Hi all,

As we celebrate MayDay (which, by the way, has its historic roots right here in my hometown of Chicago), a question comes up that relates to something I’ve been working on for awhile. That question is, “What would I do if a disaster struck my business?”.  What would *you* do, as an artist with a business to protect?

Now,  I feel like I can speak to this topic with some level of authority. In a previous life, I worked on the technology side of banking for, well, a long time.  Bankers, for the most part, are a risk-averse kind of folk.  (Now, that doesn’t include the silly folks who run the biggest banks that played a part in the financial meltdown, but that’s another story).  They *despise* risk; hate it; run away from it as fast as they can.  So, they spend a lot of time thinking about what could go wrong in their businesses, how to avoid it, and how to fix it when it happens, because something will almost certainly go wrong at some point.  There are people who make their living thinking about what can go wrong and what to do about it.  Big businesses will run dress rehearsals to practice what they’d do in case of an emergency.   That was part of my job for a long time.

Everyone’s situation is different, and so the solution to emergency preparedness, also called “business continuity planning” in the biz, varies from business to business as well, but there are some basics that everyone needs to know. Among them are…..

- Some sort of business insurance; yes, it’s an expense, but for most businesses, it’s a small expense compared to replacing your business without it.

- Keeping legal papers in a safe place; safe deposit boxes, etc.

- Protecting your most important business assets.  There are a variety of ways to do this, depending on what your business is.  What are those assets? Inventory catalogs, contact lists, etc., as well as the physical assets themselves, ie, your artwork, supplies, etc.

What you do to protect yourself from a disaster and the aftermath is always a balance of risk vs the cost to avoid the risk.

Now, we of the WorkingArtist community have a leg up when it comes to disaster recovery. Why? Because WorkingArtist is already holding much of the truly critical information you need to survive a disaster.  You have a catalog of your work and where it is. You have a list of your suppliers. You have a list of shows and fairs that you are participating in. And, you have a list of your business contacts.  That is a *great* start towards being able to truly survive a disaster.  If you don’t do anything else, keeping a copy of your WorkingArtist data in a safe location can go a long way towards helping you get your business up and running again.

One of the things that’s commonly missed in emergency planning is what to do after the disaster is over. My studio has burned down. Luckily, I have insurance, and they’ve already cut me a check. What now? Where do I order supplies? Where is my artwork?  This information can all be within WorkingArtist.

I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, and working on a solution for us that may help out a bit. Over the summer, I’m going to be releasing a new product specifically for disaster planning. Basically, about 30 years of practical experience into an easy to use guide for protecting yourself from a disaster as best you can, and how to recover when something bad happens.  Honestly, 90% of it is common sense, but having one place to go to get that information can really be a “brain saver”.  Large businesses all have a “business continuity manual” if they have any common sense at all.  Why not artists? The guide will have a place to put your critical information, ie, what are the first steps after a disaster.  We’ll leverage what’s already in WorkingArtist.  The upcoming WorkingArtist 4 will have some enhancements to streamline this as well.

The idea with a disaster guide such as this is to fill it out once, and put it away in a safe place, knowing that if you have disaster, you pull out the book, and start at page 1, which will tell you what to do and in what order.  It may sound like obvious stuff, but in the heat of the moment, it’s nice to have something that takes some of that worry out of your head.  Update the information as needed; some things need to be updated more often than others.  Once a year or so, go back and review everything to make sure that it still applies.

For now, if you do nothing else, when you back up your WorkingArtist data (and you *are* doing that, right? :-)), make a copy of that backup and put it someplace away from your PC.  Ideally, you want it in a different building, but at the very least, keep it outside of the general area where you have your PC.

Have a good weekend, folks.

Ron

Pick the career of your choice.  Most likely, you can find a good education on that career at the school of your choice.  They’ll teach you all of the theory, the techniques, etc.  Chances are, tho, they’re not going to do as good job as they might in teaching you how to turn all of that knowledge into a successful career.  Sure, if you graduate and find yourself work at a studio and the like, you can shield yourself to some extent from having to know what’s really going on.  But, if you want to go off on your own and make a living as an independent artist, you pretty much have to learn at least the basics of how to run a business.  Well, you don’t have to, but your chances of being successful are probably going to be severely limited if you don’t know how to manage the business side of your artwork.

So, what to do?

Well, If you’re lucky, you know someone who is already a working artist, and can help you learn the ins and outs of setting up and running a business.  If not, you can find yourself one of the workshops that are taught by working artists, who will teach you the basics of the business of art.  And failing that, you can visit your local library or bookstore and look for books about the business of art.

Every art medium is a little bit different than every other in how you go about selling your work and maintaining your business.  Luckily, they also have a lot of things in common.  No matter what kind of art you create and sell, you’re going to need to keep track of your income and expenses; that’s a basic part of any business, whether you’re selling sculpture, water colors, or diesel engines.  You can keep track of it on lots of pieces of paper, or in something like a computer spreadsheet, or in bookkeeping software, ie, something like Intuit Quickbooks and the like (not a recommendation, just an example).  You spend more as you go up the ladder of tools, but you gain the advantages of those tools.

Beyond basic bookkeeping, you need to be able to keep track of the mechanics of your business. That is, you need to keep track of what you have, who you sold things to, where you sold them, contacts you’ve established, etc.  Once again, you can keep track of these things on pieces of paper or a spreadsheet program.  And for very, very small businesses, that might be fine.  General bookkeeping systems can keep track of inventory, but they lack the nuances that make every kind of business unique.  For example, in the world of photography, you’ve got software systems that do something called “digital asset management”, and is called DAM software (provide your own jokes here…..).  I’ve worked in photography, and what you see in the world of photography are artists who have seemingly vast inventories of images.  If you get a notice that Joe’s World of Nature is looking for pictures of laughing gazelles for their next cover, you have to be able to find those images quickly and get them to the publisher, while keeping track of who has your images.  That’s what DAM software does.  In the world of fine art photography, and other limited edition art media, you still need to keep track of where you’re artwork is at, but you’re also tracking things like gallery connections, art fairs, etc.  The needs are similar, but different.  And there are software systems, like WorkingArtist and a handful of others, who fit that niche of specialized use.

The main point here isn’t to go out and buy yourself a lot of software gadgets to run your business.  What you do need to do, tho, is maximize the potential that your business has to be successful, and that’s what these tools do.  Whether you’re working from a legal pad, or a spreadsheet, or a good software program, you’re looking for ways to ease the burden of tracking all the things that have to be tracked in order to squeeze every bit of potential income from your business.  Like it or not, you have to do these things in order to give yourself the best chance of being successful.  It’s worth a bit of your time to review your options and pick the best tools for your business.