Getting Started – What you need to know – Part 1

Today’s commentary is in response to an email that I received from someone who would love to take the leap into making a living with their art after having a steady “day job”. Here is an excerpt:

…it’s my dream and heart’s desire to work out of my art studio from home and sell my beads and jewelry…and hopefully to teach beginners how to make Lampwork beads.

Do you have any suggestions for me? I don’t know how to go about selling my art…or how to go about doing this.

First, thank you for the email! Second, you are not alone. When we love something so much, especially  our art, we want to do it all the time and we all know, you can’t just drop out of society and make art. We need to pay our bills and feed our children too (or put them through college).

I remember when I first started looking into what it would take to do art full time and make a living at it.  I bought the book Crafting as a Business and started scouring the internet.  I found a lot of good information about how to do it and what was important to building a business.  I was getting increasingly excited about my dream!  But then I started poking around online where working artists hung out.  It was surprising to me how ‘negative’ a response I got.  Twelve years later I see that they weren’t being negative; they were being realistic.  They knew that it doesn’t do anyone any good to sugar coat it.

Much like Crafting as a Business, throughout these pages you will find informative articles on how to sell, how to set up web sites, how to market, build mailing lists, set goals, etc.  But here is something that you might not always hear:

Living your dream isn’t always as glamorous as you might think it is.  But it can be worth every minute  and successful financially if you are willing to accept and push through the following things:

1.  You will work more than you ever did at a 40 hour a week job.  WAY more.  Do you have the energy for that?

2.  You will spend as much time marketing and doing administrative work as you will making your art.  Maybe more.  Are you up for it?

3.  There will be tasks that you don’t want to do, but you will have to.  There are no midnight elves to come clean the beads and ship the orders.

4.  There will be days when you don’t feel like creating.  But you will need to anyway.

5.  You don’t get paid sick days or paid vacations.  Time is money and time off is time without pay.

6.  You will experience some lean times, if not all the time.  It takes time to build a successful business, art or otherwise.  (My husband is also self-employed.  There have were years in the beginning when business is down and we’ve lived on credit cards for months!  I don’t recommend it but just know it can be a reality).  Can you afford it?

The list goes on and I’m twelve years later I’m still coming up against new challenges.

Go in with your eyes wide open and when something comes up that you didn’t expect, rather than seeing it as a negative or a burden, learn to reframe it. Here is my strategy for doing that:  How I Enjoy the Little Things.  The amazing thing?  The things I used to dread?  I can now enjoy.

So.  There is Step One in jumping into the artists life.  And here is another perspective from someone out there making it happen.  Margot Potter – The Impatient Crafter.  If you think you’re up for the challenge, stay tuned for how to really get started.