Take stock of your arts practice. Learn our technique to get a critical objective perspective. Do the SOW exercise to see the real picture of your arts practice and know what you need to do next.
Video:
Podcast:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Video Transcript:
At a certain point in your arts business you have to take stock of how it’s going, right? I’m gonna help you figure out how to do that.
I’m John Paul Fischbach. I’m the CEO and Chief Alchemist here at the Auspicious Arts Incubator. This week as a hot tip for artists, it’s how to take stock of your arts business. That’s what I want to do. This week I want to take stock of your art business. You are the CEO, right?
You’re the CEO and the Chief Artist, but you are the CEO, right? You’ve got the art handled, no problem, but you don’t have the business handled. So let’s take stock of the business. When was the last time that you took the measure of your business? I don’t know. Probably too long. You need an objective perspective of the business. As the chief artist you’ve got the internal subjective but you need the objective.
Now small businesses use a tool that is called a SWOT Analysis, S-W-O-T. That stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. But as artists I think we need a slightly different tool. So the tool that we use with all the artists we work with is to take stock of our strengths, our opportunities, and our weaknesses. It’s a tool that’s gonna help us grow. We need to sow, right? We need to sow seeds.
So get out a piece of paper. Divide that piece of paper into thirds. Seriously we’re going to do this. On the top I want you to write “my three strengths,” on the middle I want you to write “my three opportunities,” and at the bottom I want you to write “my three weaknesses.” Okay? That’s what I want you to do.
It’s how you’re going to get objective. So in order to take stock you have to have an objective view of your business. So pretend that you’re you but not you, okay? Pretend you’re also a small business analyst. Look, pretend you’re me if you want. If you were analyzing your business. What would you observe? What would you, if you were looking from the outside of your business, what would you see, right? What are the things that you would want to tell the business owner, right?
So on the top section, I want you to write down your strengths. Now strengths are internal. What are the qualities that you have that are gonna help the business? What do you do better than other people do? List three strengths up there. In the middle section, what are the opportunities? Now these are typically external. What’s happening in your world that is providing your business some opportunities to succeed and grow, okay? I want three opportunities that are around right now that are helping the business.
And in the bottom, the weaknesses. Now those are also internal. So again, try to be objective if you can. Think this way. “You know, I’m concerned that this business might fail because of these weaknesses.” List three of them. Now another way to find these weaknesses is to think of the things that you need to work on, things that you need to improve. Okay, so that’s what you need to do on this piece of paper.
Now, find someone who loves you and share these objective SOW, S-O-W. Share this S-O-W perspective. They’re gonna help you build an honest analysis for your business because they’re gonna see things that you don’t. So the strengths help them. They’re gonna see more strengths than you see. But build on those, develop them, market them. Opportunities, get them on your to-do list. And weaknesses, address them. Get the skills that you need.
All right, if this was helpful, please share it with someone else. And please do this exercise. Get that outside perspective. When you need practical help with your arts business, come talk to us, www.auspiciousartsincubator.org. And if you wanna really propel things join, ASAP, the closed exclusive membership group just for artists like you that are in business. And then the extended version of the hot tip that they get in the membership site is actually five things that you’re gonna find, and a little more detail about what you do with that.
Share with:
