Our St. Charles / St. Louis Wine & Painting Studio!

Our St. Charles "re-launch" is in progress! A business needs a fresh expert set of eyes to gain perspective. Career professionals attend "further education" courses, so one day we thought, "Why shouldn't we?". I took to the web and searched for a "sip and paint" industry expert who specialized in developing and branding "paint and wine" oriented art studios... if there was such a thing!

Google landed me at paintandwine.com, home of "The Paint & Wine Studio" in Houston, Texas. I talked to owner / artist Brian Bullard, who has developed art businesses for clients since the year 2000. Brian told me about his offerings: a "Tune-Up" program where they could evaluate my entire Studio Gallo Blu and send a report on how to improve and expand the business. He also explained their "Total Immersion" paint and wine business seminar: three days and two nights of training in the "sip and paint" style, studio operations, hosting, copyrights, and instructional techniques in their Houston studio. Then there was the "Paint & Wine Business Consulting Program", where I would have access to daily guidance on how to re-brand and refine my wine and paint-oriented business.

Quite honestly, I'm never an easy sell on anything, but I was pretty hyped about my email and phone conversations with Brian because he was full of information and ideas and not high-pressure about anything. It was an easy choice: fly to Houston, go to the seminar, be away from it all and focus on our business with a new perspective in the "Total Immersion" painting seminar.

Next thing I knew I had flown to Houston and Brian picked me up at the hotel the next morning. We headed straight for the studio and got to work on what he calls "the interview". He wanted to know absolutely everything about my business: what I liked about it, areas that I wanted to improve.

The good news: he said we had done a fantastic job building our paint and wine oriented business. There wasn't "bad news", only the "better news": that even after the great job we had done, he could still show us ways to improve, in most every aspect.

Friday through Sunday we trained day and night. Brian helped me revive some painting tricks I had long forgotten since art school, or had never been taught. We went over operations, studio design, instructional techniques, registrations, inventory, and a very efficient and process-oriented art station setup for each student. That evening I met Brian's team, watched him put the painting class instructional techniques, that I learned by day, into use with the crowd at night, and I met and painted with a crowd of enthusiastic amateur painters, just like at home.

Attending Brian's paint and wine business seminar was informational, enlightening, and exciting, we're totally super-charged and enthusiastic about implementing all of his tips and techniques in our re-relaunch.

After returning to St. Charles we decided it would be best to hire Brian and "The Paint & Wine Studio" as consultants so we can have full access to his knowledge throughout our entire re-branding process of the business. We also hired them to create our gorgeous and efficient new website, we hope you are enjoying it!

If you've attended class at our studio, thank you for your support, and please come again to experience this exciting second round of changes. If you've never attended, now you have more reason than ever to come to Historic St. Charles and be a part of a one of a kind dynamic energy in "sip and paint" that I learned from Brian, it's truly "one of a kind".