Ep 7 How to find your income producing activities as an artist?

In this episode of the « Living from your Art » podcast, I talk about the importance on concentrating your actions initially on income producing actions to be able to make a living off your art!

Transcript:

Welcome to the episode number 7 of the “Living from Your Art” podcast. Once again in my car, Elie Castonguay, your host for this amazing podcast that I started, after reading Russell Brunson’s “Expert Secrets” book. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about marketing.

So anyway, this podcast is for artists who want to make their hobby or their part-time gig, a full-time income and thus living from their art.

In today’s episode, I will talk to you about the importance of actually understanding what an income producing action is. What I mean by that is that, as an artist or as an artist/entrepreneur, you can do lots and lots of different kind of actions in a day, right?

You can create art, you can call clients, you can prospect for clients, you can do admin work, accounting, you can do some workshops to better your craft. You can do lots of different kind of things and all of these actions are important in a way, right? They all have to be done so that you can actually have a business, an income or a work being done, producing some stuff, right?

But you are your own boss, so you decide how much time you invest on this action versus that action versus this action. You are the one and only who decides where your time is invested and your money as well.

This is where it becomes a little bit trickier because, as human beings, there are some things that we are more willing to confront than other things.

For example: calling potential clients is probably not on the top of your list of the things that you like to do, but maybe, creating some artwork is probably on the top of the list of the things that you really love to do.

So, my point is, not that creating art is not good (because this is your business after all!), so it’s really important, but mainly that sometimes we can spend a little too much time on a specific action that we really love to do and not enough time on the actions that are actually income producing.

But what is an income producing action?

Well, to be income producing, it has to bring in revenue/income. So, that could be creating a brand-new promotion about a new piece of art that you did. That could be sending text messages to past clients or potential clients. That could be finding emails of potential clients or sending emails to past clients. This could also be registering to a fair where you can show your art to multiple people in that particular fair. This could also be calling up potential clients or past clients. These are all income producing actions because they will bring in revenues on the short term and long-term timeframes.

Then, when the income is in, usually when you sell something, you sell a gig or you sell a piece of art or a commission for a particular piece of art, then, the next step is to actually produce it, right? To create it! So, that is the next step. Of course, this brings in income because usually, when it’s done, you get paid!

But the first step of this income producing action is actually communicating with people.

This is the most important step in any kind of business. Producing what is ordered is just mechanical; you create what was ordered, but it has to be sold first.

What I really want you guys to, understand or get from today’s podcast is that sometimes we spend too much time on the things that we love to do and not enough time on the things that we hate to do or don’t confront to do, or know that we should be doing more, and we don’t do it more.

So, try to cut your week in small parts, in small time increments.

That way, calculate for a week or two, where do you spend your time? Schedule full days even when you stop working, calculate how much time you spend watching the news, how much time you spend reading, how much time you spend on Netflix, etc. How much time you spend on eating with your wife or husband or kids and write everything you’re doing in a week and try to do this exercise for two weeks and see where your time is invested.

You could be amazed on how little time you actually spend on promoting and prospecting for new business. And this is the main problem of any kind of artist.

To be honest, this is the main problem of any kind of business; promotion and prospecting in sales is the main problem of businesses because they are so caught up in delivering their services and their products.

So, do this exercise for the next two weeks and let me know by email; I’m really interested to see what you discovered.

You can even send to me, if you want, your two weeks exercise of where your time was spent. My email is: elie@livingfromyourart.com; I would love to learn what YOU learned from this exercise. Also, if you took a decision to invest more time on prospecting and promoting your business, and if you realize some of the things that you were doing too much of and if you took some decisions regarding this.

That was it for today, I’m glad that we spoke even if I was the only one speaking! Talk to you soon, I hope that you keep creating, keep pushing! You are amazing and artists are really important for this planet. So, thank you for being who you are, and we’ll talk in the next podcast. Bye.

Art Business Coach
🖥️ Book a free ZOOM call with me: https://eliecastonguay.com/contact/

Be like this cat, get my book here: https://eliecastonguay.com/books