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I’m an artist, I don’t need a business plan.
After all creative people create; they are not in business, right?
WRONG!
Remember the title of this e-book? It talks about the working artist. That means not just making but selling. Unless you are content to let your work pile up at the back of your studio or in the attic, you need to sell your work. Selling isn’t some nasty activity only carried out by the likes of Gordon Gecko (remember Wall Street?). It is the ultimate purpose of any business – selling a service or a product to someone willing to buy it at a price that makes you both happy.
So, let’s start thinking about the business of being an artist.
What is your business?
Many business planning guides start by getting you to write down a Mission Statement. This is just a fancy way of asking you to define the business you want to be in. Since business plans are about making a case for securing finance, this isn’t necessarily a bad place to start. If you are a start up you want to persuade others to invest, if you are a division of a larger company, you want to make the case for the company to invest in your division.
For most artists however, this doesn’t apply. They are not looking for investors, they want some way to minimise the time spent on business matters in order to maximise the time spent creating.
This guide will take you through a business planning process that I have devised to take account of the particular needs of creative artists. It will help you focus on what is important to you, artistically financially and socially with the aim of maximising the return you get from your investment in making art.
To do this I am going to take you through a series of simple sounding questions. While the questions may appear simple, the answers will not be. Answering them will force you to look deeply at what you want your life to be and where you want to be in five years time. There is no ‘correct’ answer to these questions of course. The answers depend on you as a creative person and so that is where the process starts.
“Who am I?”
Who you are is not your business. You may describe yourself as an artist, but still make your living running workshops or teaching or even in a different field altogether. Even so, we start with that question – “who am I?”
We start here because this business plan we are putting together is intended to help you concentrate your efforts on being that person. The work you do every day still has to be about Art not taxes!
Let’s start by thinking in general about what art means to you and about how it affects you personally. Jot down some key words on a large sheet of paper then try to summarise them in a single sentence. Think of writing a Tweet - keep it short and succinct but not cryptic.
“When I make art I put my whole self into the piece.”
“Making art keeps my brain from seizing up”
“Teaching others to paint/pot/draw keeps my own art alive.”
“Making art lets me be ME – not just a wife/husband/parent/lover/employee/cubicle fodder”
“I love demonstrating … for others”
Now look at your artistic skills.
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What areas of art interest you the most?
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What areas are you most skilled in?
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Is there a gap – are there some areas where you feel the need to develop your skills further?
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How might you acquire those skills? (Later on you will need to make sure you have time and money set aside for this.)
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If you have sold work already, what sort of work has evoked the most interest?
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How does this match up with what you are most interested in?
Now consider some other issues.
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Where do I want to be in a year’s time? Three years? Five? Ten?
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How do I want to spend the majority of my time?
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Is there someone else whose life is linked to mine?
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What do they want to achieve over the same time period?
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Are they reconcilable?
Think about how these might all be put together so that you can begin to feel, most of the time, as you wanted to be in that initial statement.
In ‘conventional’ business this is done in meetings, brain storming sessions and lots of flip charts. You don’t have to do it that way.
Be creative. Think big. Keep a journal, use your own imagery, build mood boards, do whatever it takes to capture the sort of life you are looking for.
Take time over this stage. It is important for your Business Plan but more importantly it is critical to your personal and perhaps family future. It is about your future happiness.
Creating the Business Plan
You are going to work through a series of stages in preparing the plan. Each stage once complete will represent a chapter of your Plan. The order is important, but not essential. If you get stuck at any point move on to the next stage and sketch in some ideas. Creating the final Plan will involve several cycles through the process anyway.
The chapters are listed below
Mission Statement is about setting a framework for the business that delivers on your personal goals. If it doesn’t, you might as well be working for someone else and spend your spare time painting or potting as a hobby. The Mission Statement is the beginning of your business plan proper.
Describing your business is about setting out - this time in concrete not visionary terms - what you are going to make and sell. It will describe the ‘products’ you will be making, whether paintings on canvas, studio pots or hand made bags.
Looking at the Market is about who buys the things you make, where can you find those people, what they spend. It is also about your competitors, especially their prices.
Business strategy is about how are you going to bring what you make to the market. What will you do, where, how, when? It will include some concrete targets for the numbers of ‘things’ you intend to make. Assuming you intend to have an on-line presence it will also include your web strategy
The bottom line will set out cash flow forecasts, hopefully based on realistic assumptions about achievable sales etc
Appendix will include the more detailed information you have put together in preparing the main chapters. You need to keep this, because you will have to revisit your plan at regular intervals, probably yearly, against actual performance, against changes in your market and any other factors you have identified as being important.