Have you always dream about selling art and becoming a working artist? An artist’s life is a beautiful life but a working artist needs to get stuff done.
Working Artist – Getting Stuff Done
For you to be productive, you need to be able to manage your time. You need to visualize the big picture. What is the big picture? The big picture is where you see yourself in ten years. When you can visualize where you want to be, you will be able to make strategies that will be more productive. Strategies that will direct you to the finish line.
There are two ways for you to stay busy. One way is doing little things here and there so you will not have to do what is important. You might look busy, but you are not accomplishing anything. You are lowering the value of your time.
The other way to stay busy is to do the work that is necessary for you to be able to reach your goal. Your goal might be to have fifty paintings available for sale by the end of the year. You might have a goal for teaching art classes. Your goal might be to help other artists succeed. By knowing what your goals are you will be able to plan what the best steps are for you to take. You will be able to measure the productivity of your time and make sure that you are on track. Just because you have made a plan does not mean that it will be the best action to take. You need to measure the productivity, time spent, and what you’ve gotten in return. Then you will want to revise your strategy to make your time more valuable.
As a working artist, you are going to realize soon that your days become filled with a variety of tasks. Many artists become overwhelmed and think that they have to do everything that comes up to grow their business. It is easy to do. Social media networks for an example could have an artist eat up a large chunk of time, and they will get nothing in return.
You want to be able to receive a large return for your energy spent. Facebook is not going to send you a check in the mail if you spend four hours a day on it engaging with your audience. Those four hours could be spent doing something that will increase your income and increase the value of your time.
Your goal should be to make more money in less time. Your time is valuable. Make the most out of every minute of your day. It does not make you more successful if you are doing more tasks than another artist. You will only be successful when you reach your goals.
Ask yourself these questions:
- Did everything that you got done yesterday bring you closer to your goals?
- Are you closer today to your goals than you were last month?
- Are your sales increasing, decreasing or flat?
- Are you working more hours or fewer hours?
- Does the income being generated reflect the hours that you are putting in?
If any of your answers show that you are working more and making less, you need to decide what is working and what is not working.
I am not saying that you will only have to work four hours a week and money will be rolling in. It is hard work to start a business and build it. There is a large learning curve that you will be going through. You will be trying many different things to see what works and what doesn’t work. During that time could you easily find yourself spinning like a top if you are not careful. What you need to do is measure the success of every strategy that you put in place. Only keep the ones that are bringing you closer to your goals. Stop wasting your time on strategies that are not working.
Working Artists Action Steps:
- At the end of each week sit down and assess the strategies that you put in place for that month.
- The ones that are working come up with a strategy to make them stronger.
- The strategies that did not work replace them with a new strategy.
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