The Weekly Glow Up: September 27, 2023

Sep 27

Welcome back to the Weekly Glow Up, where I share tips and resources that you should know about as a creative who wants to make money from their art.

Here’s what I’ve got this week:

1. 🍵 Client Tea: How to Be Your Own Boss

I was talking to a letterer recently who was struggling to get momentum in their business.

They had recently quit their full-time job, and while they knew they loved lettering and wanted to pursue it full time, they were feeling lost on what step to take next.

They had a handful of ideas, but weren’t making significant progress on any of them.

When you’re used to a full-time job, with someone telling you what to do next and dictating your workload, it can feel really disorienting to transition to having total control and freedom over your business.

To grow your business, you have to wear all the hats at first. You have to step into the “boss” role to put together a vision and plan for your “employee” (also you) to execute.

If you’ve never been a “boss” before and you’re not sure where to start, work backwards:

As an employee, what were the things that helped you make the most progress on projects and tasks? Was it:

having a hard deadline?
having a team member to keep you accountable?
knowing clearly what the goal of the project is?

When you think about what your old boss did for you to make you successful, you can then apply it to yourself.

Set deadlines for yourself to get something done, even if they’re totally arbitrary (but make sure they’re realistic, or else you’re setting yourself up for failure).

Tell a friend or a partner or your followers on the internet what you’re doing and when you want to finish it by, so they can help keep you accountable.

I’ve seen a lot of zoom coworking sessions popping up lately where people get on a zoom call with others simply to have people “present” to keep you accountable to working on a task — if that’s something you need, get some other entrepreneurs together for a weekly or monthly accountability work sesh!

Or, articulate your goals clearly so that tasks feel more meaningful: why do you need to do this task? What will it help you get closer to achieving? What are the milestones? What will success look like?

Being your own boss might feel new, but chances are you’ve seen a successful model of it at some point in your past experience.

You know what works for you and what doesn’t — now you just have to reserve time for you to play “boss” so you can put structures in place to help your “employee” self stay motivated 🙂

2. 🧠 Who’s Your Ideal Client?

I’ve been doing a handful of free mentor sessions with artists lately (more spots are about to open for October — stay tuned!), and most of the challenges people are sharing with me come down to this critical first step:

Defining your ideal client.

Your ideal client or customer is the person who your services or products are PERFECT for. You solve a problem they’re experiencing and are selling it at a price that matches how much they value that solution.

A lot of people skip this step and try to go straight to “what should I post on Instagram?” or “where should I do outreach?”

But you can’t answer these questions until you define your ideal client.

Your IG posts should speak precisely to their pains and challenges, how you solve them, and why they should trust you to deliver.

And you can’t talk about someone’s pains & challenges if you don’t know who they are 🤔

The platforms you do marketing and sales outreach on should be the ones where your ideal client is going to search for solutions to their problem.

Or, ones where your ideal client is likely to be hanging out.

And you can’t figure that out until you know you’re targeting.

For instance, you can search for companies and job titles on LinkedIn, so that’s a great place to connect and reach out to people who work at corporate places like book publishers, box stores, etc.

But super small local restaurants and small businesses? You’d probably be better off actually going to their locations in person than trying to message them on LI.

If you don’t have your ideal client defined yet, try answering these questions:

How does my product/service help someone, or make someone’s life better or easier?
What kind of person wants that help (i.e. what’s their job title, or what characteristics do they have that makes them need your help)?
What do they want their ideal solution to do for them/look like?

Then refine your answers and get more specific as you do market research and talk to more prospects to really hone your messaging and maximize your marketing & sales outreach efforts!

3. ⚙️ Systems for Success: Market Research

If you read the section above and felt MORE lost because you don’t know where to start to answer those questions about your ideal client… start here 🙃

Market research is a really important step, especially when you’re starting out, but a lot of artists shy away from it because it sounds scary or technical.

But it doesn’t have to be! Here are some ways you can learn about your ideal client:

“Passive” methods (i.e. you don’t have to actually talk to anyone)

Read comments and reviews on your competitors’ social media pages or shop listings
Read case studies your competitors post on their websites or portfolios to learn about the “challenges” they solved for their clients
Use interactive features like polls and question boxes in your IG Stories
Send out an anonymous survey to your followers or email list (may have to incentive with a chance to win a gift card or free consultation with you!)

“Active” methods (i.e. talking to people)

Interview previous clients or customers about how you helped them and what they loved about working with you
Interview people who you think fit your ideal client description to ask about what they’re struggling with and where they’re looking for help (you may need to offer an incentive like a gift card, or buy them coffee!)
Chat with people who have experience working with your ideal client/customer (but aren’t a direct competitor) to learn what they’ve learned about them (i.e. if you’re a letterer: a surface pattern designer who works with big box stores to license their artwork on products, or an illustrator who does spot illustrations for magazines — and again, prob buy them a coffee!)

Learning as much as you can about your potential customers is key to creating good content, attracting the right people to your social media channels and email lists, and making selling easier.

Which of these market research methods will you try next?