Creative Business Advice for Artist Entrepreneurs

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

• Audio Article – Creative Business Advice
• Your Children Can’t Support You (yet)
• You Would Never Neglect Your Children
• What Did You Learn Today?

Good parenting is one of the hardest jobs on the planet, yet the task of guiding young souls is extraordinarily worthwhile. So are your ideas. So is your art. Extraordinarily worthwhile.

For many of us, our creations and our businesses are like our children, so this bit of creative business advice continues in this parenting analogy.

AUDIO ARTICLE – CREATIVE BUSINESS ADVICE:

“You must parent your ideas into adulthood for them to survive.”
~LeAura Alderson, Cofounder-iCreateDaily.com®

Your Children Can’t Support You (yet ?)

Many creatives and entrepreneurs make the mistake of trying to live off ideas still in their infancy.

If you’ve been doing your work for three years and it’s not yet supporting you, remember, it’s still a toddler. You wouldn’t expect your toddler to support you, right? Instead, consider: what are you doing to support your “toddler”… your art?

Parenting is about enjoying the journey… each day along the way. In the early days of parenting — or really anywhere along the way — we don’t wish our children were all grown up already.

In parenting, we treasure each day of their life. When we can do the same with our creations and the businesses we create to serve them, everything changes and we shift from stressed and anxious to enjoying creating our art and our business.

“Your art is like your children… atomic seeds of you as ideas birthed into the world. For them to survive you have to feed them daily.”
~LeAura Alderson, Cofounder-iCreateDaily.com®

You Would Never Neglect Your Children

Continuing in the parenting analogy, we don’t just have children and then all is well. No… we feed, cloth, and parent them into being all that they can be.

Believe me… we get it. We’d much rather be creating than sales, marketing and building a following. Creators just want to create, right?

However, creators also often like to connect with people and connect their art with people and for people. To do that requires that we engage with others beyond our reclusive creative practice.

Connect and Share

For our creative work to thrive, we need to do the same for it as for our children, by giving it the best opportunity to find its place in the world. Toward that, what are you doing to grow your brand, increase your social following and learn new skills that will help you do all of that?

To parent your art into a sustainable business, you have to learn the business of bringing your art into the world, and you have to do something toward that each day. Parents, parent every day.

Your ideas are like your children; you can’t just play with your “kids”… you also need to feed, discipline, educate, guide and nurture them into stable, healthy, productive and contributing adults. Daily. It’s the same for your work.

“To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business, and your business in your heart.”
~Thomas Watson, Sr., former CEO, IBM, 1874-1956

For your children to thrive you must help them to become all that they can be. Likewise for your business. For every success story, there are years of effort supporting that; most through the daily discipline of creating, learning, and engaging in the art of business.

“Your ideas — like your children — need a home to live in. That home is the business you build.”
~LeAura Alderson, Cofounder-iCreateDaily.com®

What Did You Learn Today?

As parents, we often ask our kids, especially when they are young and in school: “What did you learn today?“

What about you? After all, business is another form of school. It’s a learn-while-you-earn endeavor, and the more you learn the more you can earn.

Just One Thing

If you learned just one thing every day toward your goal and implemented just one thing per week, you would be miles ahead in the creating of a business around your art.  Support systems are also a part of creating. It is creating your business… creating the infrastructure for your art to survive and for you to thrive.

The More You Care… the More You Care!

It is in caring for our children that we grow to love them all the more. Love is born of caring, and caring cultivates a greater capacity to love, to care, and to stick with it through thick and thin.

So the good news is that the more you learn about the industry and profession around your area of interest, the more likely you are to become more immersed. Subsequently, you become more engaged, interested and fulfilled in that aspect of your business and brand growth endeavors.

When you can’t always do what you love, you can always love what you do.

Keep feeding your work and eventually it will feed you. In fact, it probably already does feed your soul.

“Birthing ideas is easier than raising them to significance.
But you must parent your offspring for them to thrive.”
~LeAura Alderson, Cofounder-iCreateDaily.com®

Creative Ideas for Artists Building a Following

It’s important to grow your fan following. Even if you never plan to earn income from your art, you can reach and inspire and serve more people by reaching more people!

The world needs the views and voices, art and innovations of creators now more than ever!  Let’s bring beauty and inspiration, positivity and hope to a world in need… like only art and creativity can.

There are many ways to engage your fans and grow your social following. Here’s just one that can launch into many, which we’ll link to next.

Engage fans by asking them to name a piece of your art:
☀️It’s fun for them
☀️Grows your following
☀️Gets more shares and views 
☀️Gives attention to your creations 
☀️Invites them into the creative process
☀️Helps you see your art through other’s eyes.
~iCreateDaily.com®

More Creative Business Advice and Ideas

For lots more ideas for growing your creative business, check out how to make money as an artist, and also this one on multipurposing and repurposing content.

“The world of the artist and the world of the entrepreneur are not so far apart. The successful artist is she who can find the joy in creating both.”
~LeAura Alderson, writer, editor, creator iCreateDaily.com®

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