"Eric, I want to be successful," said an artist I was consulting with recently. "Have you defined success?," I asked?
Its not enough to want success because success for one person is not success for another. If you want success you first need to define what you want your life to look like. How?
1. When you dream of success, what does that dream look like. Take a pad of paper and write everything you dream. Write as much detail as you can imagine.
2. Be specific. Saying, "I want to make a lot of money" is general. Saying, "I want to earn $50,000 a year" is specific.
2. Create priority for the dreams. Now that you have your list in specifics, which part of the dream is the most important. Knowing what is most and least important helps you focus your energy. For instance if your number 1 success element is "I want my work hanging in a museum within 5 years" requires you to do a lot of things differently than "I want to sell 1000 giclees a month."
3. Once you have your list prioritized, then ask yourself what it takes to get there and what sacrifices you are willing to make. For instance being home with my kids is more important than anything else in my life, therefore I know some things require me to be on an airplane every week. I'm not willing to do those things, and therefore have to either find more creative ways to achieve them or I need to redefine my goals.
4. Manage your "self talk". Anything is possible but if you're continually making excuses to yourself or others like "I cannot do that" or "this is impossible" or "no museum would ever want my work" your brain will fulfill your thoughts. If on the other hand you believe you can and stop negative self talk you probably will accomplish your goals.
5. Break it into small steps. When I work with artists on their goals, I first break every goal into small steps. X has to occur before Y can occur. Things seem more obtainable when you break everything into steps or mini-goals. When working with financial matters, work backwards. Here is an example.
An artist said to me the other day I want to make $200,000 a year before taxes. "How many paintings is that?", I asked. "I dunno, a lot I guess," he said. So first I said, "How much do your paintings sell for in the gallery?" "$2,000," he said
So do the math. If the painting goes for $2000 and the artist retains $1000 from the gallery than he needs to sell 200 paintings. Right? Wrong, because in his $1,000 retained he has to pay for materials (canvas, paint,), shipping (often to and from) and framing. So it's important to know your costs and what needs to be applied to every painting. So if he has a $150. frame, $50 in shipping and $25 in materials his cost is $225. He now has $775 left, which means he has to sell 258 paintings a year.
So if the goal is 258 paintings a year to earn $200,000 pre-tax dollars he has to sell. Which means he has to sell 21 paintings a month. Of course not every painting sells, and most galleries are not going to sell 21 of your paintings every month. Plus you would have to paint 5 a week every week of the year. Chances are quality suffers. Right? Though this is another issue, lets stick to the plan for a moment.
This artist has to sell 21 paintings a month. If one our of 5 sells every month then in reality he has to paint and send 5 times the paintings to sell 21 a month. AND he has to have enough galleries to hit his sales numbers. If the good galleries sell 5 paintings a month then he needs 4 good galleries. Of course all galleries have hot and cold months, therefore he needs MORE galleries.
This is problematic. A good artist cannot paint enough quality and probably should not have too many galleries. So how do we solve this problem?
We either have to find other forms of income for the artist or we need to increase prices, or both. In this case I gave the artist the following advice:
a) Paint larger paintings, which will increase the amount of money you can generate per painting. It also allows him to do fewer paintings.
b) Find a gallery, which can sell your work for more money. The market the gallery serves often dictates the price.
c) Find a couple of quality galleries. But don't try to get too many, which can hurt your reputation.
d) Find some outside income sources like teaching and trying to win cash prizes in art competitions.
The bottom line for most artists like this one is that the goal should be to paint fewer paintings so that the quality can be increased, the size can be increased and the price can be increased. Though its harder to become a premier artist whose works sell for big prices, its a lot easier to paint 12 great paintings a year to make your money. But it depends on your goals and the time it takes to get to that place. In all cases its a lot easier to get there with a plan.
Success for an artist takes on many faces. For some its about money, others its about fame, others its about freedom and no other job. Establishing a career is very delicate and the wrong reputation created can hurt an artist forever (thus the problem with giclees for some). The starting point is to define your ideal life and all its elements.
