One of the most satisfying guest speaker visits of last year’s Midwest Entrepreneurs class for me was that of former Monmouth College Chaplain Rev. Dr. Kathleen Fannin (who has taken a passion for painting realized only after retirement and turned it into an entrepreneurial venture). The reason for this high level of satisfaction was seeing someone talk passionately about something that they truly loved and how they had transformed it first in to a hobby and then realized it could become a means of starting an entrepreneurial business (which at the very least pays for adventurous pursuit of the loved hobby).

Kathleen made her second guest speaker visit to the class last Thursday; it was every bit an interesting and insightful as the first. Below, class member Blake Bichsel provides further detail on her captivating story.

Lastly, see—and buy–her paintings at her artists webpage : http://cattail.pixels.com/. My personal favorite of her many works—the original of which hangs on a wall at home—can be found at:  http://cattail.pixels.com/featured/puerto-vallarta-b-kathleen-fannin.html.

Prof. Gabel

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So far in our classes we have had a lot of very interesting guest speakers.  Rev. Dr. Kathleen Fannin kept that trend going.  She was the chaplain here at Monmouth College for thirteen years before she became an artist.  The interesting thing about her entrepreneurial adventure was that it began after she had retired from being a chaplain.  She said that when she started she had no idea she could draw, and even told our class that she wasn’t even sure she could draw a stick figure.  You might find that very hard to believe if you saw one of her paintings though.

Dr. Fannin has written several books over the course of her career as well.  She said one day she had “writer’s block”, so she went to Dick Blick and got some supplies to do watercolor paintings.  The first painting she did was of an owl.  She was in love from the start; she loved her new found hobby and was very surprised how good she was.  She shared her new hobby with her friends and family by sending them notecards featuring her paintings.  One of her friends liked her notecards so much he asked to buy the actual painting from her.  She continued to improve her artistic ability and decided to enter an art show in May 2012.  She had a painting win “best in class” at the art show; and by December she had sold eight paintings.

In November 2013, she attended her first craft show where she had a lot of success.  She had only paid $30 for her table and ended up making $400 that weekend.  She continued to do lots of paintings for her friends as well.  The first couple paintings she didn’t charge very much, but she was doing something that she loved and that’s all that mattered.  People then began asking her to do paintings of their own homes and things and that’s when she realized she could charge a little more because people were willing to pay more for something that was special to them.  She would take a picture of the house, then draw the outlines with pencil, and begin to paint.

At the craft show the next year she decided to get a double table that only cost her $50 and it really paid off.  That weekend at the craft show she made $960.  She sold things such as notecards and prints and even some original paintings.  She painted a beautiful picture of historic The Holt House here in Monmouth and it sold for $450 (see: http://cattail.pixels.com/featured/holt-house-b-kathleen-fannin.html ).  She also sells prints of her paintings on her artistwebsites.com page and for $30 a year they take care of everything from the customers ordering the products to shipping the products to them.  The website also has other products like phone cases, and shower curtains that have her paintings on them as well.  She doesn’t really do a whole lot as far as marketing goes.  But she does post all of her paintings on her Facebook page for all of her friends to see.

Recently, Kathleen has been experimenting with painting on Yupo paper, a plastic material which the paint does not absorb into. She shared with us several of her Yupo paintings done as part of her recently concluded “Lenten Painting Series.”

After becoming an artist she realized that just because she painted something and absolutely loved it, doesn’t mean other people would want to buy it.  That also goes the other way around; she said that she has had a couple paintings that she didn’t think were very good that sold relatively quickly.

Like most of the speakers so far she is doing something that she absolutely loves to do.  She asked us, “If you aren’t enjoying what you’re doing, then why are you doing it?”  She also told us that she strictly does this for fun and never wants to see this as work, she just wants to be able to enjoy it.

Blake Bichsel