Business Plans for Artists
Are you an artist who wants to work for yourself? Do you want to run your own business, but you don’t know where to start? Maybe you’ve started a business already, but you feel like you have no idea what you’re doing?
Welcome! You’re in the right place.
There is strangely SO little information out there around business for artists. And what is out there, to be honest, is kind of insulting….things like “The One-Page Business Plan for Artists” that assume we can’t handle the real deal.
We’re over the “artists can’t handle business” mentality. It’s simply not true. In fact, all the creative thinking and problem solving we do in our work actually makes us MORE equipped to manage a business. The only thing holding artists back is a lack of information.
And that’s where we come in.
In this article, we’re going to walk you through the most important steps you can take when starting your business: creating a business plan—a real one, not an “artist lite” one. Your business plan will be the guidepost for your business that you refer to over and over again—it lays out all your business’ goals, values, strategies and plans for the future. It’s your roadmap.
So… go ahead and fire up a fresh google doc, get comfortable, and let’s get into it.
Things to consider before you start creating your plan…
Have more than one income stream
Artists often have several income streams—freelance work, services, physical and digital products, brand partnerships and more. This isn’t spreading yourself thin…this is diversifying! Millionaires have 7 revenue streams—why shouldn’t you? Plus, when one is falling flat (like during a global pandemic), you can ramp up your efforts in another. If you want to learn more about how artists make money, check out our free training (it’s 90 minutes, and it’s packed full of info on income streams.)
Adopt a CEO mindset
If you think of yourself as a “beginner” or “unqualified” or “sort of a business owner I guess” that’s where you’ll stay. Start to adopt the CEO mindset. When you act like a professional, others catch on too!
Follow your passion
When you’re coming up with your business idea, start with your strengths and passions. Search for your ikigai: the intersection of what you love, what you’re good at, what people need, and what you can be paid for.
Get to know your audience
All great businesses start with the customer in mind. You have to solve a real problem for real people in order to succeed, so getting to know the audience you’re going to be serving, inside and out, is probably the most important step of the whole process of starting a business.
Building Your Business Plan
While there are a million ways you can go about creating a business plan, we’re sharing the typical formula we use to help give you a good foundation to start with. Feel free to branch off or elaborate wherever you like.
1. Naming your Business
We could talk for hours about the hurdles we jumped through before landing on a name here at Loomier. We initially planned to use a name that included words that literally describe what our brand is about, but once we brought in a lawyer, we discovered that literal descriptive names are REALLY tough to get trademarked. Following our lawyer’s advice, we ended up pivoting to find a non-existent word that was a mashup and manipulation of real words that resonated with us (hence: Loomier).
Fake words are much easier to protect, but that doesn’t mean you have to go that route. You may even want to simply use your given name! Whatever you choose to do, we highly recommend hiring an intellectual property & small business lawyer who can help make sure your business name is protected (and available).
2. Customer Profile
We already told you to get to know your ideal customers before you even start your business. Now’s your chance to organize all the information you’ve learned and use it to form your business strategies.
This section should delve deep into your audience’s wants and needs, their demographics, how to reach them, how to talk to them, etc….
3. Brand Foundation
In this section, lay out the mission of your business and start to define core points of your brand.
You’ll want to include a mission or transformation statement that succinctly distills the problem you’re solving for people into one powerful sentence. (Think about what your company does, how you help people, and WHY. People don’t buy what you do, they buy WHY.)
You’ll also want to define your brand pillars, core values, and your point of difference.
4. Competitor Audit
Research your industry and competition and include your findings here.
What does your industry look like? How do you fit in and how do you stand out? What are your competitors doing well, and what opportunities are they missing?
5. Finances
This is where you crunch the numbers and make sure you set your business up to be profitable and sustainable.
Make sure to figure out your business expenses, set up costs, and overhead, as well as the personal living expenses you need your income to cover. Set financial goals and then show what you need to do to reach those goals.
6. Offerings
Circling right back to revenue streams, what’s your primary offering, and what’s your plan for introducing new ones?
Be sure to define your pricing (hint: use your financial goals to help with this!) as well as production and delivery plans.
7. Marketing & Networking
Marketing deserves it’s own section. It’s a BEAST.
In a fast-paced digital world, there are so many platforms and avenues you can use to market your business. We recommend honing in on just a few platforms that you know your customers engage with and diving deep. List out all the strategies you plan to use to reach your ideal customers (and make sure building an e-mail list is one of them!)
This is also a great place to address SEO. What are keywords or questions that your customers are searching for on the web, and how can you show up to answer those questions?
We also like to include a survey of the customer journey in this section. The customer journey is like a map of how someone goes from their first interaction with your brand to becoming a paying customer, and then how you encourage their continued support and patronage moving forward.
This step goes far beyond a written plan… it’s how you make your customers feel, and how they remember you. What joy have you added throughout your process that makes people feel so special when they work with you? What did you do that went above and beyond? This is all about customers becoming raging fans who will promote your brand without you even asking them to.
8. Hiring and Outsourcing
What do you need help with? Are there parts of your business you don’t want to manage alone? What are your plans for hiring/outsourcing now and in the future (part-time contractors or full-time help)?
We know it’s hard to spend money on outsourcing when you’re just building your brand, but it could save you HOURS of time and tons of headspace to focus on the things that only YOU can do.
For example, consider hiring an accountant to help you make sure you’re taking full advantage of the benefits available to you come tax time. If you’re selling a physical product, hiring someone to help with packing and shipping could be super helpful and free you up to work on the things you’re best at.
9. Goals & Growth
It’s important to look into the future and set some goals you want to reach. Without goals, how can you know if you’re on the track you want to be on?
What do you want your business (and life) to look like in 1, 3, 5 years? Break it down into several goals—how many clients, how many sales, financial goals, number of hours you want to work—whatever makes sense for your brand.
10. Backup Plans
What happens when things don’t go according to plan? We’re not talking about throwing in the towel and giving up. We’re talking about having a plan for how you’ll pivot when your business inevitably faces bumps or changes.
For example, what will you do if you don’t hit your minimum break even income in year one? What other income stream might you try if your first choice plan doesn’t pan out like you’d thought?
Pivoting is an important part of being an entrepreneur, and changing course does not mean you’ve failed. Business is not an exact science, and sometimes it requires a lot of trial and error before you find a method that works for you. Changing your initial plan doesn’t show weakness—it shows strength, determination, and strategy.
11. Timeline & Action Items
This is where you list out everything you need to do to reach your first big goal, whether it’s a launch or a tangible number-based goal like “get 5 new clients.” You can have multiple action items for multiple goals, just make sure to keep it organized and add due dates so you don’t put things off!
We like to break the steps to reach our goals into phases. For example, if we’re planning to launch a new course, phase 1 might be mostly focused on planning the course and researching, phase 2 might be creating and producing, and phase 3 might be planning marketing and outreach.
We Can Help
This is a LOT. We know it’s overwhelming, and we barely scratched the surface.
But you’re not in this alone. We’re constantly creating resources to help bridge the gap between artists and running sustainable art businesses!
Ready to join us?
