I’ve said from the start that the reboot of this blog/website is for my observations, opinions, and all that good stuff. But it’s also an extension of myself as well as a log of my journey and lessons learned as an artist. That means that as straightforward as I am in real life is exactly the kind of tough love and honesty you can expect from my posts.
So today, I’m here to tell you that for me and my art business, it is sometimes about the money. Many artists shy away from talking money, and most market vendors don’t care to share what they’re earning at events. I don’t think I need to tell you how much I earn, except to say that as it’s going now, I can pay all my bills and make some small plans for my future. That’s pretty much all I’ve ever wanted the opportunity to do in life, and I’m just lucky enough to make it happen by doing something I enjoy.
Money can’t be the main reason for your business
If you don’t understand why, I probably can’t explain it in a way that doesn’t make you feel bad about yourself or possibly cry, and I just don’t want to be that guy. While you don’t need to “serve something higher than yourself”, you do need to have a robust and valid reason for being in business apart from turning a profit. The profit motive is a danger you should avoid. Profit will come when you discover the real reason for your business (art or anything else) because it will also align with your authentic self, your personal values, and it will resonate with your tribe. Profit is the result of doing good business, it should never be the reason for doing business.
You need to make a profit
Whether you feel icky talking about money as an artist or not, the bottom line is, if your art is your career, then you have to earn a living doing it. There is nothing wrong with money or profit or having oodles of it. Let’s remember the difference between revenue and profit: revenue is how much you take in, profit is how much you have left after all the bills are paid. Profit allows for new experiments in art materials, classes to learn new techniques, vacations to recharge your creative batteries, buy a newer vehicle to do shows bigger shows that might be further away, and to do so many other things that aren’t part of your current regular bills.
When the event is slow, I focus on what I’m not earning
This is a flaw I’m constantly working on. I’m better now that I was a couple of years ago. I guess because I see more clearly how things fluctuate and that even a week-long string of low sales at markets isn’t the end of the world, even if it is frustrating. What I’m learning to do is pivot my mindset from focusing on the lack of sales to working on something that will provide a better opportunity for sales in the near future. That can be emailing retail leads to see about getting my products in their shops, working on to-do lists, coming up with new design ideas, sketching them out, or any number of other little tasks. I also sometimes just stop trying to do anything like that at all and visit with some fellow vendors. Usually, if I’m having a slow day, others are too and instead of us focusing on that we talk about other things, and laugh a little and that lightens the stress of it so much!
Lesson: Money isn’t why I hustle, it’s what allows me to improve where and how I hustle.
