 Hello and welcome to this video where today I'm sharing the five stages of your successful art business. Now this is part of our art business success path that sits inside our membership and it's not something that I've shared yet publicly so get excited as I walk you through exactly what we teach in our membership, the Art Business Academy. Now these stages are of course super important because they walk you through step by step how to get from starting out as an artist to having a full-time income and making a living from your art or creativity. If you're new to this channel then welcome I'm Sophie Mehear and I do just that. I help you make a living from your art and creativity. On this channel I share all things art business related so if you love the content don't forget to give me a thumbs up, a like, subscribe to the channel, hit the bell to get notified every time I post a new video. So let's go ahead and dive into those five key stages of building a successful art business. Now on our art business success path we have the five stages but we also have a pre-stage that's sort of stage zero if you like and that's our vision stage and that's where you might be doing things like actually creating a clear vision working out what it is for yourself what is it you want to create what kind of business do you actually want to put together so at this point you haven't committed to doing anything you're sitting in that vision that dreaming state if you like. You're also working on developing your creative practice now I did a video on this so if you check there you'll see the link directly to a video on how you can develop your creative practice as a professional artist also be sort of professionally setting up so you're getting yourself ready to actually make that commitment and say yep you know what I'm going to do this like I'm going to build an art business okay so in stage one this is the creation stage so at this point you're actually creating or making the products or services that you're going to be selling you're also going to be doing that all important business plan now I'll put some links below this video to other videos and resources I've got on building your business plan but this is of course a crucial part to building a successful business. We'll also be looking at some big picture planning now if you love planning the way I do again I'll put some other resources below this video to other videos I've done on planning but the big picture planning the business plan and working on your products and services are all part of stage one creation so in stage two the foundation stage this is where you are literally laying the foundation stone for your business it's all those things that a lot of artists like to avoid it's getting your marketing set up it's getting your social media set up it's getting that email list set up sales platform set up and also of course all your time management tools things are going to help you stay on track and help you get to where you want to go. So stage three is the launching stage you are ready to open the doors to the world you have an art business launch event make it official get out there and celebrate you'll build your first audience you'll start working on that marketing routine and maintaining that routine so things start to work for you you also at this point want to be looking at covering at least 50% of your core outgoings every month so you start to make some sales get excited you should be. So stage four is momentum that's when you've really got things going and now you're looking at taking it all to the next step you reach monthly break even that's when there's money coming in to cover everything that's going out and that's happening month in month out and that's a really good stable place to be and a great place of course to then build from you're going to be also building your audience so you want to increase your audience by at least 50% that audience is starting to grow your year is going to be fully booked up you know that point where you're like oh I can't fit anything else in this year I'm going to have to put it in next year that's what's happening in the momentum stage you can also close that stage by start being in profit so you've gone from break even into at least 25% profit so a lot of people will stay in that stage for quite a while as they start to build things up and that's great okay that's brilliant because stage five is really where you want to be going so stage five of course is success so this is the final stage and it's not the end because what we always suggest is that when you reach stage five you go back round the stage one and you start improving and you work your way through through again but at this stage you are able to replace that full-time income you I've got things really on a roll you're looking at outsourcing even building a small team if that's what you want to do you've really created a balance now in your life so between your business and your creativity and your personal time things are nicely balanced the way you want and you have created your dream art business not anyone else's but yours exactly the way you visioned it right back at the beginning and like I say at this point then what we suggest is instead of saying I've got stage five that's it there's nothing more there's always more if you'd like it of course so then you go back to the beginning and you start to relook at things again and say okay maybe I want to develop more products or services maybe I want to take a business partner or I'm going to expand into a building or there's all sorts of expansion things are going to be happening as you sort of move out of stage five and you go background into relooking at the plan and relooking at what you could be doing next so it's kind of a nice circular thing so really what we do when we welcome people into the ABA our membership program is the first thing you do is work out well where am I on this path so if you want to play a fun game just listening to the video you could just work out roughly where you might be on the path and here's a here's a quick hint most people think they're further along the path than they really are all right and so you know if you haven't got all those foundational things done yet you need to focus on that and you're going to stick right back at that point and that's okay there's nothing wrong with being in those early stages get excited because once you've got all that stuff in place you can move forward I think one of the biggest mistakes artists often make is like I've made something I'm going to sell it and then suddenly there's a lot of backtracking and it's like oh wait a minute I haven't got a website or I haven't got this or should I have done that and that's when the overwhelm can come and it can be super frustrating because you know you've got something that you haven't filled in all the pieces and you're trying to leap from here to here and it doesn't work too well and we like a nice system that walks you through things keeps you stable keeps you grounded you just focus on the bit that you're focused on you don't have to worry about anything else so if this sounds like something you're even just slightly interested in click below this video or look below this video and there's a link to where you can find out more about our art business academy there's also a free training that you can watch if you'd like to watch that as well otherwise thank you so much for watching today's video if you liked it give me a thumbs up shoot me a comment let me know below this video what stage you think you're at and even put a photo of what you're doing we'd love to hear from you as well alright thank you so much for watching I'll see you on the next one