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Category: setting goals

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Just one bullet per customer, please

Mixing bullet points is a simple marketing error. How many more mistakes am I making in my one-man band?

Apple tree with swing, Carol L. Douglas, available through the Kelpie Gallery.
I spent the last two days doing 2018 planning with Bobbi Heath. While I normally hate business meetings, this one was done in stocking feet, with a woodstove and good food.
A good confab with a peer can net you as much or more than a conference does. Ask yourself these questions first:
  • Are our goals and experiences similar enough to be useful to each other?
  • Are our values the same?
  • Can this person be trusted?
  • Will he or she stay on task?
  • Is he or she able to contribute knowledge, experience or process?
  • Is he or she a creative thinker?

Flood tide, by Carol L. Douglas, sold at Castine Plein Air 2017
I’ve had enough experience with art support groups to know that they often devolve into long-winded stories, pissing matches, emotional support groups, or ego-stroking. They have their place in life, but they won’t advance your career.
The person best qualified as your informal business coach might have no experience in the art world at all. If you have enough knowledge yourself, that can work well, but it won’t help if you’re a newbie in the art world. Someone has to understand the nuts and bolts of how paintings are sold. Having said that, my move to Maine was coached by a business consultant with no art-sector experience.
Bath time, by Carol L. Douglas. I don’t focus on online sales, but this sold on Facebook, and netted me a friend in the bargain.
In her former life, Bobbi was a tech start-up project manager. She knows how to move a small business from concept to reality. I have a different but equally valuable background, which comes from years of slogging in the art market. Most importantly, we trust each other.
The question you and your partner are going to ask is, “Where are we now, and where do we want to be in five years?” The answer should not be, “rich and famous,” but it might include something like “looking more like an artist,” which is, in fact, brand management. You want to be concrete, but not limited.
Setting blocks, by Carol L. Douglas, available through Camden Falls Gallery.
Bobbi’s and my business models are a mix (in different ratios) of the same activities. I need to reset the mix. My mix of galleries/teaching/workshops and plein air events ought to be more grounded in my own geographical location, at least from June through September.
Tracking your own hours can reveal a gap between where you’re spending your time and how you’re making your money.
There is no real planning without data. I have some, but it’s all estimated. Better data might tell me that I’m investing time and energy into the wrong things. The above pie charts are fictitious, but they’re an example of how our work might not be going into the most financially productive things. In some cases, that is by choice. For example, right now I choose not to monetize this blog by selling advertising.
My New Year’s Resolution is to start logging my time just as my programmer husband does. I want to know how I’m piddling my time away.
Most of working your way into a better business model is simple trial and error. I’m especially good at the error part. That’s good for success, in fact, but you can’t be stretched so thin financially or timewise that experimentation sinks you.
Bobbi told me about a recent mailing she did, where she learned never to have more than one offer (bullet point) in an ad. She had two, and they got conflated in her readers’ minds. I realize I’m doing the same thing with my workshop ads. I need to fix this.
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My non-existent business plan

The professional painter ought to set some commercial goals. What form should they take?
Michelle reading, by Carol L. Douglas. While I love painting and teaching figure, there’s no room for it in my imaginary business plan.
One of the best things about my Ocean-Park-to-Castine week is that I get to spend it with Mary Byrom. We are good buddies but she lives in North Berwick, ME and I live in Rockport. They’re just far enough apart to make casual get-togethers impossible.
There isn’t much time for idle conversation during these plein air events but we do snatch moments. You might think we’d talk about technique or lofty ideals of art. Mostly, we talk business: are you going to [this place]? How were sales at [that place]?
Recently, Mary has been larding her conversation with the phrase “my business plan,” as in, “I’m not sure how that fits in my business plan.”
More work than they bargained for, by Carol L. Douglas. Do boatyard pictures still fit in my business plan?
After Castine, Mary, her husband, and I were enjoying some cold water in my kitchen (a delicious luxury after a week in the sun). Mary mentioned her business plan again. “Mary,” I objected, “Who has a business plan? My business plan is, um, ‘paint something.’” We guffawed, because we all know that artists are notorious for our bad planning skills.
As usual, Mary is several steps ahead of me. I mulled over what she said all afternoon. It makes sense to have a forward agenda. My problem is that I have absolutely no business experience. The whole notion of a business plan is alien to me.
Under the Queensboro Bridge, by Carol L. Douglas. I didn’t stop painting urban scenes because of a business plan; I just like painting rocks better.
The distinction between an amateur and a professional is whether one does one’s work for love or money. But it goes deeper than that: it’s about the discipline of working every day, on a schedule. It means treating painting as a real job and not something one does when the mood strikes. Even with this, however, I know artists who work extremely hard and don’t make much money.
That, I think, is because being a painter is so personal. Just as modesty precludes the polite person from telling the world how great he is, it precludes the personally-invested artist from selling his own work. For all of us, a business plan is a fence we could erect to prevent our feelings from hindering our careers.
Butter, by Carol L. Douglas. Still lives were never part of my business plan; they’re like practicing scales.
I looked up business plans for artists on the internet. Frankly, they’re gobbledygook to me. I don’t know, for example, how setting a five-year goal of making $200,000 a year in sales can possibly help me attain even a dollar more in sales today. If someone out there is knowledgeable about this and wants to help me understand, I’d love to hear more.
Meanwhile, I do have three simple goals for this year:
  • Add events in the South or Midwest to extend my season. The Northeast jams all our festivals in a four-month period from July to October. This is reasonable considering our climate, but it puts too much pressure on us to be seasonal workers.
  • Diversify my gallery representation into other geographical areas.
  • Paint more boats.

 Does that count as a business plan?
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Accountability

Underpainting of Northern Lights. Got a lot of work to do here before it’s intelligible.
On January 1, I made a pact with a friend to periodically check up on our progress toward our 2014 goals. Mine were:
  1. Regain where I was in October in terms of health and work;
  2. Finish and hang my show at Roberts Wesleyan opening 3/24;
  3. Get a workshop schedule together for 2014 and market it;
  4. Get my house on the market.

That seemed reasonable at the time, even while recovering from cancer. But man proposes and God disposes, and I landed back in hospital with a significant bleed, which means my recovery started again from scratch on February 4. 
No lifting, no bending, and I won’t even drive until after I see the surgeon on Thursday. However, today is the day when we check in with each other to see how we’re doing at meeting our goals.
Same painting, gridded. The red suggests my year so far, I think.
So where am I?
  1. I was able to walk 2.6 miles yesterday and painted for almost three hours. Some days are better than others, but the general trend is positive.
  2. Of the seven paintings I plan to show at Roberts Wesleyan, I have 2.5 underpainted, and five gridded. That’s terrifyingly behind schedule, but I’ve decided to show them in whatever phase of completion they’re in. Cancer is part of this “God and man” thing, isn’t it?
  3. I’ve done absolutely nothing to put a workshop schedule together for 2014.
  4. My first appointment with my Realtor was interrupted by my hemorrhage and hospitalization. This week she cancelled. On the other hand, I can’t do the detailing I want to do to sell it, either, so we’re at a stalemate.
Yeah, it’s a swank little studio, but it’s attached to more house than I want or need at this point in my life, so it’s going on the block. In the highly desirable Duchy of Oakdale. Call Angie Flack Brown at Keller-Williams in Rochester if you want it.

What goals did you set at the beginning of the year? How close are you to seeing them realized?
Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!