The Art of Business Thinking (PDF) - Paul Mirocha Illustration

The Art of
Business Thinking
or
"Do Banjo Players Deserve to Make a Living?"
"Where there is no vision, the people perish..."
-- Proverbs 29:18
"If you believe in your shit, you can make your shit happen."
--Bone Crusher
First, Iʼm going to cover briefly some of the fundamental shifts in outlook that can occur once one starts to consider business thinking as an artist or illustrator. I'm
going to start at the beginning and attempt to create a foundation for business thinking for artists. I went to the sources for just plain business development. It's out
there readily available and can be used to create and run a business, whether youʼre designing a Federal Express or a hot dog stand.
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Text
Do these two
people have
anything in
common? Text
If you have ever sold a piece of your artwork, you are in the illustration business. Yet who could be more different in their thinking than an artist and a businessman? Itʼs easier to see a
scientist as creative than a businessman. Does the guy in the suit have any insight to offer the artist besides being a necessary evil? How do artists view this question?
Artists•
Individualistic
• Rely on intuition
• I have to do my art whether it's profitable or not. It's my identity.
• They are wild and unpredictable
• They are creative
Businesmen
• Bean counters, don't seem very creative. It's all about things adding up.
• All dress and act the same
• They only care about money
• Numbers and math, logic, not creativity
• set up systems to do things like a machine, repetitively, boring
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Brain
comparisons
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Isn't genius and skill at your art or
craft enough to be successful?
Vermeer, Rembrandt
Botticelli
Michelangelo
Picasso
Dali
Maybe. In art history books, the impression is that famous artists are not usually depicted as part of the economy of the day. One might imagine they lived on air. Or were they
supported by the publishers of art history books?
vermeer: 1675, age 43 "As a result and owing to the very great burden of his children, having no means of his own, he had lapsed into such decay and decadence, which he
had so taken to heart that, as if he had fallen into a frenzy, in a day or day and a half he had gone from being healthy to being dead."
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How I started
thinking about
business
Why should I have to think about
business? In art school no one even
mentioned business.
As an artist, I'm not really part of
the economy, like other people.
Maybe I'll starve, but it's more
important to be true to myself and
authentic
Furthermore, I have math anxiety.
I'm kind of a victim of chance and
larger forces.
I'm in a low-paying field. Basically,
I'm lucky to have any work come in
to me
Business is antithetical to art.
Thatʼs where I faced left-over beliefs from art school. Or absorbed from other people without realizing it.
Two major lessons:
I lost my second income. Could I make a living full time doing my art? What did making a living mean?
I lost my agent, who did all the business work for me.
Someone has to do the business planning. It may be your spouse, your boss, your agent, the guy who puts a quarter in your cup. Why not be that person yourself?
And who is that person?
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Artist quotes
"I am an artist, I'm creative, so I just try one thing and if it
doesn't work, I try something else. I just try to get a lot of
stuff out there..."
"It's the economy." "It's always feast or famine."
"The best way to grow my business is to get better at my art.
At some point the magic moment is bound to come."
But.....I can't compete with those other guys. "I don't have the
time or money to advertise, plan, research, or _______ (insert
any verb here)"
"I've tried everything, but nothing works.
"Everybody else does it this way."
"This rep called me, and made it so easy. They do it all for me...
“I hired a consultant to do my business plan for me. I don’t
know what happened--he was smart and had a really good
reputation and had a really good resume...”
When I talk to artists about business, under the stubborn independence and dedication to their craft there is often a sense of
passivity and victimization. I sometimes get a sense of anxiety. Sometimes hostility to the very idea. Some of these quotes are
from myself. But the point is: this is some of the thinking behind decisions these people made. What sort of results would
you expect from these starting points?
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Thus I refute Academia
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Who are these businesses who
Are they simply smarter?
Are they producing a better quality product?
Are they just naturally talented in business?
Are they just lucky?
succeed long-term?
Those who focused soley on the product, perished. Yes, some of them succeeded too, but they might have succeeded with less work at tthe casino.
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"Artists are just undervalued by our
society. That's just the way it is."
Do jugglers deserve to
make a living soley by
doing their art?
Cirque du Soleil
An upstart circus out of Montreal, reinvented the circus business during its deepest slump period, without competing with the incumbents . By borrowing new
dimensions from opera, rock music, the theater and ballet to construct an entirely new value curve. This new value curve shows that Cirque du Soleil let go of
some of the traditional circus offerings, which “made room” for some new and unorthodox dimensions to be added.
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Cirque du Soleil: Strategy Canvas
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Those who survive and prosper do
business development work. They learn
to think like a business person.
In other words, those who struggle or fail, do not do business
thinking for some reason. (Not knowing how, not feeling capable,
not wanting to, not wanting to do the work...)
They make the business itself part of their creative product.
Ordinary, competent people who do a simple business plan are more
likely to succeed than the genius who does not do the homework.
Those who succeed without business planning might have also
succeeded with less effort at the casino. They may also be on the
edge of burnout and it may not be visible.
Most small business are not started by MBAs. They are started by normal working people who want to do what they do on their own.= instead of working for a
boss.
Fatal illusion is you can succeed just by making your product, no matter how well.
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Craftsman
Creates the product
lives in the present, day to day
Manager
creates systems and order
works in the concrete
So who is this guy? Actually, there are
Creates organization and systems for carrying
out plans
Enlightened Businessman
Visionary
three. They are you.
works in the abstract. He/she doesn't care
whether his business sells art or grommets
The process of defining and imagining possible futures, choosing them, then writing them down, makes it easier to create those potential realities.
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All that we are, arises from our thoughts
We make the world with our thoughts.
–Siddartha Gautama 563-483 BCE
I want to develop a model for what I'll call the Enlightened Businessman". And BUSINESS MIND.
I started 1000s of years ago. Looked at in a deeper way, business planning, besides dealing in practicalities, has another aspect--a spiritual path towards selfactualization
or realization. Whatever you'd like to call it.
Trips to SE Asia. I noticed that his followers begged for a living and he was golden.
He took the best-selling concept of the Ordered List from Moses, who worked about 1000 years earlier. (originally "The 10 habits of HIghly Righteous Persons")
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The 8-fold path to enlightenment
Right view! !
Right intention! !
Right speech! !
Right action! !
Right livelihood! !
Right effort! !
Right mindfulness! !
Right concentration
RIght Livelihood: Originally suggested making your living legally, peacefully, and honestly, without doing harm to other beings. He even explained the ethics of
the workplace and ekmployee/eployer/customer relations. Work is part of your spiritual development. A lot of writers have picked up on this concept and elaborated
on it for modern times. Not just Buddhists. To show how work provides a structure for us psychologically and integrates with our life.
a reflection of who you truly are and want to become. Work is more than a paycheck--it provides a psychological structure and a grounding for our lives.
Right Mindfulness: The ability to see things as they are. Business, like life is about the 10,000 details, maybe boring, repetitive, pragmatic. Attention and meditation
on these details is said to eventually bring wisdom.
RIght Concentration: as one-pointedness of mind, meaning a state where all mental faculties are unified and directed onto one particular object.
Iʼll elaborate it further: The purpose of life is to find well-being, success at however you define it.
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artists are usually pretty good at this part.
1. doing what you're good at, passionate about...
2. within your values and life goals = right livelihood
Add the last circle: PROFITABILITY: What people will pay you to
do.
research shows that incredible geniuses do what is easiest for them.
the way you make your living is an expression of your deepest self.
This is the key to making the other 2 circles work. What is profitability? Profit is the excess of income over costs. It is what makes the other two circles business
work. At this point though, it's not a matter simply of making money. Money is simply an indicator for how well your business is working. We'll define profitability
simply as progress towards your strategic goals. This is where we need the EB.
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1. Your aim in life
2. Strategic planning for business
The EB starts with a vision of the future business in the same way an
artist sits at a blank canvas and imagines the final painting.
In order to achieve almost any task, you first have to have a purpose or CLEAR vision of what you want to have happen. It includes a multiple time frame. This
viison you have is the only thing certain and predictable. That is what emotionally fuels your project and guides it. If you donʼt feel passionately about the goal, you
may not carry it through to itʼs conclusion, which, like a painting is not exactly what you started out with. Your business plan achieves this.
Iʼm going to go through some of the steps of a standard business plan with focus on how the BM thinks.
Primary Aim: your future memoirs
Strategic goal: How your business will achieve that
Business planning is really these three steps:
1. Seeing clearly your own situation. Look at the white canvas in front of you.
2. Imagining exactly and precisely what you want to paint, even though you don’t know exactly how the final painting will look.
3. Carry out the 10,000 details. That’s the brush work in a super-realist painting.
It's not about making money--it's about reaching your goals- back to buddha's idea. remember, money or cash flow is just the indicator of a successfull bisiness.
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Business Thinking: Before and After
Applied to some standard stages of business planning
Most of the default thinking patterns of the “Craftsman” without
first applying business thinking are usually wrong. They are often
based on such things as:
What everyone else seems to be doing
One or two prior experiences: anecdotes
It’s not that these thoughts have NO validity, but they are severely limiting.
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Define yourself and what you do:
Write a Mission Statement
You do it for yourself to help you make decisions.
Also tells your potential clients who you are.
Use it for YOUR UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITION
Walt Disney
"To make people happy."
No cynicism
Nurturing and promulgation of "wholesome American values"
Creativity, dreams and imagination
Fanatical attention to consistency and detail
Preservation and control of the Disney "magic"
The mission statement should be a clear and succinct representation of the enterprise's purpose for existence. Write a statement that reflects the essence of why
you are in business. It should reflect your highest values, vision, and purpose. It's your heart and soul. It's what you'll put into your work. It's what you do.
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Napkin sketch:
Business situation for the craftsman
Mostly the craftsman focuses on the yellow spot-their art.
She also notices if she can’t pay her bills. That’s cash flow. You need business thinking to solve that.
Limits: time and energy
The only way to make more is to charge more.
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Numbers: a super-simple business plan
Using simple arithmetic, you can learn a lot about your business. Create your own spreadsheets.
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“I just get my work out there in any way that I can.”
Reasons to define and focus down to
your target market
You will be more successful if you find YOUR people, those who are
RIGHT for you. (Right Livelihood)
Dud clients will drain you. Your ideal clients will give you more
energy.
You can only be an expert in one small area, so start there.
You can always have one or two secondary markets. They add
security while you
Although there is some truth to the artists view above, it is severely limiting if that’s all you know.
Who will pay you this 70/hr that you just calculated?
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MARKETING: Perception is reality
Define your target market: your most
probable and best client. Your ideal client.
You are a brand, not a commodity
eg. Professional ADs with experience working with illustrators
Have budgets that will pay me the rate I calculated
Are not buying on price
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5 second
judgement
3 kinds of clients
Current customers
Your best prospective client
May create 70-80% of your business
Market with regular mail post cards and
emails. You can CALL them!
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Clients seeking you
those with a project, looking
illustrator web sites
keywords: workbook.com
Hit reports: theispot.com
Directories
Your web site
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Your future clients
new clients that you have identified as
yours but they don't know it yet
You know their names, where they
work, and the clients they serve.
html email and post cards
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Don't "sell" to your client. That's about YOUR needs
Your product is how your customers FEEL when they receive your
artwork.
Goal: have a meaningful, lasting relationship with YOUR clients.
1. turn customers into clients
2. keep clients
Client Fulfillment
80% of business may be from former customers
3. get referrals from those clients
EB: "The single most powerful force in marketing is word of
mouth"
Look at your business as a hotel or restaurant and your clients as your guests. You must satisfy their every desire. In order to do this, you have to research them
and know them in detail.
If you have found your target client, it's worth your while to exceed their expectations.
It's the extras, the added value you give freely that makes the client feel good about working with you as a co-worker.
The customer may even become unaware that this is an exchange fro money--he just perceives that you are helping him with his project from the point of view of
what's important to him.
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ASSESSING THE COMPETITION
The Perceptual Map
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Perceptual map for illustration
market segments
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The Strategy Canvas
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Benefits of
business planning
Increased enjoyment of work
with less anxiety
Chance of success
dramatically improved
Creative engagement rather
than passive experience
Increased clarity in making
decisions
Working on business mind into your life will make you work harder than you ever have before. And it will challenge many basic assumptions, even your orientation
toward the world.
It's not comfortable. But hopefully, you can see that doing this work will take you into areas you want to go to, just didn't know how. The artist and the
businesperson can form a symbiotic relationship. Business mind is there in your own brain and can become the missing part of your creative mind. The part that
makes it all work in the outer world.
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http://www.paulmirocha.com/recent_business.htm
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