In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast, you’ll learn how to sell your art, how to market your paintings, and everything else you need to know in order to have a successful art career. Each episode answers questions from artists by host Eric Rhoads, author of “Make More Money Selling Your Art,” publisher of several art magazines and newsletters, and author of ArtMarketing.com.

In this Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads explains how to set reasonable art goals, and how to get more recognition as an artist.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 66 >

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

FULL TRANSCRIPT of the Art Marketing Minute:
DISCLAIMER: The following is the output of a transcription from an audio recording of the Art Marketing Minute. Although the transcription is mostly correct, in some cases it is slightly inaccurate due to the recording and/or software transcription.

Announcer:
This is the Art Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the Amazon best selling book, “Make More Money Selling Your Art.” In the marketing minute we answer your questions to help your art career brought to you by artmarketing.com, the place to go to learn more about marketing. Now, here’s your host, arts magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads:

In the marketing minute I answer your marketing questions you can email yours to me at actually [email protected]. So here’s a question from Jay Taylor in Arveda, Colorado, Jay says as we wrap up the year and look forward to the next I’d like to get some art goals. But I don’t know what they should be. What are some reasonable goals we can set as we look forward to next year? Well, Jay, I recommend everybody sequester themselves and set their goals between Christmas and New Years Take, take it seriously. If you actually want to hit goals, if you actually want to accomplish something, it takes planning, it’s not something you just go, Hey, here’s a couple of cool goals. And then you announce them on January 1, and then you’ve you’ve blown them by February 1, right? So you want to actually take some time and all great goals are measurable. All right. measurable means you need to be able to know if you’ve accomplished them. And so you want to you want to do your goals in that way. So I can’t pick what are good goals for you. I can give you some general things that artists and others might be thinking about. I don’t know what your goals are going to be. And quite frankly, if they’re not your own goals, you’re not going to hit them. You got to believe in them. You got to think about them. You got to constantly monitor your goals. I talked a lot about this and Sunday coffee, my blog and I also talked about it in art marketing comm a lot of goal setting is very important to me. I set my goals for 2021 back in September. I have big four days. have meetings with my team for goal setting, because that’s how important it is. And we monitor those goals every single week, we have a meeting as a team. And we go through the goals and we say, Okay, here are our goals for the quarter. How are we doing here are goals for the year? How are we doing? What are the steps, we make sub goals, steps, you know, they say the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time, right? So you’ve got to take that elephant and break it up into, you know, monthly goals, and then weekly goals and sometimes even daily goals. And you’ve got to pay attention to them. And you’ve got to take the steps. Because if you don’t take the steps, you won’t hit the goals. You can’t just say, Alright, I’m making 10,000 a year and now I want to make 100,000 next year, you know, there’s positive thinking, and you can think positively about that all day long. But if you don’t have a system in place to hit those goals, you’re not likely to hit it. So here’s some things to think about. Where am I now? And where do I want to be? What is the gap? What you know, how do I get to where I want to be? What are the steps necessary to get there, and then break them down to weekly and monthly and daily and so on? Are my goals realistic and attainable? Are my goals measurable? In other words, measurable goals, let’s say an easy measurable goal is I want to make $100,000 a year. And let’s say $120,000 a year to make this easy. And that means Okay, now the monthly goal is I got to make $12,000 a month well now the weekly goal in that is, you know, you got it, let’s say we’re based on you know, four weeks in a month, it’s probably a little bit different 4.5 weeks or something but so now you got to say, all right, if I got to make $12,000 and I got to make $3,000 a week, well, how do I do that? Well, now I got to say, all right, I got to make how much per day to make 3000 a week. And if you have a monitoring system that you put in place, you know, what am I doing today, to reach that, you know, $500 or $1,000 in sales that I get to get for today or for this week, then you’re going to be thinking about those things. And so you want things measurable now, it’s not just measurable when it’s about money, you need to know other goals and how you hit them. So you might have a goal of buying a new car, while buying a new car might translate back to money. A trip might translate back to money, but some things don’t transfer back to money. For instance. Everybody needs different kinds of goals, like you need family goals. So a family goal might be I’m going to spend, I need to get closer to my kids. Well, how am I going to do that? Well, I’m going to spend one Saturday a month taking my each of my daughters to daddy daughter date or I’m going to spend I did that you know what are the different things that you’re going to do? And you need to break them into goals and monthlies and weeklies and so on, because you need to be able to measure those.

You also have to ask yourself, what are the sacrifices I’m willing to make? You know, because goals require sacrifices, things don’t just happen, you have to you know, if you have to work harder, you might have to paint more, you might have to do more things. And so you’ve got to ask yourself, Am I willing to make those sacrifices? are they worth it? You know, if I’m going to make $120,000 a year, but I’m going to have to work, you know, 10 hours a day in the studio, am I willing to do it Am I going to be you know, able to make the trips, the teaching trips, or whatever it is you’ve got to do. So every goal needs to also then be broken down to what if I hit them? What’s next? You know, what if I hit them early? What’s next? Will my life be better if my goals are accomplished? And do they really have a purpose? Because your goals need to have a purpose, right? If you just say, hey, I want to have a Gulfstream jet. Well, that’s nice, but unless you need it, unless you’re going to use it. If you say to yourself, Well, I’m going to the reason I want that is because I’m going to do these trips, and I need to have personal transportation and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, then you, you might want to have purpose or you know, I do a goal. I want to hit a certain number financially every year because I know I’m going to take 10% of that money. And I want to be able to say look, I’m going to give X amount of dollars to this charity or that charity. So you need to be thinking in terms of that. Anyway, start picturing what your life should be. What is the ideal dream life for you? What do you want it to look like? And then you might not make it in a year, you know, it might take you 20 years, that’s okay, but you’ve just got to take it. So think about your ideal life and say, Okay, what can I accomplish this year and next year and so on, break it into goals that will help you a lot. I hope that’s been helpful for you. Thank you In terms of your dreams, and remember, think in terms of different kinds of goals like financial goals, spiritual goals, family goals, travel goals, painting goals, job goals, etc. You know, you might have a goal, like, I want to retire from my job in five years, and be making the same amount of money. Well, how do you do that? Well, you’ve got to back it up and say, well, you don’t just say, Okay, I’m going to leave in five years and then start my business. Instead, you say, I’m going to start my business and ramp it up over the course of the next five years. So by the time I am out of there, I’ve got the same income. Right? That’s the kind of thing I like to think about.

Here’s a question from Melissa Morris in Overland Park, Kansas. Melissa says, I’m not worried about selling my paintings, because I already have a steady income. But I’d like to get more recognition for my work. What are some ways other than sales that I can validate myself as an artist? Well, Melissa, I think that’s a very mature statement. You know, I got a, I do a thing called fall color week and one in the Adirondacks called publishers Invitational. And sometimes I’ll offer to coach people on their marketing during those events, and I remember we were up in Canada, it was snowing, we had a little more time on our hands, because a lot of people didn’t want to go out. And so I offered to do some coaching, one on one coaching, and two different people basically said to me, You know, I want to sell more paintings. And I would say, Well, why. And they started going into it. And I, you know, I identified in both of their cases, that they didn’t need the income, they had the income, they had jobs, so they had money, and they had retirement or whatever, and they didn’t really need. And I and they both, they both said, Well, I thought I was supposed to do that, well, there’s no supposed to the supposed to is you’ve got to do what’s right for you. And for your life. What we identified in both of their cases, is that it was really recognition they wanted, it wasn’t sales, they want it to be recognized. So you’re already on top of this, Melissa? And I think the way to think about it is how do I get recognition? Well, you have to ask yourself, what kind of recognition you want? What kind of recognition is important? And And who do you want it from? So for instance, if if I get recognition from let’s say, my mother, may she rest in peace? When I would, you know, she loved all my paintings, you know, but she loved even though crummy stuff that I did. And so, you know, she’s just always gonna love me and then love what I do. So yeah, it’s nice to have recognition from your mom. But who do you want recognition from? Well, you want recognition from people who are maybe your peers or people who matter to you like, for instance, I had Daniel spiric visiting here in Austin, recently. And Daniel came over to my studio. And you know, when somebody walks into your studio and starts looking around at your paintings, you see them differently through their eyes, because you wonder what they’re thinking. And I showed my self portrait that I did during COVID, first parts of COVID, to Daniel, and he was very complimentary. And I thought, well, that’s, you know, he’s just not making up stuff. Now. He, he saw some of my other work, and he was like, you know, not saying anything. So it’s like, Okay, well, I maybe I didn’t do very well for recognition in that area. But so who matters to you? What kind of recognition Do you want, I like to use my work for charity auctions and silent auctions and helping out at the school and things like that. And to me, if somebody’s bidding on it, and ending up owning it, even if I don’t get the money, that’s recognition, because if people like it, they’re signing up for they want it. I think that’s a great way to get recognition, you know, so think about charities, you can help. I have some rules in my book about if you’re giving things charities, especially if you’re marketing yourself, you might want to look at that and say, Okay, what else do I want out of that? Do I want publicity? Do I want mail lists? Do I want introductions? You know, I have a set series of things in my book, making more money selling your art, and I talked about that a lot. I think charities are a great way to go whether you’re looking to make money or not. A lot of people don’t like to give up a painting. I’ll give them up all day long. I don’t mind because I use them as tools to help me in other areas. So think about that.

Well, this has been the art marketing minute with me. Eric Rhoads. My goal in life is to eliminate the idea of starving artists to help your dreams actually come true. So if you want to submit questions, simply email [email protected]. And to learn more about marketing ideas, you can visit Artmarketing.com. Thanks for listening.

How to Submit Your Art Marketing Questions: What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

> Visit EricRhoads.com (Publisher of ArtMarketing.com) to learn about opportunities for artists and art collectors, including:

  • Art retreats
  • International art trips
  • Art conventions
  • Art workshops (in person and online)
  • And more!