You're listening to the savvy painter podcast episode number 24.

Welcome to the savvy painter podcast, the podcast for artists who mean business.

Here's your host, Antrice Wood.

Hey, it's Antrice and welcome to another episode of the Savvy Painter Podcast.

Today's guest has been an enormous influence on my art career.

Errol Gerson has been teaching business management for designers

as well as entrepreneurship at the Arts Center College of Design for the past 43 years.

I was among the 6,600 students that have passed through his class.

Errol's combined passion for entrepreneurship and the arts inspires his students to fearlessly pursue their passion, knowing how to back it up with a sound strategy.

So it's my pleasure to bring you Errol Gerson. Errol, first of all, why do you teach? It's really very simple. The reason I

teach is because I'm extraordinarily selfish human being. By teaching, I get to be

around some of the brightest, most fertile young minds, and they have an impact on me.

I am in many ways an empath, and I get to draw of their energy and at 70 years of age I feel better than I have in a long time

and there's no question that a lot of that has to do with being around exceptional bright young people.

But the second reason that I teach is because I was fortunate to have great teachers in

university and this is my only way to pay them back because these men

and women impacted my life in ways that I can never repay them for. In fact, my mentor just passed away about four years ago and he was my mentor

since I graduated USC in 1971, Dr James McNeil-Stancel.

So that's why I teach.

I teach to give back.

And what made you decide specifically to teach art students?

I'm sitting in graduate school at USC in the management class of Professor Harry Grace,

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