One reason I know so darn much about running a business as a solopreneur is I’ve been doing it for over 20 years.

And what amazes me, what never changes, is that the learning curve is always ahead of me. I used to think there was a catch-up point, and I’d race for it. Took a while for me to notice that each time I got close, the curve simply…

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Four time, returning smARTist Alumni, Amadea Bailey, tells us exactly why she keeps coming back!

Is your art career sitting on the fence because you are?

Register for the smARTist Telesummit 2010. (It starts in 2 days!)

Your art career will thank you—and that’s a promise!

One of the main challenges of trying to fit marketing into an artist’s busy life is this overwhelming sense that it’s just all too much. I know because I struggle with this story too.

And, I have to remind myself that it is just a “story,” and as long as I keep telling myself the same plot over and over, that’s exactly where…

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Twitter works like this for lots of people:

1. You sign up and start tweeting enthusiastically.

2. Your list of followers grows slllooooowwwly. You wonder how all those other people got to 3000–or 300–followers. Isn’t Twitter supposed to be social networking magic?

3. You tweet less and less frequently. Eventually, you stop altogether.

If this is you, don’t despair. At the 2009 Smartist telesummit, Joan Stewart, the social networking maven, had a great suggestion about how to find your tweeps.

Use the search box.

Let’s say you’re a painter–and you paint dog portraits. Dog owners would make great clients for you. So you type ‘dog owners’ or ‘dogs’ or even ‘I love my dog’ into the search box–and voila! You have a bunch of potential clients. Chances are, if you follow them, they’ll follow you back.

But–and here’s the key–don’t say hello with a sales pitch. Next time, we’ll talk about how to keep people reading your tweets.

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When it comes to tips and tricks for your art career, nothing’s better than those 7-days of the smARTist Telesummit 2009!

In the old days it was location, location, location.

Now, it’s attitude, attitude, attitude.

We know this is true, especially as social media marketing takes over the traditional way of doing business.

I mean, it’s always been true that our attitude…

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I’ve been feeling the crunch of time lately; chewing away at emails, tasting the flavor of helping clients, swallowing whole chunks of I’m-not-getting-to-what-I-want-to-do.

And now that smARTist 2009 is over, one of the consistent messages I hear from artists is, How can I do it all?

Given the vast range of art career information that smARTISTs encounter over the 7 days of the conference, I’m not surprised that suddenly they have even more on their plates than before.

So I thought the perfect remedy, for all of us, would be Waverly Fitzgerald, our Slow Time Lady expert from the smARTist Telesummit 2008

This post is one in a series of her time-tested ideas about helping time work for you!

She has a unique take on time, and our relationship to it. Instead of the more traditional ”management” approach to all things hourly, daily, and monthly, Waverly advocates a sense of…

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Over the years I’ve encountered two groups of artists. Those who embrace the “M” word with determined resignation. And those who turn away, mumbling something about not selling their souls to the devil, or I wouldn’t have a clue where to start, or I’m an artist, as if the very obviousness of that fact will save them from getting their hands dirty.

For that, after all, is the real story behind the “M” word…

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I recently finished negotiations on a large equine sculpture for a major developer. Erik, a sculptural genius, is working with me on this. To date, we’ve had three meetings, and have invested about 8 hours of our time-most of that coming from Erik in the form of renderings. And all of this we did without…

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