The Mission Paradox Blog

Repost - Power and the Arts

I like this one so I'm reposting it. New blog post on Monday

 

Looking for my 2012 clients

Here's the deal:

Every once in a while I work directly with a handful of individual artists and arts organizations.

For example, this year I worked with a visual artist, a theatre that focuses on highlighting artists with disabilities and a few other interesting folks.

We are headed toward a new year so I wanted to open the door to a few new clients. I'm going to do this the old fashioned way. I'm going to explain what your getting and offer you a discounted price for a limited time.

Technically what I'm offering is called marketing coaching. You are going to come to me with your marketing challenges. Challenges like these:

You need to sell more of your jewerly on Etsy.

You need to build awareness for your Kickstarter campaign.

You need to sell more tickets to your plays.

Then we are going to break your problem down into pieces and tackle the thing one week at a time. We do that through a series of phone calls.

The phone calls last about two hours. At the end of each call, you'll get some homework. DO THE HOMEWORK.

We do that for six weeks, maybe seven if we need it.

At the end of the process you should have some answers to your challenges. That's cool, but that's not the point. The point is the process. The goal is that when the next tricky marketing challenge comes up, you'll have a way of finding your own answers.

The price is normally $750.

If you sign up by Monday, Jan. 2nd, I'll knock it down to $500. I'm comfortable with taking payments in installments. If you need an installment plan, email me and let me know. Payments are done via Paypal.

Need some testimonals, click here

Got questions about the process? Email me at mission.paradox(at)yahoo.com

Ready to get to work? Email me.

Business Day

Let's do a little housekeeping:

1.  THANK YOU to the hundreds of folks that get this blog via your email or an RSS reader.  Your presence is both noted and appreciated.  

2.  If you're in Chicago tomorrow and up for a good workshop, then we still have some availability for this social media training 

3.  Don't forget that some of my very best advice on connecting art and audience lives in my e-book, Authentic Arts Marketing.  You can get a free PDF download, or a low cost version for your Kindle App by clicking here.

4.  Every year I work with a small number of clients directly by doing personal coaching.  For them, it's a good way to really solve some deep arts marketing challenges.  If you're interested in learning more about that, click here

See you Friday

Authentic Arts Audio

This is from 2010, but I think it's still relevant.  It's a two part audio of a presentation I did on Authentic Arts Marketing.  If you're short on time, just check out Part 2.  Link to the audio is here.

Welcome to Paradox

This is the Mission Paradox Blog. I'm your friendly host, Adam Thurman

Since 2007 this has been a place where artists and those who work within artistic organizations get insight on marketing, leadership, diversity and other topics.

The main source of that insight are the blog posts that appear right below this one. Typically you'll get a new one every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. You can get the blog post directly in your web based reader (like Yahoo or Google news) by clicking here

You want more? I got more.

My e-book Authentic Arts Marketing is available as both a free download and as a cheap buy in the Kindle Store. Get details on that here.

Want to work with me directly? I do a limited amount of presentations, workshops and private coaching. Details are here. Testimonials are here.

I hope you find this place a helpful resource as you go about the hard work of connecting your art to an audience. Feel free to drop me a line at mission.paradox(at)yahoo.com.

Remember, new blog posts appear below.

 

Power and the Arts

Here's my TED Talk from the TedxMichiganAve conference.  It's entitled Power and the Arts

 

Check out all the TedxMichigan Ave videos here

Just checking

When's the last time you:

Checked in on the mental health of your team?  Are they tired?  Excited?  Burned Out?  Inspired?

Checked out the financials?  How's that cash flow looking?  Are the revenues on track?  Are the expenses in line?

Visted your own website?  Any broken links?  Do some videos, pictures and other content need refreshing?

Took a vacation?  Perhaps you should walk away from stuff for a few days.  I'm confident things will survive your absence.  Even if you don't leave town, just shut off the email and phone for a while.

Bought Authentic Arts Marketing from the Kindle Store?  I know, shameless plug.  Please forgive me.

Considered some marketing coaching?  Yeah, one more plug.  But I just finished a coaching assignment, which means I have room for one more.  If you want to move your arts marketing in a really positive direction, perhaps coaching is for you.  Details on the experience here.  Testimonials are here.

 

 

More Required Reading For Artists

Get these titles on your bookshelf (digital or real world) ASAP.

1.  The War of Art and Poke The Box - The resistance.  The lizard brain.  There are many external obstacles to success but most of them can be overcome.  The biggest obstacle and the one that crushes us most often is the internal obstacles.  Steven Pressfield and Seth Godin give those obstacles a name and face.  The obstacle that can be identified can be defeated.

2.  The Art of Profitability - It's a simple formula.  Revenue - Expenses = Profit.  If you're some nonprofit hippie then just change it to Revenue - Expenses = Surplus.  This book reminds us that the road to profit/surplus is paved by a bunch of tiny decisions.  It's a bit of tricky read but stick with it and see if any of the profit models given work for you.

3.  How The Mighty Fall - You may have heard of Jim Collins "Good to Great".  I find the book equally interesting.  Organizations in decline tend to go through a similiar process.  Take the lessons in this book and apply them to your organization.  What you discover may freak you out, but at least you can do something about it.

4.  Authentic Arts Marketing - What?  You didn't think I would include my own book in this list?  Silly mortal. 

5.  The Art of Governance - If you run a nonprofit arts organization please do the following.  Buy each of your Board members a copy of this book.  Any member who doesn't read it, and embrace it, should be kicked off the Board.

6.  Evil Plans - If you need a role model, Hugh MacLeod is a damn fine one.  He's an artist that has found some brilliant ways to leverage his work and impact a lot of people.  He's also a great writer.

 

Easier And Harder

One the most fascinating and challenging aspects of this new world we live in is that some things are easier then ever while other things, other really important things, are harder then ever.

For example, it took me six weeks to write Authentic Arts Marketing.  That was hard. 

It took about 15 minutes to make the book available via the Kindle Store. 

That was easy. 

It's taken about three years (and over 800 blog posts) to build a platform strong enough that I had a chance of selling a few books without the help of a publisher, outside marketing staff, etc. 

Writing 800+ blog posts was hard.

So it took years to build some equity with an audience and then minutes to leverage it. 

Part of the reason I'm so passionate about artists taking control of their careers and building their own platforms is because this process of gathering an audience that respects you and trust you can take a while.

If you leave that process in the hands of others, it can take forever.  Even worse, it may never happen.

Just remember that this is a process that takes a while.  And remember that it's hard.

So you better get started now because you have a lot of work to do.

Authentic Arts Marketing - Now On The Kindle

I try to pratice what I preach.

About a year ago I decided it was time to pick myself and publish some of my ideas in a little book.  A short time later, Authentic Arts Marketing was born.  I created it as a PDF and put it on my blog.  Along the way I got feedback from those who read it.

One the biggest complaints I got was that the PDF format was not the most handy format.  We live in a mobile world and people want to read content on their e-Readers, IPad, smart phone, etc.

So with a little help from the Kindle Direct Publishing platform, Authentic Arts Marketing is now available on the Kindle and can be read on any Kindle compatible device.  It can be yours for $4.99.  That money will be split between Amazon and myself.  Click this link to get yours now

Now, after much experimentation with pricing, I finally have a structure I feel comfortable with.

If you want the PDF, it's yours for free.

If you want the Kindle version and all the benefits of that, more portable, the ability to highlight passages, etc. then I think less then $5 is a fair price.  Plus, I have enabled the option that will allow you to lend the book to others.  So I think the benefits will even be of value to those who have already downloaded the PDF.

Again, the link to purchase the Kindle version is right here

I hope you find the book to be worthy of a purchase. More importantly, I hope you find the book worthy of sharing, no matter what format you choose.

A few more things:

1.  If you already have the book and would like to leave a review with Amazon please do so.

2.  I'm still working on some formatting for the Amazon page, for example my book description isn't complete for some reason.  I'll get that fixed, but I figured I might as well get started and fix along the way.