How to get started on the right foot, Part 1

This is the first of a two part series designed to help you start the new year off. So instead of bit­ing off a mouth­ful of res­o­lu­tions you may or may not be able to achieve read this care­fully and pick a cou­ple of steps that you think would work for you over the next year. Select no more than six because six allows you to work on a new one every two months. Write them in a cal­en­dar and don’t do any­thing on them until you get to their start date. Then focus on those steps.

Today’s part of the series addresses the impor­tance of defin­ing your com­mit­ment to your art as a busi­ness, so you can set objec­tives con­sis­tent with your vision of your busi­ness. An impor­tant point here is to under­stand the con­nec­tion between how you see your busi­ness and how it actu­ally is. Not mak­ing this con­nec­tion can and often does lead to dis­ap­point­ment down the road together with an accom­pa­ny­ing sense of fail­ure. A sim­ple atti­tude adjust­ment and re-focus can be of immense value over the course of your year

Finally, today I’ll cover some basic steps you can take right now to focus or re-focus your mar­ket­ing by offer­ing some dif­fer­ent ways to really know how to iden­tify the right buy­ers for you.

Define your busi­ness and your commitment

Before you do any­thing fur­ther this year, take a few min­utes or more and think about why you are doing what you are doing and what you want your busi­ness to be.

Part time

Did you acci­dently “fall” into your art busi­ness after a job loss? If so be hon­est with your­self by ask­ing whether this is what you want to be doing or if it is just some­thing to “fill the gaps” until you find a “real” job.

Accept­ing your com­mit­ment level will help you adapt full time expec­ta­tions to your part time sched­ule, in other words don’t expect to make a full time income off of part time work.

Full time

What does full time look like to you? This is very crit­i­cal if you’re just start­ing out, because you could eas­ily burn your­self out in the early phases of your art busi­ness. So be real­is­tic, ease into it, don’t start out in a panic think­ing you have to work 20 hours a day! If you are expe­ri­enced, you know this pit­fall, so take a look at what isn’t work­ing for you and make an effort to change it for the better.

What­ever you decide, decide to live with it, don’t set full time inten­tions and expec­ta­tions if you are only tem­porar­ily work­ing as an artist. Like­wise, if you are work­ing only as a way to sup­ple­ment your house­hold income with some­thing you like doing, be hon­est with your­self and accept your com­mit­ment level as the best you can do. If you set full time expec­ta­tions and goals and don’t work full time you’re set­ting your­self up for disappointment.

Adjust your attitude

Start defin­ing your own game by  see­ing your busi­ness as some­thing dif­fer­ent than you have always thought. To do this, define your busi­ness so that it best fits you, your val­ues, per­son­al­ity, and vision.

A key ele­ment at this point, is decid­ing to ask for what you are worth, not what oth­ers think you are worth but the value you want your buy­ers to derive from own­ing your work. Do not expect this process to be accom­plished once, it is and likely will always be an iter­a­tive process of con­tin­ual adjustments…it can also be one of the hard­est things you’ll do.

Fig­ure out how many dif­fer­ent ways you can earn from your busi­ness and your skills, how many ways can you give your buy­ers to own or expe­ri­ence your work. Eval­u­ate the options and choose a few to focus on for the next 12 months.

Start see­ing your self as a suc­cess­ful artist and not a starv­ing artist. Visu­al­ize your suc­cess at the end of 12 months. Is it finan­cial? If so what does it look like? Is it skill based? What does that look like? Do this for each level then fig­ure out ways to mon­i­tor your progress so you can make adjustments.

Develop a mind­set of inten­tions built to con­tin­u­ally rein­force your visions of use inten­tions instead of goals. Goals can imply inflex­i­bil­ity whereas inten­tions not only keep you in the present, they also let you adjust to chang­ing cir­cum­stances with­out being self judgmental.

Be pre­pared for pot holes and develop a learn­ing mind­set by keep­ing your focus on your inten­tion and not the out­come because one thing is for certain…stuff will change. Use the fol­low­ing tech­niques to help you stay focused on intention:

• Ban­ish the words starv­ing artist from your vocabulary.
• Ban­ish lim­it­ing thoughts that will only sab­o­tage your goals.
• Use WHEN and stop using if when you talk about your business
• Ban­ish the word “if” from your vocab­u­lary because “if” rein­forces non-comitment and Fear whereas “When” rein­forces com­mit­ment and courage.
• Start net­work­ing to find other artists who are like minded to limit your sense of iso­la­tion. Encour­age the oth­ers to reach out for help in tough times. Don’t be afraid to ask for help or support.

Most impor­tantly…

Do not go it alone!

Know your buy­ers and design their experience

Under­stand your buy­ers by fig­ur­ing out just who your stuff is best suited for, develop a pro­file of these peo­ple and include why, what and how they would be attracted your work. A good way to is by doing what I call  “Being John Malkovitch”, spend  a day as if you were them.

Put your­self in their skin  approach your busi­ness and art deci­sions from their point of view. If you spend enough time being those peo­ple, the ones who feel com­fort­able to you will show up and because you feel com­fort­able with them, like you’ve “known them for­ever”, you won’t feel like you’re com­pro­mis­ing your val­ues. Instead, you’ll feel like you are mak­ing things for a friend.

Taking time to really know your buy­ers is key to de-commoditizing your work and putting your focus on those who like your work. In this way, you stop try­ing to get the wrong peo­ple inter­ested in your work, in fact you can for­get alto­gether about them.

Once you have made this tran­si­tion, it’ll be eas­ier to frame the buy­ing expe­ri­ence around the value or your stuff. You’ll have the time, energy, focus and knowl­edge to dis­play your work in ways that empha­size its’ value to those most inter­ested in your work.

Because you know what your work does for them, how they will use it and how it improves their lives it will be much eas­ier to design their buy­ing expe­ri­ence so that they auto­mat­i­cally feel your  con­nec­tion to them.

Really know­ing your buy­ers also makes it all the more eas­ier to insure every point they inter­act with you and your busi­ness is not just sat­is­fy­ing but wow­ing and reaf­firm­ing that they made the right deci­sion to  buy from you. Pay­ing atten­tion to this detail will make a dif­fer­ence for your sales when there is lit­tle else you can do to stand out in the crowd. While all your com­peti­tors are busy under pric­ing each other, you can be secure in the fact that the more your buy­ers enjoy work­ing with you the less you will be seen as a com­mod­ity and more as a cre­ator of value in their lives.

The more you make your sales venue shout your cre­ative vision the more those who res­onate with those val­ues will be drawn to you. In order to have that hap­pen, you need to make sure that at every point poten­tial buy­ers come in con­tact with you and your work they expe­ri­ence your mes­sage, which in turn will cull out those who are only inter­ested in price.

So for exam­ple, if you sell on-line make sure your images are clear, write your descrip­tions to reflect how your work can be used and if needed show them in use. But don’t stop there, do what­ever cus­tomiza­tion you can to reflect you because you are your brand. If you can change col­ors do so and make them con­sis­tent with your other on-line venues.

The same can be said for street fairs, design your booth so it visu­ally stands out from the rest and draws the right peo­ple in. Street fairs tend to take on the visual style of a nomadic tribe hawk­ing their wares, the more you can visu­ally sep­a­rate your­self from this image. the more likely the right folks will find you.

Finally, an impor­tant point to remem­ber in design­ing the expe­ri­ence, is to choose the venues that are likely to enhance your buyer’s expe­ri­ence and reflect their val­ues. Pay atten­tion to the loca­tion of gal­leries you exhibit in, fairs you enter, and on line venues you might test. Make sure sure that your brand is com­pat­i­ble with that of the venue, doing so will help ensure your buy­ers will be here.

Pho­tos: All mine Bill Weaver Pho­tog­ra­phers copy right 2009 processed using High Dynamic Range (HDR) techniques