Key to Survival as an Independent Artist

Being an independent artist requires hard work, especially when you are minimizing your achievements. Celebrate the small wins, be more confident, stronger and more capable because you deserve it.

What does celebrating the small wins means? It’s about celebrating the initial steps, small steps of progress you can make. Do you even take notice of the times that you knocked off your entire “To Do List”? The times that you stretched or pushed yourself? The times that you’ve added flair and creativity to the world? When was the last time you ended the day acknowledging that you did a good job?

If you’re not allowing yourself to feel and celebrate the little achievements you’ve accomplished, you won’t either celebrate your huge achievements. Feel better about yourself as an independent artist with these three ways on how to celebrate your small wins.

1.    Create a look back time

Set a time to think about the achievements that you had this week. What did you do well? What did you achieve? What went well this week? What good things happened that you didn’t even anticipate? You have to integrate accomplishments into your identity or this is just not going to happen for you.

2.  Allow yourself to feel your achievements

Allow yourself some heartfelt satisfaction. If you’re not feeling it, it will not work. Feel that joy as it builds your confidence. You’re an artist, you’re doing what you love. Feel it, connect to it. You are the most important person in your business. Feel and appreciate that.

3.  Share your achievements

I want you to share the win with real enthusiasm. It’s not about bragging, it’s just simply sharing. Be enthusiastic about what you achieve. The best thing you can do to steer the win is to get a celebration buddy.

Schedule your look back time, feel the win, and share the win because you deserve to feel better about yourself.

If you to know more details and understand more about this, join our ASAP program. You will join a group of people who are also trying to build their business, and if you need real practical help visit us at http://www.auspiciousartsincubator.org

The 92 discrete skills it takes to run a small arts business

This article was originally published on www.ArtsHub.com.au, 2016

In the first two years of the Incubator, after every coaching and mentoring session we made a note about the particular business or marketing skill that was taught. When we compiled that list, we were surprised to see that there were 92 discrete skills that it takes to run a successful arts business. Several years later, when we started working with small business development organisations we learned that they had lists of what it takes to run an average small business. Their lists had 55 skills. Which means it’s way more complex to run an arts business than any other average small business.
At the Incubator we offer a business skills inventory checklist. The important part of this checklist is to look at each skill and decide whether A) You got it, B) You need it, or C) You have no clue what that skill even is. Here’s the link to our online diagnostic you can do yourself here.

You skills

The list begins with all the things an artists needs to develop to be an artist in business. Arts businesses are unique in that the overlap between business owner, talent, product and service is common and much larger than in other industries. There is more vulnerability inherent in a business which produces art. Being able to manage yourself as the CEO, Chief of Finance, Head of Marketing, Head of Sales, Administrative Support and Key Talent requires a very unique set of skills. There are mindsets, thoughts, feelings, habits and behaviours that successful small business people have developed that artists can develop too. Developing new personal skills is exciting and creative. For artists who are OK with developing their business side, developing these new personal skills is challenging and rewarding. Here are the top25 skills we help artists develop to become successful.

‘You’ Skills

1. Time management – getting control of your time
2. Lists – Urgent vs. Important
3. Valuing your time – what are you worth per hour / per day / per week
4. Saying NO – control your energy
5. Medicine Wheels – shifting perspective
6. Self-care- your are the most important
7. Limiting beliefs – recognising and eliminating
8. Confidence Building
9. Productivity skills – working smarter not harder
10. CEO skills – working ON the business
11. Personal brand – why they love you
12. Feedback & Criticism – getting it and using it
13. Perspective – getting out of tunnel-vision
14. Impact – understanding the impact of your art
15. Leadership – skills to lead the business
16. Entrepreneurial mindset
17. Team management
18. Managing expectations
19. Managing your emotions
20. Managing your thoughts
21. Operating at Peak performance
22. Moving blocks and limitations
23. Networking – tips and tricks
24. Reward- encouraging positive behaviour
25. Accountability – staying on track

Business Skills

When one signs up to the life of an artist, no one tells them that they will need to be a competent businessperson as well. No matter how brilliant an artist may be, no artist can survive long term in this industry without business skills. Artistic skill ≠ Business skill. An artist needs to learn to balance projects budgets, manage teams, manage time, manage resources, develop plans, understand taxation, superannuation, Work Cover – the list goes on and in the ‘independent’ arts sector there is no one to do it for them.
It is this lack of business skill that causes most of these fledgling businesses to ‘close shop’ within the first five years. Arts Businesses are very complex. This is the list that is so much longer than the list of Business skills required to run your average small business.

Business Skills

26. Budget planning – understanding the connection between budget plan and expense / revenue tracking.
27. Cash flow – understanding the “crunch times” in project delivery
28. Job / Project costing – understanding the macro level of project visioning from a cost-based paradigm.
29. Return on investment – understanding the balance between quick return, investment, and long tail return cycles
30. Amortisation & assets – understanding both valuing / depreciating.
31. Tax – understanding tax basics including filing and GST
32. Accounting / accountants – understanding the value of an “arts accountant”
33. E-commerce – understanding selling on the web.
34. Business model – Leader, Manager, Talent
35. Banking – understanding business banking accounts
36. Independent contractors vs. employees – understanding the financial and legal obligations such as on-costs including workcover etc.
37. Contracts – types, templates and management
38. Partnerships – collaboration and sponsorship
39. Negotiation – win : win
40. Incorporation – understanding options and yearly management of each type of incorporation
41. Not-for-profit incorporation – understanding the limits of this model
42. Profit in the not-for-profit sector – understanding that you can make money
43. Charitable status – understanding the path to this designation, and the rights and responsibilities of this status
44. Copyright and trademark – the differences and the process to obtaining
45. Expense tracking – developing a system of recording expenses — “getting the receipts out of the shoebox”
46. Project monitoring – when and how to check progress against cash flow and projections.
47. Cost of doing business – is your art a hobby or a business
48. Income / expenses – understanding, managing, tracking both credit and debt
49. Overhead – cost of doing business, including fixed costs
50. Insurance – public liability, work cover, volunteer, officers and directors
51. Risk management – why and how
52. Pricing – cost vs. market
53. Audit – when do you need one
54. Balance sheet – statement of financial position including assets
55. Business Plan
56. Strategic Plan
57. Vision statement
58. Mission statement
59. Work plan
60. Marketing plan
61. Goals / strategies / objectives – what and how to use them
62. Revenue streams – the things you do to generate income
63. Funding and grants – as support not sustenance
64. Crowd funding – how it works, how much to ask for
65. Litigation – how, why and experience of typical cases
66. Intellectual property rights – how to protect creative ideas

Marketing Skills

The list of 92 skills concludes with Marketing Skills. If you know who you are, are capable of running a business, then it’s time to let people know who you are what you have to offer. Within the arts industry there is little shortage of vision and creative ideas. What we hear across the small to medium independent arts sector is, “I have a great idea / show / design / piece…. I just need to let more people know about it!” Developing Marketing skills is the most important thing for independent artists and small/medium arts organisations. Finding fans, customers and audiences who get what you do and want to experience is the key to a sustainable future. At the incubator we say, “Funding is insecurity, the market is security” When you find the people who want what you create, the next time you create something they will be ready and eager to experience it.

Marketing Skills

67. Increasing word of mouth
68. Branding – understanding image
69. Website design – understanding the importance of the site from the customer’s POV
70. Relationships – understanding how to build and maintain business to business, business to customer and business to stakeholder relationships
71. Email service providers – Mail chimp etc.
72. Viral marketing – understanding the power of trends
73. Long tail – understanding the benefits down the road
74. Touring – locally, regionally, nationally and internationally
75. Publicity – tips and tricks and new ways and means
76. Arts lobbying – moving from individual needs to collective bargaining power by understanding the power of a unified voice as an industry sector.
77. Social media – building relationships not sales
78. Advertising vs. marketing – knowing the difference
79. Facebook – use and abuse
80. Instagram – for the arts
81. Twitter – for artists
82. YouTube – essentials
83. DIY video – production and distribution
84. Podcasts – production and distribution
85. The customer journey -making sure you have marketing collateral at each stage
86. Value based language – Smarter more effective marketing language
87. Website DIY (including wordpress) – supervising you building it yourself
88. Blogs – to offer insight into your process
89. Demographic – who’s out there
90. Psychographics – what do they like
91. Customer Avatar – finding your best customer
92. Pitching – how and when

There are probably more than 92 skills but over the past 8 years of helping 1,000s of artists we know that these are the essential ones. You don’t need to learn them all at once. Artists are kinaesthetic learners and so being able to apply the learning is the best method for taking ownership of these skills. Many artists have lots of these skills in their artistic practice so it is just a matter of transferring the skill into their business.

Is Your Art a Hobby or a Business?

Sometimes our arts practice is a business. Sometimes our arts practice is a hobby. Occasionally our arts business is a hobby masquerading as a business.

There are a few ways to tell which of these categories most accurately describes your arts practice.

Is it viable?

Arts practices are not about profitability. They’re about viability. In the early years many small businesses lose money while they’re building up reputation and customers. That’s perfectly normal. In moving from an arts hobby to an arts business you have to consider viability. By viability I mean is this business viable?

Ask yourself these questions:

• Do you still want to do it year after year? Is it still something you’ll still be passionate about. Will you still want to pour your time, love and resources into it?
• Is there a market for it? Does anybody want it? Does anybody like it? Are there people who are willing to give me their time and money to receive my art?

If you want to do it and there are customers, you have a viable business, and it might be several years before you have a profitable business.

If there’s no market, it may be time to rethink or accept that it’s a hobby.

If there’s a market but you don’t want to do it anymore, it may be time to look towards doing something which you’ll enjoy more.

Have you tracked the numbers?

The second thing you have to consider in moving your arts practice from a hobby to a business is that you have to be able to start tracking some numbers, and become comfortable talking about them. If you can’t talk the numbers, you aren’t really in business because you can’t manage what you can’t measure.

As you move your practice from a hobby to a business you need to become conscious of what it costs to produce the product or service and how much money comes in from the product or service. Tracking the numbers doesn’t have to be difficult or complicated. It can be as simple as getting an exercise book and on the left page writing down money coming in – any sales, contracts, gigs. On the right side, write down money going out – what you’ve spent to create your product or deliver your service. At the end of each month add up the page. Remember that it’s not about profitability, but you do need to start knowing what it costs. Eventually you want to be running a successful business which has more money coming in than going out.

It’s okay to have loss. It’s perfectly fine. The ATO will let you have a loss for three to five years because they understand that you’re trying to build your business. In the early days of building a business you’re often going to spend more money than you’re going to make. Also in the early years you’re likely to be giving away products and services to build your client base. It’s fine to do this, but you have to know and be conscious of the numbers.

Are you tracking your customers?

A successful business is built on repeat customers – you have to have a method of tracking customers so that you can focus on the people who come back. Getting the first sale is difficult, getting the second or third sale is much easier if you have the data. Creating a database doesn’t have to be a complicated expensive piece of software, like a CRM (Customer Relationship Manager).

Any list is fine – it just has to be something that you can download, sort and make notes in. It can be on an excel spreadsheet, a table in Word. It’s not useful if it’s just signatures in a guest book – take the time to type it into some kind of form, table or database. The important part is that you begin to recognize and build relationships with repeat customers.