03_Art Business Tips: 2 Must-Dos When Building Your Art Business
Resources Mentioned:
- Previous Episodes: 01 and 02 - SMART Goals and Overcoming Obstacles
- Measure Your Goals Statistics Survey
Introduction
Have you experienced this: you create something phenomenal, you pour your heart and soul into it, it could be art, an article you wrote, a podcast, a video, something you designed, and you were just sooooo excited about it and couldn’t wait to show the world? And when you do, it is crickets….
Well if that happened to you, stay tuned cause this week we are going to talk about the 2 things to do when you are starting something new in your creative business to take advantage of those quiet moments..
Welcome I’m Stephanie Weaver Artist and founder of the Positive Painters online creative community come to you with art business tips so you can gain focus and action on your art business. Let’s get started!.
2 Debilitating Ingredients the Create Mindset Disharmony
Last week a really good friend of mine called me up completely frustrated with the progress that she's been making on her art business. You see she started her art business in a new direction, she was on day 12 of the new business and product offering. She is at ground zero.
We all start off at Ground Zero at some point and the problem lies in a vicious mindset that has 2 key -debilitating ingredients: Patience and Comparison.
What I call the Veruca Salt attitude “I want the world, I want the whole world and I want it now.!” - which is essentially a lack of patience; And the other is the comparison trap, you know what you're comparing yourself to those artists that are out there that have been producing for 10 to 15 maybe even 20 years and have developed a following over the 20 years. What you aren’t seeing is that it wasn’t an overnight success or if it was it was because of the years of small steps and setbacks that got them to that point. Which in turn leads to the patience problem. It’s a vicious, debilitating cycle unless you recognize it and break the cycle.
Instead, I want you to start a new cycle and that is giving yourself space to Learn, Evolve, And Repeat. Give yourself time to grow.
2 Things to do When You Start an Art Business
Over the last couple of episodes, I've been really kind of comparing goals to soccer and I'm gonna do that again to really drive home how important where you are right now.
When I watch professional soccer players I’m reminded of how it all started. My kids started playing soccer when they were three and they started on these teeny-tiny fields with no goalies and no one keeping score (except the parents). They started out on these fields because it allows them to learn the rules, try different positions, score, and also allows them to mess up on a smaller scale to get redirection from the coach.
As the kids grow, their soccer skills grow, their field size grows, their stamina grows, they get more competitive, they have more obstacles to overcome to get to that goal.
You start on a small playing field and a small supportive audience is a good thing. As you grow, so will your audience.
This sounds easy, but mindset changes never are. But think of it like this, you are learning the playing field, making changes, failing at times, and then learning from those failures (or if you’d rather call them lessons instead of failures to sound more positive). :).
Enjoy the small field. Use this time to do the next two big things.
1) Prepare for Art Business Growth
80% of what we do in our creative business is the business side (good article here about Art Marketing Secrets)…so part of the idea of putting a system into place is so that eventually you can give a component of your art business that you don’t enjoy to someone else to manage - this will give you time to do more of what you love. It’s like doing laundry: wash, dry, fold, put away - that’s a system - it's a repeatable thing that I don’t particularly enjoy. So when the time comes, you train the next generation to follow the same process and guess what - they are doing what you used to do!
Always plan for someone else to take on the responsibility of what you don’t enjoy doing.
To prepare for growth do the following:
- Document and refine the process to easily hand it off.
- Set a reminder to review the process you put into place to review the process - I do this monthly with my email automatons.
- Start with one system, get it defined and refined BEFORE you add another system. For example, Facebook posts - get the process down before you add another social media platform. Email workflows - get one workflow down before you add another workflow.
Otherwise, you’ll be a game of fix it on everything and not enjoying creative time.
2) Measure your Art Business growth
Every day I’m reminded of growth - Since the kids could stand I have marked the kids' growth on the doorway into my studio kids. Whenever I walk by the doorway, I am reminded of how much they’ve grown even though they are still 5 years old in my mind. We need to measure the growth of our art business too.
We all start at zero. And guess what, numbers tell the truth. Set up a process reminder to document the growth of your business.
Tool to Measure Art Business Growth
I have been measuring my statistics since 2014 and it took me time but it was in 2018 that I developed a consistent and stable system to track growth. I am going to make my system available along with supporting explanatory videos to the Positive Painter Pro Members in the next several months. I use tools in Google Analytics, Pinterest Analytics, Social media analytics, and more to track growth, which will be included in the tool. BUT I’d like to know what metrics you measure or want to measure, as a result, I’ve put together a quick survey to better understand the metrics you want to measure so that I can design the tool around what YOU need.
Go to the show notes and enter your feedback about what you’d like to measure in the tool so we can better develop a system that meets your needs. Feel free to provide examples.
Again, this system will only be available to members of the online artist community. If you’d like to Member to gain access to this system when it becomes available and so much more you can click on the link in the show notes or go to stephanieweaverartist.com
A final word about growth.
Let me ask you: when you climb up a steep hill or up the Empire State Building or Eiffel Tower when you get to the top do you count the steps or do you look at the distance you’ve climbed. You are on a journey. Give it time, give yourself time to grow and build the systems and stamina you need to get to your destination.
Enjoy your journey.
Until next time, stay safe, happy and healthy and happy painting!
