Managing Your Time:

The second step to successfully building your business empire is to manage your time correctly.  The biggest problem that I see many entrepreneurs face isn’t the lack of the business plan, but rather the inability to properly manage their time.  Often these soloprenuers get burned out trying to do everything themselves and “bootstrap” that they return to the 9-5 or struggle with “being their own boss” for years to come.  Remember why you got into business.  You didn’t sacrifice your weekends, sanity and free time to make $60,000 a year only to worry about how badly you’ll be fucked when tax season rolls around.

There’s two barriers to managing your time correctly:

1. Being Busy – This may be the more harmful of the two issues.  Being busy comes from doing everything yourself.  Ever hire a house cleaner to tidy up your home?  Notice how they never speak english, yet the lady on the phone spoke perfect english…  The lady on your phone is the receptionist who gets paid $17 an hour to handle calls all day.  The cleaning lady who comes out to your home will make upwards of $25 an hour.  The BOSS who has the house cleaning inquiries routed to the receptionist is the one who’s making the real bread.  He’s the one making money from doing basically nothing.  If you need a good house cleaner that’ll have your home tidy just click here to learn more.  You better not be cleaning your home yourself!
2. Distractions – Distractions are a completely different animal.  You’re no longer just working stupid and wasting your time on things that don’t make you money.  Instead when you’re getting distracted you’re falling into humanity’s natural trap.  You’re body wants the easiest route possible.  There is a natural resistance that comes about as you’re setting foot on your entrepreneurial journey.  Your ability to choose to write a blog post (although you should be doing a higher level activity instead) instead of play another game of Heroes of the Storm is a muscle.  This muscle is only improved by putting in reps.  No matter how strong you get you’ll always have to put in those reps to stay focused.  This WILL always be a fight.  Getting distracted is a daily battle for even the most successful business owners.

Developing a Business Plan:

The first step to successfully building a business in the Visual Arts industry to develop a business plan.  Many entrepreneurs are suggested to just start and not over analyze the situation at hand.  They often quote the popular key term “analysis paralysis” which encourages young business owners to “just do it” or “launch quickly”.  Although that may seem exciting and you’d like to get started with building your business right away there’s a problem.  The problem is that going into a business right away can easily ruin your reputation.  This isn’t a multi-level marketing business that’s done for you.  You’re not simply a pawn in a giant team of sales people.

You are a fundamental part of your business.  If you try to build too quickly or start working on your business without a sound fulfillment plan you will fail.  You might not fail right away.  You might not fail for years, but those parts of your business that aren’t set in stone such as fulfillment and order processing will significantly slow you down.  You will look unprofessional to many people.  An unprofessional look will hinder the success of your business.

It is vital to develop a business plan.  Your business plan needs to include 3 major parts:

1. Fulfillment – Never do the work yourself.  You will fall into the trap of being self-employed if you’re doing all the work yourself.  Being a perfectionist is great for the people that are doing the work for you, but keep in mind you cannot be a perfectionist in your business management role.  You need to have a sound fulfillment team setup prior to launching your visual arts business.
2. Sales – Your sales funnel needs to be build out extensively.  You need to do major research on your customers.  You also should focus the research on your ideal customer.  Knowing which kind of customers ask the least questions, pay the more and appreciate the work you do the most is key to growing your business.  Wasting time catering to everyone is a waste of time.
3. Referrals – Referrals will be the lifeblood of your business.  A referral is the best customer that you can get.  They come pre-sold and will help you push through those plateaus with ease.  The problem that most business owners have is that they don’t bake referrals into the deal.  Give your customer 2 separate prices.  The first price will be higher and will not include a mandatory referral.  The second price will be lower, but will bake in mandatory referrals to the deal.

Lesson Take Away:  Develop a Business Plan

Homework:  Watch this video below about Developing a Business Plan

Introduction to Our Business Tips

Growing a Visual Arts Business is not a hard thing to do.  You’ll soon realize that it’s about expertise, client acquisition and fulfillment.  Those will be separate categories soon.  Soon you’ll be focusing on building the business instead of delivering the perfection.

New Posts Coming Soon.