Plan Your Creative Business: Your Path To Creating Income As An Artist

1. What This Class Is About: Hello, I'm Mimi. I'm a digital artist, picture book illustrator and content creator who has spent the last three years building up my small business from scratch, over six figures a year in revenue. And in today's class, I'm going to guide you through making a plan for your own creative business. I'm really excited to help you get clarity on the direction that you want to take as you get started on your business journey. So that you'll set up for success from the beginning. Because there are so many great ways that you can create a successful art business. But it can be a little overwhelming to know where to start. This class is best suited to creatives who want to turn their passion for art into a small business that suits the lifestyle they want to live and allows room for creative growth. So if that sounds like you, then you're in the right place. When I started my art business, I made a mini master plan in my notebook about what I wanted to achieve. And that simple plan has been fundamental to my success and staying on track. But looking back, there's a lot that I didn't know, which is why I've made a workbook specifically for this class that you can download from the resources below. We'll be filling in the workbook as we learn about the formula for a successful and sustainable creative business in each module. And you can either print it out or fill in the digital version by opening up appropriate or another PDF friendly software. Feel free to pause the class at any time to fill in your own answers in the workbook. Or you can wait until the end and have a nice, big planning session. We'll be covering some business basics, defining your goals, choosing a general path to take, understanding your customer, creating a product for that customer. Choosing how you'll market your product, Going an audience on social media, dealing with finances and legal requirements. And then we'll bring everything together. Of course, I don't know your specific situation. This is going to be general advice. Only get cozy. Download the workbook and let's start planning your dream business. 2. Business Basics: First, I want us to have a clear understanding of how business works. You don't need a degree in business to learn the basics of making money from your own creativity. We can cover those basics in this small module right here at its simplest. This is how business works. Your potential customer has a problem that they want to solve or a transformation that they want to make in their lives, big or small. You create a product or service that solves that problem for them. You tell them about it in a valuable way, and a percentage of the people you tell will buy that product or service so that you earn money from it. In order to make a strong plan for your business, you'll need to understand how each part of this formula applies to your business. Which is what we'll be doing in my plan, your creative business workbook, of course. There are lots of ways that each part of this formula can happen. How you lead a potential customer through the process of discovering you all the way through to purchasing from you is often called a sales funnel. Sometimes it's a pyramid, but the main point is that there's a wide part and a skinny part. The widest point represents where you reach the most potential customers. These are usually called leads, and this is where they become aware that you exist maybe through your social media or your website. From there, you can lead them down through the funnel by providing points of value that spark their interest and improve their relationship with you until hopefully they reach the pointy end of the funnel and make a purchase from you. The reason it's cone shaped is because at each stage, you'll only have a percentage of people move through. So the percentage of people who make it all the way through to purchase from you will only be very small. Not everyone who knows that you exist as a creative will want to purchase from you. Lots of people just also won't be in a position to. And that's normal business, That's not a reflection on you as an artist. If you can cast a wide net in the right places and reach the right kind of audience for your art product, some of those people will want what you have to offer. Another part of the business formula is solving a problem for your customer or helping them with a transformation that they want to make. This is really crucial and the tricky thing for artists is often figuring out what value we're providing our potential customer. How are our products transforming their lives for the better? Or solving a problem for them? This is a really important part of the equation and something that we'll go into detail with in the creating a product or service module later. And generally in business, it's important to build trust and credibility with your potential customer. If a customer knows likes and trusts you, they'll be far more likely to buy something from you than the same item from someone they don't. They might feel comfortable buying from you because of the familiarity of knowing you or at least your online presence. They might want to support your small business over somebody else's because they like you. Or they might be wanting to purchase your video cards because they trust you and your credibility as an expert on that topic. These on their own aren't necessarily reasons enough why someone will purchase from your business, but they can definitely help convert someone who's on the fence into a paying customer. And it can also lead to more loyal customers. So these are just a few basics and throughout the next section of this class, we're going to dive a little deeper into each section of this business formula to make sure that you understand how your business is going to address each part of it and convert customers. But first, in the next module, we'll get an understanding of what the purpose is behind your business and what your goals are, because that's going to filter down into everything else. 3. Getting Clarity On Your Goals: So let's get some clarity on your goals. Because before we even start a business journey, we need to understand what we want to achieve and why we want to achieve it. Knowing this upfront will give you a strong foundation to build the rest of your plans on and some direction for the decisions that you'll need to make. If you think of your business as a house that you're building, the foundations for that house are the purpose and values of your business. It's important to build this first, because without those, it's hard to build anything else on top. From there, you need a framework and that's what the rest of your business plan will be, a frame to guide you as you build your house. From there, every product you make, illustration you create, and every post you use to market your business is a brick that you add to your house to start building it. It obviously takes a lot of time, but that's okay. It's supposed to. Let's build our foundations and understand the purpose and values of your business. I want you to think about why you want to build an art business. What is the purpose of this business in your life? You're going to be putting a lot of time, energy, and creativity into building and maintaining it. Make sure that it's going to give you an outcome that you want. You probably want to make money from your business, but what does that mean for you? Do you want a small side income or do you want a full time income? What else do you want to get out of it besides the money? Because that's just as important to know. Let's open up the purpose page of the workbook and I want you to write down what you really want to achieve. Take your time and be as specific as you like. If you have a particular project or financial goal in mind, then this is a great place to write it down. I've written some suggestions in the workbook that you can use and you can, of course, write your own. For example, in my business, I wanted to earn a full time income, have a purpose to improve my art skills. I wanted to be able to work remotely, and I wanted to help others because I know that's what I want and that's what the whole point of this journey is. For me, every time I need to make a decision in my business, I can refer back to these goals and they help me decide what direction to take. Plus, they also keep me feeling motivated and clear on where I'm going. When things are difficult, feel free to pause the video and have a think about what you want from your business or come back to it when you're ready. Now, I also want you to think of a few values that will be most important to you on your art business journey. You'll be faced with lots of decisions that will challenge you. So it's important to know what you're flexible on and what you're not. Perhaps you'll be offered a sponsorship opportunity with a brand that isn't quite aligned to your business, but they offer a lot of money. You accept it, that's up to your values. Write down what you really value and what's really important to you that you don't want to compromise on. Again, I have a few suggestions, so feel free to choose some of those or write your own. For example, in my business, the things that I value the most are being genuine. I value my creative integrity, I value my privacy, and I value accessibility. Values are a bit of an abstract concept and can be hard to define for me. When I say being genuine, I mean being authentic to myself, not jumping on trends that I don't feel aligned to, and being a real human online who connects with other humans. When I say accessibility, I mean that I want to be able to reach lots of people regardless of what they can afford. So I don't want there to be too many barriers to at least some of my content and resources. Whenever I can remember that your purpose and values make up your business foundation. So take a little bit of time here if you need it because it's really important in order to build something that's sustainable and keeps you feeling motivated. You're planning for success in your business, and your values help you define what success means to you. In the next module, we'll start using a basic direction for your business to take based on the foundations we just laid. 4. Choosing A Path: Let's choose a general path for your business to take now that you have an understanding of what it is that you want to achieve from your business, and you understand what values are going to be important to you. We already established in business basics that we need a product or service to sell. A customer who needs or wants what we're selling and a way to tell them about it. So what does that look like for your business? We don't need to get super specific gest yet about the exact products or services that you're going to provide, because we can talk a bit more about that in a few minutes. But we're going to figure out what types of products or services would be a good fit for your path and your values. And also what forms of marketing would be a good fit for you as well. First, let's figure out what category of products or services are going to be a good fit for you. Because not every type of product will align with your business purpose and values. I've written down some product types in the business plan workbook and I want you to select one or two product types that feel really exciting to you that you can see yourself wanting to make. You might already know exactly what you want to sell, and that's great. Select the category that it falls under, or write that down in the extra space. If it doesn't fall under one of these categories, consider here the purpose of your business and what your values are. And think about which of these products fit. It takes a long time to build products and services from scratch, so you want something that aligns with your business foundations and also something that you're excited about. I've written down some basic information about each category to help give you some context and pros and cons to way up. For example, in my business, I wanted to eventually be able to work remotely. I always knew that selling digital products would be a better fit than physical products because I didn't want to hold onto the stock. I also really wanted to help and encourage others. So I thought that content creation would be a good fit because it's a way that I can help people by sharing as well as earning income. You might eventually have a combination of lots of these product types in your business, but in the beginning, we want to choose one or maybe two things to focus our energy on. And when everything's up and running, we can add other projects later. Now we need to decide how we're going to reach our audience. Because just like with products, not every marketing channel will be a good fit for you. Choose one or two platforms from the webbook that feel really exciting to you, and again, that fit with your business foundations. Feel free to add more to the list if the platform you like isn't here. These are just some suggestions. We'll talk in more detail about marketing in a few minutes. For now, I want you to focus on what just feels exciting to you. Because you need to want to show up on that platform for it to be sustainable. Social media is really powerful. Even if your main form of marketing isn't going to be a social media platform, it can still be a really good idea to have at least one platform where you can share your creativity with the world and build trust with your audience. Will say though, try not to grow too many at once because it's a really easy way to burn out if you prefer to interact face to face, then in person events like markets and networking can be really powerful too. Again, it's all about your values and the lifestyle that you want to live personally, I'm an introvert, so I like Instagram because I very rarely even show my face there. And I also like Youtube because I get to help people with the value I can provide and I get to choose how much I show up on line. I personally avoid things like doing live sessions and in person events very often because it's not what I want to spend my time doing and therefore not what I want my business to rely on. You might be the total opposite of me though, which is why there really isn't a one size fits all approach. Let's quickly put this together and look at some common business parts or creative people that might spark some ideas for your own business. Or you can mix and match some of these ideas in these plans. You could create some art, make physical products with your designs, and then either sell those on line via social media or at markets. This is a popular option for artists and it's easy to get started, but there can be a lot of competition. You could work on improving your art skills, Share your journey online to build an audience. And then monetize by teaching what you've learned in videos, with ads, or by making courses. This is the direction that I've taken, and it's a good path, but definitely takes a while before you can start earning. You could create some art, build a portfolio, and then pitch it to get professional illustration work. This path can be hard because you often have to face more direct rejection upfront. With patience and perseverance, you can build up a really nice set of illustration clients. Or you could create some local in person art workshops and market them at community events and markets. This is a great path, if you prefer, the idea of a small scale face to face art business. Once you filled in this section, you should have an idea of a category of product to sell and a way that you might like to market it. That's fantastic. This on top of your foundations, makes a basic framework for your business to follow. In the next module, we'll talk about your target customer and how to identify what it is that they need or want. 5. Understanding Your Customer: Now let's understand who your customer is because they're the ones who will be buying your product or service. So they're obviously pretty important to get to know. The better you can understand your potential customer, the better you can serve them, and the better you can do that, the more likely they are to convert to a paying customer. I think a good place to start is thinking about the psychology of why someone in your target audience will want to purchase something from you. Because we're all customers ourselves. We can think about our own experiences. What makes you want to purchase something? What are the last five non essential things that you bought? And think about how you found out about those items, the thought process you had when you considered buying them, and then why you decided to actually purchase. You can also think about the creatives that you follow in social media who are selling products, and why you choose to buy or not to buy from them. Usually we buy things because they either solve a problem for us or they give us a transformation that we want that's really key to business. The bigger the problem a product solves, or the bigger the transformation offers, the more valuable that's likely to be for a customer. Selling art for decorative purposes, like wall prints or wallpaper, can be a bit tricky to sell because we're not always solving a very big problem for our customer, since decorating isn't often high on everyone's priority list. But art is still really important to a lot of people and it can absolutely give a transformation to them or their space. That's what a lot of successful art businesses focus on, is what kind of transformation will your art give to someone's space? Maybe it will make them feel more calm or happy or help them stay in touch with nature. We all have fantasies about the kind of person we want to be and the transformations that we're seeking. And we buy products that help us get closer to that version of ourselves or at least helps us think that we're making progress. I've bought plenty of art supplies before that I've hardly ended up using because when I bought them, I had a fantasy version of myself in my head that I would in the future be the kind of person who's creative and makes art all the time. Whether I end up actually doing that or not, I've bought the products because of who I want to be. Because of that, it's really important to know what kind of person your customer wants to be. What's the fantasy version of themselves that they have in their head? They might be a mom who doesn't have much free time, but would love to reconnect with her creative side and learn some art skills. And we want to offer her a product that helps her do that. Let's brainstorm some ideas about our target audience and some traits or problems they might have. I have a page in the workbook where you can do this. They don't all have to be problems. They can be anything about your customer that helps us build out a profile of who they are. Things like what are their dreams, what are they struggling with, What are their interests, and what do they want to improve on? You might not be 100% sure who your customer is just yet, and you can refine and change things a bit later. But think about the kinds of products that you chose and what impact you want to have with your business and that will help guide you at this stage. For example, in my business, my customer is largely beginner artists who want to improve their art skills and earn an income from those creative skills. They're mostly women who are about 20 to 35 years old and they have big dreams. They're creative and have a lot of great ideas, but don't know how to prioritize them or where to start when it comes to monetizing those ideas. Knowing all of this information helps me get more specific with my products and helps me identify the best ways to reach this audience. With my marketing. Sometimes especially as creatives, we make products that solve a problem for ourselves or that we wish we had access to. You might even be your own target audience. This is the case for me and my target audience now is who I was a few years ago when I started as a beginner artist with Business Dreams. The benefit of that is that I can understand what my customer wants and what problems they might be facing because I've been in that position before. You don't have to be your target audience though. You might be quite different as long as you understand the wants and needs of who you're selling to. How specific should your target audience be? Because you might have already heard a lot that it's a good idea to niche down to a smaller, more specific audience. I think it's more of a spectrum. Rather than being black and white, good or bad, it's up to you where you want to fall on that spectrum. The more broad your target audiences, the less specifically you'll be addressing any individual customer. But the more niche your audiences, the more specifically you'll be addressing the needs of an individual or a really small group. Generally, the broader your target audience, the smaller your conversion rate will be from potential customer to paying customer. And the more targeted your audiences, the higher your conversion rate will be. If you have a broad appeal, then that can be useful for things like content creation, where you might want more views. But selling specific products to them might be difficult because their needs are all so different. Whereas a more specific audience will give you a smaller pool of people to sell to. But you can make a product that really matches them well. A really broad target audience could just be women a little more specific. And it could be women who like art. Then it could be women who like astrology themed art. And you can keep adding information about this audience until you get really specific. Like women who are students on a budget who love astrology themed oil paintings and have a black cat or something like that. I think that for most of us, it's good to fall somewhere in the middle, but toward the more specific end of the spectrum. And remember, you can always get more specific as your business grows and you start to understand your audience a bit better. All of this work we're doing now is giving us a plan and a direction to take, but none of it needs to be said in concrete. Again, feel free to take some time completing this activity. And before you move on, you should have a better understanding of who your customer is, which fills in the customer with a problem, part of the business equation. In the next module, we're going to do some brainstorming to get clarity on the product or service you're going to sell to this customer. 6. Creating A Product Or Service: Let's now get more specific by creating a product or service that you want to sell to make money in your business. You might eventually have a few income streams and that can be part of your plan, but it's a good idea to be clear on what those are and what you're going to prioritize. You've already decided what type of creative product or service you're going to sell. But let's get more specific to be successful and sustainable, you'll want to sell something that is a mix of a, something that you want to spend your time on, something that you can sell for a profit, and something that your customer wants to buy. Let's brainstorm on the creating a product page of the workbook. You've identified what problems your customer has that they want to solve or what transformation they want to make. Let's write that down again, in the middle of our page. Underneath we're going to write the type of product or products that you said you were most excited to make. Now we're going to brainstorm, how can you solve their problem or help them with their transformation with the type of product that you want to make? No ideas are too silly or too obvious. Here, Just jot down all of the ideas that you can think of without holding back. Feel free to spend some time doing this. Take as long as you need and we can also do a few examples together. My business, my customer, wants to improve their art skills and earn an income from those creative skills. That's the transformation they want to make. The product categories I'm most interested in are digital products and content creation. What are some digital products and videos that can help them with that transformation? I can make art resources to share with them to help them with their skills. Specifically, step by step drawing tutorials, video lessons, workbooks, things like that. I can create tools that they can use for drawing like brush sets and texture packs and that will also help them with their art. I could also teach them how to make an income from those skills. I need some teaching resources to do that. I could make video courses as a digital product. I could make a workbook specifically for that. And I could make free content that's monetized through ads and sponsorships. Let's now say that your audience is college students who want to be motivated to study more. So they want really cute school supplies and you're excited to make physical products. You could make journal stickers that specifically help them to organize their notes. You could help them with a desk planner that has a super cute aesthetic, but is also customized for college student schedules. They might need a great bag to put their textbooks and laptop in. Or some really nice stationary, like notebooks with your cute R on it with matching pens. Those are just some examples. The key thing is creating things that you're excited about that solves a problem for your target customer. Now that you have a nice set of ideas that will work for both you and your customer, you can think about what you'd like to start with. We unfortunately, can't do everything all at the same time. Pick one or two products from your brainstorming session to be your primary focus as you get your business started. This fills in the product part of the business equation. Now, there are a lot of art products out there, so you need to figure out what makes yours special. Why is somebody going to buy your art product and not from somebody else? They say that in order to stand out in business, you need to either be the first, be the best, or be different. If your product is the first of its kind, then that's a great start. Chances are though that most of us won't be the first in our field, so we'll need to be the best or be different. This is especially true if you're selling a product in a saturated market, like art prints or stickers. Don't get me wrong, I like stickers as much as the next person, but I see so many art stickers being sold and I've already got some stickers. So for me to buy stickers from an artist, I either need to really love that artist and just want to support them in some way, which is where building a trusting relationship with your audience can be handy. Or they need to be the most beautiful stickers I've ever seen. Or they need to be solving a specific problem that only your stickers can solve. I'm not necessarily the target market for stickers because I don't use them often enough to need a steady supply. But the point is that you need a point of difference. Is your brush set better than all of the other ones you've seen? Fantastic. Your greeting cards, really unique. Wonderful. We've all got something that we can do really well. We all have something special to offer. So you just need to think about what skills and traits that you have that you could incorporate into your products to help make them better or unique. To know if your product is going to stand out among the competition, it helps to do a bit of research into what's already out there. If you can find a gap in the market, then that's ideal. But if there's already competition, you can just make sure that your product is either the best among them or different in a way that would be really valuable to your customer. In the next module, we'll talk about how to market your product to your customer in a valuable way. 7. Marketing Your Product: Let's plan how you're going to market your product to your customer, develop a relationship with them, and tell them about your product. This is marketing. And we're going to use a basic sales funnel like we spoke about in the Business Basics module. There are lots of ways you can go about building your sales funnel. And you might end up having a couple for different products. Your main platform for marketing your products could be a social media platform. It could be a blog, an e mail newsletter. Or it could be your portfolio that you send out for anything that's sold online. It's going to be a lot easier to monetize if you have an audience generally. The bigger the audience is, the more opportunities you'll have to monetize. It can be a really good idea to start building an audience as soon as you can start today if you haven't already, because it's going to take a long time to grow, but will be really valuable to you as you start to market your products, sell your services, or monetize your content. I personally chose to start building an audience before I had any products to sell, partly because I wanted some time to develop the art skills I wanted. So I spent about nine months growing an audience before I properly started selling my services as an artist. If I had developed those skills in private and waited until I was ready to launch things like illustration commissions and my Youtube channel, I would have been starting with an audience of zero. But instead, I already had subscribers and followers across my platforms who are potential customers already. The marketing platform that you chose earlier will be the largest part of your funnel because it's going to reach the broadest audience and this is where people find out that you exist. From there you're going to provide more value to your audience to build a relationship and spark interest and then eventually tell them about the product or service that you're selling. And remember that only a percentage of people who entered at the broadest part will filter through and become customers. Your funnel could be really simple and just be one social media platform where you grow a really strong relationship with your audience and then direct them to your product funnel. Might be that you have a broad reach on social media and then have an e mail list to provide extra value to the biggest fans in your audience, and then give them early access to your product. To increase your conversion rate, you might have a Pinterest account that directs people to your blog where you share some free value and then direct them to your product or service you're offering to convert your audience from the top of the funnel into customers. You want to focus on providing value based on the kinds of things that your target customer wants. And we've already identified their interests, the problem that they have, or the transformation that they want to make. This is where you can put that information into action. The first stage of a sales funnel is reaching your audience to build awareness with them that you exist. This is where your target customer first learns about you. So it's often a post on a social media platform, or it could be your store front at a market, a blog post that you've written. Something that lots of people can see or find that will introduce them to you. Ideally, you'll make a good first impression with your target customer and they'll be interested to know more about you or what else you have to offer and we'll look for more value from you. There's a funnel ready to fill in on the sales funnel page of the workbook. In the wider section of the funnel, write what your main way of reaching your audience will be. For my business, it's Instagram and Youtube. This will lead them to the next stage of the sales funnel, where you can spark interest and provide more value to cultivate a positive relationship with them. You want to show them why you're good at what you do, why you're worth paying attention to, and why you're trustworthy in the field that you're in. In this stage, we're giving our target customer the opportunity to know like and trust us. So that when it comes time to offer them a product, we already have a trusting relationship with them. One thing that you can do to understand the power of providing value on social media is to really pay attention to who you follow on social media and why. What makes you stop and pay attention to a piece of content? What makes you subscribe to a Youtube channel? What makes you want to watch short form content? Think about who your favorite creators are on the platform that you use the most as a consumer, and why do you love what they create? They obviously provide some value to your life, otherwise you wouldn't be spending your time watching them. But what specifically is that value? There are lots of ways to provide value. You could make people smile with your art, or you could post things that are relatable or funny. You can share advice through an email newsletter or teach with videos. Or you can share behind the scenes insights through Tiktok. Think about what you can share that will have a positive impact on your target customer. In the workbook, you can write some ideas for how you can provide free value to your target customer or spark their interest for my business. It's largely through teaching valuable knowledge through free content on my Youtube channel. Now that your target customer knows likes and trust you, you can make them an offer of your product or service. When you're telling your audience about your products, remember that we're looking to solve a problem for them or help them with a transformation. That's what we want to focus on to better convert them to a paying customer. If you're selling an art class or workbook that teaches your target customer something, you're giving them a transformation To being a more skilled artist, focus on what that transformation means for them. It's one thing to tell them the features of your cast and how long it is, but how is it going to change and improve their lives? Because that's what they really want. If you're selling art stickers, then your target customer probably wants to be someone who has cute things and expresses the aesthetic that they like. Focus on that aesthetic because that's what you're selling. You want to offer your product in a way that appeals to what they need or want, but you also want to make it as easy as possible for them to purchase. Make it clear on your sales page what it is they're getting. Make it simple to purchase and make the receiving of their product as simple as possible as well. I think it's really powerful to make the buying experience for your customer as easy as possible. And make the process of receiving their product exciting so that they're more likely to have a positive experience overall. And hopefully purchase from you again. Or tell their friends about you. In the last section of the sales funnel in the workbook, you can write down some ideas for how you might offer your product to your customer and where you might direct them to buy from you. For my business, I offer my Youtube audience, who I've already provided value to, the opportunity to purchase useful digital art tools from my Etsy shop or learn how to draw on my patrion. This funnel fills in the marketing part of the business equation for us. That's the basic process of a sales funnel and how you go from building awareness with your audience to providing value and then converting some of those people into customers since social media is such a large part of most of our sales funnel these days. In the next module, we'll talk about growing an audience on social media specifically. 8. Growing An Audience On Social Media: So let's learn about growing an audience on social media. Building a relationship with that audience, and eventually driving sales to your products. Social media platforms like Instagram run on a currency of social engagement. It's about keeping the attention of people so that they stay on the platform for longer. That means that it's not about how good your art is, it is about how liable your posts are. And that's really important to keep in mind as a creative person. Usually platforms like it when you put out quite a lot of content, but they also want people to engage positively with that content. So if both of those things happen consistently, then the platform will be more likely to promote your account to more people, which will help it grow. There's a little bit of searchability within social media platforms, but people mostly find new content through recommendations in their feeds or on an explorer or for page which shows them content that the algorithm thinks that failed. Like this is one place where you can get a lot of people finding your account and hopefully joining your community. But platforms will only put content on these explore pages if the people in your current community are engaging well with your posts. Positive engagement, like comments like shares, saves, and even DM's tell these platforms that your content is liable and valuable. And therefore it might show it to other people who like similar things. Another way you can grow on social media platforms is by having your current audience share your content. Which will grow your community in a more classic word of mouth way. Posts that are relatable, funny, educational, or just make people feel good can have great shareability. Now we all know that we should be posting a lot and posting consistently. But what does that actually mean? Do we really need to post every day? In my experience, it certainly helps to post often. But I've never posted every single day unless I've been doing a short term challenge. I found success posting every week day, five times a week in the beginning, and I did that for about a year. I think it's more important though to enjoy what you're posting so that it's sustainable for you. And it's also important that you don't stretch yourself too thin. Consistency is more important than posting often, but if you enjoy creating something to post a few times a week, then I think that puts your account in a great position. How do you set yourself up with the best chance of being in favor with a social media algorithm? Here's my basic recipe based on what I've learned. Step one, set up a clear profile, create a clear profile name a bold profile picture, and fill in your bio with some simple information. I found it helpful to make sure that my account said that I was an illustrator. I said that I was illustrating five days a week so that people knew what to expect from my profile. And I tried to maintain some consistency in the images in my grid because I was still learning a lot of art skills in the beginning. I just tried to keep my color palette the same, and that helped a lot in tying everything together. Your profile is what will determine whether most people follow you or not. So think about what would make your community want to follow you. Step two, be consistent. Find a schedule that's realistic and achievable for you, and make content that's fun for you to make. If you don't enjoy it, then it's going to be really hard to maintain. Personally, it wasn't sustainable for me to draw and post something every single day. But I could commit to drawing at least a little something every weekday and then have weekends off. I posted five times a week, every week for a full year. And after about nine or ten months, the growth really kicked off. Step three, create content that is liable. Like I said before, social media platforms run on a social currency. They want people engaging with your posts in some way. Make content that encourages engagement. You can focus on making posts that are really sharable or that people will want to save to come back to later, or that people will comment on. Step four, engage with your audience, make the most of the community capabilities of social media. And engage directly with your target customers. Build a community of like minded people and interact with them because in my opinion, that's the best part of social media. And it makes it so much more enjoyable to want to show up online. When you have a community that you love, do all of these things and over time your account will grow even if it feels really slow at first. The great thing about social media as an artist is that your social media account can double as a portfolio. And that can be really helpful if you're looking for professional clients. You can direct potential clients to your social media profile when you pitch to them, or because it's a public platform and most of them have some kind of searchable hashtags. You might even get scouted by clients who are actively looking for artists. So hopefully now you have a clear framework for building an audience on social media if you're using it as part of your sales funnel. And you also have a decent understanding of the path to take for your creative business and that's really exciting. Before you rush off and create amazing things, though, in the next module, I want to quickly cover a few business legalities so that you can start your business on the right foot. 9. Getting On Top Of Finances: So let's address the slightly less exciting, but super important part of business, which is getting on top of finances and legalities. I can't give you specific advice here, but we can talk about the general things to consider when you're putting this plan into action and taking the first steps in your business. You obviously want to make a profit in your business, so you need to stay on top of your finances. The revenue you earn from a sale, so the amount the customer paid minus any platform fees, costs of creating the product and any other expenses will be your profit. It's a really good idea to do at least a rough costing of what you expect it to cost to start your business. Any major ongoing expenses and the approximate profit of your main products so that you're aware of your finances from the start. Some products have an upfront cost to them that you need to consider like most physical products and some products don't. Like most digital products, you already have some clarity about the product or service you're going to sell. So the next step is to do the math and calculate whether that product is actually profitable. If it is, then that's obviously a good thing. But if it isn't, then you'll want to consider making some tweaks to make it profitable, or pivoting to another product. You can work out the profitability either by estimating how much it would cost or by actually making a test product or small batch. Of course, you want to be able to sell your product for more money than the cost of all the materials to make and sell it. But you also need to consider the time required by you for each sale. Be sure to include things like packaging. If you're posting physical products and include things like platform fees. If you're selling online, then there are general business expenses that need to be factored in, like hosting a website, software subscriptions, or accounting fees. Maybe the main cost for you will be hosting a portfolio somewhere to send to potential professional clients. It's hard to know all of the expenses you're going to have as a business upfront. But on the finances page of the workbook are some common business expenses. And some of these, but not all of them, will be applicable to you. Look through the list and identify the ones that you think you might need and do a bit of research into how much they might cost you. Once your business is up and running and you're selling things, make sure you keep track of all your income and expenses. You might need this information for things like taxes, but you also want to be able to track your growth over the long term. Now, there will also be some legal requirements to stay on top of. When you're ready to start selling your art products to the world, you'll need to look into what your country's requirements are for running a small business. You might need to register your business name or register for a business number before you can legally earn money. This varies from country to country, and I've heard that in some countries it's really easy, and in some countries it's a big process. I'm Australian, so to set up my business in Australia as a sole trader, I registered my business name online and applied for an Australian business number. Next, there are taxes. Once you start earning money from your art, it's really likely that you'll have to pay some tax on those earnings. It's a bit of a headache to deal with taxes, but important to know what your requirements are. You'll need to research the tax requirements for your particular situation and the country that you live in. If you're really not sure, then you can always hire a professional accountant to help you. It's not always fun to take care of the finances and the legalities, but it is really important. I've got a list of questions for you to research for your specific situation and location to get you started. It can be a lot to take on all at once. So to get one question at a time and slowly chip away at them, now that we've talked about everything you need to know to plan your credit business, in the next module we're going to bring all of that together to lay it out clearly. 10. Bringing It All Together: It's time to bring together everything that we've discovered throughout this class into one place. You should have collected all of the pieces of the business equation that we talked about in the beginning. Let's summarize by bringing all of those pieces together to make your vision extra clear. I want you to complete these phrases now with the information you've gathered through the workbook activities. For example, the purpose of this business for myself, is to earn a full time income. Have a purpose to improve my art skills, allow me to work remotely and to help others. The values that are important as my business grows are being genuine, my creative integrity, my privacy and accessibility. My potential customer is a 20 to 35 year old woman who loves to create art. Looking to make the transformation of improving their art skills to become a better artist and monetize those creative skills. My product is learning resources and digital art tools and will help them with that transformation. And I'll build a valuable relationship with them by sharing my knowledge on social media before offering my product on Etsy and patriot. I want you to have this written down like this so that you can see the picture as a whole. And have this to come back to. Anytime you're unsure or starting to lose motivation, I'm really excited for you to get started. So in the next module, I'll share some final tips as you begin your creative business journey. 11. What’s Next?: Now you have a plan to get started with your very own creative business. And I'm so excited for you to make your dreams a reality. We've covered the basics of business. Who your customer is, chosen a product, and learned some marketing basics. What's next? Well, the only thing left to do is get started. Make that first social media post, create that first product, improve those skills. Just get started with the things that you're excited to make. And don't worry about it being perfect. Perfection is the enemy of progress and will only be a hurdle. So start with where you're at right now. You're making a big commitment to yourself, and that's such a cool thing. So I hope you're full of excitement and motivation to get going and achieve the goals you set out in this business plan. But I also hope that you can maintain that excitement as time goes on. Building your business is going to take time. And a key to staying on track and motivated is managing your expectations. It's good to be ambitious, but it's just as important to be realistic. Because when our expectations aren't met, then we feel disappointed and unmotivated. And that won't help us make progress dream big. But also assume that everything will take longer than you think. Because good things just take time. You're starting something challenging but incredibly rewarding. And there will be a lot of highs and lows. But just note that every hour you spend working on your business is a step forward and is an investment in your future. Make sure to pay attention to all of the small winds as well as the big winds, and know that the failures are just part of making progress. Most importantly, make sure that you're being a good boss to yourself because you're what's driving this whole operation. You need to take good care of yourself and take breaks to be able to have a sustainable business. So make sure that you don't sacrifice yourself, care in the pursuit of success. I'm so excited to see what your plans are. So share the business summary page of your workbook with us in the class project section so that we can all be inspired by your plans. Pop over to my website to learn more about me and growing a creative business. Leave this class a review if you enjoyed it and I can't wait to see you get started. Bye bye.