Networking 101 for artists. Conversations = Wealth. People are interested in your process not your ‘label. Learn how to tell your Mum what you do. Share your passion and your struggles not your job title when networking.
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Hi. I’m John Paul Fischbach, the Chief Alchemist here at the Auspicious Arts Incubator. Welcome to another Hot Tip Tuesday. This hot tip is entitled ‘Conversations Equal Wealth’. It’s one of those great rules. As an artist you need to be having a conversation about what you’re working on. You need to engage people in conversation about what you’re working on and about your work but you need to avoid the label.
When you’re networking or when you’re having conversations with people and they say “What are you? What are you doing?” Don’t say “I’m a painter”; don’t say “I’m a woodcarver” because no one knows quite what to do with that. Because we’re a little bit special as artists we can be a little bit intimidating in those kinds of situations.
Here’s my piece of advice to you. You want to have a conversation about what you’re working on, about your enthusiasm, about your passion so here’s what I would say. Here’s an example that I used with a particular woodcarver. I said look, instead of saying “Hi. I’m Phil, a woodcarver.” no one knows what to do with that. You meet someone and they say, “Hi, I’m Phil.” What do you do you do Phil? “Right now I’m really struggling because I’m trying to figure out how to make a chainsaw work as finely as a scalpel.”
That’s intriguing. Someone thinks that’s weird, what are you talking about? You can talk about the piece that you’re building. He was a particular carver I think he did this big welcome bears outside of your house but the phrase of the thing he was struggling with was more interesting and started a whole conversation rather than saying “I’m a woodcarver”.
Another story is about a still life painter. She was trying to capture a particular quality of light on a particularly hot beach. Instead of saying “Hi, I’m still life painter”. They said ‘hi, what do you do?’ “Right now I’m trying to capture that temperature on the beach on a bright morning at about 9 in the morning.” That started the whole conversation about the quality of light, the temperature and what happened was they were so fascinated in trying to capture the temperature in a canvas in a painting that that conversation led to a sale of the painting.
I encourage you to think about this idea of conversations equal wealth and try to talk about something that you’re struggling with. Try to talk about a challenge that you’re having with your artwork rather than using a label that say “I’m a painter” or “I’m a sculptor”.
If that tip was helpful to you please like this video. If you know someone who could use that bit of advice please feel free to share this video. Please make a comment, ask us a question below. That would be great. Here at the Arts Incubator it’s all about helping every single artist to more than survive but to actually thrive. In order to thrive you need to subscribe. Keep checking back at this channel and we’ll keep bringing you all kinds of cool things to share.
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