MINDSET: Commit to Your Craft
There was a bear on the guest ranch. It was a black bear of decent size, and it was dusk, which is when they often would come and try to test out the dumpster that was hidden behind the maintenance shed. A number of guests and kitchen staff watched nervously from a nearby hillside. Other guests would be walking past the bear soon on their way to dinner. There were kids everywhere. How would this play out?
A wrangler heading to dinner saw it and stopped. Her job was leading guests on horseback through the mountains, and surely she’d encountered this sort of thing before. She turned and walked towards the bear, waving her cowboy hat and yelling. The bear spooked and ran back into the woods. Problem solved. The ranch had competent and experienced staff.
But did they?
I was the wrangler, and that was my first week on the job. My boots weren’t yet broken in and my hat didn’t fit quite right. I had never had a riding lesson in my life. I honestly don’t know why they hired me. That was the first bear I’d ever seen that wasn’t in a zoo. I was scared, and every step I took toward the animal, made me less sure the situation was going to work out in my favor.
Thankfully, the scene played out just the way all the nature documentaries said it would, and the bear moved on. The event had a ripple effect on my time at the ranch though. With my hat, boots, and audacity, the guests immediately trusted me. I looked and acted like a seasoned professional. I had been really nervous that someone would ask me how long I’d been riding or working as a wrangler, but it never came up. They never knew I was a greenhorn. Why would they suspect it?
Most of the kitchen staff made assumptions as well. Only my close co-workers down at the barn knew that I was new to it all. When chatting with a staff waitress later that summer, I mentioned how inexperienced I was at the start of the summer, and she was shocked, and referenced the bear incident. It occurred to me then, how important looking the part can really be when getting started.
Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t trying to deceive anyone, and had anyone asked I would have explained that I was a newbie. I wasn’t going to advertise it though. I applied for the job with no experience, transparent about that. They had hired me anyways, and now I was looking the part and on the job gaining experience everyday, slowly becoming the persona outsiders thought I was anyways.
The waitress and I had both applied for summer work at the guest ranch seeking a bit of western adventure. There was only one difference between her and I. I had the audacity to apply for something I was unqualified for. I said yes to me, and left it up to the staff of the ranch to say no… and they didn’t. I spent three summers on the ranch, eventually becoming one of the barn managers. I have wonderful memories and a thousand adventures, all because I had the confidence to push myself and reach for what I actually wanted.
FAST FORWARD:
Fifteen years later, Christian (my husband) and I were just dating. He had completed his first ever public art project, a small electrical box in Ivanhoe Village, Orlando. He had been expressing to me frustration with his current full time job.
“So, if you could do anything for a living, what would you choose to do?” I asked.
“Well, I would ideally make a living with my art, but no one actually does that,” he replied.
“Why not?”
That question, why not? Changed everything. When I said it, I cared less about why he thought no one was making a living from their art (because certainly I knew people were), and I meant why couldn’t you? Someone was out there doing it. He was certainly talented. Why in all the 8-9 years since college had he never really pursued art as a career? Perhaps he didn’t know how to get started, or what direction to go, either way he had convinced himself a long time ago that it was not possible.
This experience is not unique to us. I think it is something many creatives experience when they want to make art for a living, but do not know how. The art world can be overwhelming. It is full of dead ends, rejections, low paying opportunities, and scams. You are most likely to run into these when you are just starting out and don’t quite know how to recognize traps yet (though some things, like rejection letters, never really go away). It can be incredibly discouraging, and if you are unsure of what you are doing, a small speed bump can seem like the end of the world.
Making an effort with your art, and presenting it to the world is a very vulnerable act. It is saying This is me, I care about this, I am trying to do something here, what do you think of it? Depending on your support system, you may have little to no encouragement, no wind in your sails. Just committing to your art practice and recognizing that time spent on your craft is not a waste, or a luxury, but an actual career, takes some courage.
These first steps of believing in your art practice, and saying I am going to take this seriously… It's like stepping towards the bear. It requires a little courage, but it sets the tone for the rest of your journey. In taking your first steps and presenting yourself as a professional working artist (even if you don’t feel like one yet), you make yourself available for opportunities when they arise.
FIRST STEPS
Your first steps in presenting yourself as an artist will be the basics of demonstrating that you are serious about your art to potential clients. These are things that lay the foundation for your future success. This could include:
Building a website
This will function as your home base online. Potential clients will look to this to get a feel for who you are and to see work samples. Social media alone is not enough. As you grow in your career, your website is a sales and marketing tool. Include client testimonials, brands you have worked with, venues you have performed at, flyers for events you have participated in, news articles about your work, and of course a way to contact you to be hired.
Set Up Social Media Channels
This is how you reach people and pull them back to your website. Share your work, grow your audience, get discovered on your terms. Make these separate from your personal accounts. Protect your privacy from the start. Keep your social media professional and focused on your art only. Social media accounts that mix your personal life with your professional life look unserious to clients.
Research Becoming a Business
Look up different operating types and what is required in your area to become officially a business. I promise it is not that hard, and sometimes your local library has resources that can help you.
WHAT IS STOPPING YOU?
No really, what is stopping you?
You are probably smart enough to re-route around many obstacles in your path… unless you are holding yourself back. Self doubt plays a powerful role in how we feel about the time and effort invested into our art careers. Is it really worth my time to do all this if I am likely to fail?
If you assume failure, then you will certainly have it. I’d like to encourage you to reach for things anyways. Reach and reach and keep reaching. I have seen so many artists make a successful living simply because they refused to give up. They continued learning, refining their craft, and pursuing opportunities.
Who is an artist? Who is a performer? Whoever claims to be, and then gets out there and does the work. That's it. The ones that stick with it long enough, continue to practice and improve, those are the ones that make it.
FAILURE?
What I did not mention at the opening of this article is that prior to that summer, I had applied to 53 different guest ranches. I got a few offers for jobs in other positions (child care or house keeping), I got a number of rejections, and a great many people never replied at all. But I got the one job doing exactly what I wanted. All I really needed was the one. So despite 52 failed attempts, I ended up on horseback in the Rocky Mountains for three summers living my best life. 52 failures was still a success.
Knowing that Christian wanted to be an artist for a living, I figured the least we could do was try. We set up a website, social media channels, a business, and kept ourselves open to local opportunities. At the time there was one main wall mural festival in Orlando. We almost didn’t apply (that what’s the point? attitude was still heavy on his mind).
The narrative went from, I’ll never get picked to they only picked me because no one else applied. This of course was not true and he ended up painting his first mural alongside well established and well known artists in town. Things began to snowball from there.
It took a long time to build confidence and shake the imposter syndrome. Sometimes, even now, it still pops up. Despite this, we have always committed to keep moving forward anyways. Keep investing our time in our art business, keep believing in ourselves, and wouldn’t you know it…. it's working out. We’ve been doing this for about nine years now and hopefully will be able to continue for quite some time.
Your success or failure is determined through many choices you make throughout your art career. The very first choice is, are you serious about this or not? It’s up to you to decide and take it or leave it from there.
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