How Maria Brito used Instagram to build a 7-figure art consulting business
She eventually grew her audience to over 200,000 followers across Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and email.
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It was 2008 and Maria Brito was miserable. By that point, she had spent the better part of a decade in corporate law, a career she hated and had only entered out of familial obligation. “I grew up in Venezuela in a conservative family,” she told me in an interview. “My parents thought that the only path for me was to become an attorney or a doctor or an engineer.”
Brito graduated Harvard Law School in 2000 and soon got a job at a New York law firm. “I was so depressed and had no meaning or purpose in that job,” she said. She now refers to that period as “the dark ages.” In a recent Instagram post she described it as “countless hours, all-nighters, lack of creativity, lack of diversity, boring routines.”
But Brito did have one bright spot in her life; in the early 2000s she started going to NYC galleries and buying some art. She’d always been interested in art since she was a young child, but the density of galleries in New York allowed her to take this interest to a whole new level. “As I grew more fascinated with the field, I started recommending art to friends,” she said. “And it was very interesting to see my friends calling me and saying, ‘that artist you recommended me is getting hot. The price is going up.’ Those calls provided me with little clues that I needed to change careers.”
Eventually, Brito reached a breaking point. In 2008, she went on maternity leave, and the thought of returning to her job filled her with dread. By that point, the economy had entered a tailspin, with Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers both collapsing. She decided that if there was ever a time to shift careers, this was it. “I went back to the law firm after maternity leave, and then they paid the bonuses in January, and then I quit.”
Within months, Brito had launched her own art buying consultancy. By then, she had built up a small network of high net worth individuals who trusted her recommendations, and that network served as her initial client base.
But Brito also invested a significant portion of her time into creating online content, first with a blog and then later on social media. She eventually grew her audience to over 200,000 followers across Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and email, and she’s leveraged this audience to sign book deals, run brand sponsorship campaigns, and bring in dozens of wealthy clients that include Gwyneth Paltrow and Sean "Diddy" Combs.
How did Brito accomplish all of this? In a recent interview, she explained to me her content creation process, her philosophy on Instagram sponsorship deals, and why so many high net worth individuals trust her to buy art for their collections, often after seeing only a static iPhone photo of the piece she’s recommending for purchase.
Let’s jump into my findings…
It all started with a blog
To understand why Brito became so successful in her career as an art advisor, it’s helpful to know what an art advisor does. On the surface, it’s simply recommending art to her clients for purchase, and then she takes a commission on the sale price. In theory, she’s recommending art that’s not only aesthetically pleasing, but also projected to go up in value.