Today’s blog post is going to be all about how to balance your 9-5 job while developing your art career on the side.
I guess the first thing I want to say is that having a full or part-time job as an artist does not invalidate your art career whatsoever or should make you feel as if you're less of an artist because you cannot commit to your practice just yet.
Indeed, when you’re starting out, it’s quite normal not to be making money from your art immediately, especially if you don’t have any help in terms of mentors or if you don’t have any previous business experience whatsoever. So my first piece of advice for new artists is to:
#1 - Don’t freak out and be patient
In the beginning stages, you’re trying to understand what you do, you’re honing your creative skills while also learning how to make your first sales, decide if you want to sell on your own or work with an art dealer or galleries, you’re trying to get as many shows as possible to build your CV and portfolio.
This is a phase that can last up to 1-2 years depending on your previous experience and the time and energy you can dedicate to your art career in your free time. So at the beginning it is normal to not make money from your art, indeed most businesses tend to break even after the first year if they’re lucky so don’t panic if you’re not seeing results fast.
And if you cannot invest more time in your practice at the moment because you’re working full-time or studying, that is totally fine too.
#2 - Prioritise your finances first, always
Because at the beginning, you need to prioritise having a constant source of money flow over producing work. If you’re able to have a roof over your head and pay your bills, then you won’t be so stressed out and this is where the magic begins as then you’ll be able to create art and relax. Over time as you sell more art you’ll see this dynamic is going to be reversed and so you will be gradually spending more time creating art and managing your art business than working in your 9-to-5 until you’ll be able to quit for good as just be the CEO of your art business.
#3 - Have clear goals
During these initial phases you also need to think thoroughly about what your career goals are and most importantly, whether you want to pursue a professional art career or just make art as a hobby. You commit to go ahead and build a professional career, you need to believe that you can make money out of your art, even if this is not yet happening. You need to have an even delusional mentality, if you will, in that you will succeed and have a laser-focus goal. This could be getting your first show in 6 months, or selling your first piece within 3 months or this could be building an audience. Because if you don’t set out big targets, goals that are big enough to motivate you but that are realistic (because if you set out to achieve 200k revenue in the first year of business, well, this is probably not going to happen). So determine what your goal is and work towards it during your spare time, during the weekends, whenever you can because this is going to keep you motivated to actually do the job and work on your art business after you come home tired after your 9-5 job.
#4 - Be realistic with your time
This leads to my next point and is to be realistic with your available time and what is actually possible. If you’re working full-time, it is quite normal that your art career takes longer to really take off so what we actually want to achieve is to make the most out of your actual free time and be realistic about it too. Analyse how much productive free time you can actually dedicate to researching and creating your art, to your marketing strategy, to content creation and selling, etc. Because at the beginning, until you’ll be able to hire people to do this for you, you will be wearing many hats: you’ll need to take care of production, marketing, sales, PR, attending to networking events, reaching out to people, shipping, invoices, etc. So be realistic with your time, calculate how many hours you could dedicate to each part of your art business on a weekly or monthly basis, and try to maximise each hour as much as possible.
#5 - Time block your activities
Lastly but not least, create a weekly schedule and time block absolutely everything. You need to be getting super organised and for that there’s nothing better in my opinion than getting a Google calendar or any other time management software tool or a diary and writing down every activity related to your art business or not that occurs in your life.
Time block your productive time creating at your studio, time block the time you dedicate to building your audience on social media, the time you will spend weekly checking on your email, creating content, etc. you should be also time block when you’ll like to exercise, do your errands, work in your 9-5 everything, don't leave anything because you need to be adopting both a macro and a micro view of how you’re managing your time are unless you’re writing everything down and sticking to your schedule, you could feel soon burn out and overwhelmed.
# Bonus tip- Set boundaries and be disciplined
If you’re working or studying full-time you have little time to create and run your art business so protect your precious time at all costs! So be disciplined and set the right boundaries especially with those people who don’t understand what you’re doing and don’t support you in your art business goals
See, you need to be laser focused with your goals and the type of life you want to live: does going out with your friends every single day or watching 3h of Netflix every day contribute to your larger goal or not? Would this be detrimental to your working hours? Will this affect your energy levels the next day? Prioritise what’s gonna do you good in the long run and set boundaries around people and behaviours to maximise your time. I hope you've enjoyed today's post and if you've liked it, make sure to suscribe to my newsletter to never miss my weekly posts!
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