking at what I was getting, and not what the clients were getting. And of course, I didn’t believe in the value of art. I was just seeing what I was getting, not how the painting would impact the clients or the viewers’s life in a positive way. So, like we said before; if I’m excited about what I’m creating, that excitement comes through, and is contagious. I feel like art is one that’s right for the person viewing it just speaks to them and in a way that it reminds them of somebody who is someone they are, they see something of themselves in it and it just somehow gives them the freedom of being themselves and chasing their dreams. I feel like it has direct access to people’s feelings. Yeah, and inspire the actions that are right for them in their lives. 

Martine:

Yeah, so someone reached out seemingly out of the blue and you got you know, someone wanting you to paint something. You adjusted your prices after what felt good for your upgraded mindset. And they were happy about it and you were happy about it.. And everybody was winning!

Lene:

Yes!

Martine

So, is there anything else that you would like to add to the conversation before we move on to the rapid fire questions? 

Lene:

I just want to say thank you for these past six months. It’s been priceless and I don’t even have words for how much it’s done for me. It’s really given me the power back to creating the life I want. So, thank you. 

Martine:

Love it! I am so excited to continue to watch you and see all the beautiful things that you are up to. So let’s get into the super quick questions. 

So number one: What is your favorite quote?

Lene:
“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you’re working” –  Pablo Picasso.

Martine:

Beautiful. Love it. And it’s so true. It’s like when you find content and you get this other idea. It’s like when you’re working and taking action – you’re like creating new hooks, or new inspiration to get attached to. 

Okay, question number two: What’s been the most impactful book for you specifically in your journey to build your own business? It doesn’t have to be a business book. It can be anything. 

Lene: 

In terms of coaching, it’s the Self Coaching 101 by Brooke Castillo, and in terms of my art, it’s How to Sell Your Art Online by Corey Huff. 

Martine:

Awesome! Okay, Number three, what is one thing that people can do right now to get closer to having their dream business?

Lene:
Don’t think that you have to have it all figured out before you start – because it’s just not how it works. It’s an exploration. Finding yourself and your most authentic business. It’s an exploration, it’s not a destination. Allow your message to be a bit rusty and then you’ll just figure it out as you go. Packaging can develop naturally.

Martine:

Okay, the final question, what would you like to say to someone who is considering hiring a coach right now?

Lene:

I would say that whatever you expect to get from it; you’ll get back tenfold! It’s just so empowering. It has given me back the power to design my own life. And the positive mindset that you get in your business. It’s just gonna seep through in every aspect of your life. It’s going to come through in your relationship to yourself and your relationship to your family. Yeah, it’s just I think everyone should have a coach.

Martine:

Yeah! I think the world would be a better place and we would have a lot more happy humans who were living out their dreams!

Lene:
Absolutely.

Martine:

Okay, so if people want to buy your gorgeous art or hire you as a coach or mentor, where can they find you?

Lene:

So my website is https://www.lenefredriksen.com/ and you can find me on Instagram @lene_artists. You can find my coaching service and art at my website, or you can just DM me on Instagram.

If you loved this episode and you know someone that would greatly benefit from hearing what we’ve been talking about today, we would love for you to share this podcast in an Instagram story and tag us or for us to just share the episode directly. Just share the love and yeah, thank you so much for being here. It was such a pleasure!

Thank you!