 Well hello and welcome to this video. Now understanding these five things to focus on in your art business will help you get set up for success from the get-go. The worst thing you can do is somehow blunder into the year with your fingers crossed kind of hoping for the best. Now unless you take control and decide on the results that you would like for your business you will get results they're just not going to be the ones that you actually probably are looking for right now. So for example you might have exhibitions with no sales, applications with no response, marketing effort with five people that join your mailing list you probably get the idea and I don't think that you want those as your results this year. So if you prefer to decide exactly what you want and plan a strategy to get yourself there then this video and this whole channel is going to be for you. Now in case we haven't met I'm Sophie artist coach and entrepreneur helping artists just like you to make more sales by building that profitable art business. On this channel you'll find lots of playlists on all things art business related you'll even find one where I share a little bit of my sketching challenge that I'm doing at the moment. One year long sketching challenge where I was trying to sketch every day it's kind of more like every other day at the moment but you know what I'm really happy with that. At time of shooting I'm going to be doing day 71 and I would never have thought when I started out that I'd be this far along. So if you want to follow that make sure to have a look at the links below this as well. Okay let's talk about those five things that you need to focus on in your art business this year. I feel a drumroll coming I feel like you're going to know what my number one is going to be it's always the number one it's the thing I talk about all the time. So if you're a regular viewer or if you're a customer of mine you're all going to shout out together number one and by these by the way these aren't really in priority order they sort of are but not really. Number one drumroll create your business plan and that's where you go oh yes I know love it or hate it the business plan is your guide to building a successful business right I'm holding it like that's if I'm holding it in my hands I could do it's over there silly me but imagine that I've got a business plan in my hand this is your roadmap to success if you like if you don't put one together you're kind of letting yourself down in a way I'm going to just give you a few of the highlights of why I think having a business plan is perfect for you well first of all you're going to help it's going to help you with finding out how much money do you want to make in your art business how much of that is profit how much of that is going to be a salary that you're going to draw down into your bank account it's going to help you to choose which products and all services to create and which ones you should focus on first creating that business plan is going to help you work out your ideal target market and that perfect customer they always talk about the ideal customer avatar and the perfect audience for what you are actually selling right all right having the business plan is also going to help you get the pricing correct right this is such an important part you work out what it is you're going to be selling you work out who you want to buy and you've also got to work out what is your pricing strategy so all of that is in the business plan it's also going to help you to know how to choose which marketing strategies will get your products or and or art services in front of that target audience so that they can buy or have the opportunity to buy I always think they're always going to buy have the opportunity to buy and of course it's going to help you nail your business finances so that you can love counting all that cash and all that money coming in right and that's just some of the reasons why having a business plan is critical without a clear plan quite honestly you could be wasting hours if you're trying trying this thing trying that thing maybe I'll do this maybe I'll do that without actually working out what is the right thing for you you could potentially lose lots of hundreds of dollars or pounds or euros whatever your currency is but you can lose a lot of money as well going down those avenues so many people said to me Sophie I tried selling at an exhibition I'm like hey where was where was the exhibition I was in the middle of nowhere nobody came like it's just you just want to work out what is going to be the best thing for you the best fit for you and how is the best way to build that art business so that it supports you and your lifestyle and honestly having a plan is the number one thing which is why I put it first do check out my little course build your artist business plan because it solves all of this in a flash right you can get in do the plan follow watch the videos get done get out again and you can say to me Sophie I've done that I've ticked off number one so if you want to check out that just grab the link but directly below this video the second thing that you want to focus on in your art business is of course growing your mailing list why I hear you shout out it's the only thing you control right you own it you control it it's your mailing list right when you focus on building an audience on somebody else's platform i.e social media etc and even this platform on I'm on here right this is not your platform that platform could close down tomorrow and suddenly you're going to tear your hair out going well I had 30,000 followers on Instagram who are following me but now Instagram's no more now I have nothing all right it's super important you take control of that and you build a mailing list that is yours so when I started out in my business we didn't have all this online email marketing we had the good old fashioned writer letter and printed out and stick it in and that's I'm not that old but stick it in an envelope put it in the post or put it through someone's door and sometimes I think it was a lot easier it was all about building a list of people who were a interested in coming to an exhibition and be who'd already bought right so customers and interested parties that was the entire focus of the marketing that's all I did was write and send out letters send out invites and that was a really really critical piece to understand when building a business and now we have all these tools to do it online we don't even have to I used to walk the streets with the envelopes putting them through the doors don't have to do that anymore don't have to pay for postage I sometimes think when people say to me so if you have to pay for this email marketing platform yeah try sending out a few hundred letters and see what that's going to cost you all right it's really nothing and there's so many other things you can do on an email marketing platform these days as well so it can be a lot harder to build an audience on social media as well and and sometimes you're building the followers but they're not even the right followers so you don't even know who they are half the time so when people join your mailing list they've opted in they've said yes I want to hear more from you yes I'm interested in what you're doing and if they don't want to hear anymore from you they can unsubscribe all right it's a really powerful tool then you can send emails where you build trust and you communicate with them and you let them know periodically what you have for sale hey get a discount code jump over to my shop as I've just dropped a whole new range of prints and I'd love to offer you 20% off for the next 24 hours because you are members of my studio VIP email list right it's super super powerful and you ask anybody who's really making money in their business they're doing it because they have a mailing list they're not doing it because they're slogging away to grow the followers on Instagram it's turning those followers if you can getting them off Instagram or whatever platform you're on I say Instagram because it's the most asked for thing I get all the time and I'm just like that's great let's focus on building the mailing list so if you can if you're doing social media if you can build a strategy where you move them across from the social media onto the mailing list then you're all good right this is going to be the second thing to focus on this year so what do you need to do well number one if you haven't got a mailing list you need to set one up and number two you need to have a strategy to grow that list for example my youtube channel provides me with people new leads onto my list every single day I mean it's a great what a great platform it's of course not the only platform there are many many other ways and I have other videos on ways that you can grow your mailing list which you can check out below this one all right I'll put links below don't forget you can use ads to speed things up if you have a bit of a marketing budget consider that discount voucher you know for the very first purchase there's all sorts of things you can do to grow that list as I say check out the videos below this one all right number three talking about marketing this next one we want to focus on in our art business is improving your marketing skills all right it's an area you want to focus on a lot this year any year really but particularly this year every day more and more people are looking to sell online more and more artists are looking to sell online if you're looking to sell online or even offline you're going to need to improve your marketing game if you're not where you want to be business wise if you're not making the sales if you're not growing that email list and you're sitting in a place of frustration you know there's a few reasons why that can be but one of them is a lack of marketing and I see it I see it all the time so whether you sell online or off or a mixture of both this is going to work for you so if you are in charge of your marketing you need to up the game all right so what does this look like typically first up you want to focus where your audience are already hanging out which you'll know once you've completed your business plan all right then you need to choose three to five strategies oh you're going to do that in the business plan as well actually thinking about that I didn't even realize that as I wrote that you're going to choose three to five strategies such as YouTube Pinterest ads PR email networking blogging whatever it is for you and then you're going to decide on what might work together so for example if you decide to do the blogging sending pins to that blog can work really really well and also creating that blog into a video can also work really really well as well and then from there when you have a blog or a video you could offer people a link to where they can either join your email list or whether they can go and buy something already use a weekly planner and commit to doing marketing tasks daily now I know you're saying to me Sophie but I need to paint Sophie but I need to create well if you want to build a business until you get to the point where you can outsource the marketing stuff you've got to do it all right you've got to wear the marketing hat the business building hat the admin hat the finance hat the painter hat hmm the creator hat right you need to wear all those hats and be prepared to switch between right this is my marketing I've set aside two hours today I'm just going to do marketing tasks tomorrow I'll set aside three hours I'm going to do it when I first started out in business back in the day as an artist I was told I suspend 50% of my time marketing as a new business and I have pretty much stuck to that rule right if you're at ground zero you've got you know artwork to sell you've got art courses you've got something to sell but you're not making any sales one of the first things you got to do is you got to spend a lot of time on the marketing and don't worry and I've got marketing videos on this channel but there's another kind of good one I think I'm quite excited about this next video I think you're going to want to even subscribe to make sure that you don't miss out on this next video hmm there's some special marketing video coming up after this one all right so you're going to want to improve that use the weekly planner and then you do you do things like for example you say okay I'm going to each week I'm going to write a blog I'm going to create 20 pins that lead to the blog and other things maybe art listings or whatever you've got going I'm going to create a minimum of five Instagram stories and five Instagram posts and I'm going to send out two emails that's how a typical week might look at a minimum right and honestly the more that you put yourself out there and I know a lot of people don't like that but there's lots of ways you can do it without putting your face out there these days the higher the sales are going to be assuming of course you're putting the marketing out to the right audience that comes back to understanding the business plan all right remember somebody needs to see your content or your offer around seven times before they might consider to buy all right so putting one post out I've got new artwork on my website it's just going to sink all right you need posts and emails and video you need lots of different content so people begin to say oh yeah she's got new she or he has got new prints out there's a new print collection that's exciting even quicker if you put all that marketing into growing the mailing list because then all you got to do is send emails to the people who are interested all right number four I hope you're getting this I hope you're going to get excited about this exciting as I'm jumping on my stool here I'm excited number four thing that you want to focus in on your art business is the figures you want to focus in on the numbers all right this often gets totally overlooked in the excitement of the marketing and the sales and the planning it's all very lovely but actually you need to know your numbers all right so if I picked up the phone today do you remember those things those things we used to actually they used to dial like that and you do this puts me to a really old age you're all thinking my god how old are you so you pick up your phone and I ring you today and I say ring ring ring and I say oh hi can I ask you three questions about your art business and you say to me yes I'd be delighted and I say question number one what's your business break even point and you give me the answer and then I say question number two how much profit how much profit did you make last quarter you give me the answer and I say great and lastly all right how many items do you need to sell this month to hit your target now here's the thing thank you very much so how many of you could answer all three questions off the top of your head whether you could or whether you couldn't I'd love to hear from you in the comments below let me know how clear you are with your finances do you understand the sort of financial lingo do you feel at home with it is it okay would you like to learn more are you in profit are you at the beginning of the business have you not set up yet like where are you on the journey and if of course you could answer all those three questions say yes it's me I have the answer to all three questions you don't need to share that obviously that's private but I would love to know if you can answer those questions and then you give me the phone number and I'm going to ring your check now not really I promise so understanding your business numbers even if they are super simple right now it's going to help you to take action on those marketing tasks right it's going to help you to stay on top of your potential sales and of course it's going to mean that you're on the way to building that successful art business that I know that you really want all right here we are number five thing that you should focus on this year to grow your successful art business drumroll again lastly but definitely most importantly is working on your mindset it's crucial all right so what is your mindset your mindset comprises of a collection of beliefs that mould your perception of the world and your own kind of identity it plays a massive role in shaping your thoughts your emotions and your actions in various situations it means that what you believe about yourself impacts your success or your failure so example if you believe you can sell your art you can if you believe you can't sell your art nobody buys art at the moment whatever that belief is that's also true all right so you're often we're hampered by beliefs that we've picked up along our life journey it's not our fault but right now it's a great time to realise okay I run this little thought in the back of my head that says money doesn't grow on trees somebody told me that when I was growing up now for me my father very helpfully told me that when I was younger I must have asked for something and he said very sternly money doesn't grow on trees you have to work for every penny now do you think that impacted me growing up 100% do you think that knowing it understanding it means that you could then change it absolutely thank goodness none of it is set in stone it's all changeable but understanding at the beginning that how we think and then even if we layer that how we feel what emotion is associated to that thought impacts the results you're getting on a day by day basis now I imagine that you would really love to be getting high quality results so if you're watching this and you're thinking oh yeah I remember being told something like that at school you know does that run as a little program at the back of your mind and the answer is yes but pretty much everybody there's very unlikely we're all born with with we're all born pure but unfortunately as we grow up through life we hear things we adopt beliefs we adopt them as our own and then we make sort of actions we have thoughts and actions and feelings according to that but you can change it and so my suggestion to you is I have definitely got a playlist on mindset I'm definitely planning on making more videos mindset specifically on the law of attraction and manifestation because I think a lot of people are using these tools I'm using these tools and I think also sometimes it's given a bit of a bad name oh I'm just going to sit there and meditate the painting's going to sell it doesn't work like that however you can work it so that you can build the business without so much effort and without any stress and negative thought right wouldn't it be amazing if you woke up in the morning just knowing inside you today was the day you're going to make another big sale and you go to your bank account you go oh there it is fantastic all right so all of this is in the realms of possibility where should you start well you know a lot of people start out with a popularized version of the law of attraction the movie the secret if you've not seen it it's a brilliant place to start I think you can just go there's a link I'll find a link and put it below the video if you're like yeah old hat Sophie watch the secret read the book then it's like okay great but what else could you be doing now because watching the movie reading the book is just the start of your journey you know actually understanding how to work the stuff and working it to help you grow your business is another little daily action that you can add to your list and there's so many things you can do so again I will link to the mindset videos that if you're at the very beginning and you're curious then I would suggest picking the secret or the book ask and it is given think and grow rich the power of now and many many many many more there's actually a beautiful book called the alchemist by Paolo Quelo you could start with that one that's quite thin and pretty magical book so again I'm happy to link those below or not link but list them below so we know now that these things are super important we've got the mindset to work on and we've got four things to work on here as well haven't we we got to get that business plan going we've got to build that mailing list we've got to improve on our marketing skills and we've got to really know our numbers and those four things plus the mindset honestly if you can improve all those areas you're definitely going to be seeing a whole level of different results I'm super excited for you please let me know in the comments if this video has been helpful what you'd like to hear more of etc and don't forget to subscribe and give this video some love if you've enjoyed it and look out for that special marketing video that's coming in the meanwhile on screen I suggest if you haven't watch the biggest mistake you can make in your art business in 2024 because it's related to this one all right thank you so much for watching everyone have a great day take care bye