Monday, February 18, 2013

What's Stopping You?

"The thing that is stopping you from investing in yourself (time, energy, money, etc.) is the thing that is stopping you from having what you desire."
-Joanna Rothman

So much in progress

What feels like it's stopping me is time.  I'm working on taking back my time. I'm on vacation this week and I'm acting as if this is what my life looks like.  I'm trying it on to see how it feels. I'm loving the more natural flow of my days.  I've made a huge quantum leap in this direction that I can't share quite yet, but for me, it's unprecedented. 

I've accomplished a good chunk of my list over the past few days.  I added Mailchimp to my website.  I set up my Facebook page and invited people to like it.  I've started moving forward on a series of interviews that I will be posting here very soon.  This is the kind of work, in addition to painting and creating, that I want to do-even though it's insanely frustrating at times, because I know that it's taking me in the direction I want to go.

Here are some basics for you, my artist friends.  Technology may not be your specialty, but it's a necessary part of doing business right now.   I know it can feel overwhelming to get these things going when you really want to be creating but remember the world needs your light and technology helps you shine it as far and as wide as you can!

Creating an e-mail list: (The word "creating" is in there so it must be good right?) 
You may want to build an e-mail list so that you can send out things like newsletters or your class listings to a targeted group.  I recommend a mail site like "Mailchimp."  It's free and it was probably one of the easiest things I've set up so far.  

You design the page you want people to see when they sign up to receive your e-mail and then link it to your website.  I'm still working on making the "opt-in" part of my site look better but the basics are there.  I chose this because this is what Tara Gentile, an artist/business woman that I admire recommended and it's pretty widely used.  Plus, my goal is to use only free products on my site-so far, so good.

Setting up a professional Facebook Page-You can add a "page" to your personal facebook account that can be used for your business-again it's free to set it up.  I wanted to create a professional page focused on art and creating a business where I can post quick updates that aren't long enough to be blog posts plus have another outlet to get the word out about what I'm doing.   You can go to "create page" on your facebook page and it will walk you through how to set it up.  Artist Regina Jessup recently shared in a facebook group that Udemy gives step-by-step instructional videos if you're looking for more information on how to get it going: Creating Facebook Pages.

After you create the page, add a couple of items to it before you invite people to like it. The business page will give you the option of inviting friends to "like" your page so you can send out the request to many people at once

Making a video:  I just made my first video this week.  I used iMovie to record and edit it and then sent it to Facebook because I had trouble uploading it to Vimeo.  At first I was very perplexed by iMovie and did not like it, but here is a helpful video to show you how to use it: How to use imovie
Artists in my Ignite Group have recommended Windows Movie Maker and ReelDirector for video editing but I have not tried them yet.

Painting:  Yes! Make sure you're still taking time to do what makes you come alive most.  Plan it into your day.  Make it non-negotiable.  I've been making time to paint-had a good 2 hour stretch in the studio working on the painting above.  Painting and creating gives me fuel to continue with the less desirable stuff. 
 
These are little steps you can take to invest in yourself and move toward what you desire.

Let me know if you have questions that I might be able to help with!


2 comments:

shannon said...

Great post... Need to add mailchimp to my site. Thanks for mentioning it. This was very useful to me.
Shannon

Kelly D said...

Thanks Shannon-I still need to work with it quite a bit, but wanted to share where I am as I go.