Four important easy things

Instead of a big long thing today I’m going to share a col­lec­tion of small things…things I’ve learned, thought about, stum­bled over, avoided and always had a ker­nal of an arti­cle in them. And trust me they all fit together.…

No! I won’t do it…

One of my chil­dren was par­tic­u­larly stub­born about what she would or would not eat and fre­quently would pick some­thing to call “nasty” and promptly refuse to eat it. After try­ing every­thing one par­tic­u­larly cranky  day I hit on an idea.… I sim­ply said “you don’t have to eat this and I don’t want to hear any­more “nasty”. She soon real­ized the reverse logic I was apply­ing and decided she would rather eat the “nasty stuff” and con­tinue to call it nasty than not eat it and not be able to call it “nasty”.

Over the last sev­eral decades I have worked with many many small busi­nesses around the coun­try  and almost uni­ver­sally heard ” I don’t have time to mar­ket” and yet would con­tinue to com­plain about hav­ing no buyers…my answer to them was the same as to my chil­dren “Fine don’t take the time to put your­self out there and don’t come com­plain­ing to me about no buy­ers”. See their real issue was fear about some­thing or other around actu­ally pro­mot­ing them­selves, a fear I might add that is pretty uni­ver­sal and one that dri­ves small busi­ness own­ers into hid­ing out doing “real work”.

At one point, I had a cou­ple of clients who were “really ready” to “jump in and do what it takes” to get their busi­nesses to the  “next level”. Some­thing I might ad I was pretty excited about, how­ever, as soon as we got to the nitty gritty of things they sud­denly started becom­ing “to busy”. Turns out being busy was a detrac­tion because it gave them the feel­ing of “doing some­thing pro­duc­tive” which means that they didn’t see doing things that would actu­ally bring in more cus­tomers as being “pro­duc­tive”. Don’t worry I’m not going to get all Psy­che 101 here…the point is they pre­ferred to stay where they were and just complain.

So the next time you find your­self say­ing I don’t have time to waste on Face­book, or twit­ter, or blog­ging step back and take a long look at what you ARE spend­ing time on and just how much it is con­tribut­ing to your biz. You see, we have a strange def­i­n­i­tion of what pro­duc­tive actu­ally means, for most it means “nose to the grind stone” suf­fer­ingly “hard” work, espe­cially if that “hard work” is some­thing we “know” how to do.

So.…go ahead and keep up the “hard work” but don’t com­plain when those who do the
“easy stuff” start leav­ing you behind. The real “hard work” is step­ping up and let­ting your­self learn and succeed.

Dude! Don’t make my eyes hurt…

One of the things I used to do as an Urban Designer was work with com­mu­ni­ties, neigh­bor­hoods and cities on issues around aes­thet­ics, visual deci­sion mak­ing, and human scale. A key point of focus was always a per­cep­tive clash between busi­nesses “need” to adver­tise their pres­ence, their need to be found and the greater need for visual con­ti­nu­ity within the com­mu­nity. If you have ever dri­ven down a strip in any­where USA you know what I’m talk­ing about…that is called “visual clut­ter” which in turn vir­tu­ally elim­i­nates the very thing it is try­ing to accomplish…give you a chance to see what you are look­ing for.

What you were expe­ri­enc­ing was the result of the busi­ness com­mu­nity feel­ing that they had to dis­play every­thing at one time in the hopes that a few mov­ing at 40mph could dis­cover where they were headed. In essence they were ignor­ing one of the car­di­nal rules of visual deci­sion making…“Don’t make my eyes hurt” so because they wanted to make sure you saw every­thing they ended up not let­ting you see what you indeed wanted to see.

This same prin­ci­ple applies espe­cially to folks one would least expect.…artists. I visit lots of artist web sites and go to lots of art fairs and I am con­tin­u­ally shocked, yes shocked by all the noise. If you are in the art busi­ness and have lots of blink­ing lights and but­tons and badges run­ning up and down your blog/website over a bright pink back­ground, with big yel­low swirlies and flow­ers you might want to step back and re-think about the busi­ness you are in.

If you are in the busi­ness of art as in mak­ing my eyes feel good about what you have and giv­ing my eyes the chance to find what it is I may be look­ing for then please, please, please don’t make my eyes hurt. Instead, get down to the basics of what you are about and sooth­ingly invite my eyes in to explore the beauty of your cre­ation. This applies to all those places you have your stuff whether on the web or at an art fair be kind to my eyes so they can see what you have.

Are you for real…

Really?.…are you an acci­den­tal artist, or one who has a pas­sion for cre­at­ing and wants to do every­thing pos­si­ble to sell your work? So what are you doing to be taken seri­ously? And by seri­ously, I mean not being seen as a “flea mar­ket ” ven­dor but rather some­one who has some­thing of great value to offer to us. Because, in my trav­els on and off-line, I see very few, who actu­ally give the impres­sion that they will be around for the dura­tion… as in not just dabbling.

This is not a crit­i­cism, but rather an obser­va­tion, if you are going to be an artist… then be one!  Think of it this way…would you let a sur­geon who was not pas­sion­ately ded­i­cated to your wel­fare cut you open? I thought so…now answer this: Why are you cheat­ing your buy­ers out your value? And…it really doesn’t mat­ter if you do it part time as long as you do it with heart and pas­sion and show me the value. I could give a rip how much or hard you work, all I want is that good stuff that comes out of you.

So, how does this pas­sion show up? Well, to start with espe­cially you art fair artists, in the way you present your work to a jury. This goes back a lit­tle, to the not mak­ing my eyes hurt thing above, I have sat on many juries for many dif­fer­ent cre­ative things and I have to say no one got my votes if they made my eyes hurt or my lips curl. Jurors want to, not only see your work, they also want to see if you care about your work so much that they as jurors should to.

So please, please, don’t use that dirty old blan­ket as a back­drop, clean you cam­era lens and espe­cially make sure those slides don’t have an goobers on them. Also, don’t show me a 1970’s Kodachrome slide that has aged well.

Show­ing me you care about your stuff shows me as a buyer you care about me, it shows me you will be around for a while.  If you’re going to be around for a while, I might be more inclined to buy some­thing now and next time bring my friends. But if your booth looks like it belongs in Afghanistan or upper Kurzac­stan I doubt I’ll

• buy now and/or
• come back to buy more since I don’t get the mes­sage that you’ll be around.

Oh and one more thing don’t give me one of those inkjet printed cards ’cause they are just so cheezy, and cheezy is not what I’m look­ing for in an artist.

Pull your head out of your art…

Ok…I get it your work is spe­cial and you want me to really know how spe­cial it is. In fact you want me to think it is so spe­cial that you don’t let me touch it or at least you make it hard for me to feel its real­ness. And when I ask about it you stand there all stiff and start talk­ing about your glaze ingre­di­ents, or your mark mak­ing, or all the var­i­ous things you do to or on your work to make it art. But ya know what? I don’t care! I don’t care that you stuck that lit­tle pot in the far lower cor­ner of your reverse gas com­bined wood fire kiln and reduc­tio fired it till the flame was pink then threw in some magic dust. I just don’t care.

What I do care about is what drove you to do all that… where did it come from, why did you make it. Because that is the core of its ori­gin, that thing came from you not your kiln, your paint mix­ture or what­ever magic for­mula you mixed up. It came from some place deep inside you, a voice that told you to mix up that magic dust the way only you can. That my friend, is what I want to know because that makes your stuff the real deal, and that is some­thing I can col­lect, because no one else can mix up that magic dust like you do. Kinda like Micha­lan­gelo or DaVinci despite a lack of try­ing nobody has been bee able to  really copy them.

Finally, like I’ve said before many times don’t make your stuff hard for me to access, tell me or bet­ter let me dis­cover how it will give value to me and every­day life. Will it make me laugh? Make me remem­ber? Make me cry? Help me heal or any com­bi­na­tion there of? How will it fit in my life and make some part bet­ter than it is now? That’s it that’s all I want to know… more than any­thing else.

Can you guess what the com­mon thread was? Let me know in a comment…