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Successfully Promote Your Work

Lesson 8 from: FAST CLASS: Become a Working Artist

Lisa Congdon

Successfully Promote Your Work

Lesson 8 from: FAST CLASS: Become a Working Artist

Lisa Congdon

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Lesson Info

8. Successfully Promote Your Work

Lesson Info

Successfully Promote Your Work

So we're actually gonna build in this next segment From the work you did in segment four on branding to talk about marketing because one really important aspect of marketing is having some solid branding that you can then share with the world and it's a way to continue branding using your branding on a daily basis. So before we do that, I just want to, oh, this is uh, this is actually also available if you purchase the course as a downloadable, high resolution print. Um, I love this quote by robert Frost, Freedom lies in being bold. Yesterday I went over these and I'm gonna just quickly go over them again. These are this sort of principles that I like to abide by when I'm in a learning environment, both myself and that I like to encourage other people to use. And the first one is openness. So openness to the possibility that you can be successful and achieve those dreams, those big goals that you wrote down on your vision map yesterday. Openness to some of the ideas that I'm going to b...

e talking about and in this marketing segment, I guarantee I will be talking about some ideas that are going to push your buttons a little bit. Some of you are not going to be comfortable with what I'm telling you. You might need to do in order to get more exposure for your work. So be open and be open to the possibility that you can enjoy all of this even though it might feel a little awkward or hard humor. We did a lot of laughing yesterday, didn't we? Yeah, that was fun and um I want to make sure that we continue to laugh and have a good time and joke around. Um I want this to be an enjoyable for everybody and um and it's I think important that we don't take ourselves too seriously. So we're all in learning mode curiosity, similar to openness, put on that hat of really wanting to know more. Ask questions. That also goes for people in their homes who are watching this. Um don't be afraid to raise your hand and ask a question. Even if you think other people might think your question is silly because you'd be surprised how many people probably have the same question that you do. So push yourself to ask questions. That's why I'm here and now is your opportunity, bravery. We had a lot of brave people get in the hot seat yesterday, Gabby in particular went through four different exercises with me in front of thousands of people. So um that I think you're all brave for being here and for thinking about taking your business, your art business to the next level. Um you know, we live in this world where the starving artist myth still um is still a strong belief system in our, in, in our society and um and we want to break that down and and saying I can do this, I can make a living as an artist or at least part of my income as an artist is a brave thing to do and it can feel really scary. So um community, we're here together. You heard us talk a lot yesterday about community. Um not just in the fine arts segment, talking about um finding and meeting mentors, um making sure you have a supportive people in your life who are going to tell you you can do it. And um Darlene talked about her accountability buddies at work where she checks in with them about what she's working on and what they're working on. Like find your people in um and think of creative, interesting ways to do that. The internet is also another great place for that. You may even meet people through the course of taking this class that you might want to start a private facebook group with or you know start a group with. So I encourage you to do that. We're here, we need to be here for each other. I would not be standing here if it were not for the generosity of So many people over the last 13 years of my life who have given me advice and held my hand and talked me through rejection and all of the things that I've experienced. And so it's important also making art can feel like a very lonely and isolating thing. Um If you are already working artists at least part time, you know that most of it you do by yourself and um I quite enjoy hanging out by myself and that's good because I do a lot of it, but at the end of the day, you need to be able to talk to people and relate to people who also do similar work as you do. And finally perseverance, this determination to keep pushing through, even when things feel uncomfortable or scary or hard, a lot of you may not like planning or this idea of goal setting or even thinking about you know what you need to do to get to a goal, Some of you may be uncomfortable with some of the stuff I'm gonna talk about today around using social media, um some of you may feel scared to launch something new that you're thinking about launching. So perseverance is a big thing that has sort of gotten me where I am sort of pushing through all of the fear, all of the self doubt and um I hope you can do that at least for this class and then beyond Okay, segment five, successfully promote your work. Mhm All right, um so you heard me say it yesterday and I'm gonna be talking about it a lot again, today, we're in the midst of a really, really exciting time for artists, I think any creative person, whether you consider yourself an artist or not and that is because of one thing and that thing is the internet, the internet has changed the landscape for artists in a really profound way. And actually, I was saying yesterday that it's really changed the landscape for professionals all over the world or people who connect over any number of topics including science and math and other forms of the arts, like entertainment and writing. So if you're starting your career now you cannot or re launching your career now, you cannot be starting at a better time. And that's because there are these ways that you can communicate about what you do. There are these ways that people can find out about you. There are these ways that, um, you can connect with other people who do what you do, that never existed until the last 10 years. And that's super exciting. And we also talked about the fact that that means that a lot more people are for lack of a better word, competing for attention on the internet, right? That lots of artists are out there, the playing field is leveled. Anyone can use the internet to promote their work. But it also means that more people are on the internet trying to promote their work. And so it can feel overwhelming at times. And that's where this idea of perseverance is important. The Internet has revolutionized how we work, how we communicate about our work, how we sell our work and talk about that in segment six. Um, and it used to be that when you were an artist, whether you are a fine artist or a commercial artist before the internet existed. And even even in the early days of the internet, you needed somebody with connections and power to represent you or to speak for us, especially if you didn't come from a prestigious institution, even if you did, even if you went to school for art, but especially if you were self taught, you really needed somebody else to sell your work for you. Those people are still really important. There are still illustration agents and licensing agents and literary agents and photography agents and gallery reps and art dealers. And those people's roles are very still very important in this world. But it used to be necessary to sort of make it anywhere that you had to have one of those people on your team. And now that's no longer true. It's helpful to have one of those people under team. Um and a lot of people aspire to having representation. But there are also people who have figured out how to do this on their own without anybody representing them. Because usually when you have a representative, what do you have to do, pay them, They take a commission. It's not always, you know, in the art gallery world, that's typically 50% illustration reps take anywhere from 30 to 45%. Literary agents typically take 15%. So you're giving up some of your income for that help. And oftentimes it's incredibly incredibly helpful to have that, especially if you reach a point your career where um you need someone to help you manage everything, but it's no longer necessary. People can do it on, people can promote their own work, and that's what we're gonna talk about today.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Workbook
llustrated Quote Print

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