WARNING: don’t spoil the holidays with your do-do.

In the blink of an eye another year is about to pass and most of us will be mak­ing pil­grim­ages to our parental units or some sem­blance there of.

Whether you return to your parental units or not, the hol­i­day sea­son is chuck full of times to mix and re-connect with oth­ers, some of whom you may not have seen since day care. Those hol­i­day re-unions are also times when we get to brag about our­selves, to let our old friends know we are not still liv­ing in lava lamp filled apart­ments dec­o­rated with neo-Spanish inqui­si­tion furnishings.

So here’s how it usu­ally goes.…

Some­one you hardly rec­og­nize walks up and intro­duces her­self to you, and asks the inevitable “So, what are you doing now?” ques­tion. To which you respond, “I’m a (fill in the blank) I make wid­gets that have sev­eral mag­net­i­cally applied sur­faces by using a super whatcha-ma-call-it that bakes them at 5 bazil­lion degrees then quick freezes them to minus five hun­dred degrees. That process causes them to shat­ter into tiny pieces, which I assem­ble using reversed mag­net­ism gen­er­ated by twenty five coils each putting out twenty thou­sand mega-kilowatts of dou­ble reverse polar­ity power.….blah blah blah”. And to your shock you notice sud­denly that  the per­son who so thought­fully asked you a sim­ple ques­tion, has been engaged in a side con­ver­sa­tion with some guy.

The same thing often hap­pens when we’re talk­ing to a poten­tial buyer about our stuff. The con­ver­sa­tion is usu­ally about us, and how we make our stuff and how that makes it so spe­cial. It doesn’t mat­ter where we are when we do it, the result is always the same… that poten­tial buyer or inter­ested per­son goes bye-bye leav­ing us all dazed and confused.

The Unspeak­able…

Well, guess what, you just pushed the reject but­ton and gave a really inter­est­ing per­son a rea­son to not remem­ber you, you brought your do-do into the con­ver­sa­tion( a term cre­ated by Robert Mid­dle­ton ). See, your do-do is the way you describe what you do (there’s that word again)the way you respond when some­one asks you that lead­ing ques­tion “what do you do?”.

Talk­ing and ask­ing about what we do, is not some­thing we do mali­ciously ( in most cases), it’s a habit we’ve inher­ited from cen­turies of cul­tural lessons. When we don’t know what else to say espe­cially in an unfa­mil­iar or uncom­fort­able sit­u­a­tion, we ask the clos­est per­son “So, what do you do?” The response we usu­ally get or give is based on the teach­ings we’ve learned since we came out of the womb…that it’s not polite to brag about our stuff nor to talk about prob­lems (prob­lems = unhap­pi­ness). So we’ve adapted, by keep­ing things objec­tive. What bet­ter way to be objec­tive than to talk about our stuff  in terms of how and what WE do. So, we judi­ciously apply this approach across the  board and won­der why our sales suck!!

Do-do shows up when you talk about the process of how you make what you make and do what you do (hence do-do), instead of talk­ing about the prob­lems that poten­tial buyer has and help­ing her learn if our stuff will work for her. So, instead of remem­ber­ing you as some­one with her inter­est in mind she is way more likely to remem­ber you (if she remem­bers you at all ) as the per­son who big words and talked about himself.

Talk­ing about our do-do does one thing really well, despite being the very thing we are try­ing to avoid, it gets us talk­ing about our­selves and our stuff, very often in ways that leaves the per­son check­ing out our stuff with the impres­sion that we don’t know her prob­lem and there­fore don’t have the solu­tion she wants.

Find the leaks

Your do-do seeps out in all kinds of lit­tle ways, mostly because you have grown uncon­scious of what’s hap­pen­ing and you know no other way.

Your do-do leaks out when writ­ing your “artists’ state­ment” that lit­tle ditty that is sup­posed to estab­lish your legit­i­macy as an artist who dis­dains hav­ing to sell her work. But it all back­fires on you, because that poten­tial buyer eying your stuff is inter­ested in one and only one thing…do you have what will solve her imme­di­ate prob­lem. If she can’t quickly see if you do or don’t she’ll just keep look­ing and you’re going to be left empty handed.

Now, that “artists’ state­ment” is great under cer­tain con­di­tions and when writ­ten well it can be a help­ful tool. But, in most cases when you are try­ing to sell that stuff of yours it just helps con­firm your lack of inter­est in those folks eager to learn if you can make their lives bet­ter. Writ­ing about and or describ­ing your do-do in lofty intel­lec­tual terms leaves most folks won­der­ing what they just read.

Another place your do-do shows up is your on-line descrip­tions of your stuff. A great exam­ple of leak­ing do-do is all the artists hawk­ing their wares on Etsy or Art­fire and in their announce­ments over social net­works. Most of the prod­uct descrip­tions I run across are all about the mate­ri­als and tech­niques used to make that paint­ing, pot, etc. Sel­dom do I see descrip­tions that make me want more, like the wind chime designed to lull me into relax­ation, or the cool sun catcher that promises to fill  fill my walls with beau­ti­ful bounc­ing rain­bows dur­ing those chill­ing win­ter days.

Burn your do-do

The best way to avoid talk­ing about your do-do, is to prac­tice talk­ing about your buyer’s prob­lems and how you can help them, and do so in a nice non-slimy way and remem­ber you will never have to con­vince the right peo­ple to buy your stuff.

Because of its’ dam­ag­ing effect on your abil­ity to make a liv­ing off mak­ing what you make I’d advise you to write your do-do list out on paper, neatly fold that paper up and cer­e­mo­ni­ously toss it into your burn­ing fire­place or just step out­side and light a match to it.

Change your focus

Now that you have ban­ished those do-dos,  you’re free to talk about the prob­lem your stuff solves that no one else’s does, and do so in a way that stops that surf­ing mama right in her tracks, mak­ing her mouth water with antic­i­pa­tion of check­ing out your stuff. Once, inside your site, booth or gallery show, she can’t resist because you have let her know that no one else can solve her prob­lem like you.

The beauty of this approach is it doesn’t involve con­vinc­ing, sell­ing or any other kind of slimy approach…you or her will not need to take three hour hot shower so you can feel human again.

Remem­ber.…

every­body has a prob­lem and they have them every minute of the day. Your job as a work­ing artist is to not talk about your do-do, but instead, focus on the prob­lems all those folks have who are eye­ing your stuff.

if you want to make a liv­ing off of your cre­ations you need to engage in com­merce. Your art does no one any good piled up in that rental stor­age unit.