"Fall Harvest" Oil, 6" x 6" Available My first Marketing Boot Camp is next week in Waco Texas and I am so excited! We are staying at the Magnolia Bed & Breakfast and I cannot wait. There is a lot of preparation that goes in to the event. And my biggest task has been putting together the "marketing handbook". The only problem is that ti is 125 pages!
Ok, so yes, I think I got carried away just a bit. But it's hard to limit anything I want to share everything when it comes to marketing your art. I promised to share all of my tricks and not hold back. I just don't know how I am going to cover all of the material in three days! I am still editing with hopes I can shorten the book by twenty or so pages. But I don't think that is going to happen. I figure if I can't cover all of the material during boot camp at least the group will have the material for reading later on! Putting the book together was a much bigger task than i expected. But it's pretty much done and will be ready for my second class in November! It's always harder the first time around!
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For those artists who paint outside, en plein air, it's important to have a great umbrella. I have seen hundreds of them in my workshops and I think this one is by far the best umbrella and value. It's called the Sport-Brella Versa Brella All Position Umbrella and it's awesome.
First off, it's great for protecting you from the sun. It's got a UPF 50+ lining for maximum sun protection. It swivels four ways and has a great clamp. But the best part? It's only $19.99. Seriously I am not kidding. And it comes in red too. As you all know, I am pretty cheap and love a good bargain. One of my students had this umbrella in Cape Cod and I absolutely fell in love with it. Of course when she told me the price I had to order one! Follow the link below to see more about the sport-brella! Ugh. I think one of the most frustrating things we all deal with is trying to stay organized. Specifically I am referring to keeping to-do lists, calendar items, appointments and big picture items organized. And all in one place. And the biggest issue we face? We are all creative people so we like everything to be out in front of us. Because once it's filed away then we suffer from out of site, out of mind.
I have tried binders. I have tried memo books. I have put everything in many different electronic formats. And yet, nothing is working. I do like having all of my appointments in my phone/desktop calendar. But then I have my daily to-do lists and the long term projects that I also want to have at my fingertips. I think both of these need to be in written form. I just get too much satisfaction crossing things off. And I don't want to give that up! So I am going to try yet another system (I promise to share after I try it) but I would really like to hear what all of you are doing to keep your life organized. Please help! It's not too late to find an intern. I just found an amazingly talented college graduate who is looking for work experience and specializes in social media! How cool is that?
I think most of us think that we need to wait until spring to find an intern for the summer. But there are lots of places you can find interns, both paid and non-paid. For right now. Here are my suggestions: 1. Ask your friends if any of their kids (or their friends) need work experience credits for high school. 2. Call your local high school or junior college and see if you can list the intern job with them. Of course art majors might be most interested. 3. Reach out to local art school and colleges and post the job opportunity. Remember you will get a lot better response if you can pay your intern. But you don't have to pay cash. You can offer free painting instruction, a free workshop, some of your art or private painting lessons as an option! Good luck. These young kids are so smart on the computer and know a ton about social media. Just saying. Stop for a second and ask yourself, "Who were your first customers?". For most of us I think it's safe to say that friends were some of our first customers. Friends are a fantastic group of supporters. They love what you do, they promote what you do. And I think you can get them even more involved in your art.
What about asking one of your friends to host an art show for you at their house? Some of your closest friends will gladly open their home to your friends and their friends. (Of course you should always gift them something they would treasure. Probably one of your paintings!) Many of us have a lot of paintings hanging around our studios. What about asking some of your friends to showcase your art on their walls? There is a likely chance they would love to have some of your art for a while to hang on their walls. And the visibility could be fabulous! You can also ask them to share your social media posts and even invite your friends to a fun cocktail/painting party so they can see what you do! The more involved they are the more fun you will all have! You may remember a few months ago I built four very large vegetable planters in our back yard. I haven't posted any progress shots for two reasons. First, my original organic tomato plants were a total bust so I ended up tearing them out and replanting them. I also had problems with the watering restrictions (in case you haven't heard there is a water shortage in California) and two days of watering just wasn't enough. So my corn, pumpkin and cucumbers didn't survive. The good news is I now have at least 40 ripe tomatoes and as soon as I have a spare moment I think it will be time for homemade tomato sauce! I also have a ton of lettuce and lots of peppers. But that's ok. Healthy eating it is!
I am about to rip out the dead corn and plant some fall vegetables. That's what I love about Southern California. I get a second chance! Of course I need to actually be at home to do that. Details ... In case you are wondering about the title of this post, it is true that I often garden in the dark. In fact my mom called a few years back (at about 8:30pm and it was dark) and when I told her I was gardening she told me I had to name my book "Gardening in the Dark". Some day I just might do that ... cuz that so sums up my life right now! For the record, I am not complaining. What would you title your autobiography? I can't believe it. My webinARTs course has officially launched. I don't dare try to count the hours I spent creating this course. WebinARTs is an online class that shows you how to build a website and blog for your art business. If you are wondering why it launched four days late ... well ... I have a good reason. The amazing web builder I use for the class is called weebly and ten days ago they launched a new platform weebly4. Needless to say I quickly figured out that I had to redo the entire class and re-film hundreds of hours of video. Yep. That really sucked.
But ... the class is now based on the new platform (that is only two weeks old) and thus it will be current for a very long time! If you don't have a website or you have a website you can't manage on your own or you have an old weebly website then you really need this class. I am not kidding! Check it out.
I mentioned a big idea yesterday on my blog post. This idea is to identify the biggest marketing challenges artists face and then tackle them as a collaborate effort. I am so excite to take on this project. In the next month I will select the top 12 challenges and then we will all start the reseach, submit information on the public google doc and figure out how to make this work for each of us. While the information will be available to everyone I do have an idea on how to recognize the biggest contributors in this project (and take them with me to the next level). Find out about all of this, and more, on Wednesday's Artists Helping Artist show. It airs at 7:00 am PST, 10:00 am EST.
Click here to listen to the show. Help us get started on this project. Help us identify the challenges artists face by filling out the form below! It's true. We are going to change the art world forever. How?
First off I want all of us to create a list of all of the biggest challenges we face in the art world today. Things like "how can I get galleries to notice my art?" or "How can I get more people to follow my blog?". I hope it's a big list. Just go to the google doc here and add as many items as you want. Once we have a decent size list then we will identify the ones that we want to solve. We will then work together as a group to solve the issue, tackling a new issue every month. Together. And the entire process will be shared online so everyone can contribute and follow our progress. I can't do this by myself and I know if we all work together by identifying the tasks, doing the research and coming up with a solution then we will see huge results. The last step will be for each of us to personalize the solution for each of our art businesses. Does this sound like a good plan? Let's get started. Please follow this link and provide your input! Ugh. September is already two days behind me and I am really bummed. Painting the thirty paintings with my Project Runway theme was a blast and I enjoyed being on auto-pilot all month. I knew what I needed to paint and painted every day. Unfortunately, I didn't have much time to stay caught up with all of my projects.
Uh-oh. It appears that sh*t has hit the fan. Somehow I hadn't realized I would be home a total of six days in October. That's right, six days! Are you kidding me? How could I possibly have done that? My to-do list is staggering especially since I had to put off everything these last two weeks because I had to re-film my entire 2016 webinARTs course. (My webinARTs 2016 course is an online class that teaches you how to build a website for your art. It also teaches all of you how to upgrade your website if you have an old website.) The fabulous web builder that I use is weebly and they announced a huge update ten days ago. Once I started looking at the update i realized pretty quickly that everything I had filmed for the course was obsolete because the platform and themes were different. So I had to scrap all 24 videos and start over. From the beginning. Oh my goodness! The good news is the new, shiny, totally redone webinARTs 2016 class will be launched this week. But it has been what you might call "twice the work". And stop laughing, this is not funny. Somehow in the six days I am home this month I also have to finish commissions and finalize my Marketing Boot Camp notebooks. Plus I have a workshop this month, a really big idea and big project that I am launching in November. More about that later. So the "let down" is really a realization that my fun painting days are now a lot more crazy and stressful. Why do I do this to myself? Help! |
Leslie
Mom. Wife. Artist. Marketer. Teacher. Radio Show Host. Archives
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