Have you been waiting?
Waiting for something to happen for your art business or career. Waiting for the gallery email, the collector to respond, the residency acceptance, the moment that changes everything.
Some version of the big break. And it’s not just waiting. It’s organizing your whole career around waiting.
Is there something you’re waiting for right now? What would have to happen for you to feel like your career is actually moving in the right direction?
Waiting isn’t ambition
Waiting has very little relationship to ambition. It looks like it. You want more, you’re hoping for more, you can picture the version of your career where it all breaks open. But wanting isn’t the same as moving toward it. Ambition without movement is just longing. Sad longing.
Hustle isn’t the answer either. That’s the same fantasy in reverse. One big push instead of one big break. Both are shortcuts. Both ask for something outside of you to improve your trajectory.
Real ambition is smaller and steadier than either of them. It looks like your next move, and the move after that.
On this episode of The Art Biz, I’m encouraging you to always be on the lookout for your next opening. There’s always one, and your job is to be aware enough to recognize it and walk through it.
Listen
The 3 kinds of openings
An opening isn’t just an opportunity that appears. It’s a doorway you walk through, and often one you crack yourself. Here are 3 doorways to be aware of.
- Some openings are handed to you. A call for submissions. An invitation. An unexpected email from a curator. These feel official, because someone else — someone with authority — decided they existed. And that’s exactly why we wait for them. The problem is you don’t control when they come, whether they come at all, or whether your submission is even responded to.
Building a career around the openings someone else has to hand to you is building a career on someone else’s schedule.
- Consider openings already in your world that you’re overlooking. A conversation could become a studio visit if you followed up. A collector who bought once could buy again if you stayed in touch. Openings are in your VIP list, your contact list, your followers.
- Then there are openings that exist because you initiated them. The podcast you pitched. The proposal you sent. The show you organized. The relationship you started. These openings did not exist until you created them. This is the category most artists underuse, because it doesn’t feel like a real opportunity. No one gave it to you, so it doesn’t count.
But think of the possibilities if only you took the initiative.
Embrace being an ambitious artists.
You cannot have a successful or long-lasting art business without ambition.
Embrace ambition
Try the word on. Ambition. It’s not one everyone can wear readily, but I encourage you to embrace it.
You cannot have a profitable or long-lasting art business without ambition. Business, by definition, implies profit, and that takes some ambition.
It’s not a ladder to the top or a summit to reach. Ambition is a series of doorways, and there’s always another one. Your job isn’t to arrive. Your job is to keep walking through those doors, again and again.
Artists often lose steam not because they lack talent, not because there aren’t enough opportunities, not because their prices are too low or too high. They lose steam because they stop looking for openings, or they see them and don’t act. Not moving is the problem. Waiting is the problem.
Instead, follow a natural cycle.
The Next Opening is ready for you
The Next Opening is a small coaching group for ambitious artists who are done waiting for the big break and ready to make their next move.
A year of aiming, acting, assessing, adjusting, and doing it again, with support and accountability. Next cohort starts in September.
The 5-A Cycle
The cycle is simple.
- Aim. Make a plan. Not a 5-year plan. The next season, the next month, this week. Be brutal with your intentions. Put only in your plan what you intend to work toward.
- Act. Do the things you said you were going to do. A plan is no good if it sits on paper. Send the email. Write the proposal. Make the call. Follow up and follow through.
- Assess. A clear look at what happened as a result of your actions. Not what you hoped would happen. What did. What was good, and what didn’t work.
- Adjust. Look at what you learned. What needs to change?
- Again. Building an art career is a cycle. Not a one-way ladder. It’s repeated actions, becoming increasingly sophisticated because you learn from them.
Doing it alone is exhausting
Most of us run through this loop alone because we’re taught to be self-reliant. Do-it-ourselfers. Used to working alone in the studio.
After more than two decades of consulting with artists, I know that artists who have support and accountability along the way are more likely to be tuned into the openings, follow through on their intentions, meet their deadlines, and grow their businesses.
Doing it alone over and over again is exhausting and overwhelming. And frankly, often uninspired — because you can’t see it. You’re too close. You don’t have outside perspective.
That’s why I built The Next Opening, a small coaching group for ambitious artists who are done waiting for the big break and ready to make their next move. New cohorts begin in September and January.
The Next Opening is ready for you
The Next Opening is a small coaching group for ambitious artists who are done waiting for the big break and ready to make their next move.
A year of aiming, acting, assessing, adjusting, and doing it again, with support and accountability. Next cohort starts in September.
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