It’s been almost a week and I’m still not sure I’m fully recovered from the Craftcation conference. I was scheduled to run three sessions in three days, but then added a fourth at the last minute when another speaker had to cancel. Having been a middle school teacher for six years, where you teach 4-5 hours a day, I didn’t think it would be a big deal, but I was exhausted at the end of every day. I forgot how tiring it can … Read more »
I got a lot of etiquette questions this week, so I’m posting all the answers below:
I’m just starting out, and I have lots of questions I’d like to ask successful business crafters. What’s okay and not okay to ask about?
In general, it’s okay to ask about process, not product, and it’s always best to ask for help from businesses that don’t compete with yours. For example, if you sell plush toys, it’s not okay to ask another plush artist where they get their fabric, who their distributor is, or what consignment stores they work with. Instead, try … Read more »
How do you make a living off your art? That, my friends, is the $50,000 question. There are the standard models we all know about, but they’re all deeply flawed in the same way: in order to be successful, you need to spend most of your time on non-creative endeavors.
Take the typical gallery model, for example. Unless you are sponsored by some incredibly well-connected patron, you need to go to graduate school, network like crazy, and then apply for shows, grants and residencies with the hope that you will secure one out of fifty. All of this while maintaining some … Read more »
Today I attended a San Francisco Town Hall Meeting sponsored by the National Women’s Business Council — an advisory council that reports to the offices of the President and Members of Congress the issues that women in small business face every day. While it is obviously important to make your voice heard to your representatives in government, our concerns as small businesswomen could have been collected via e-mail or online survey. Such a method might have gotten more more responses (today’s event was limited to 200 participants) and certainly would have cost a lot less than … Read more »
Today is the first day of San Francisco’s second annual Small Business Week. As a truly microscopic business, I can’t actually afford to participate in a lot of this week’s events but there’s even some stuff for gals like me.
For example, this Saturday, May 17th, is the Citywide Sidewalk Sale. If your business is located in any of these neighborhoods, you can set yourself up a little table on the sidewalk for selling/promoting your business without … Read more »
The other day, my good friend Eleanor over at The Present Group sent me a link to the post “Eight Things They Never Taught You About Networking“ on Coroflot’s “Creative Seeds” blog. That post, and indeed, that entire blog, is a useful web resource in and of itself, but coroflot.com has a lot more to offer. Now, I realize that many designers, especially if you went to design school, already know about this site, but I think it may actually be … Read more »