03: Brushstrokes and Business Plans: The Case for Art Entrepreneurship

Today, we are talking about one of my favorite subjects, which is why artists make the best entrepreneurs. I have a front seat to so many artists who are becoming brilliant entrepreneurs, and it's better than anything Hollywood could conceive. There's grit, there's challenges, there's vulnerability, there's courage, there's so much story and heart, and it's one of the things that I'm most passionate about. So tune in for episode three, Brushstrokes and Business Plans, the Case for Art Entrepreneurship.

Hey, artist friend. This is Mariana Durst from the Liberated Artist Podcast, a space for unvarnished conversations about selling art online from a place of artistry, integrity, and courage. So whether you've got yellow ochre under your fingernails or clay dust on your jeans, I'll be your go-to guide as you bridge the gap between art and entrepreneurship. Your art isn't meant to stay stacked against the studio walls. Ready to walk this path together? Let's get started.

There's this topic that very often comes up in my weekly mastermind meetings, and it is that of beginning a business. There is just something so fascinating about a person who is willing to put themselves out there in a way because they believe so much in something. And I love this. I love nerding out with my masterminds about how... to develop a business. And we even used to have a group where we mentored other business owners and their development of the business and brand and all of that stuff that was pre-COVID. And it was so much fun to develop a community around building a business. And it's because we're a rare breed. I know it kind of seems like everyone and their mother has a brand or is an influencer or whatever, but really building a business out of something that you truly believe in is not the norm. And today I'm going to make the case for how artists are especially well suited for entrepreneurship. 

So first a little background about me. My dad is... an entrepreneur and he has been for pretty much most of my life having his own business. And this is my reality of like what I was exposed to growing up. My dad was the boss and he made all these decisions and he always managed his time coming back for lunch every single day, coming home for lunch and then taking a nap and then going back to work. And that sort of agency, I just thought it was normal. And it wasn't until I was an adult where I realized like, hey, not everybody gets to do adulthood this way. My great grandfather was also an entrepreneur. He had several businesses, I believe. He cut hair, he also sold bottled water, was one of the first people to do that in the area where he lived and he sold fruit. And... So I don't know, I have always considered entrepreneurship to be in my veins. And this inherited passion led me to create four creative businesses from the ground up in the past 20 years. I know exactly what it feels like when that little seed sprouts in your heart and transforms your life. suddenly all you see is possibility. 

The challenges that you foresee, you're kind of excited to tackle. And those butterflies in your stomach are usually super excited, but they can also be a little bit terrifying. And there's this rush of momentum and motivation through your veins that you can't stop. It's almost like this tidal wave. that takes over you. Every single time that I created or when I was about to create a business, I felt these things. I almost felt like I could not, not open a business or create a business and do something with this creativity that was just overflowing. I saw the possibility and the impact that it could make in my life, but also other people's lives. And I also saw myself enjoying it and spending my days doing the things that brought me light and joy. 

My entrepreneurial journey, which I'm very surprised and shocked to say turns 20 years old this year, has been so winding and multifaceted and evolving. that it allowed me to not only live and have this, you know, very real experience of what it's like to build a business out of my creativity, but because now I help artists sell their art online, I also have this broad experience of seeing what it's like for other creatives. And we all have all of our own journey that is so unique to us and our circumstances. 

But there are certain threads that are very common among all of us, all of us artists who are out there trying to sell our art ourselves. The crossover between art and entrepreneurship is wild. There are just so many things that we can leverage as creatives. important qualities that an artist shares with an entrepreneur is that passion for exploration, the ability to let a question form in your heart and relentlessly go and find the answer. We do this when we are creating art and we are going through our creative process, but as an entrepreneur, we also find that exploration fuels our idea tank of what kind of business is this? What can I do with these skills that I have? What does the audience or what does the world need from me? And how can I give it to them? 

There's also creativity and innovation. Without these two things, there's no way that an entrepreneur could build a business. This is 100% baked into the artistic process, right? As an artist, it is one of your major tasks to express your creativity and to come up with innovative ideas that you put on the canvas or make into a form. 

Another quality that artists and entrepreneurs share is taking risks. You wouldn't be an artist if you weren't taking risks every time you went to create. If you go to create and you know exactly what's going to come out the other end and there's zero risk involved, where's the art in that? It's maybe closer to a craft than art because art in and of itself means that we have something at stake. We have a degree of vulnerability, therefore there's a baked-in element of risk. If you don't have the tolerance for taking risks and you want a safe route, then entrepreneurship is definitely not for you. 

There are so many times where entrepreneurs fail and their success doesn't come from getting it right 100% of the time. Their success comes from having the resilience to bounce back up, to learn, and to grow, and to evolve. And you're doing the same thing if you're creating as an artist. So many of my clients come to me, and they're so comfortable making their own art, but they don't know how to talk about it. They've been working on it for a long time. narrowed down their artistic voice on the canvas or in clay, but they haven't yet articulated what their voice is going to be as a business. But going through this journey of finding your voice as an artist and finding your voice as a business is not all that difficult. It's truly an exploration that goes inward. 

First, to dig for your story, your values, your approach, your curiosity, and the questions that you ask all the time, those lenses with which you see the world. And as a business, the journey is also internal, where you have to figure out how you're going to position your business in a way that stands out from the market. But then you turn to the external to see who your people are. Who is the best case scenario for you as a business? That person who stands to gain the most from your business and who can also be an evangelist for your business as well and become a fan. OK, so maybe it's a little bit of a stretch. trying to position finding your artist's voice and your brand voice, you know, as similar things, similar journeys.

But really, if you are already on this journey to find your voice as an artist, all you have to do is take that same process or a very similar process and define. how you're going to make that really easy and accessible for your audience to understand. Finding your voice as a business is a journey that combines the internal with the external. And it can be just as wonderful as finding your artistic voice. 

Another fantastic quality that artists and entrepreneurs share is the desire to say something. I really don't believe that art could the artist's desire to communicate something. And the same thing comes for businesses. If we don't have anything to say, if we don't have a point of view or something that we truly believe in, then there is no business. A painting that you feel tepid about is not gonna be as successful as one that you are truly loving and amazed with. And the same thing goes with a business. You can't really invest all of this energy and time and effort into creating something that you just can't stand behind. So entrepreneurship is a bubbling up of something that you have to offer, while art is the same thing, but with something that you have to say. I hope that now I've sold you on the idea of artists entrepreneurs. I mean, there's just all the raw material there, right? Well, almost. 

There are a few things that are sometimes hard for artists to tackle in order to reach their ultimate level of entrepreneurship. So here's a few things. Number one, mindset. I'm pretty sure that a bad mindset is what keeps artists who want to share and sell their work from doing so. When you're an artist, you do have to struggle with other people's mindsets and including your own of what being a successful artist looks like. Some people might say that there's no way that you could be a real artist unless you have a gallery representing you. That you can't be a real artist if you're trying to sell your work. You can't be a real artist if you're not suffering through the artistic process. All of those things are meant to keep us small and are things that we need to actively reject in order to be the best entrepreneurs that we can be. Imposter syndrome, which shows up in so many different ways, is really a fear of rejection. And it can show up in very different ways, which is why it's so difficult for a lot of people to identify it and fix it. I mean, imposter syndrome can look like telling yourself that you can't learn something new. It can come up as shyness of not wanting to do the work that it takes to sell your work or at least get it seen. Imposter syndrome can also show up as perfectionism. It's one of the sneakiest disguises that imposter syndrome loves to wear. It gets to that point. where you make yourself get so busy perfecting things and getting them just right, that it keeps you from actually sharing the thing, sharing your art, sharing your website, sending out that email to your audience, and you're completely justifying that because, oh, you want it to all be perfect. If you don't get a handle on imposter syndrome, it can really keep you small, and it can really... hurt you as an entrepreneur. I happen to believe that a little bit of imposter syndrome is not a bad thing. I think that if you are operating in this zone of a little bit of imposter syndrome, but a little bit of risk, you are actually growing. And if you don't feel that, maybe you're staying too safe, and maybe that's not optimal for growth and development and evolution. But, when it starts getting a little bit troublesome is when imposter syndrome is truly holding you back and it is your operating method of making decisions. So a suggestion is to just acknowledge imposter syndrome. To see it for what it is, it means that you're doing something risky, but to also say, okay, imposter syndrome, I see you, but I'm okay. I got it. I'm going to do it anyway. and just let it take the backseat and do the thing that you need to do. 

Something else to watch out for is lack of clear goals. When you set out to build a business from your creativity, it's so important to have clarity around why you're doing this, why you're putting all these resources, time, energy, money. into this. If you're not clear about what you want your business to do for you, then how can you get it to do it for you? Does that make sense? You're on a bullet train to burn out if you don't have clarity around your goals. Shanna Skidmore, inside her wonderful program, The Blueprint Model, taught me how to really define what enough was for me and to engineer my business to help me reach my actual goals. And that way I know that I'm working enough and that I'm not overworking, trying to accomplish these unaccomplishable goals. Every single one of my goals, the metrics that I wanna reach is built around me and not somebody else's version of what a successful business looks like. And having a real understanding of what your goals are and why they're important is such an essential component of a sustainable business. Without clear and defined goals, it's very hard to have focus. It's so easy to just shoot ideas. And I know as an artist, it's so easy for you to just create and create and create. But creating without strategy for your business? is really exhausting. And having that lack of focus in our inner landscape can really be reflected in the businesses. And I see that a lot with artists who are just beginning, who want to have a load of offers. They want originals and prints, and they want to do licensing, and they want to do coaching and workshops, and they also want to offer commissions, etc. I talked about this in the last podcast episode, where I referred to having too many offers at the beginning of your entrepreneurial journey as those guys from the Deadliest Catch that go and fish in the Bering Sea for crab. And if they get hit with an ice storm when they have all the fishing pods on deck, They're in big trouble because the huge fishing vessel can topple over and sink. And the same thing goes for beginner artists, entrepreneurs who want to take on too much too soon. Without focus, there cannot be a strategy. And without a strategy, there is burnout. 

Another thing that can easily get in the way of artists who want to sell their work is know-how. You probably know your art like the back of your hand. You know your process. You know how to get into flow. You know what your subject matter is. You know how to create wonderful pieces of art. But when it comes to selling your art, there's so many things that you have to be good at that is hard to learn them all. There's marketing and everything that falls under that. There is branding, copywriting, web design, email marketing. welcome sequences, et cetera. There's also the digital know-how. Everything from installing a newsletter form on your website to actually building a website. It's hard, those aren't things that are baked in. 

The great news is that there's never been a better time to be an artist, a self-representing artist, than it is today. There are so many tools out there that make it so easy for you to build your own website, to collect emails from your patrons, and to market that… It's really simple nowadays, way easier than it used to be 20 years ago. 

The key here lies in balancing what you can take on yourself and learn how to do versus what you can hire an expert to do. Because as we all know, our time is... precious and if you are wasting your time, time that you could be using at the studio, building the back end of your business, then how are you going to have anything to sell at the end of the day? So if you have resources to hire out those headaches, then by all means, go ahead, hire that web designer, hire that branding designer, hire that copywriter. Anything to make your life a little bit easier and have you spending more time at the studio is well worth an investment. This way, you're not second-guessing whether something's good or not. You can go with a pros, someone with experience that can deliver in record time and way less time that you could do on your own something that is high quality that you feel super proud to put out there. 

There you have it. Today, we talked about why artists make the best entrepreneurs. We talked about all the things that entrepreneurship and art have in common and how we can leverage those qualities to become better at doing business. We also covered a few of the things that artists specifically struggle with and how to work around them. I hope you enjoyed this episode and that you remember that your art isn't meant to stay stacked against the studio walls. Talk to you soon. 

Today's episode was brought to you by Mariana Durst Studio's prolific and profitable artist quiz. A quick quiz to assess your marketing prowess, learn your superpowers, and get a personalized plan to overcome overwhelm and get your art seen and sold. Your art visibility plan awaits at marianadurstudio.com/quiz. 

Thanks for listening to the Liberated Artist Podcast. Be sure to visit liberatedartistpodcast.com for show notes, bonus materials, and to subscribe to get new episodes dropped straight into your pretty little inbox when they're published. If you enjoyed today's podcast, I invite you to follow or subscribe to the show wherever you're listening so that new episodes magically appear on your feed. If you have any artists in your life who desire to or are selling their art online, then please be sure to share this episode with them. Want to connect? Me too. Let's continue the conversation on my Instagram @marianadurstudio.