 Well hello and welcome in today's video the art business review of 2021. I'm going to take you behind the scenes and share some of my wonderful wins, my biggest blunders and my largest learnings from 2021. Not only as a fine artist but also as an art business owner so stay tuned you won't want to miss this. Well if you're new here then a huge welcome to my channel my name's Sophie and I help artists to build a profitable business around their own art practice. I'm also a fine artist myself as you can see I'm sitting in my studio today so this channel is dedicated to all things art business related whether that's actually from starting up and putting together your business the planning the organization the marketing social media all the things that are involved in running a successful art business that's what we do each week on a wednesday on this channel. So of course if you love the content don't forget to give this video a like because it really helps me to get seen by more people on youtube and of course subscribe to my channel so you get a reminder every time I post a new video. So first up let's look at some of these wins it's really easy when you're doing a review of the year of course to dive into all the wins and I highly suggest that if you haven't done a review that yet that you really sit down and think about everything that went on for yourself and your art practice last year did you achieve your goal you know what were the biggest wins that's something I'm going to share in a moment what were the learning opportunities what did you do well not so well what do you need to change up for this year etc so I'm a really big proponent of doing a big review before you start planning your next year. So some of the wins for me definitely actually I'm sitting in the first win so although I had probably what you could say is plenty of room to paint at home we all know that when you're running a business there are lots of distractions when you work from home so a big win for me was finding a local studio just 10 minutes away where I could actually spread myself and make a huge mess and that's what I say that's what we're filming in today so that's the first big win the second big win was looking at actually getting outside of my comfort zone I took the creative visionary program with Nicholas Wilton and I'm actually taking it again this year because I really wanted to expand my own work I wanted to work at what I liked and what I didn't like there's been a big gap since I was a professional artist back in the UK and I haven't quite found my groove I've tried a few things and if I'm sure a few of you watching can relate you know you love to paint you love to create but you perhaps haven't quite found what it is I certainly did do and I don't want to just pick up where I left off I want to actually develop and stretch myself new so taking that program and and finding a time in and amongst everything else to do that was a big win another big win was actually taking myself seriously as a weaver I started weaving alongside the painting and discovered that actually the two could really inform each other so but taking myself seriously as a hand weaver and enjoying that texture of wool and fabrics and different things but not only that by the end of the year I was actually running a weaving workshop and I mean doing that twice a month going forward as well so that is a big win sometimes we do something and it's a bit of a side hustle or we do something and it's just a creative expression but I discovered that I really love weaving and the two the two things really complement each other and then another big win on the business side is myself and Vicky my business partner we really really decided to up level our art business academy this year on membership programme so we took a lot of time out to actually put together a five stage path every single step you need to build your business and all the content it was kind of like a mega course in the background of our membership and it took of course far longer than we thought and actually at time of recording we haven't quite done the last couple of pieces but it's nearly all there and so we're really proud of that achievement and we can really sit back and say that we stand a thousand percent behind our art business academy so that was a huge win actually forcing ourselves to get down and plan it all out and try different things and actually decide on the final five stages and then put all that content together okay next up some blunders who doesn't love a blunder we might call them a mistake but I often find that you know a mistake actually is a chance to learn something so I've decided to call them blunders really right first up was actually booking myself into an art fair when I didn't have any work and so I put myself under huge pressure to having come out of that program to actually change my art and then complete an entire collection for the art fair and of course I didn't pull it off so I had a lot of work that wasn't finished that I didn't stand behind I wasn't happy about so that was a massive blunder so could I pull out of the art fair yes I could but I decided to go ahead and just see how far I could get so for me that that was that was probably the biggest blunder of the year just not allowing myself time to create the product first blender number two was really not sticking fully to our business plan now a lot of people might say well it's been COVID it's been difficult we've had to do things in different ways and sure you know we definitely have to do that we definitely have to work in and around that but as a creative we all love to add things in and so therefore I was forever saying oh let's add this in let's add this in let's do that and so that was a massive blunder because it sent us off in different directions that we didn't really need to be doing last year and then really the third blunder was not fully looking after my health and those of you that have been following my journey for a while know that I've had a big sort of health journey and therefore for me it's super important to look after my health and I kind of started to feel better again and so therefore I let some of the routine go and so a big blunder for me was the fact that I lost my energy I wasn't sleeping and I didn't really put the attention on health like I should have done so last but not least having looked at some wins having looked at some blunders let's get them really important part and that's the learnings and I hope you're following along with me and making sure that you're writing down wins for you and blunders for you and now let's look at those learnings because that's what we can really take into the next year well the first learning for me was actually that as a creative I really can put the weavings and the paintings together you know a lot of times when we express ourself in different ways we say well they don't really sit together you know I'm doing something completely different over there and really I advocate to focus on one thing and do that thing really really well so it felt a little bit hypocritical to suddenly be saying well I paint and weave but until I got to a point where I realised that one really informed the other they're both about colour they're both about texture they're both about the same sort of content as well now so actually discovering that I could pull those two together and I will be having an exhibition with both really side by side I've done a couple of open studios with them into mix but this time they're going to be a brand new collection that's worked together the paintings next to the weaving so they really will sit together so that was really a good learning and it's definitely building my excitement for this year to come so the next learning for me is really to allow the time to fully explore the painting you can see some paintings behind I've definitely been dreaming about those and I'm definitely going down that abstract path and I've gone down that abstract path and now I'm allowing myself to see that right to the end and you know what I think I think I'm probably going to end up a little bit where I've been most of most of my career which is having something vaguely recognisable on the canvas I've really explored the abstract thing and you know what it's probably not for me so I need something that's just a little bit representational because that's what I think about that's what I photograph that's what lights me up that's what inspired me to watch this space because I've definitely taken some interesting photographs in the last few months and I'm really inspired to see how I can translate that onto the canvas and of course onto the weaving so yeah really allowing plenty of time to fully explore the creativity that's the next learning third learning of course is to keep on learning and that really is to keep up pushing yourself out of the comfort zone so I've signed up for the creative visionary program again and I'm really excited to go through the different stages I've also had more a sort of notice I knew that it was coming up and I've managed to map it out in our annual planner to allow plenty of time for me to actually dive into that whereas it kind of I've sprung upon me last year and I signed up and we were in the middle of a launch and it was all very messy so this time I've enabled myself to actually block out those three months in the year so that I can devote more time to doing it and learning number four especially right now we need to be thinking about this in January and that of course is really to have a simple business plan and stick to it we really really noticed that last year you know I was wanting to chop and change and put this in and put that in and come up with this idea and that idea and a massive shout out to my lovely Vicky who said you know what we're actually just going to we're just going to do one thing and we're going to stick to it next year so we have a really simple business plan we're just going to stick to that so I'm going to say that if you're watching this video right now and you're thinking mmm I don't really have a clear idea of what I'm doing next year I'm good with this review bit but I don't really know how to put that plan together then make sure you look out for the next couple of videos and if you're interested too we do all of this stuff over in our membership program right now you can get yourselves on the wait list we will be opening the doors again in March but if that's something you even vaguely want to find out about then check the information below this video as I'll have a link where you can get yourself on the waiting list and you can find out about it before everyone else that's it I hope you'll feel fully inspired to do your own art business review for 2021 to get yourself fully prepared for the year ahead I look forward to seeing you on another video thank you so much for watching take care bye bye