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Written by · Categorized: 1 - ACCOMPLISHING 19 Comments

Why do artists give up on their careers?

Why do artists give up on their careers?

Why do artists give up on their careers?

Artists give up on their careers because there are no careers for artists.

What am I talking about?

Fact: According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics only 3,660 Fine Artists, Including Painters, Sculptors, and Illustrators were employed in 2014.

If there are no jobs, there are no careers.

Unless you’ve won the big lottery, meaning that you’re one of the very precious few artists who’ve actually secured reliable long-term representation by the art establishment, you don’t have a career.

However, eventually most the lucky lottery winners will fall out of the art establishment’s favor because another more marketable artist will come around and eclipses them.

If you’re a successful artist today, you have a business. You’re a thriving member of The New Creative Class.

You’ve built a distinct brand, platform, and following.

And you are not competing with other artists to sell your art. You’re delivering value above and beyond your art that serves a target market.

Just like playing the lottery, you can continue to throw your money and time away playing the art establishment’s game. Maybe you can afford it? Maybe you have family or a partner who takes care of you financial needs? Good for you.

Maybe you’ll win. It could happen.

But since life is short and resources are not unlimited, another option is to plan your success as an artist and to build a business.

To build a business as artist, you’ll need to first understand what type of “product” you’re selling. It’s not paint stuck on canvas in that very special way that you’ve mastered and is explained so well by your artist’s statement.

The “product” you’re selling is emotion. Collectors are not concerned with your technique. You are. They want to feel, to be reconnected with their humanity. That’s the function of art.

This is where the product of art parts ways with conventional goods and services. Until you fully realize this, you’ll be chasing your tail and hoping for success instead of planning for it.

The artists who “get it” are rappers. Rejected initially by the music establishment, they created their own genre that served their tribe.

They offer some of best example of independent artists who took their power back from the music establishment and turned the tables on them.

Our notion of artistic success has been defined the competitions like American Idol.

But those contestants are not winners. They’re actually indentured servants. I’ve read the contract contestants must sign requiring them to surrender all of their income from any source for the rest of their lives to the entertainment company. WTF?! Yes. That’s what it says.

So why do artists give up on building their careers? Because they’ll never have one. And no one told them that they have to build a business to be successful.

Basically what artists are told is, “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about money. You just do what you love and the money will follow.”

What do you think? Leave a comment below.

 

Because there are none.

Written by · Categorized: 6 - SELLING 9 Comments

A Plan To Sell Art Without a Plan, Is a Plan To Sell No Art

A plan to sell art without a plan, is a plan to sell no art.

Every week I ask artists from across the globe, if they’ve had a chance to read the free weekly guide I sent and what they think of it.

Why? I’m actually interested in what you think and what you have to say.

When I received this reply last week I realized that I’m not doing a very good job teaching artists about making art and making money.

I’ve painted about 25 pieces. I wanted to get the art out of the way first. Now, I’m focused on the business side.

My heart sank. This is in reverse order!

Would you invest time and money in building a product line and then go to business school to learn how to sell it?

I don’t think so.

I’m hearing from artists who are eager to enroll in The MAKING Art Making MONEY Semester.

But do you know what many of them say when I asked them why they haven’t yet applied?

I first need to complete a body of work.

Oh good God! NO YOU DO NOT!

Now if you want to create a body of work to satisfy your personal creative urges, inspiration, and curiosity, go for it! That’s fantastic.

It’s beautiful creating art as a hobby.

But your tinkering is not going to result in sales.

When an artist’s work is not selling, you’re told by the art establishment,

You need to go and create a new body of work.

That is completely ass backwards advise. Ignore it.

What you need to do is to:

  1. know your creative purpose, you why
  2. determine a worthy mission, your what
  3. offer a unique value proposition, your how
  4. serve a target market, your who

Or maybe you have figured out how to market your art but you suck at selling your art?

It’s not uncommon to be great at marketing and suck at sales or vice versa.

How do I know? Marketing is just a fun creative exercise for me.

Sales? Let’s just say this. I’ve had to work on it and I still am.

If you’ve mastered your creative medium, and you should before you call yourself an artist, then completing a new body of work, and just hoping that this “newest series” will sell, is not a good plan.

Your latest series of art won’t sell just because it’s new.

A plan to sell art without a plan, is a plan to sell no art.

What you need to do is create value above and beyond your art so that you can create a prototype series and test it with a target market.

This artist’s reply struck me so hard that I actually changed the first line of the Artists Who THRIVE creed.

Why? I want to make the difference between submitting to the permission and scarcity based art establishment versus joining The New Creative Class abundantly clear.

Let me say this. It’s awesome that she completed 25 paintings. I just want her to sell them.

When you know what value you offer above and beyond your art and precisely who you are serving and how, you are filled with focus and confidence that can’t be beat.

Do you have the cart before the horse? Please tell me why below.

Written by · Categorized: 8 - PROFITING 5 Comments

Get a Professional Development Grant for Artists from Your County Arts Council

The most important investment you can make is in yourself. — Warren Buffett, billionaire investor

“But what if I don’t have any money to invest in myself?”

First. Let’s examine this sentence. Is it really that you don’t have ANY money or is it that you are choosing to spend it instead of investing it?

Did you know that the government is willing to invest in you because even they know that investing in you will yield many dividends.

And guess what? Securing the investment doesn’t even require much.

Just a little bit of time and effort.

During this thriving artist profile I interview visual artist Nikki De Preist from Portland, Oregon.

Nikki is not a student; in fact I don’t really know her that well.

The reason that I interviewed Nikki was because she found a way to secure the funds to enroll in The MAKING Art Making MONEY Semester and she wrote me to tell me about it.

Nikki demonstrates exactly the kind of initiative that Artists Who THRIVE take.

What did Nikki do? She applied for a “Professional Development Grant for Artists” from her county arts council in Portland, Oregon, called the “Regional Arts and Culture Counsel.”

Every arts council has a different name but every major county in the US and its territories has an arts council.

So if you live in the US they’re not hard to find. If you live outside of the US there may be an equivalent organization.

What did Nikki have to do?

It was surprisingly simple. In June 2015 she completed a one-page application and in December she was awarded a grant to enroll in the The MAKING Art Making MONEY Semester.

Nikkie said that the one-page application wasn’t that complicated.

I’ve spoken to several arts council’s who have reviewed the The MAKING Art Making MONEY Semester and they’ve confirmed that my program falls within the grant guidelines for “Professional Development Grants for Artists.”

The big take away is simply this, a bit of initiative and a little bit of paperwork could change your life.

If you really want something you’ll find a way, just like Nikki did.

Contact your county or state arts council now and see what resources are available to you.

It’s just a quick Google search away. Do it now.

Written by · Categorized: 8 - PROFITING Leave a Comment

You May Receive Some Goofy Messages

design

I’m apologizing in advance; you may receive some goofy messages and errors in the next couple of weeks. Please. Bear with me.

Why? Because I’ve launched an all new Artists Who THRIVE site, as you can see, and I’ve moved my on-line courses.

Seem simple? I feel like I was run over by a steamroller.

This year I failed a lot, so I’ve learned a lot.

In 2015, I learned about all of the technology that has to play nice with each other so that I can deliver value to you.

I trusted, and so I was sold, technology and consulting that not only did not serve my needs but it caused me:

  • real distress
  • huge loss of money
  • valuable time
  • opportunity costs that I don’t even want to think about
  • and worse of all, it inconvenienced my students!

The valuable lesson that I learned was to always trust my gut and to hire slowly and to fire quickly. That’s a lesson for you.

The good news is that I have found a more stable and simpler systems and support.

Out with the bad and in with the new in 2016.

To pursue my mission of slaying the “starving artist” slur, I need to master 16 realms of technology. I’m not counting any of all of the technology required to create the content, like Adobe Creative Suite.

So that I can deliver on-line education to artists all over the globe, 24/7, 365 days a year, 16 realms of tech must shake hands.

The good news! It’s almost all untangled.

  1. Email service provider that allows you to tag contacts and create rules.
  2. Learning management system (LMS)
  3. Online cash register.
  4. Membership management system.
  5. Word Press.
  6. Sales pages.
  7. Affiliate functionality.
  8. Webinar platform.
  9. Video and audio hosting.
  10. Video-editing tool.
  11. Video production.
  12. On-line advertising.
  13. Web hosting company.
  14. Merchant credit.
  15. Merchant accounts.
  16. Payment gateway.
  17. Reliable and honest expert help.

If you’re wondering if I’m eager to get back to my own art. Yes I am!

And that is what I aim to do in 2016!

 

Written by · Categorized: 3 - VALUING Leave a Comment

The Limitation of Her Art is Now Her with Strongest Asset

Yesterday I interviewed Irina Cumberland, a recent graduate of The MAKING Art Making MONEY Semester.

She shares the three top lessons that she’s learned in The Semester.

Irina has an interesting background.

She thought she had a limitation because she paints the ocean. Expertly, but just the ocean.

Irina was completely stuck about how and where she could sell her art.

But as every student of The Semester learns, you don’t want to sell art.

Why? Because selling art sucks.

You want to create value above and beyond your art and sell that.

During our one-on-one I found out that Irina has a medical degree and that she’s really a scientist and an artist.

So I recommended that Irina take a look at the medical benefits of fractal patterns that are found in nature, like leaves in the trees and waves in the ocean.

Irina did some research, because she can, and found out that bio-measures experiments concluded that fractal patters reduce our stress by 60% within 15 seconds.

What drug can do that?

So I suggested that Irina STOP selling ocean paintings and start selling stress reduction a la ocean wave fractals. As a trained human health scientist she can speak to the benefits of fractals with authority.

What happened next? She was off and running. A very different artist who I enrolled initially.

The limitation that she once believed that she had with her art is now her strongest asset.

So what where Irina’s top three lessons that she’s learned in The Semester?

  1. She had trouble only naming three but the first thing that Irina learned was that her art not only could be, but it should be, an expression of her truest self.
  2. The second biggest lesson was that focus is everything. Focus is what moves you forward. She learned to take things one step at a time during The Semester and how to best do that from my friend Dr. George Pratt’s training during his guest lecture. He’s a leading performance psychologist and author.
  3. The third huge lesson was that Irina could find a community of artists who support her and inspire her within The Semester. They don’t compete with each other. They’re not jealous or competitive. They’re actually friends who are on the same path, speaking the same language, and who now share a profound and personal experience.

What is Irina’s one piece of parting and advice to you? “Just focus, focus, focus, on one thing at a time and in order.” Sound familiar? ?