The Thriving Christian Artist
The Thriving Christian Artist
434 - 3 Things I Wish I Knew Starting Out
Looking back at my career as an artist so far, I’m not sure I would change a thing. Sure, I’ve had ups and downs along the way, just as everyone else has. But I’m exactly where God has put me, so how could I ask for anything more?
That being said, there are a few things I wish I would have known when I was just starting out that may have saved me some struggles, both in mindset and in the realities of owning my own business.
In this episode of 5-Minute Mentoring, I’m running down three things I wish I’d known when I was starting out. Hopefully, they will give you a leg up as you go through your journey as an artist, an entrepreneur, or just a person trying to live your best life.
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3️⃣ Connect with God: Discover how to connect with the Lord and discover His intention for you and your art in His Kingdom in my course, How to Connect with God to Create & Sell Your Art. Get more details here ➡️ https://thrive.matttommeymentoring.com/how-to-connect
4️⃣ Ready to truly thrive? Join the Created to Thrive Artist Mentoring Program to discover how to build your art business and live the abundant life Jesus promised you as an artist in His Kingdom! Click here for details and to enroll! ➡️ https://www.matttommeymentoring.com/artmentor.html
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You know, I've been an artist for a long time, probably over 30 years now, and there are a few things that I wish I had known before I'd gotten into this thing called being a professional artist. I'm going to share three of them with you today here on 5-Minute Mentoring. Hey there, I'm Matt Tommy, and over the last 10 years, I've helped thousands of Christian artists all over the world start thriving spiritually, artistically, and in the marketplace, while at the same time building my own super successful art business. If you're ready to bust through the roadblocks that have held you back for years, create the work you love, and really live the life you know God created you to live in His kingdom, then you're in the right place, my friend. Now with over a million downloads, you're listening to the Thriving Christian Artist Podcast. Hey, my friends. So glad you're with me today here on 5-Minute Mentoring. You know, we can all look back on our journey, whether it's being an artist or not, and you say, boy, there's some things I wish I had known before I jumped headlong into this. And I want to share three things that I wish I had known earlier in my journey, if not before I started, just to help kind of contextualize the journey and maybe help to give me momentum and acceleration in my journey faster. Hopefully, that's what these will do for you as you kind of learn from my mistakes and learn from the areas that I've stepped in the potholes. You don't have to do that. That's the whole point of why we do the podcast and write books and the mentoring program and all of that is to help you get those results faster. The first thing is this. I don't know that I realized when I became a full-time artist back in 2009, and I'd been a hobbyist until then, just kind of doing my art on the side and that sort of thing. I really didn't know Well, I don't think I really even gave it any consideration what my time allocation would look like at all. But I surely didn't realize that it would be really half and half making art and then the other half, the admin side of making art. That is... making, ordering, procuring materials, selling my work, advertising my work, emailing partners, building my website, applying for shows, just all the stuff. A lot of people have this idea, oh, I want to quit my job and I'll just make art all day. It'll be great. Yeah, that's great until you realize that you got a garage full of stuff and nobody's buying it because you're not doing any of the administrative stuff. And so legit, it is 50% making art and 50% getting that art out into the marketplace. You are both an artist and an entrepreneur, both full-time, both equally, as you begin to move into doing your art as a business. And that's something I wish I had known a little bit earlier. It would not have been as much of a stretch for me as it was. Secondly, kind of right along with that, number two is all around time management. I really didn't realize that to be your own boss, to be an entrepreneur, own your own business, Being an artist, you've got to be really strong at time management and boundaries. That's something that took me a while to get good at, and it's something I'm really passionate about teaching the folks in our mentoring program now. But suffice it to say, if you're somebody that is really kind of willy-nilly with your schedule and you don't like habits, you don't like showing up at the same time every day, you don't like being in the studio for a certain amount of hours, you don't like deadlines, that sort of thing, it's going to be really hard to be a full-time artist. or even part-time successful working artists. And so I struggled with that a lot at the beginning. I kind of wanted to just make what I wanted to make and that sort of thing, but quickly had to learn that, hey, I got to get a hold of my time management. I got to say yes to the right things, no to the wrong things, set some clear boundaries on my time and energy and resources so that I could focus on what it was that God was calling me to do. And then number three, I think the... Something I didn't realize, but I quickly got a hold of in my art business was that you can accelerate your profitability and the growth of your business through hiring. Now, I can hear some of you say, well, Matt, I can't even pay myself. I'm going to pay somebody else. Listen. If you can pay somebody less than what you wanna make for doing the same kind of job, you're gonna come out profitable. For example, if I can pay somebody$15 or$20 an hour as a studio assistant and get them to make the pieces and parts of my work, gesso canvases, clean the studio, order materials, post some things on social media, whatever it is. And that's going to get me more time in the studio making. That's going to give me more time selling. That's going to give me more opportunity to be in front of my ideal client. Listen, it's worth it all day long. And so you got to know your numbers. You and an artist. But as you start to realize you're getting a little bit of extra capital coming in, you got some money to reinvest. One of the first things that I wish I had known to do, and I learned it later on, but would be to hire a studio assistant. Start hiring to your weaknesses. And even if a studio assistant is not something you need right now, hiring a bookkeeper, hiring somebody to help with your taxes. Listen, you don't need to be spending hours and hours and hours pulling your hair out, trying to figure out how to do all that stuff. You can much much easier. Pay somebody to do that for you. Get it off your plate. Know that it's professionally done and get on with making art. So those three things I wish I had known before I started my art business. I think I would have gotten off the ground faster and experienced acceleration more quickly. But if you'll consider those for your life, I believe that they really will help you start moving your art business in a lot quicker direction and let you move from doing it part-time, maybe even into a full-time, replacing the job that you have or whatever it is that you believe God has for you in your art business. All right? Love you, my friend. Until next time, remember, you were created to thrive. Bye.