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The Backup Plan. Type A’s love it, but most artists and creatives hate it. Maybe your parents said you needed it. Maybe your school told you it was practical. But either way, I am not here to tell you what to do. In fact, I am here to tell you what not to do.
Instead of plan B, let’s pretend that you’re actually just a team of three: an effective artist business plan that treats you as a team of three essential roles.
Let’s dive right into it.
There is a fundamental problem with the idea of a plan B — or creating this crazy specific artist business plan and having a back-up plan if you “fail.”
Plan B’s assume that your path will either be perfect or imperfect, whereas your path is always going to be imperfect, this whole idea that plan A has to go according to plan, and if anything goes outside of that, then I have failed.
Is just so last year. It’s so like 5 years ago.
It’s so 10 years ago.
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The Problem with the Back-Up Plan within the Artist Business Plan
The problem here, my friend, is that you are holding yourself to too high of a standard. You might have the perfect business plan; for artists, though, it’s not as simple as this.
You’re being a perfectionist and don’t worry, I am a perfectionist as well in some elements
This is why I talk about this being a creative journey, not a creative destination, where once you’ve hit that goal post, you are done, we don’t need to talk about anything anymore, we don’t need to try anymore. That’s not what we’re here for.
We love a good challenge. We love a beautiful journey.
We love the idea that we have goals, but also that we can romanticize every single day.
You’re holding yourself to too high of a standard. And in turn, considering something a failure when it’s really just part of the universal plan all along. Because creative entrepreneurship really involves embracing both successes and setbacks as valuable parts of your artistic journey. And that shouldn’t fall into a Plan A or Plan B. It’s the higher business plan for artists overall.
It’s already made by the universe and it’s already divine. You are good. Take a breath, drink some tea, watch some new girl, go outside, get a massage. You’re good. You’re good.
Does this just mean that we’re not going to have a plan B and we’re just going to hope for the best?
No, this means that we need to use goals and systems to create your dream, creative life through your creative team of three. To develop an artist business plan that incorporates goals, systems, and the energy of your internal creative team of 3.
I didn’t mean to rhyme this, but I just kind of love how it’s like, no plan B creative team of three. Right? I don’t know. I love it. I love it for us.
The Creative Team of 3
We have the chief visionary officer. We have the project manager and we have the lead artist slash CEO, which is my friend, you.
By understanding how to embody each of these team members, you’ll no longer have this fear of plan A is not working. I need to try plan B.
The Chief Visionary Officer
So, first, We have our chief visionary officer. Now, our chief visionary officer is the spiritual, energetic, fun loving team member
we always have this practical person in our mind who’s like, okay, you gotta make sure that you make this amount of money and if you, you know, this, this, this, is this.
We go to her for the big ideas. We go to her when we’re feeling like we’re hopeless and she’s like, no, because the vision, the greater vision, we have this amazing product. You, the artist. And we need to make sure that we are Pulling everything out of it that we can, that the world is seeing all of it.
(I hope that didn’t sound weird, not like all of it, like naked, like the world seeing naked, but like, like your talent. I think you got that. And I think by me saying that it was weird, but I’m gonna keep it in.)
This chief visionary officer is about manifesting your biggest, most dreamiest aspirations in the universe.
And she’s helping you actually defining what your version of a successful journey is. At the same time of her having this beautiful vision of this is what I want to do. She also reminds us that this is all a journey, so we’re going to enjoy every single day of this iteration process. Let’s put it into real world examples.
I bought this indoor hydroponic garden there needed to be somebody on this team who was like, this is an amazing product.
We’re going to change so many people’s lives. To push them through these really hard parts of, get funding, they need to find the money, they need to, create the product, they need to do all this stuff.
They needed somebody to constantly remind the team, guys, I know it’s getting hard, I know the practicalities are hitting, we need to be aware of that, but also, Remember the goal. Turning this to you as an artist, remember the goal, what are some of the goals that you have? And I know that there’s more than one.
I also implore you to think about, not as much of a goal, but just day in and day out, what do you want to give to the world? What is the service that you want to give to the world?
I’ll give me as an example, selfishly, there’s probably many more, Interesting examples, because I am still a budding singer-songwriter, but maybe this will relate to you.
Ultimately for me? It comes down to me wanting to create a community a community here on YouTube and a community far beyond this as well.
I just feel like I can feel most myself when I’m in a community of like minded people who we share the same aspirations and values and we just love supporting each other and there’s no competition, maybe because I grew up in an environment where I did not feel that way.
I feel like it’s, it’s kind of my life’s purpose. The medium in which I am doing that happens to be hopefully a decent performer and singer, and I can share this and it can move people.
Think about how this can translate into you, this chief visionary officer, how this chief visionary officer can help serve your audience?
Artists greater purpose. What is your greatest purpose beyond your art? This is beyond art marketing strategies and artist brand development and examining the crux, first: what do you love as an artist?
We love creating art But what are we actually what are we doing with this, right? it’s the same thing as someone who is a crossing guard their greater purpose might be I want to cherish every single child and just keep them safe.
They could do that as a crossing guard. They can do that from the founder of a multi billion dollar non profit. It doesn’t matter.
And this is what this Chief Visionary Officer is here to do.
Eliminate the chokehold of practicality, we can get so in our heads, playing the comparison game there’s this practicality that we have in our environments as well.
I had, teachers who would kind of be like, you’re going to go to school for theater, what are you going to do with that?
I’m grateful that my parents were very supportive of me. Getting, an education in theater, even if it were to be at a conservatory, which it wasn’t because I didn’t get into any conservatories. Yeah.
We need this practicality. Yes. We’re going to talk about that, but there needs to be a member of your personal team that actually reminds you that there is a greater purpose here.
The universe, whatever you believe in. has got you,
the world needs this. The world is craving for this. Craving for your song. Craving for a piece of art that they look at and literally feel like home. Craving for a performance that finally gets them to, talk to their brother again it reminded them of what their relationship was and how much they miss it.
This is a service. This is something spiritual. This is something that the world needs.
Here’s the modified version of the script without emojis and with basic formatting for a blog article:
The Chief Visionary Officer is also here to help you manifest your biggest dreams in the universe. So there are times, again, there are times when you need to be practical, but there’s also times where you need to really ask yourself,
If money wasn’t an issue, if I could literally have anything in the world, what would I have?
People get really stuck on things like this. It’s very hard for them to be like, I would love a full time job that paid me this amount. It’s like, wait, would you actually want a full time job? No, but like, that’s what, no, no, no, no. I’m literally talking. If any, like money was not an issue, you could do anything.
You could literally make a thousand dollars a day by sitting outside in the sun all day. Is that what you would do? Would you not work? Yeah. Would you work? Would you have this be your full time thing, your part time thing? Where would you live? How would you live? How much money would you be making? What would you invest in?
What would you be doing? What would your days look like?
This is what your Chief Visionary Officer has to be for you. It’s going to give you this permission to be able to actually like dream without borders. This is kind of where manifestations come in.
I talk a lot about how in this creative journey, we have two things. We have like manifestation and we have systems and systems we talk about later, but manifestations is affirmations, vision boards, like no barriers to this. These are the art career goals that you want. You’re putting no barriers up.
What would you absolutely love? Stop being practical. Whether you’re a founder of an Indoor Hydroponic Garden or an artist like this, you need that member of your team to actually let you say genuinely, what the heck do I want in life? That goes into this last part is really defining what your successful journey looks like. This word success got me caught up so much, in 2020 when all of us were kind of just like, what am I doing with my life?
I was in acting school. 2020 happened. I was like in my second year, which was the last year. Living right outside of New York and I was planning on doing that basically for the rest of everything. I was going to audition for Broadway and do all this stuff.
And then I sat home and kind of realized like, what is success really? look like to me
what I realized was I was like, I really like this lifestyle of being able to work when I want to and have this sort of be able to work when I’m comfy. When I’m cozy, I am more comfortable being me, this chief visionary officer is here to help you define really what does a successful journey look like?
Now notice i’m not saying a successful goal I want you to remember that i’m never talking about just one goal.
I think that as a society Maybe it was just me I was led to believe that you have like one goal in life
As an artist,
what do these goals look like? But then also with that, what does every day look like? What am I doing every single day that’s actually making my life more beautiful and artistic and creative?
Have you decorated your home?
So it’s beautiful. And you walk around and you’re like, I love my home. For me, that’s success, right?
There’s other things that I don’t feel like I’ve hit success in yet, but I’m walking around in this glitter of success right now that’s your chief visionary officer.
She is, Always going to remind you, stop boxing yourself in.
You have dreams. What are they? I will never make fun of you. I will never judge you for how big these are. I want you to dream big. As cheesy as that sounds. Hopefully you get the picture. Genuinely, you need to be able to dream big in order to have things happen.
Then we got our project manager.
The Project Manager
This is team member number two. She’s all about systems. She is focused. She’s the organized arm of your team. She’s here to make sure that you’re doing everything that you’ve I’ve dreamt about and set out to do, especially when it comes to the Chief Visionary Officer because she’s got a lot of dreams, right?
But the project manager is like, okay, well, how do we make that happen?
breaking down your goals into practical steps. You need her for optimizing, your days. And you need her for checking in on your progress and holding you accountable.
Let’s talk about that first one. So we talked about goals. We talked about the vision board and our affirmations and this is all good. This is all needed. Totally needed.
We do not want to dream small. The worst possible thing us artists can do is dream small. And then we’re going to look at other people and we’re going to say, why the heck didn’t I even try that?
We need to give this to the world. But we also need this project management to reel us back and say how are we going to do this?
The easiest way I always like to say we can pair these two things is okay Let’s say you’ve created a vision board, write down some affirmations I am abundantly making 10,000 a month in my Etsy shop
The simplest way that the project manager can help with this is what are five things you can do every single day to get closer to this? There are also project management tools and systems
I love Asana. You can have different projects. You can have a project called house. You can have a project called business and you create tasks and you move them over in the card and sub tasks and you can make it really complicated, but really just keeping it simple, break it down into practical steps.
Okay. You want to make 10,000 from your Etsy shop. What are five things you could do today?
5 things a week, 5 days a week, 25 things. That is a lot of things a week that you could be doing and it’s actually bringing your dreams into realization. We need the project manager for that. She’s also the go-to for financial planning for artists — everything numbers, really.
Optimizing, systematizing, ritualizing your days. It seems like this is very detail oriented, the input is detail orientation. Yep, I’m gonna go with that.
We’re gonna create systems and we’re gonna plan out our day, but the output of that is actually feeling really inspired and creative and spiritual.
Let’s say, you’re looking into your calendar app and you’re like, okay, so tomorrow I’m going to wake up at 7am, I’m going to do my red light therapy and then I’m going to go outside in the sunlight and then I’m going to work for two hours and I’m going to take a lunch break and it seems really rigid, right?
It seems like, oh, but then when you do it, you’re actually creating a very beautiful, romanticized day. The things you’re actually doing are just rituals.
It’s very important you decide to do things that spark joy for you. But who says that the project manager has to make you do boring stuff? Who says that they can’t say, okay, you’re going to do the dishes, but you have to watch your favorite show while you’re doing it. Like it can be fun. They’re here for making things, not just chores for you to do. They’re here for reminding you, no, make this fun, make this enjoyable.
They’re here for checking in on your progress and holding you accountable. This is things like if you have a blog, I have not been good at this, but usually if you have a blog, you should be checking the analytics every week or every month, right?
Reflecting and seeing. What blog articles are doing really well? What blog articles are not doing well? What can I tweak a little bit? What are people liking? What are people not liking? What’s bringing in traffic? What isn’t bringing in traffic?
Having that regular check in and say, okay, how are things working? How are things feeling? When it comes to your artistry, maybe that means you are working a full time job right now. It’s very tiring. Your goal is to transition from a full time job into your cozy girl job and then your cozy girl job into being an artist full time.
So we’re going from that full time job to the cozy girl job. You could be checking in on yourself every week doing these systems like, okay, I’m going to apply to five jobs a day, or I’m going to build up my Etsy shop, or I’m going to try switching to freelancing so I could at least work remotely.
Check in on your progress and see, okay, how many jobs am I actually applying to? This is again, where a project management tool like Asana can come in. You can track the applications you send, how am I doing? How many jobs are actually seeing my application?
How many interviews am I getting? Is this platform actually working or should I use a different tool? Should I be cold emailing instead? Should I be reaching out locally
On a more artistic note? If you’re releasing art and you want to put on an art show locally and you’re checking in on your goals, like check in every single week and say, how many people are you reaching out to?
Are you networking? Are you going to events locally? Really use as many numbers as you can how numbers wise, okay, how much am I making how many jobs am I applying to? How many art galleries have I pitched to? How much traffic has come to my website?
And then, also ask yourself, how am I feeling on a scale of 1 to 10? Does this feel like it is in line with what I want my artistic journey to be? Is this in line with what my Chief Visionary Officer would be saying that I really want to be doing?
Your project manager might feel like she’s kind of like the mom of the group, and she probably is to a point, but you know you need that mom of the group. You know that you need them to keep you together because they’re going to be the one to remember band aids in case someone gets hurt.
They’re going to be the ones to say, hey, I got water, don’t worry. They’re going to be the ones to have your back when the chief visionary officer is like, okay, come on, we need to, go towards the goal. And then you’re here to say, okay. Are we actually making progress on this goal? This is something that you can do weekly. This is something that you can do like just super casually, literally like, Oh, is my, I hate that my window’s crooked right now.
And I just see it. Can you please pretend that you never saw that? Please. Oh my goodness. I’m really upset, but I’m not going to change it because I’m lazy.
Your Project manager and your chief visionary officer might feel like they’re colliding heads sometimes when you’re feeling really organized, you don’t want to be, you don’t want to be the dreamer.
And sometimes if you’re like in this dreamer state, you don’t want to get organized. I don’t know. There’s sometimes there’s phases in my life where I just, I’m like one or the other, but really they have to work together in order for your creative career to flourish and your creative journey to flourish.
That gets to our last Very important team member, which is you. This is the CEO. This is the lead artist. They are here to be the techniques, the skills and the talents of this beautiful team.
The Lead Artist/CEO
Your lead artist and CEO is the literal heart and soul and energy behind your business.
I don’t want to say they’re the talent because there’s such a bad, connotation with being like the talent’s here because they’re usually really like diva y
but really, I mean, we can’t do this operation without her and going back, Oh, I kicked the camera.
Going back to this idea that there are no plan B’s, there’s this divine path that has already been chosen for us
You have a talent for your art. You have a talent for whatever type of art you’re doing, we can’t dismiss that. We can’t have this business without that.
Unfortunately there’s a lot of people with great talent and they aren’t able to share it with as many people as perhaps they could be able to, because of they don’t have this divine trio.
The lead artist and CEO is actually providing the service of your art.
We’re using the talents that were gifted to us to do something in the world positively. I talked about this being a service in the beginning, and I really just want you to reflect on that even more What is this service that you’re bringing?
As much as we love spending time doing our art and there is an indulgence,
there’s also an audience of people who need this, this product that you need to sell, this hydroponic garden. I bought it, I needed a way to grow plants organically that I didn’t need to go outside for because I have a black thumb, and this solved that problem.
What problem are you solving for your audience? What types of people are going to listen to your music or watch you perform or enjoy your art and say, “This is what I needed. I have been looking for this my whole life.”
Turn it around to someone else. What do the people want and how can I use my talents for good. This goes to the second responsibility of the Lead Artist and CEO is just moving others.
People experience art because they want to feel something. People go to shows because they want to feel something.
I was always told this as an actor, the worst thing that can happen is a group of two or three people go to your show and they have dinner after and they don’t talk about the show. That’s the worst thing that can happen. The best thing that can happen is that they can talk about the show, even if they hated it. But they’re saying something.
You invoked something in them, ideally, it would be something positive, but this is the whole point. People want to be moved. You have this magical power to do that.
It’s like you have a wand from Harry Potter. You are able to do this. You are able to have this magic that you can cast spells with people with your art. And you have to make sure we’re doing it for good,
we’re here to make the world more beautiful.
The world has so many amazing engineers and scientists and we have so much AI and, some of which might be for good, some of which might not, we are here to make the world beautiful,
at the end of the day, this is not a life or death thing. We are here to make people feel something leaving things better than the way you found them,
we’re like freaking wizards, man. We’re like berries. We’re like berries. Yes. We’re walking around and we’re just creating beauty this is the talent. This is why we have the project manager. This is why we have the chief visionary officer
you need all three of these to really love this creative journey that you are on. It truly is a trichotomy. Is that a word? I’m going to make it a word.
Moving Forward With Your New Artist Business Plan (AKA, Your Creative Team of 3!)
The next time that you think that you need a plan B, the next time that you feel like a failure because your initial plan didn’t work out, I want you to just reframe this what if actually this entire plan was exactly how it’s supposed to go?
All you need to remember is that these three team members are innately already inside of you Use this to leverage your business as an artist to the places you want it to be.
I have no more natural sunlight, I hope you can still see me. but, I will see your three team members. next time bye.
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