I have always prided myself on being organised. It fits perfectly with my “Type 4” nature (see my Feb 25 blog for more about “Type 4”). Two of the things I liked the most to teach in my previous career were Project Management and Spreadsheets. A few years ago, I organised a Christmas weekend sleepover for about 40 family members at a large inn, including room assignments and detailed meal planning/kitchen duty assignments for all for three days. I loved it!! Up until the firemen arrived that is .... but that's another story for another day..... Unfortunately, a trait shared by many creatives is curiosity, so I am constantly being pulled away from what I should be doing by things that look soooo interesting! So things don’t always get done! I mentioned in an earlier blog that I had found and started using a free online software called Airtable. Some people find it complicated, but as someone who also taught database design, I found it wonderful to use, because of its flexibility. You can put anything in there, and organize it any way you want! With age comes wisdom, they say, but also comes a less reliable memory, so Airtable has become the central repository for all the information about Claire Bureau Artiste! Just knowing I have all these lists available frees up my memory for more important things, like, did I remember to chill the wine for supper? In addition to painting, I have also been working very hard on building my Social Media presence, in an effort to get more people to see my work and possibly become collectors. I am inherently stingy, so I avoid expensive solutions (my costs would get passed on to you, so be grateful! 😉). I have found and read numerous free marketing books online, and have spent what I would consider reasonable sums of money to join select marketing courses or groups. They often start by telling you the first thing you need to do is set your goals. But because I am also impatient to get back to painting, I figure: "I know my goals, just show me how to meet them!" A few days ago, I came across two ideas that, I hope, will turn out to be life changers for me. The first was : “Art is sold one piece at a time”. That seemingly banal statement lit up a bulb for me! Although I always felt that there was something in all the marketing stuff I had been following that just didn’t fit, and even though I had been hearing variations of this idea for weeks, it took that simple sentence for the pieces to fall into place! Social Media is not going to sell my work, I am! I have been putting my energy in the wrong place! There is no point in me getting hundreds of followers if they are not looking to buy! Of course the flattering comments are nice and I am grateful for them, but I beleive there is no option for me but to get art physically in front of people so they can fall in love with it. Of course during covid this is not easy, but hopefully it will become easier in the near future! The other idea came from an Art Marketing Group I just joined. I have only been there for three days and already my gears have been switched! Being with people in the same “industry” is priceless! In the first chapter that we were asked to read, the group leader recommended, you guessed it, to “set my goals”. But this time, he suggested reading the following blog if we needed help with that step: https://chrisguillebeau.com/how-to-conduct-your-own-annual-review/ To my delight, this Chris Guillebeau used a spreadsheet to set his goals! Yay! I actually didn’t wind up using it, but it got me looking for software to help in setting and tracking goals. No paper and pencils for this computer geek!! After reading a few reviews of goal tracking software (free of course!), I got something called ClickUp. I watched a few tutorial videos and tried it out. I created Goals, then broke those down into Targets, then Tasks…. It was OK, but I kept thinking “Do I really want yet another tool to keep track of?” Plus, I already have a to-do list in Airtable ….. If only…. A quick search of YouTube led me to a short tutorial on how to use Airtable for Project Management! Voilà!! So now I have Goals (well, actually 1 Goal), which is broken up into Targets, which each have specific Strategies, to which I have linked all the tasks I already had in my To-Do list. So anything that doesn’t relate to a Strategy is now in the ‘not a priority’ list and I can feel better not doing it because I know it will not help me reach my Goal! Plus, now I can see all the Strategies that have NO associated To-Do list task, so I know where I need to put more effort if I want to see those things happen! All in one place!! Brilliant! And this means I can more easily identify and ignore the daily distractions that may look cool, but that won't help me attain my goal! So, are you curious what my single Goal is? "To be featured as an artist in a newspaper or magazine within 5 years"! Wish me luck! P.S. If you are also curious about the group I have joined, it is called ArtMarketingToolkit.com
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AuthorMy name is Claire Bureau. Archives
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