Automate your small business:
Well, this may be possible if you're making bath bombs, or something with some level of uniformity, but it won't work for artists! You cannot outsource your art. You can reach someone else how to make production-quality knock offs of your work, but it'll never quite be YOUR work. There are plenty of jobs to hire out when it comes to your business, but if you create one of a kind pieces of art, I suggest you keep the hiring out to stuff like shipping and shopping.
Stick to ONE THING.
To get noticed, to stand out, these small business gurus recommend making yourself the end all be all in just ONE arena. What? You want....artists.....to suppress their talents to appease you by focusing on one medium until they're bored? This is terrible advice for artists! True artists fiddle with multiple mediums every week! What if you haven't even found the medium that will allow you to reach true greatness, and you settle for good? No, artist friends, do NOT stick to ONE THING. Unless that one thing is your heart. Follow that bad birch everywhere.
Assess the competition
How about no? As an artist, other artists are teachers more than they have ever been competition. Assess the market, sure. But keep any ideas about competition strictly to sports. This isn't a competition, and the only one you should be competing against is your former self. No one else can produce your art because no one else sees the world quite the same way you do. Eyes on your own paper, there, Jimmy.
The market, however, watch all you want. Its good to be aware of trends and to use effective tags, but don't think of the art market as competing for sales. Other artists and sellers may be employing marketing strategies you could benefit from, but they are still not your adversaries.
Attending a webinar could be enough to crush your spirit, but don't start restructuring your small business just yet! There are many paths to success, and you could be very close to yours and not even know it. While it's always good to keep learning new techniques to apply to your business strategy, it seems best at this stage to keep plugging away, and apply the techniques that feel right for you. Not being able to match strategies with one guru seller won't break your company, but cutting off what people genuinely love about it, might. If you're going to subscribe to any of these gurus out there, remember that not everything you try on I'd going to be a perfect fit, but when something does got for your startup, you'll know it! What fits your business best, is your passion for it.
