Hey there everyone. Coming to you live with another hot tip for this week. So this hot tip this week is the number one thing that artists learn from me and from us that changes everything completely. And it’s changing the language that you use when you message your customers, or your prospective customers, your fans, or your followers.

We’ve gotten trapped in the arts of pushing product or pushing service. And every other industry in the world, every other business in the world, has learned to use value based language, but we’re really dragging our feet with learning value based language. So this hot tip is number six in the series of the ten things that I learned that help artists and make a successful business.

So number six is called Message, and it goes with Marketing, so the pair is Marketing and Message. So once you know who your market is and who your fans are and you can find them and you’re spending 30% of your time building and growing those people who really get you and love you and want what you have, then the next thing you have to work on is, what’s the message that you send them?

And the big mistake that we make is we tell them what we want to say, we don’t tell them what they want to hear. And that does not mean that you’re compromising in any way. What it means is to use language that communicates what you want to say in a way that they go, “Oh, cool. That’s what I want. Absolutely, yes!” So it’s not about pandering to the things that they want at all. It’s all about learning to craft that message.

It’s about building relationships. And that’s also a different thing for us. In the arts, for years and years and years, our art was consumed by faceless people that we didn’t know. Customers that came into the gallery that we never met. People that bought stuff from our agents that we never met. People came to our performances, and we never met them. But that’s all changed now.

So this is part of what we call marketing, advertising, and communication, and it all gets rolled in together. But today, we’re going to talk about the advertising communication piece. So now that you know who your market is, you need to craft those messages. And the key to that is sharing not selling. We’re not very good as artists at selling, but we’re really good at sharing.

So here’s some things that you should be sharing with your audience. So that’s by newsletter, by social media post, by email. Start sharing your creative process. You have a recipe, you have a process that you follow. Start sharing that process. Here’s what we do in this part. Here’s what we do in that part. Share the process.

Share your motivation. Second thing, share the motivation. Why are you creating this thing that you’re creating? Where did the idea come from? What’s driving you to do that? What’s it feel like to be motivated to create this cool thing that you’re creating?

The third thing you could do is your big why. If you’re not sharing why you’ve decided and why you recommit to being an artist … There are things you could do, but you continually recommit to being an artist and to expressing your creativity. So one of the cool things is, well, why? Why do you make that commitment? And the other thing is when we talked about branding and values, we talked about your values. So communicate the things that are important to you. Please talk about why that matters to you. Talk about why the things that are important to you in the world, why the problem’s worth solving. So any of that sort of stuff that you communicate about yourself is sharing, not selling. Now we have a rule in social media that we teach that’s called the eight and two rule. Eight posts of sharing per two posts of selling.

So the other thing that I want to talk about really quickly and make this a nice, quick, short hot tip is to say that it’s about the benefit, the value, and the impact of your art is what you’re sharing, is what you’re communicating. Your message is about the benefit, the value, and the impact of what you create. Now that’s called value based language. So when people experience value in you and your art, you can’t keep them away. So it’s your job, your job and your messaging, is always to tie the emotional experience of your art back to its source, back to you. That’s your job. And that’s reestablishing, communicating, sharing, about the value, the benefit, and the impact of the experience that the people have just had with your art.

So that’s really the most important thing in this little hot tip. And I try to make these really brief with one idea that you can go, “Okay, let’s think about that for the week.” So this is your job. For this week, I want you to stop advertising, and start sharing. So if it’s newsletter time this month, if it’s email blast this month, if it’s mail communication this month, if it’s social media post this week, I want you to start sharing, not selling. Okay? So connecting that emotional experience that people have back to you. So I want you to find some things to share.

So let’s review. Things that I suggest that you share that we know work really well for building that relationship with your fans and your customers are things like your creative process. Have you shared, have you created a post about your creative process? Any step of it, any stage of it, how you do what you do. Have you taken them back stage? Have you taken them behind the scenes? Have you shown them the area where you write? Have you shown them footage of you guys jamming? Have you shown them anything that’s behind the scenes? Anything that’s part of your creative process?

Have you talked about your motivation? What are you working on right now? Don’t push what you’re working on right now, share what’s motivating you to keep creating this thing or to figure this thing out or to solve this thing or the challenge that this thing creates for you. Okay?

And then your big why. Why do you recommit to being an artist? What is it about being an artist that excites you? What’s the big reason why you’re giving your gift of creativity and talent to the world?

All right. That’s it. That’s all I want you to do this week is look at this idea of value based language and really crafting the message really cleanly. Now, understand that this hot tip that I’m giving you live is really fast, but that’s the idea. One bite sized piece of advice every week. If you want deeper, more in depth, where we go into copywriting, and we go into the three times that you should be communicating with your customers, then that’s what’s inside the ASAP program, the Auspicious Successful Artist Program. So you might want to think about jumping onto that program because there I take much more time and we go into depth and we work on these things. And there’s things to do and challenges every week for that.

But I think this one tip is really important. When you think about the message that you’re putting out, the language needs to be shifted to words that excite them, that they go, “Yes, I want some of that again. I want to feel that that I felt with you before.”

All right, there you go. That’s it for this week. Cheers until next week. Bye.