Twice-Baked Potatoes

November 26, 2016 by Laura Leave a Comment

Art Business Isn't Potatoes
My mom makes fantastic twice-baked potatoes (you cook a potato and then scrape it out of the skin and mix it with milk and cheese and bacon and such, then put it back in the skin and bake it a little more) that we have every Thanksgiving.

EXCEPT THIS YEAR I SPENT THANKSGIVING WITH MY HUSBAND’S FAMILY AND WE DIDN’T HAVE THE HEAVEN-SENT POTATO GOODNESS.

When I was wishing my family a happy Thanksgiving over the phone, she reminded me how much I was missing out (I mean it when I say “heaven-sent potato goodness”, hereinafter referred to as the HSPG).

She asked why I didn’t make them myself as a contribution to our meal and you know what? I told her I didn’t know how.

Anyone can follow a recipe, but the reason I can’t make the HSPG is because there is no recipe!

Holy hand grenades, Batman!

Every time I’ve watched my mom make the HSPG, it’s a dash of this, a pour of that…

It’s based entirely on the way it looks.

AND IT OCCURS TO ME TODAY THAT THIS IS JUST WHAT MOST ARTISTS ARE TRYING TO DO TO SELL THEIR ART.

They’re taking a little ideas here and there from all sorts of different recipes and their own gut feelings and trying to smash them together and somehow still come up with the art-business version of HSPG.

Occasionally it works!

But most of the time, for the vast-majority of artists, this approach leaves them depressed and ultimately drives them to give up selling their art.

I find that so sad! Because all they need is a good recipe. But the thing of it is – in business there are no reliable recipes.

Every artist’s art is different.
Every artist’s fans are different.
Every artist has different preferences and enjoys different things.

SO NO ART BUSINESS IS GOING TO BE JUST THE SAME AS SOMEONE ELSE’S ART BUSINESS.

All that false security when you see “recipes” out there for building an art business is detrimental to the art world.

It’s not that courses and recipes are bad. Just that they’re bad when they’re billed as comprehensive.

If it’s marketed as a course that’s going to teach you everything you need to know to build a successful art business, you’re almost certain to be disappointed that even after you implement what you’ve learned, you’re still not able to quit your day job or let your spouse retire or take that epic vacation. Sure you’ll see huge progress if it’s a good course and a well-thought-out recipe, but it’s rare that it gets you all the way to your goal – a smooth, systemized business that sells as much art as you want it to and consistently exceeds your income goals.

TO GET TO THAT POINT, YOU NEED A PLAN THAT IS DESIGNED JUST FOR YOU.

You might be able to do that on your own, especially if you’ve been researching for a while and have a knack for business. And then you can take courses for specific things that are part of your plan, like Instagram or licensing.

But if you’re completely lost with making a plan or you are just guessing with your plan, then maybe it’s time to call in an expert.

Someone who has seen lots of different art businesses succeed and is capable of figuring out the right combination for your particular situation and helping you implement that plan to fruition with aplomb.

That someone might be me!

If you love my articles or felt like my free video series on pricing art made it all make sense, then there’s a good chance I’m the right person to help you make a plan that makes sense just for you and then make that plan happen.

I’M HAPPY ABSOLUTELY THRILLED TO ANNOUNCE THE ANNUAL OPENING OF 2 SPOTS FOR A YEAR OF CONSULTING WITH ME!!

Each year I only offer 2 spots (so there’s enough room the rest of the year for artists to work with me in smaller amounts of time) to work with me for the entire year. It’s a year of not just learning, which you could do a lot of on your own, but of actual growth. My clients say things like:

This email is gold. YOU ARE GOLD! Thank you!” – actual quote from Maggie

You are awesome! I really appreciate all of your input, guidance and advice. You’re saving me sooooo much time (vs if I had to figure it all out by myself).” – actual quote from Sondra

It has been GREAT working with you in the past few months. You have taken me to a place a never could have imagined. You have given me so much confidence to move forward. It has been an absolute pleasure! You have helped me grow both as an individual and as an artist. Super super super. Thank you! I can’t imagine life without you.” – actual quote from Boni

One of the reasons I get all this fantastic feedback is that I only work with artists. I don’t teach these strategies to other types of business owners, because they don’t work for other types of businesses. But of course, I also don’t teach the same strategies to each artist… because there’s no HSPG recipe in business either!

Maggie’s business is designed to make money through licensing, with a dose of wholesaling prints.

Sondra’s business is designed to make money through a mixture of direct-to-customer sales, gallery sales, and licensing.

Boni’s business is designed to make money through direct-to-customer sales of finished works and commissions.

And all three of them have different marketing methods, branding, pricing, and everything else in order to make that business design work.

IF YOU THINK YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN A CUSTOMIZED PLAN AND INTENSE IMPLEMENTATION TO MAKE YOUR ART BUSINESS SUCCEED IN 2017:

1 Fill out my no-commitment application.
2 I’ll contact you to schedule a phone or Skype chat to talk more about your business and the details of consulting.
3 I’ll let you know if I’m the right person to help you from my perspective.
4 You’ll decide whether it’s the right fit for you from your perspective.
5 We’ll get started in January!

Easy peasy to get the process started and you’ll know before Christmas whether I’m going to be your partner in crime (or “fairy artmother” as a couple artists have deemed me) for next year!

Whether I’m your perfect match or not, I hope you’ll stop blindly cobbling together every strategy you see and start composing the perfect symphony of strategies that make sense for you, your art, and your fans. You’ll find that was the easiest route all along.

Laying Foundations

October 22, 2016 by Laura Leave a Comment

Wilderness With Shed by Zoe Badger

When most artists start to sell their art, they don’t think of it like a business yet.

They’re just selling a couple pieces to make room in their studio to create new work. Or they’re excited to bring in some play money on the side.

And that’s totally fine! It’s great, even, to start off selling your art with a relaxed attitude.

BUT IT DOES BREED THE PROBLEM THAT WHEN YOU DO START TO TAKE YOUR ART BUSINESS SERIOUSLY, IT’S TWICE AS HARD AND SOMETIMES IMPOSSIBLE TO CRAWL OUT OF THE MESS.

Naturally, I liken the foundational systems and strategies in your business to the physical foundation of a house.

A good foundation doesn’t just keep the house up, though that’s crucial. It also keeps moisture out, insulates the home, and helps it stay sturdy when the earth makes those slight shifts over time. And it has to be trusted to last since you can’t go knocking down your house, ripping out foundation, and rebuilding everything every few years.

SO IF YOU HAVE A BAD, OR EVEN MEDIOCRE, FOUNDATION IT CAUSES MAJOR PROBLEMS.

But in your art business, a mediocre foundation doesn’t just cause major problems when you’ve build your business and have money rolling in and art getting hung in loads of loving homes, it can cause major problems well before that.

For example, if you’ve been pretty lackadaisical about everything, when you’re ready to really try at this you’re faced with frustratingly ineffective systems that you have to not just rework but then revisit much of what had been done with the previous system and redo it with the new system.

Around 10% of my clients come to me with a stressful storage system for the digital images of their art. They end up spending tedious weeks streamlining the process and refiling everything so that they can find what they need when they need it.

And that’s just one system!

THERE ARE HUNDREDS OF SYSTEMS AND STRATEGIES THAT MAKE A SUCCESSFUL ART BUSINESS.

When you ask an expert in construction about foundations, they will tell you that the foundation of a building has to be tailor-made for that building in particular.

THERE’S NO ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL FOUNDATION.

FOR A HOUSE – OR FOR AN ART BUSINESS.

From time to time artists will ask me why I don’t have a course that just teaches “how to build an art business” and I tell them that it doesn’t work. I know it doesn’t work because I tried it!

A few years ago, when I was fairly new to teaching art business, I built a one-size-fits-all course meant to teach you everything you needed to know about starting and running an art business.

I had tested the content and researched like crazy to make sure everything I was teaching was solid. I think about 10 artists went through the course. None of them came to me later saying the course taught them everything they needed to know or that they were suddenly selling tons of art.

So I worked with more artists one-on-one before I released another course. I knew that something was off and it wasn’t that any of the content was wrong, so I knew I needed more information. Through working one-on-one with artists, I realized that there are loads of different ways to run a successful art business!

I couldn’t create a course to teach it all because there were too many options for each artist and different combinations are necessary for different art, different artists, even different target markets.

Every course, worksheet, and webinar I’ve released since then has been designed to tackle one particular part of an art business.

BUT IT’S BEEN A FEW YEARS AND I’VE LEARNED EVEN MORE!

And now I know that most things can’t be one-size-fits-all art businesses. But the foundational elements of business apply across the board to practically every artist trying to make a living selling their art.

When you set up these sorts of foundational elements of your business – goals, a business plan, getting your mindset straight, finalizing your branding, etc – you won’t run into a toppling business, whether you’re serious about selling your art now or you get serious in the future.

Where do you stand with the foundational systems and strategies in your art business? I’d love to talk with you about it in the comments!

Looking Professional

November 28, 2015 by Laura 8 Comments

by Elena Blanco

One thing that’s difficult for most artists is looking professional. By nature, we’re a little too up in the clouds to consider too closely all the niceties and expectations of professional business.

But this is crucial.

People do not want to buy from people they don’t trust. They want to feel secure that you won’t steal their payment information, that you’ll pack the art safely when you ship it, and that you will take care of them if something goes awry.

While we want to come across as being competent and easy to deal with when someone buys from us, sometimes we actually put forth the opposite aura with the simplest, smallest details that we could change if we only noticed them.

For instance, when most people first get to an artist’s website, they’re looking for some sort of proof that the artist will actually ship the art if they buy, that the art will actually look like it did in the picture, there won’t be any hassles through the process, and that if something goes wrong, the artist is going to fix it.

Artists have a bad rap for being flighty, so people are expecting the worst but hoping for the best. If they don’t find proof that their hopes will win out, they won’t buy from you.

Sometimes this can be something really obvious, like adding quotes from a previous customers to your site so people who are thinking about buying from you for the first time see that it’s been done successfully by other people.

Or you could add a page to your site showing off all the media attention you’ve gotten (simply having the logos of the publications, even if they’re not widely known, can be enough) or just put it in the footer of your website or on your about page.

And other times it’s something more subtle like having a clean, well-designed website instead of an ugly one or one that looks very dated. Or if you have ads for other businesses on your site, which makes people think you aren’t making enough money on your own (which shouldn’t mean they won’t trust you, but it often does in most cultures).

One big thing to pay attention to is using proper spelling and punctuation. It’s a universal indicator of professionalism in business.

Break those rules and you lose the trust. Grammar isn’t always as important, depending on how you break the rules. If it is colloquially correct and fits your brand, you might be fine.

Now outside of your website, you can still lose the professional persona when you’re talking to a potential customer – in person, online, or on the telephone.

The most obvious way is poor customer service. For instance, if someone asks you how much a piece costs and you stumble over your words. Or if someone writes you an email and you take two weeks to get back to them.

The most important things for good customer service before a sale is made are organization and speed.

If you handle their questions quickly and they can tell you’re in control and have all the information at hand, they will easily place their trust in you.

But the last thing that will help people see you as not just an artist but also a professional business owner they can trust is the hardest.

Confidence.

Think about it. If you went to a new workout class and the instructor kept stopping to correct herself and made comments about the students not wanting to come back, would you go to that class again? Probably not. And if you did, you would still be worried you weren’t getting the best fitness instruction.

A lack of confidence in any professional will read to the potential customer as an incapable business owner. And do you want to buy from an incapable business owner? Absolutely not.

Most of this is subconscious stuff that we’re pretty unaware of in the day-to-day. But if you stop to think about it and put in place as many of these professional touches as you can, you’ll be amazed at how much easier it is to get an interested person to become an actual customer.

It starts with loving your art. But that’s just not enough. They have to trust you too.

Simplifying Your To-Do List

November 7, 2015 by Laura 6 Comments

Deer and Friends by Ashley Percival

Whether your list is on paper or digital, it can be very difficult to reign in your to-do list.

There are always so many things to get done! I want to share with you the way I’ve found to work time and time again for making my to-do list into a done list.

First thing’s first: make sure you know what things are worth doing and what aren’t. If you put everything on your list that you could possibly do, there’s no way you’ll ever finish – and worse, you’ll have no cohesion to the progress you do make so it won’t have a very big impact. If you need help with this, I suggest going through my super-inexpensive business plan course.

Now that we’ve got that sorted, make a massive list of everything you want to get done, including stuff that’s kind of out in the future.

Go through the list and cross off anything that doesn’t pass the test of making sense for you, your art, and your business. For instance, if you hate being on Facebook but on your list is to start a Facebook account and run ads, cross it off. There is nothing that you absolutely have to do or your business won’t work, so it’s much better to be honest with yourself and assign yourself the things that are most likely to get done, and done well.

Now separate your list into three smaller lists: this week, this month, and someday.

Be honest here too (your list will be a total waste if you aren’t honest with yourself) and only put things on the week and month lists that really belong there and that could really get accomplished in that time.

If you have trouble with a couple tasks that take longer than a week or a month but you don’t want them on the someday list, you need to break the task into smaller chunks.

Bite-sized is the most effective way to get your to-do’s done.

For instance, if you want to start selling your art onto pillows, a horrible task idea would be, “Put my art on pillows”. You can’t figure out how long that would take and it certainly looks so overwhelming on your list that you’ll keep putting it off. Instead, break that down into tasks like, “Pick 5 pieces that would look great on a square pillow” and “Research online print-on-demand services that offer pillows and make a chart of their pricing to compare” and “Set a retail price for the pillows”. Much better.

With your three lists – week, month, and someday – go through and make sure every task has a verb at the start.

Seriously, it sounds silly but it’s a lot easier to complete a task that sounds like an action than to complete one that doesn’t. “Exhibition Entry” sounds vague and potentially terrifying. “Fill out the exhibition entry form” sounds a lot more simple. Filling something out? That’s easy!

Everything’s actionable and everything’s small and easy to accomplish?

Great! Now you want to create your today list.

Some people find it easier to create their today list the night before or the morning of, while others find it easier to create an entire week of today lists at the beginning of the week. Play around to decipher what works best for you. When you write your today list, pull the tasks from your week list.

Be reasonable with yourself, even if it means you’re going to get less done than you’d like. Remember, it does you no good if your list is asking the moon and the stars.

We want a useful, purposeful list.

Consider that it may be better to have three things on your list that will definitely get done and are really important than 10 that will just make you feel stressed and later disappointed that you didn’t accomplish them all. If you do finish your tasks at the end of the day and you have extra time, you can choose to reward yourself with free time or to accomplish something from the next day’s list or the week list.

It does help to accomplish everything on your today list. It helps a lot. There’s nothing more motivating, really.

Different tweaks to the system will work for different people, but for me it’s absolutely most effective when I set no more than three tasks for the day and I accomplish all three and then reward myself. For me, this means I never work so hard that I get sulky, but I’m always making steady progress every day.

The last important thing about your to do list is to give yourself time off.

Very few people thrive in constantly-running-around-mode. Most people sort of “break” when they’ve been going strong for too long without a break. For me that can mean a mere 3 hours straight of working to create an urge for me to get up and move around and do something new. But for some it’s days or even weeks of feeling constantly busy before they have to stop.

It doesn’t always mean you need a vacation (I certainly don’t take off to Bali after every 3 hours of work) but it means you need to watch your energy levels and do something for yourself when you feel drained. Read a book, bake some cookies, take a walk, watch awful reality tv, make something in a different medium so there’s no pressure…

Find a few activities that are really relaxing for you and make the time to do them amidst your to do list tasks.

Now what? It can be a little overwhelming to restructure your to do list. So just plan to take your next normal block of work time to focus on writing your master list, someday list, monthly list, and weekly list. Once they’re written, most of the work is done. You just have to pick the things for your daily list each day. Don’t forget to store all your lists somewhere you can easily add to them as new things come up.

Let me know in the comments what you’re knocking off your master list and if you still need help getting the master list right, nab access to my low-cost course The Artist’s Business Plan over here to get your priorities sorted so you always know what should be on the list.

The Truth about Work-Life Balance

April 25, 2015 by Laura 4 Comments

Llama by Audrey DeFord

You’ve probably heard a lot about achieving the perfect work-life balance, right? And you’ve struggled and pushed to get there yourself. You want that feeling that everything in your life is running smoothly and easily.

But here’s the hard truth.

You can’t achieve a perfect balance between work and personal life.

To dig a little deeper, you can achieve balance in certain areas. You can feel like you’re both getting plenty of time in the studio and selling enough art. You can feel like you’re both keeping a clean and pretty house and also spending enough time with your family. And crossover too: you can feel like you’ve got plenty of studio time and you’re also spending plenty of time with your family. And other areas too.

The most common areas of our lives are:
health
spirituality
career
family and relationships
space (home, work, environment in general)
personal fulfillment (hobbies, playtime, academic growth)

Usually, we can manage two or three of these at once.

But if your career, family life, and hobbies are getting all your attention, the odds say you’re not going to have time or energy for a workout, picking up your house, or spending time on your spiritual and work lives.

It’s disappointing. Especially for perfectionists like myself. And you’ll probably still strive for that perfect work-life balance anyway. But it might help you beat yourself up less to know that you’re not expected to achieve it.

There’s another little thing with this that I want to teach you and it’s a little more important. It’s a great strategy for getting as many areas of your life to run smoothly as possible. See there’s a little nuance here that I haven’t highlighted: this limit is for areas that are growing and being paid attention to.

So it’s not so much that you can’t be happy in all these areas at once (you totally can!) as it is that you can only be focused on 2-3 at once.

The other areas will stagnate. But if they stagnate in a good spot, then it doesn’t matter as much, right? You can’t have a “balance” where you spend time and energy on everything, but you can get all the areas to a satisfying level. So here’s a cool strategy for you.

If you focus really intently on one area and get it to a really good point and put in place the systems that will keep it that way even when you’re mostly ignoring it, then you can let that area stagnate and you can work on another area. And if you keep doing this, eventually you’ll create your own version of balance. It will feel really good.

Let me give you an example.

So you decide to focus on health. You spend a couple months getting to the point where you’re eating well and getting a really good workout in 3 times a week. You hit your goal weight and you don’t feel tempted to overeat or even to skip your exercise regimen.

Then you start working on getting your home de-cluttered and cleaned. Because you’ve already built systems and routines around your health, it almost runs on autopilot while you tackle your house, room by room. You don’t have to worry about losing weight because you already hit your goal weight. You don’t have to worry about managing your diet because you’ve already made healthy food choices into a habit. Make sense? When one area has been fulfilled, you can let it stagnate at a really good spot while you focus on another area.

However, if you were to try focusing on health, spirituality, and building your art business all at once?

Whoosh! That’s really hard! On any given day you might be trying to make the right food choices, to fit in an hour-long workout, to spend time praying or meditating, to take time to read spiritual texts, to get through all the emails about your business, to read articles about building your art business, to photograph your newest piece, and to contact a local gallery about showing your work. Can you imagine trying to fit all that into one day without going crazy? I can’t!

So today I want to leave you not just with ideas buzzing around in your head, but with something you can actually do to move forward, make progress, and start to see your own version of a work-life balance appear.

I want you to pick the one area that matters the most to you right now. Got it? Good. Now I want you to make a goal surrounding that area. Got it? Good. Now list out everything that has to be done to hit that goal and put each task on your calendar, one a day, until they are all on there.

Fabulous! You will now be making daily progress toward your goal. When you achieve that goal, you can do the same process with another area.

For a little accountability, post your area and your goal in the comments below and any questions you have about this process or achieving your goals.

*This post was inspired by the Magical Manifesters program from Erin Stutland. No product affiliation here aside from me taking the program and wanting to riff on one of the topics as it pertains to artists, but I wanted to give credit where it’s due.