How to start your 2009 season ahead of your competition

This time of year is the best time to begin focus­ing on how you want your busi­ness to be next year, what you want to have hap­pened at year’s end, what you want to achieve with your art by the end of 2009, what you want for income, your show strat­egy, etc. There are sev­eral key areas to focus on as you pro­ceed, they include:

• Vision of your business
• Your inten­tions for the com­ing year both busi­ness, per­sonal and spiritual.
• Mar­ket­ing and brand­ing strategy
• Busi­ness model

Some­thing very impor­tant to remem­ber is that all of these are dynamic…able to adapt to chang­ing mar­ket con­di­tions. Do not expect to have the right answer or the right plan, it is more impor­tant to main­tain clar­ity of pur­pose and direc­tion and be open to adapting.

Vision of your Business

Envi­sion Jan­u­ary 1, 2010…in pre­vi­ous posts I have out­lined this process so I’ll sum­ma­rize it here. Take some time out no longer than 30 min­utes and move the cal­en­dar ahead to 2010, visu­al­ize your busi­ness and your art. Do so as if you are already there. Now write out what you saw, you can also just start writ­ing if that works for you. Stay focused on the present (01/01/2010). The result is a pic­ture of your busi­ness and what you did to get it there. This is the foun­da­tion of your strate­gies for 2009 and it might look this…

” I have just fin­ished the 2009 show sea­son and my income has dou­bled from ___ to___. I hired a Vir­tual Assis­tant (VA) part time to help with  rou­tine busi­ness chores I not best  at doing. I also increased my e-mail list by focus­ing on engag­ing with my  buy­ers as a result I have key con­tacts at each show venue. I found the buyer who really gets me and set her up as my local coor­di­na­tor in return she is able to have first pick of my work along with a discount.

I also started blog and have used it to stay in touch with my buy­ers as a result my per show sales have increased. I use the blog in con­junc­tion with other social media tools to keep each seg­ment of my buy­ers up to date. Now when I go to shows I have a steady stream of buy­ers who know my work and come specif­i­cally to buy from me.”

You get the idea you don’t need to write a book just a page or less, doing this will def­i­nitely help you in the next step.

Set­ting your intentions

You’ll notice I replaced the word goal with intention…there is a rea­son for that. Recent trends have shown that using the term goal to iden­tify your desired result leaves a lot of wig­gle room for never reach­ing  your desired result. On the other hand focus­ing on your inten­tions puts you in the present and cre­ates a mind­set of action.

Your inten­tions should reflect in words exactly what it took for you to achieve the vision you described above. So lets say in 2010 you saw your­self in sev­eral high end shows or exhibit­ing in high end art gal­leries your inten­tion might look like…

“My intent is to be accepted into the XYZ , ABC, DEF show/gallery.“
“My intent is to travel only to shows within 100 miles of my stu­dio“
“My intent is to engage my buy­ers devel­op­ing long range rela­tion­ships with them“
“My intent is to develop a new body of work and show it at ABC show/gallery“
“My intent is to become com­puter lit­er­ate and start writ­ing a blog”

Mar­ket­ing and brand­ing strategy

These are the steps you will take to make sure you are seen by the mar­ket that will fit best with your vision and inten­tions. So if in the process of devel­op­ing your brand you iden­tify your pri­mary mar­ket as women in their 50s and young newly mar­ried women look­ing for home decor items. Then you know that doing a street fair in east Tim­buktu will not likely work.

You will also know that if your vision has you trav­el­ing to shows you will need to develop a net­work of fol­low­ers at each venue and exactly what tools will work best.

Busi­ness model

How do you have to orga­nize your busi­ness to achieve your vision and meet your intentions?The busi­ness model should reflect how you want your busi­ness to func­tion and what you want it to look like…it is kind of like a road map.  It doesn’t have to be a mas­sive vol­ume full of spread sheets and finan­cial pro­jec­tions. It can be as sim­ple as…

“My busi­ness is a sin­gle per­son busi­ness my income is the result of attend­ing X num­ber of art fairs, devel­op­ing addi­tional sales through on line stores, work­shops, x num­ber of gal­leries, and open stu­dio sales. I also receive income from my patron sub­scrip­tion program.

In order to max­i­mize my stu­dio time I have a Vir­tual Assis­tant on part time to han­dle my mail­ing list and keep up with other rou­tine work. I also use a num­ber of ser­vices to auto­mate some of the rou­tine tasks nec­es­sary to my business.”

Essen­tially your busi­ness model is a  pack­age made from your vision, brand­ing and mar­ket­ing strategy.

This process helps you tie every­thing together so you can be as clear as pos­si­ble and able to respond to changes with­out dis­rupt­ing or veer­ing to far from your orig­i­nal vision. If you do have to make extreme course changes the struc­ture is already there, all you have to do is make the needed tweeks.

Some­thing very impor­tant in all of this is to have one or more part­ners to help you, hold you account­able and pro­vide another set of eyes and ears. For exam­ple join­ing Deepak Chopra’s site Intent will help you get sup­port and account­abil­ity for your inten­tions in fact I have found it extremely useful.