How To Build a Brand: See How I’ve Failed & Won so, You Can Do It Better.
hello friends and neighbors thanks for joining me on another step of the luminous journey this one goes back a bit starting something like five years ago i want to share with you the things i've been doing to try to become someone in the art scene if you're like me you didn't go to an art school you don't have a family name or connections in the right circle in that case how in the world can you get noticed with seemingly endless numbers of artists out there how can i call my way out of the shadows and into the lights where i can blossom that's what i want to explore today by giving you some of the advice i've taken and followed so we can come up with some solutions together let's get into it [Music] first things first what is your niche if you don't have an answer to that question you're gonna struggle in my case i was pretty fortunate to be struck by inspiration and discover light painting finding that passion was a journey though it took years of experimenting with different styles and forms to get to that point and that's what you have to do dig into as many different styles as you can find and give them each a good underscore and decide what exactly makes a difference this change over time but understand that the more specific you can get the better you'll be able to stand out specialization is a key to both refining your skill set and being noticed once you have your style refined what you need is a study of work you cannot become a photographer without taking ridiculous amounts of pictures i mean ridiculous like get yourself some extra sd cards and start building that shutter finger muscle it takes hours and hours just to familiarize yourself with the settings and functions of your camera once you do that you can then begin on the years it takes to develop your craft there's a great article in the description about the ten thousand hour rule the author believes that just the master lighting would take around ten thousand hours and to really become a great photographer is in the range of a decade of daily practice by that count i still have a long way to go but i try to do as much as i can and so should you it's a long game even if your iphone photos look great right now alright so you're pretty damn good photographer now so let's talk about business we need to find an outlet my first attempt was craft fairs we would print up some photos get a booth and hit a passersby to buy them and this was a total failure the prints were too small not well framed and just didn't have a feel of value i got a ton of compliments but no sales it just wasn't the right market later on i entered a few group exhibitions which was a bit better at least the buyers there were looking for art without a track record though it's still a challenge to comment good prices and generate a bus another thing that hurt me was the quality of my equipment at that stage we'll get into more details about what i use in a future video but i'm sure you all can understand that to do pro level work you need pro level tools it actually wasn't until this point in time that i developed a distinct name and logo before this i was just going by my full name there's a lot of debate about this point with many saying that the best name you can have is the one you were born with it's distinct it helps people to identify with you on a personal level and just keeps everything simple all these points are true and you can't go wrong with naming your photography business after yourself however when your last name is chuckeroldo it doesn't work super well for the american market so i had to go a different way after several weeks of brainstorming writing down options and iterating i came up with the luminous eye it emphasizes the light painting it has an element of mystery that i want to bring up alright on this point i'd love to hear your comments do you think it's more effective to use your own name or create one now that i had a name it was time to make that proper business after doing some research i decided to go with an nlc the main reason for that is that at the time i wasn't a citizen yet and s-corps may not have non-citizens as shareholders beyond that there are many formalities involved with s-corps that i just didn't want to deal with bear with me i know it's not the juices topic the llc protects my personal assets and also gives me some tax breaks there's a cost of course nothing is free it's a minimum tax you have to pay even if you don't make any money but at least you can write off all your equipment expenses i went through all this with an attorney for my first llc in california and you should definitely do the same i'm not qualified to give up financial advice so you need to find someone who is that worked well for me until i moved out of cali and had to dissolve my llc as i no longer had an office or agent in the states for my second attempt i use an online service to form the llc but the big benefit being that they can act as my agents and receive official correspondence which will be necessary once i hit the road okay now i was legit but still had no source of income up to this point my in-person exhibitions were just not panning out so my next move was to go virtual i purchased a domain name and set about designing my website i did this all myself rather than hiring designers so i could get what i wanted downside to that is that it took almost two months to really get everything right the fonts colors layout i really got into the details so that the site looks as professional as possible hopefully i hit my mark let me know what you think the website was done so now i had a great place to direct anyone who wants to know more about my work but i want to take the virtual experience a step further i stalked reddit for several weeks to get an invitation to an nfp platform it turns out i was a bit late to the party but i wanted to take advantage of the big wave of nft sales that was going on i got that set up now and you can link to both my website and my marketplace in the description now i feel like my digital presence is up to what i would expect and all my infrastructure is ready so get to what i feel is one of the most difficult parts of this process marketing no matter how excellent your work is and how well you prepare yourself and your business you'll never be successful if nobody knows who you are and to be frank i feel a little bit lost here i'd love to hear your thoughts on the most effective channels for a new artist i'm just not sure if i should just focus more than local groups and events or go wide there's certainly an element of cost involved here larger campaigns require larger investments if you got great ideas for marketing on a budget share them below i'll highlight some of the best suggestions in a future video speaking of comments our boat ended up with most of our passengers saying that they could probably do the rv for around two months with no minute thinking that they could go for a full year i'm also sending a print to barb for her comments on the challenges of the rv life your task for this week will be to share any of the steps that you've taken in starting your business and that you think we should all know about best one gets a prince so here we are i've been laying the groundwork for this journey for something like five years and there are many miles to go if you take only one thing away from this video it should be this chase your dream and keep chasing it if you're on the right track the chase will not feel like work you may get lucky and find the secret sauce quickly but more than likely you will need perseverance i haven't gotten there yet but i'm also not discouraged it's only a matter of time and as long as i keep putting in the energy i'll make it and you will too just as long as you never give up in the next episode i want to show you some of the people who have inspired me to maintain my efforts and keep the journey on course wouldn't it be great if that could also inspire one of you find thumbs like subscribe and notification buttons so we can find out next week much love and see you soon
