 Hello, today we are looking at the seven simple steps to your artist's business plan for 2022 so that you can start your year with clarity and confidence, knowing exactly what you need to do to get where you want to go. And yes, it all starts with the vision of course, so more on that later. Now if you're new here, a huge welcome. My name is Sophie, I'm a fellow creative and I also love to help artists to build a profitable business around their existing art practice. So on this channel we talk about all things art business related. And if that's what you need for 2022, don't forget to hit the subscribe button. I put out a new video every week on a Wednesday. And if you want to make sure you don't miss that, you want to hit the notification bell as well. All right, are we ready? Let's do this. Make sure that you've maybe got a notepad and a pen ready to take some notes as I walk you through the seven steps that are crucial for your art business plan for 2022. Step one, we call the big picture. Now, before you get down into the nitty gritty detail, we need to start with some crucial basics. And that being all things to do with the big picture. So what do I mean by that? I mean, of course, the vision, where do you want to go? I've talked about this on my previous video about how to make money in 2022. It all starts with really having a crystal clear vision of where you want to go. And this is absolutely critical for your business plan. You want to have a vision, you want to have a mission, a purpose. Why do you actually want to create an art business this year or any year? What about values? What about some goals that you actually want to achieve this year for your business? And then where I like to start everybody off? Yes, it's calculator time. Well, not just now. But it's your turnover goal. It's again, for some reason, a question that gets avoided or people say to me, oh, I don't really know. And I'm going to challenge you and say, I think you probably do know is the difference between knowing and being willing to actually write it down on paper. How much money do you want to turn over in your art business this year? That's not profit. That's turnover. Everything in before the stuff goes out and you get left with your profit. So we need to understand that figure before you can move into anything else. So if you're not sure, you need to press pause on the video and work out. Now, here's the thing that I always say to people in the business planning phase. The very beginning, you might be just taking a guess, unless this is not your first year in business, because you will work your way through the plan. You might need to come back and alter that either raise it or lower it according to what you're selling, how much time you've got, how long it takes you to do things, how you price point things, et cetera, et cetera. So put a figure down for now. This is all part of the big picture. Step two is really, well, what are you going to be selling? And that might sound super obvious. You might say, Sophie, I'm a painter. I'm going to be selling paintings. Well, I'm going to say to you, well, OK, paintings on what? Paintings on paper, canvas, metal, wood board, tiny paintings, little miniatures, ginormous kind of warehouse wall paintings, commissions, ready made. Are you watercolor or oil or acrylic or mixed media? There's a multitude of things and we want to get really specific. Are you going to have a range of sizes? Do you frame? Do you not frame? So all of these decisions you want to make and you don't want to be that artist that says, I do it all. So the really important thing for me when you make a plan is you want to just have what we call key products. Do you want to have a few things, a few things that you know that you can focus on selling and the others are incidental and they can come along along the way? Because what I also know from many, many years in business and doing this myself is you've only there's only finite amount of time. Time is your biggest resource. Everyone thinks that money is that is the biggest resource, but time, all right, you only have 24 hours in a day. Therefore, you really, really, really want to make sure that you use that well, all right, you can't go and get extra time or you can always go and get extra money. So time is going to be your most precious thing. So you want to protect that. And when you're doing your plan and you come onto the products and services, you might want to think, well, OK, what are the things I just need to focus on? You can always make prints next year or you can put together that online course later if it's not your key focus. If it is your key focus, you want to put it in for 2022. But I don't know about you. Do you find that you always write more on that plan than you can really achieve? You know, there are there are just that finite number of hours in the day. You're only going to work creatively well for a certain number of them. Some people say two hours maximum before, you know, things start to deteriorate and you're not working at your optimal level. Then you've got the business side to run. So the really is there's a practical element to just choosing one, two or three key products or services. They're the ones you're going to focus on. They're the ones that you're going to be selling over and over. Anything else can be added in along the way. Other things to consider with products and services. Key part of your business planning. How are you going to price them? What's your pricing strategy? You want to make sure that you're pricing them for profit, right? You don't want to price things and then look and go, Oh, well, I'm only left with two dollars. That doesn't work for me. So you want to make sure that you price them effectively as well and look out for resources on that as well below this video. And once you've done that, you know, my favorite little calculation is, well, how many of the key products or services do you need to sell to hit that turnover figure? And that's the calculator moment. That's the real turning point because when you get your calculator out, you say, my key product is X. It's got this price point. I want to turn over this amount of money. I need to sell hundreds of these or 20 of these or 2000 of these in the year. That's when you can start to get a little bit of feet on the ground and do a bit of a reality check. Is it going to be possible to deliver those and actually market and sell those in the time? And that for me is the magic of the plan. If you don't have a plan, you won't have that calculation. And you won't really know what you're doing next year and you'll go in blind and you won't achieve the goal. So when you do this, you can really, you know, you can fiddle around with the numbers. You go, OK, I need I need to be charging more money or I'll need to become a wizard marketing and get them out in front of more people. Or maybe I need to be more realistic with my five hundred thousand dollar goal for my first year in business. And maybe I need to lower that slightly to match those two things. You don't want to have anxiety and stress because you set yourself a big goal and you need to make, you know, three hundred paintings and sell them for X amount of money, right? You want to make sure that it's also manageable and you're also creating balance. You've got a life to live as well. So just remember that. Oh, step number three and a definite firm favorite. And that's the audience. Once you've worked out where you want to go, how much money you want to turn over, what you're going to be selling and at what price point you need to actually make some decisions around. Well, who's the ideal audience for this product or service? So audience really encompasses anything from that target sector that you're going to market towards. Right down to I like to do work around my ideal custom avatar. Who's that one person that I would be over the moon if they bought from me again and again and again? And we profile them into huge amounts of detail. And I do all of this in my art business academy membership. So if you're listening to all of this and you're thinking, oh, my goodness, me, I don't even know where to start. We help you with all of this. We have resources to do everything that I'm talking through today, including business planning, templates, marketing templates, all the things you could ever need to run your art business. So if you would like to find out a little bit more, we do have the waiting list open at the moment because we will be opening the doors. We only do that a couple of times a year. We will be doing that coming up shortly. So look out for the link below this video that where you can pop yourself on our waiting list to find out more about that when we have that moment in March. So the other thing, of course, in this area is niche. So what is your niche? What do you want to be known for? It's super, super important. It makes your marketing really easy. If you are the artist that does a little bit of everything, you're going to struggle to market that, all right? Because if you're confused, your audience is gone. All right? If you're even slightly confused, your audience is just not interested. They need to know this is what you do. Step four, you've done a lot of the meaty work, all right? We haven't done the money yet. But step four is your research. And I call it vital research because, again, without this, you're lacking in some information. So part of the research is competitors. What are your competitors doing? Have you got a direct competitor that just lives on the other side of the town and is selling exactly what you sell to the same audience you sell to? Then how are you going to stand out? What's going to make you different? What's going to be your unique selling point that's going to make you different and appealing to that audience? So that audience might want to buy from either of you, either of you. We're also going to be looking at things like the SWOT analysis, which sounds really dull and boring, right? And when I very first did my first business plan, I looked at this thing and I thought, I'll do that later. And really, I'm going to suggest you do it first. You get to the research and you do that. What is a SWOT analysis? You're going to list out your business's strengths. What's the strength of your business? Likely, it's going to be your creativity and what you do, but it might also be that you have some experience in business, that's the strength. Or you're pretty organized, that's the strength. Weaknesses, what's a weakness? Well, maybe you have no experience in business. Maybe you're terrible at timekeeping or you don't wake up very early in the morning or whatever it's going to be for you. So you've got strengths, weakness, weaknesses, opportunities. Have you crafted something that is trending right now and there are outlets desperately looking for what you're providing, that's an opportunity, right? What about threats? Well, I guess none of us could foresee and put a pandemic on their SWOT analysis a few years ago, but right now, that's going to be at the top of your threats because we just don't know what's going to happen in the next 12 months. So what do you do once you've actually put together this SWOT analysis? You need to do what are called plug the gaps. So you look down your weaknesses and your threats and you work out what you can put in your plan to mitigate that. So for example, if the pandemic rises, the numbers rise again and in your area you're put back into lockdown and suddenly you can't deliver that live workshop, what's going to be your backup plan? So your plan B might be I'm going to do it virtually and I've let everybody know, you book on it, don't worry because if it can't happen face to face I'm going to do it virtually and this is how I'm going to do it. So you make sure that you have a backup plan because if you don't and you put all your eggs in one basket, perhaps you say I'm going to do markets. That's okay, I've put markets for the whole year, I've worked my numbers, if I sell this percentage of stock at each market, I'll hit my target. Well, what if you can't do any of the markets, right? So this is why we do the research part. We need to make sure that we have a plan in place to cover off when things could go wrong. So step five is your business model. How are you going to run the business? Are you full-time, part-time? Is it going to be a fully online business or an offline business? Or is it going to be half, half? How are you actually going to operate it? Is it just you? Have you got a team? Do you want a team? Have you got virtual people? How are you actually going to run the business? What type of business are you actually running? Do you work from home? Or do you have a business premises? Have you got somewhere already in mind? Or you want to? Perhaps that's your vision for this year to get business premises. Now, last year I got a studio again and it's always a bit of a game changer when you can actually go to your place of work because the distractions are not there, right? And you always get way more done. So perhaps that's going to be part of how you run the business. But you might just say, okay, mine is going to be 80% online, 20% offline. I'm going to run the business from home, myself and one other assistant. Okay, that's how we're going to do things. And you want to make sure that, you know, part of the plan is that you write out a little bit of how you're actually going to do that. What's the process? Supposing you're going to set up an Etsy shop and you've got lots of items that are going on Etsy and suddenly your phone goes mad, ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching, who's going to fulfill those orders? How is that going to happen? What's the process? So all of that can be in this phase as well. Okay, so we're nearly there. We have two more steps to go. And they are critical. I'm pretty sure you can imagine what they are because you're sitting there thinking, we haven't done any numbers and we haven't spoken about marketing yet. So absolutely, step six, marketing and sales or sales and marketing, however you want to put it. Right, they're two very, very different things if you need the two together in order to make that lovely money in order to build a profitable art business. So you want to make sure that you choose some core marketing strategies, things that you're going to be doing day in, day out. If you're not sure about marketing, I will put a link to a playlist for the marketing videos below. So make sure to catch those because I talk about online strategies, offline strategies. I will also be doing an update for 2022. Well, we know signposting, what I would recommend doing as an artist in 2022 to market your art. So we'll be looking at that as well. So you choose a few key strategies, things you can do as part of your weekly marketing routine. And then you're also going to look at things that you do when you actually just, you're going to run something called a campaign. That's when you're actually going to be making your offer and you're actually going to be putting things out for sale and you're going to make those sales. What sales strategy are you going to do? Are you going to offer a discount voucher to everybody who joins your mailing list in order to incentivize them towards that Etsy shop? Are you going to, for example, four times a year, you're going to have a big show and you're going to give people a special offer. I don't know, maybe a bonus. If they buy an original, they're going to get a limited edition print free with that original to give to a relative or whatever it's going to be for you. You want to work out some sale strategies and marketing strategies because without that, you're not going to make that lovely money. One of the key parts of the marketing and sales section, of course, is how you're going to build your mailing list. And I talk about that a lot. So check out the video on mailing list right here because you want to make sure that everything you're doing is leading into building that all important mailing list. Last but not least, step seven, it's the money. It's the finance section. You know, when I very first got into business, I didn't know about you, but I was really fearful around the money. I would avoid the templates. I even had a friend who was a finance whiz and accountant and she used to make me these really complicated, bespoke spreadsheets. And I was terrified of them. And it wasn't until many years later that I simplified the whole thing and suddenly it became a lot easier. And now I'm in a place of like, give me that spreadsheet. I love it. Let me plug in some figures. Let me try things out. And you'll be doing things like a cash flow forecast. That's where you are literally gonna be putting everything that you've talked about into a spreadsheet and working out. Well, okay, this is my estimate. I'm gonna sell this amount at this show. I'm gonna be doing these markets. This is how much I want to make. Are the numbers gonna stack up? So all of this important work that you do in the business plan is really checking that what you said you want to do is practically doable. Now, obviously we know we can set the intention. We can have a clear plan. It's going to be up to you to execute that plan. So like we said before, business is 80% mindset and 20% strategy. So this will give you the strategy, but it's up to you and your belief and your drive, your motivation to actually do it. Now, if you again, if you want help from that, don't forget to get yourself on the waiting list for the Art Business Academy because we also deal with the mindset in our monthly membership as well. So we can help and support you to build that confidence, believe in yourself to actually take the action required. So what else apart from a cash flow forecast should you be doing in here? You definitely want to be listing out your expenses. You want to know what it costs to run your business. I'm not talking about your household expenses, just the business expenses. You might want to do a forecast for the next three years as well just to kind of get excited about where you're going to be taking it. What if you're a brand new and you're saying to me, oh my goodness me, I'm still in hobby status, I want to move to business owner, then you'll have startup costs. You definitely want to get an accountant and or bookkeeper on board, somebody who's expert in that area who can help you and support you. It's always been the first thing I've done every time I've started a business is being go and actually find somebody to do that for you so they can help you structure it. They can tell you what you can claim, what you can't claim. And you just know that you've got somebody supporting you doing all of that as well. And the very final thing, pulling all of this together is a summary page. And the summary page goes at the beginning. And it is literally what we say, it's a summary of the whole business. So if somebody wanted to get a feel for what your business is about, or if you want to build something a bit bigger and you're looking for perhaps some investment and somebody wants to just get a gist of your business, that summary will be a one page that can just go, oh yeah, I see. I see what the vision is, what the key goals, the turnover, the money, how this is going to be done. And you can summarize the whole business down into two or three paragraphs. It's also really good practice because by doing it, you better understand the business that you want to build as well. So it's a kind of win-win situation. So that's it, all right? That's a little bit more detailed than I've ever given out before but I hope you're inspired and excited to get started. 2022 could be your year, the year where you really take your business to the next level, the year where you finally make a really profitable living from your passion. I'm right with you, I'm here to support you. I know you've got this, I know you can do it. And if you'd like to say if you want help, shoot any questions below the video, I'm always happy to answer them. Thank you so much for watching. Take care and we'll see you on the next one. Bye-bye.