Getting Started on the right foot: part III

Start invest­ing in your­self because you are your business

While this may feel like it belongs in last week’s Mind­set sec­tion it also belongs here as one of most impor­tant cor­ner­stones of best busi­ness prac­tices, espe­cially for very small busi­nesses. Why? Because, small busi­nesses tend to sell them­selves short, cut cor­ners in areas that will come back to bite them in the ass later. Of course, it is very easy when cash is tight to not invest in the tools that can and will make a dif­fer­ence in your sur­vival as a business.

Here are some areas that I’ve seen artists neglect to invest in themselves:

Equip­ment and tools

This cat­e­gory includes all those tools and things you need to pro­duce your work, so you don’t  just make your stuff, you have the tools to  make it to your high­est stan­dards. If you cut cor­ners on tools, you’ll end up more often than not, increas­ing your pro­duc­tion time, decreas­ing your mar­gin, and ulti­mately your prof­its. A com­mon out­come is not pay­ing your­self and that doesn’t help anybody.

Grow your busi­ness in a way that allows you to gain access to the right tools and even­tu­ally acquire them with­out sac­ri­fic­ing qual­ity or your bot­tom line.

Edu­ca­tion and growth

More often than not improv­ing artis­tic and or busi­ness skills are seen as fluff, some­thing that can eas­ily be cast aside because it’s con­tri­bu­tion is hard to mea­sure. A com­mon mis­take is to sub­sti­tute “blood, sweat and tears” for the renew­ing effect of learn­ing from a mas­ter or gain­ing the sup­port of others.

Pro­fes­sion­al­ism

The label I’ve used is for want of more spe­cific term to describe all those ele­ments of your busi­ness that help to com­mu­ni­cate your mes­sage and with­out which can and will effect your suc­cess. Not rec­og­niz­ing the con­nec­tion between how your work is judged and per­ceived by those whose opin­ions are impor­tant and your suc­cess truly rep­re­sents a fail­ure to under­stand the impor­tance of self investment…’nuff said.

Finan­cial

Self-investment here includes sev­eral areas begin­ning with a thor­ough under­stand­ing of  the con­cept of oppor­tu­nity cost. In short, you aren’t sav­ing any money by not pay­ing your­self or at the very least includ­ing the cost of your time and energy in the cost of every sin­gle thing you make. Time is money and with­out money your abil­ity to con­tinue mak­ing your work and doing what you like will even­tu­ally stop.

The solu­tion here is to under­stand what it means to “do what you do best and out­source the rest”. In the short run it may seem like you’re sav­ing by teach­ing your­self how to code a web site in the long run though you’ll not only have used pre­cious time you could have spent devel­op­ing new work you’ll also end up spend­ing more money.

Finally, absolutely ban­ish the phrase “I can’t afford it” and replace it with “ it is not a pri­or­ity  right now”.

Find ways to lever­age your work

Regard­less of your medium, there are many ways you can real­ize income from your work. Whether you paint plene aire or throw pots you can and should learn how to lever­age your work. Lever­ag­ing your work means find­ing many dif­fer­ent ways to gain income through diverse venues, com­bin­ing high mar­gin work with low mar­gin work     or even licens­ing its use.

Rely­ing on a sin­gle venue or venue type is a pre­scrip­tion for busi­ness sui­cide espe­cially in today’s world. The aim of diver­si­fi­ca­tion is pro­vide you not only with mul­ti­ple income streams but also income streams that give the best bal­ance for you and your lifestyle. For exam­ple, art fairs are a lot of work, both phys­i­cal and emo­tional, gallery exhibits are a lot of work up front but lit­tle between open­ing and clos­ing, on-line sales por­tals like Etsy and Art­fire can also be a lot of up front. The key is to invest your time and energy wisely to match the needs of the mar­ket you are choos­ing. So…leveraging eas­ily pro­duced work  in venues that are com­mod­ity based could pro­vide you with the time and income to focus on higher end work for other venues. An impor­tant thing to keep in mind is once again your vision and aim for your busi­ness. In this con­text, lever­ag­ing may mean sell­ing high end pieces, or as a basic corol­lary goes…you can sell a lot of lower priced work or you can sell less higher priced work and both will get you to the same income level. How­ever, one may cost more of your time, energy and money which you pick is depen­dent on your pri­or­i­ties and goals for your business.