FFF: Ekaterina Papova on Community, Coaching, and the Numbers Nobody Talks About

In this episode, I sit down with Ekaterina "Kat" Papova, artist, founder of Create Magazine, and creator of The Art Queens community, to talk about the messy, unglamorous path from making art in your dorm room to running a real business around it. We swap stories about our earliest Instagram days, the websites we obsessed over and rebuilt a dozen times, and the moment we each realized that waiting for the "perfect" setup was just another way of stalling. Kat shares how she built Create Magazine and The Art Queens out of a genuine hell-yes moment, and how she decides which ideas are worth chasing versus which ones just need to sit and simmer. We also get into email lists as a safety net against Instagram's chaos, why bootstrapping before you invest in a fancy rebrand actually pays off, and how knowing your numbers (even the ones that sting) changes what you make and how you price it. Kat's new book with Chronicle Books was about to launch when we recorded this, and she talks about what it took to get there. If you've ever felt paralyzed by a blank Instagram bio or a spreadsheet, this one's for you.

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