Mixed Media Artists Who Want To Make Money Series 4: Part 2 - Managing Your Projects

Project management is vital to surviving in this fast and loaded world. It may seem like just a topic, that I believe you are well beyond ready for as an artist, but it goes beyond that when you start making your art career!

Spring is finally somewhat in the air! You know what that means! Lots of art shows and opportunities are springing up everywhere this time of year for artists and creative entrepreneurs. As I watched my son frolic during the Easter egg hunt last Sunday helping him retrieve hidden eggs throughout the house this topic occurred to me that I had not thought about in almost three years...

Why on Earth was I thinking about project management during an Easter egg hunt with my toddler son?

I will get to that in a moment!

Right now I want to explain what project management means in the world of becoming a creative entrepreneur and why you need to know how important this can be to your career as an artist. You've probably already been doing a variation of this. However, I want to give you a tool that will help organize your mission more efficiently.

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Project management

When you deem something as being a "project," you are setting up a longer-term goal and creating steps to achieve this. To get to the end point of the long-term goal you might accomplish this by implementing the use of automation, an email list, an entourage of others either through an online community or social media aspect, and many other variables such as inputting a budget and time constraint.

regarding is a simple concept, but when you are a creative entrepreneur or an artist, you might have several if not a dozen of these going at the same time!

Why?

As I was searching for Easter eggs with my son, I started thinking back to when he was seven months old and not yet ready to hunt for eggs, but as a first-time mama, I hid some around the house anyways for him. What on Earth was I thinking? He could barely sit up on his own let alone grasp the concept that I hid this treasures and carrying him around trying to remember where I hid them out of sight. Anyways, I never usually bring my son up in my blog posts I typically keep it very down to business. However, I felt that this was relevant to get my point across. As drawn out as I've taken it I know I am guilty of losing people mid-conversation face to face lately so blog-wise I'm trying to keep it together!

Anyways, the whole point of this story is that I was forced to visit yesteryear and remember the days when I was in college still learning of Project Management right before a few days off for Easter break. The fondness of pulling all-nighters forcing myself to learn MS Project to implement a fictitious company's end plan for the next eight months was enough to finally look back onto this and find the positives in this dreaded endeavor.

Why in the world am I sharing this with you?

You have to start planning! Not just with a pen/pencil/marker and paper which is ok, to begin with, but you must not stop the planning phase of business there! It eventually needs to carry over by using a computer mouse or by touching a screen in a software program or an online hosting program. Especially, if you are collaborating with others on the same project! Yes, I am going to be very straightforward with you right now, as I ventured into the whole bullet journaling cult this last week just to try it out for giggles. I woke up the other day thinking, 'wait a darn minute... I know of a much more powerful tool that I could be sharing with you why the heck haven't I done this yet?!'

What you guess is as good as mine...

We all get lost in the hype sometimes before we see the clouds separating in the mist!

The last few weeks, I've been designing a course based off of the mixed media artists series' and did not realize how time-consuming each part of this was. If you have begun to monetize your content by offering courses or podcasts or other value streams, you know what I am talking about!

Not at that point yet?

That's entirely alright because this post is concerned with setting up any project not just for monetization but also if you will be entering any art shows or summer shows that are upcoming. It's better to begin any project with a defined endpoint with milestones along the way so that you can merely glance at where you are and make sure that you are either ahead of schedule or right where you planned to be so that you can focus more on your creations. I will show you how to go about this with pen and paper first before implementing a software program to enhance the control and integrate other areas.

Print your totally free template guide before going further so that you can fill yours in as I go further!

First, define your where you want to be + where you're at right now in terms of your success

Figure out what you are capable of right this second as a starting point...

Then fill in the area by the light bulb with this information. It's going to be different for each person, however, as an example, I'm going to use one of my paintings and its current phase of readiness before being in a presentable state and ready for the market. I did not blatantly write on the printable worksheet above the exact starting point, however, if it helps you follow the flow of this better then go ahead and write it out. This can be utilized for larger projects across wider spans of time (which would take more than one worksheet to plan out) or a short-term goal that you want to reach that can be broken down into various steps.

Fill the rest of this worksheet out backward....

I filled this template out utilizing a "bottom-up approach" which basically is what it sounds like, I went through from the bottom and filled it in backward going all the way up still thinking about the start date and wrote down each activity and when it needs to be done by.

Much easier said than done as you can see from my worksheet above that you get to somewhere in the middle and start thinking of more activities than you originally planned so just draw some arrows going towards where they need to go eventually and adjust your dates.

Add your budget somewhere in there to remind yourself that you have to pack all of these activities into not only a time constraint but you need to stay under budget or right on a budget as well.

From this example, you can start to see why I suggested putting the pen and paper down and utilizing a software program. When choosing the technical route, you will see the difference as the days will be calculated for you as well as being able to integrate a budget constraint that goes with each activity making sure your money spent is put into the areas that you need the most. Go through and write everything down because it will make it faster in the next part.

I will be returning shortly with Part 3 showing which software programs are the easiest to use and exactly how to make better decisions when you have everything running!