 Wouldn't it be great if we only needed one tool to build a successful art business? The fact is on your route to art business success, you're likely going to need a few tools to put your business together. But there's only one that's really gonna make or break you. And that's the tool that's gonna enable you to make the money that you truly deserve. And I'm going to dive deeper into how that works in just a moment and share five things that you're also gonna need to be crystal clear about in order to gain that success. Well, hello and welcome or welcome back. My name's Sophie and I help artists just like you to set up Market and Grow, a profitable art business doing what you love. And if you'd like more tips and tricks on that very topic, then you're in the right place. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel and hit that bell to get notified every single time I post a new video. So what is this one tool that you need in order to build a highly successful profitable art business? Well, if you've watched my mini workshop that I'll link in the card up there, the top three secrets to art business success, then you'll likely know what it is. But don't click away because I've got some additional information that I didn't share on that workshop that I want to share in this video today. It is, of course, having a clear step-by-step plan to enable you to get to where you want to achieve the very things that you set out to achieve. In other words, your artist's business plan. Now, likely, if you haven't got one of those, you've got a little bit of resistance. Maybe you're saying to yourself, I just haven't got the time to do that. Sophie, I work full-time, I haven't got time to write a business plan. I don't really understand what should be in it. I don't really know why I should be doing it. I'm not convinced. Is it going to make the difference? Will it really enable me to make the money or is it just a few hours of my time that I could be painting and creating instead? And maybe I'm not even sure what products or services I actually want to sell or how much money I want to make anyway. I'm so unclear and it's staying in that lack of clarity that's really stopping you from moving ahead, right? Because as we discovered from my little training, the number one thing you really need is clarity. Clarity about what you want. So if you haven't worked that out yet, you're not sure about your big vision, what it is you want to achieve, then you wanna make sure to watch that little mini workshop. As I say, there's a link on the card, but I'll also put a link below this video as well. And of course I absolutely get this. You definitely need to know where you're going before you start making a plan to get there, right? But if you are clear on where you want to go, 100% you need a plan to get there. Otherwise, you're gonna go on the scenic route over here or you're just gonna spend months and years of your time kind of going round and round and round in circles never getting where you want. And we talk about a lot more about as I say in that workshop. So if you haven't checked it out yet, do so after this video. But right now, I want to share with you five things I say I didn't talk about in that video that are really, really important in terms of building a profitable art business. So let's go ahead and dive into what those are. In order to be highly successful, you're going to need these five things, all of which are covered in the process of putting together your artist's business plan. Number one, you need a high quality offering. Now, whether it's artwork, it's products, it's physical products that you're creating or digital products, or whether you're offering art services, you need something that people are already looking for. You need something that's being searched for, that's being wanted. You need to know that there's maybe a gap in the market. You need to understand that what you're offering is something that people already want. Because let's face it, if we create something over here that we really love but nobody else is kind of into it, it's going to be quite tricky to sell. So you need a high quality offering that somebody out there is likely already looking for. And you'll know that by the time you've gone through the business plan, all right? Number two, a clear niche and what we call a USP, that's a unique selling point. So what are we saying here? We're thousands and thousands and thousands of artists all out there or creating something magical and wonderful. How do you stand out? How do you declare this is what I do and only this? And how do you stand out from other people who do something similar? So that's claiming your niche and understanding what makes you different, the unique selling point. Because if everybody out there is selling the same thing or if you're selling lots of different things and you say it's okay, I cover so all these different things. I paint portraits and landscapes. I do some abstract and I do some still life and I do some realistic. Oh, by the way, I also paint in oils and watercolors and pastels. It's going to be so confusing for your audience to work out what it is that you're actually specialized in. What is the one thing that they want to come to you for? What do you want to be known for? So having a nation, understanding what makes you stand out is critical in building a profitable business. And again, you will have worked that out once you've gone through the process of your artist's business plan. Number three, this is something we talk about a lot, a clear understanding of that target market. We create this wonderful high quality offering. We've gained ourselves a niche. We know exactly what we offer. We've worked out what makes us stand out. But we haven't really decided who we want to sell that to. Who is the target audience? Who's that ideal customer? Who's that perfect person who's already out there looking and saying, oh my goodness me, I really do want a picture of blue beach huts that reminds me of my childhood holidays. I know who paints beach huts. So we need to claim that niche in order for people to understand and recognize and also search for and remember what it is that we do. Now I'm not saying for one moment you need to be the beach hut queen, but you do need to claim that niche. And it makes it super easy for them to be able to find the target audience and get your work in front of them. Number four, once you've done all of that, then of course you need a solid marketing routine because it's all very well to create the product and to work out your niche and how you stand out and then have worked out that target audience and who you really want to buy your work. But if you're not putting any good quality content out there if you're not marketing to that audience, then they're really not gonna know you're there. So for a lot of you you've probably got some of the pieces of this puzzle. You're saying, that's okay. So if I know what my niche is, I've got good quality work. I've sort of worked out who my audience is but nothing's happening, right? I'm not making any sales help. For the reason you're not making any sales is if you've got all those pieces, you must have a solid consistent marketing routine. And I've got a load more videos about marketing and how to do that best right now. So check out the links below this video as to what you want to be doing in terms of your marketing. And then number five, the other thing that you really need to be doing and that all of these things you work out by doing your business plan, of course is making a consistent sales offer because you can have all of those things in place but if you're not putting sales offers out there, if you're not letting people know, hey, you can buy my thing over here. On by the way, if you buy it in the next 24 hours or the next 48 hours, I'm gonna give you a special discount code or you can buy it over here. You can join this workshop or buy my online course. And here's three bonuses today if you join that course. You need to be always understanding putting special offers out there, putting offers out there, letting people know where it is they can buy your stuff because without that the sales are not gonna roll in. All these decisions folks are made with that one main tool that runs your business and that is your business plan. I cannot stress it enough. I'm obviously highly passionate about filling out a business plan. If you're on my email list, you'll already know that I shared a little story about how that has worked for me and the difference that's made in my life by having a business plan at each point of my story. So if you're not on my mailing list, then you obviously will be blissfully unaware of that story. You wanna get on the mailing list and make sure that you hear all my insider tip bits then grab yourself a freebie below this video and then you will find yourself on my list. Of course you can send me a DM and say I'd like to be on your mailing list Sophie and I will add you there as well. All right, so we now understand that the one tool that you need in order to make a highly successful profitable art business is your artist business plan. How do you go ahead and get that done so that you can save time, save money, avoid all those mistakes. You can make those critical decisions that you just need to make because at the end of the day, building a business involves making decisions. Not sure exactly what you wanna do. You just gotta make a decision and make a start. I'll start with doing that now and I'll work out the other stuff later. Now I have a great solution for you. If you are ready to do your business plan but you're not really sure what goes in it, you want some guidance, some help, you'd like perhaps to be walked through step by step. So I have the perfect solution for you. It's called build your artist business plan. It's our foundational online training course. It's a series of short videos put into helpful modules that walk you through step by step building and putting together your artist business plan. Everything I've been talking about today, everything I talked about in that training, pretty much everything I share on this channel, right? All goes into the blip business plan. There are short, bite-sized videos that I think are seven modules plus a bonus module. Each module has a few little lessons in. I think overall we're around the 29, little tiny lessons, some are like three minutes long, four minutes long, super quick and easy. You can binge watch the whole course in three hours. You can take some notes, you can download our gorgeous artist business plan template and that cash flow template. We've got the numbers, we've got you covered all of that as well and you can maybe go back over. This is how I do it. I'd watch the video, I would do the work, I'd watch the next video, do the work but that's just me. You can do it any which way you like. Join today and you've got 24 seven lifetime access. That means every time we update the course you get the updates as well. We've also just added in a Facebook group where you can go in and ask your questions. Now because it's also August, it's my birthday month, I'm gonna be doing all sorts of extra things this month included in that I'm gonna be doing some little bonus live videos within the group which you can watch back no matter when you're watching this video at some point in the future. You can watch back those videos and they take a deeper dive into each of the modules if you really want to learn even more or if you have some specific questions. We also have a fabulous bonus which is what to do once you've built the plan, right? How do I put the plan into action? That's a little mini bonus training that you can watch that helps you actually execute the plan on a day by day basis. All of this just for the lovely sum of 97 Australian dollars. That's about 55 British pounds and I can't work out what the other you'll have to do the converter but it's really the equivalent of a couple of bags of shopping. So the question you have to ask yourself if you knew that you were gonna make, I don't know, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, $100,000 in the next year in your art business, would it kind of be okay to invest 97 in this course so that you could learn how to? I know I certainly would and I did back in the day. I've got behind me 20, 30,000 pounds or dollars worth of training so that I'm able to speak to you today and understand the marketing, the business I've been doing it long enough. Listen, I would love to have you in the course if you've got any questions, I'll pop them below this video or shoot me a DM over on Instagram. We'd love to have you join. I say the links below this video, go over, check it all out. It's got all the information you could ever wish for and of course there is a payment plan too. So you can get started from just 35 Australian dollars. We hope you decide to join and we'd love to see you inside the course and kind of help you walk through your business plan. Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you on another video. Take care, bye-bye.