Sometimes it’s hard to know what goals to set, isn’t it? I struggle with this in my art business endeavors. I love creating new pieces, and am passionate about sharing them with written words that encourage people to love God’s truth. But I’m kind of hazy on any long-term plans, and I’ve never been great at setting goals for my art beyond specific things to create.
But over the past few weeks, I’ve been working through The Artist’s Year course from Stacie Bloomfield, about taking time to set goals and plan priorities for your art business. It comes with a workbook, and I am challenging myself to actually DO THE WORK and spend the time and effort necessary to put firm goals on paper, rather than simply answering things in my head… which is the path of least resistance, and often leads to the least results.
I still have trouble coming up with a specific long-term vision, but my husband had good advice for me about that. I may not be able to create a 5 or 10 year plan, but I can easily come up with steps for the next 12 months as I consider what I enjoy creating, what skills I want to develop, and what business ideas I want to explore.
I may not know where the road will take me eventually, but I can figure out what I want to do THIS YEAR. I’ve spent the last month working through Stacie’s advice and developing a short, realistic roadmap for the next twelve eleven months. For the sake of accountability – and to encourage you to maybe plan some things, too – here are the goals I’ve settled on, simplified into three main categories (easy to remember!).
CREATIVITY
This is the most fun category, and the one I can lose myself in for hours. A roadmap simply helps me to keep going in my desired direction. So, in the next 12 months, I want to:
- Spend at least 1 hour weekly on learning: art courses, tutorials, biz workshops, magazines, etc.
- Create at least 4-6 digital lettering pieces, 2-4 standalone illustrations, and 1 seamless pattern monthly.
- Have 1 painting-on-paper (or canvas) session weekly, and turn some of those pieces into items to share or sell.
AUDIENCE
Creating art is fun, but it means so much more when other people engage with it! But without specific plans to share my work, I end up speaking into a vacuum… and nobody enjoys that. So here is how I’m working to build my audience this year:
- Continue hosting monthly #LetterforHisGlory challenges on Instagram, and engage specifically and personally with participants’ posts (rather than just leaving a “like” or other generic comment).
- Spend 1 hour weekly updating my website and shop listings to improve customer experience.
- Write 1 blog post every month sharing creative endeavors and other behind-the-scenes thoughts.
INCOME
In a perfect world, I would ignore this part of the equation: but unfortunately, money is necessary to pay the bills. I haven’t been making much so far, but I’m hoping to more intentionally pursue this goal in 2025 so I can (eventually) contribute to our income. My main goal is to spend 1 hour weekly pursuing leads and developing products in the following possible areas:
- Evaluate whether finding an art agent would be a worthwhile investment right now.
- Explore licensing opportunities for full designs, text-only pieces, or illustrations.
- Contact local gift stores about selling art prints or card packs.
- Add more digital designs, downloads, and tools to my online shop.
This might look like a lot, but I’ve broken it down into smaller and smaller steps than what you see here. One thing Stacie suggests in her class is to break down these big yearly goals into quarterly, monthly, and weekly priorities. That way, even when life interrupts our plans (and it always does), we can often still achieve smaller ‘baby steps’ towards those big goals – and it becomes easier to regain momentum with small action steps already written down, rather than staring down a long list of broad, poorly-defined goals.