Entries Tagged 'Success' ↓

‘Wealth’ is one of those words that both turns us off and, often secretly, excites us. Most of us want it, but we don’t really want to talk about it because then people might think we’re money hungry and materialistic. But what is wealth, really?

The first step is to define what wealth means to you. To me, wealth means abundance and having enough. I do not want to worry about or focus on money. When I had too little, I was always worried about getting enough to eat, paying rent, etc. If I had too much, I would worry about saving enough for emergencies, if I was investing it wisely, and even worse, wondering if everyone was being nice to me just because of it. I want to focus on my relationships and my work, the things that make me happy. I do not want to spend my time thinking about money.

One day I took these thoughts a little further. How much money is just enough? What is the least expensive way that I could live? I thought about Peace Pilgrim and how from the age of 45 until her death at 73 in 1981 she walked 25,000 miles to learn about and talk about peace. Could I live simply walking from one place to the next? I could! I could carry my laptop in my backpack,connect at coffee shops, and do all of my online business as an itinerant. Sure, this is carrying the idea to an extreme, but it also helps put things in perspective. “Enough” can be much less than we think. “Enough” does not have to be enough to maintain our current lifestyle… we have the power to change our lifestyle!

On the other hand, I strongly believe that we need to set goals of what we want and create that reality in our minds first. Have you watched “The Secret”? If not, get it and do so. How much money do you want to create each month? What kind of lifestyle do you really want? What is the least amount of money you can live on? What is the most that will cover all of your wants and needs? Set a monthly amount and make that your goal. Do you want $5000 a month? Easy. Really! How many people in the world are already making that much each month, every one of them creating it in a different way.

Is there enough money in the world for everyone to have $5000 a month? Why not? We’re not talking about everyone in the world getting $5000 worth of gold of which there is an apparently finite amount. Money is simply one of the physical manifestations of energy transfer. I know that is a mouthful, but what it really means is that money does not exist in a finite amount. Is the total amount of money in the world today more than the total amount 100 years ago? Of course. Why? Because there are more people and more minds filled with creative thought transferring their thoughts and energy (and the products that come as a result of those thoughts) to others.

This can be a difficult and deeply philisophical subject or it can be looked at very simply. MONEY IS INFINITE! There is more than enough for everyone and when we need more we simply create more. How does that work? Let’s say that you have created a loyal following of people that want to buy your paintings. Every time you create a painting, you sell it immediately. Normally you create one painting a month and get paid $5000 a month, enough to be wealthy according to how you have defined it for yourself. Now let’s say that your car breaks down and you need to buy a new one. Easy! You create two paintings that month and you have just created twice as much wealth. Yes, there is a limit to how many paintings you can create each month, but there are many other ways of creating more wealth. You could sell prints of your painting. You already have a loyal following of fans, you simply duplicate your work and create more money. Duplicating your work by creating prints is what is called “passive income”. It is passive because you already did the work and you are simply duplicating that work without as much effort, sometimes no effort at all. There are many more ways to create passive income and I will cover as many of these as possible in future posts.

Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com

Here is a great review of the quintessential success book, Think and Grow Rich.

Brian Lee (of Genius Types fame) writes a review of the perfect length: short enough to easily read and hold your attention and long enough to give some depth and give you a good idea of what value the book holds.

This book was one of the first I ever read in this field and its wisdom has stuck with me, if not always in my practice, at least in my thinking.

You can purchase Think and Grow Rich at Amazon.com. At just over $13, it may be the best ROI you ever receive!

Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com

Here is an excellent post by Lisa Call about defining success as an artist. They say it takes one to know one. I used to work as a chemical engineer and I really resonated with this post as the engineer in her really comes through. I’ll quote the post first and then add my own comments afterwards.

” Today Alyson Stanfield linked to my post about respect from her blog with some of her thoughts about when it is time to move on from juried shows. Interesting read.

I’ve been thinking about this prickly topic quite a bit the last few days (okay I couldn’t resist adding an image from my recent trip to the Desert Botanic Garden in Phoenix).

Because I am a requirements engineer by day I started thinking about what type of use case one might have for becoming a successful artist.

From the wikipedia article linked above: use cases allow description of sequences of events that, taken together, lead to a system doing something useful. Each use case provides one or more scenarios that convey how the system should interact with the users called actors to achieve a specific business goal or function.

So here’s my take on a simple use case for how to become a successful artist

Actor: Artist

Preconditions:
1. Artist has a desire to become successful
2. Artist has a definition for their idea of success
3. Artist has motivation to become successful artist
4. Artist has time to do the work to become successful artist

Main Flow (Artist definition of success is obtaining quality gallery representation):
1. Artist creates a strong body of quality art (and continues to create throughout the entire duration)
2. Artist creates quality materials to promote the art (and continues to throughout the duration)
3. Artist enters work into juried shows to build resume
4. Artist researches galleries and selects appropriate galleries
5. Artist approaches galleries
6. Artist has work accepted by gallery
7. Artist sells work with gallery
8. Artist repeats steps 4-7 until satisfied.
9. Artist is successful

Alternative Flows:
I. Artist definition of success is selling enough work over the internet to live comfortable
1. Artist creates a strong body of quality art (and continues to create throughout the entire duration)
2. Artist creates quality materials to promote the art (and continues to throughout the duration)
3. Artist researches online sales opportunities and selects appropriate venues (including ones own website)
4. Artist approaches online venues
5. Artist has work accepted by online venue
6. Artist sells work online
7. Artist repeats steps 4-7 until satisfied.
8. Artist is successful

II. Artist definition of success is making quality art
1. Artist creates a strong body of quality art
2. Artist is successful

etc (add different flow for each definition of success)…

Post Condition: Artist is successful
Well, that’s maybe not my best requirements work because I’m being very general.

But what I really want to talk about is why and where an artist might fail, or in the use case world these or often called exceptions - things that might happen that don’t result in the post condition being met but the flow ends anyway.

I really don’t know - not having failed nor planning to. But if I had to guess I would think the preconditions (which are things that must be true or the usecase can’t be started) are a big hold up for many people.

Figuring out just want it means to be successful as an artist is really rather difficult. Why are we doing what we do? What is our end goal? Maybe we have multiple goals. I think that different goals require different actions to reach that goal and not understanding the what the goal they are trying to reach can really trip someone up. There are so many options in the artworld I think trying to narrow down our focus to 1 or 2 can be very difficult.

I know in my path as an artist my end goals have changed many times over the years and I’m not the only one that struggles with this. Paula McCullough left an interesting comment about this topic on my last post - pondering about what success really means. I recently found Paula’s blog through her comments here on my blog and her work on artsocket and really enjoy reading her thoughts on her blog about her adventures in becoming a successful artist.

Long ago my end goal really didn’t exist and I couldn’t even imagine how I might have goals as an artist and I wandered aimlessly not really ever getting any where. Now I have very specific art business goals. It’s taken years to refine these goals and to define what I feel is my definition of success but I feel with them I have a road map that I can follow that will lead me to my desired end goal.

I also think the preconditions for having the time and motivation to reach the end goals are important. When I lose motivation or run into periods where I have no time for the art career things really stall out. Keeping motivation, staying in the studio and office - these are keys to success. I believe success is mostly about hard work, not about divine intervention and getting discovered.

Back in my respect post I was countering the argument that quilters aren’t making it in art world because they didn’t make statement art. I see all kinds of art getting respect out there in the world - not just statement art. So when I look at step 1 of all of the flows - making quality art - I don’t see there needs to be any kind of restrictions on what type of art that is. I think there is room in this world for successful artists of all kinds, working in all media and styles.

So I guess I’m just repeating myself because I don’t see that the type of work is what prevents an artist from becoming successful - I see it as the actions (or lack of actions) of the artist as the stumbling block.

Although the other thing I have to add is that I think without step #1 (making a body of quality of art) it is really hard to get very far. You can’t promote what doesn’t exist. So I think that means I need to stop rambling and get back to my studio.”

My Comments:

I think it is extremely useful to go through this process of defining what success means to YOU. Define what success means to you, then determine what specific steps you need to accomplish to get to that point. My addition is to do this in a series of success-determining steps. Decide on a lesser goal of success, perhaps simply producing a certain amount of quality work, and detail the steps to get there. (I would also suggest reading Lisa’s previous post on defining her business goals.) From there, determine your next goal towards success and define the steps to get there. Before you do all of these little steps, however, still determine your overall definition of success. Each of these little steps will lead you towards that goal. My suggestion is to get a big sheet of paper and start representing everything graphically.

Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com
www.peacefulbirder.com