Bogdan and I spent the whole of our adult lives working for a living, me as a librarian, and Bogdan as a producer in Romanian television. We both loved our work, and were pretty good at it too. In 2015 we moved home from a job in Russia because my elderly parents were needing some help.
While I’m not going to pretend that we were “ready” to go out on our own as freelance creatives, but the timing was right. We started a photography and video production business, where we did fine art on the side. Here we are, five years later doing exactly what we love doing, in a way that we love doing it.
One of the first obstacles we ran into, after the nightmare of the paperwork needed to start the business and landing our first paying gig, was that both of us were instinctively looking for a boss.
The problem is that of course, as a freelance, self-employed business owner, there is no boss. That’s the point, right? For us at least, that took a while for us to understand and to appreciate.
I believe this to be a real problem for creatives, and entrepreneurs in general. How do you stop thinking like an employee, and start thinking like the boss? An employee, even a manager, worries almost exclusively with the tasks at hand. What is due today? What fires do I need to put out? What can I do today that will please the boss, and make me a favorite? I’m not saying these things are unimportant, and newsflash, even if you’re working alone, the day-to-day tasks will still need to get done.
What I’m advocating is changing my mindset from working for my business, and being my business. With fine art it’s a bit simpler. I am my own brand, and no one can create my art but me. But with a service based business it’s harder to visualize. I tended to replace a boss with a client. While certainly my clients are my boss in some respects, as they control the exchange of my work for their money. And while that dynamic worked for a while, it wasn’t long before both Bogdan and I became disenchanted with the notion that we were just part-time labor in someone else’s business. It’s important to me to be clear here, I’m not suggesting that we don’t love working on projects with others, and we want very much to give them a product or a service they desire. That’s always the goal. We just want to work as a collaborator, as a specialist, rather than as an employee.
The greatest problem we face on this topic is understanding and internalizing what is the difference between a worker and a boss. I mentioned before, for many of us, we think of an employee as the front line worker, who does the grunt work for pay. We often think of the boss as the manager. The person who organizes projects, procures supplies, and puts out fires. When I was promoted from a front line employee to a management position, I soon realized that I was not at all the boss. I worked for someone else whose job was strategic… someone who had a broader vision. Instantly I felt that I was the true linchpin of the organization, since the “boss” wouldn’t last a minute on the front lines. What I didn’t seem to realize at the time was that I wouldn’t begin to be able to do the work of the director. She dealt with politics, funding, strategic planning, growth, and reporting… because she also had a boss.
What Bogdan and I had to do was create strategies to train us to look beyond the day-to-day grind of the jobs we love, and apply some strategic layers to our art business. By far the most effective way we’ve found to make that jump, is to spend time on goals and objectives. If you are doing your goals well, there is no way you can be bogged down in the minutia. If you are, then you need to revisit your goals and make them more strategic. As you spend scheduled time with your goals and vision, you will get more and more comfortable thinking like a boss.
This month we're offering a free give away. If you'd like a free copy of the spreadsheet template I use to organize all my records, it will only cost you an email address. I'm trying to build my database of emails, so if I send you a newsletter or promotion that you'd rather not receive, you can always opt out at any time. So just send me your email, and I'll get you a copy of the spreadsheet file. I have used this template now for several years, and even if you need to tweak it to make it work best for you, it might be of help to you in organizing your own small creative business. https://www.johnbishopfineart.com/giveaway
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Resources:
Bloomburg, Matt. Kauffman Founders School. “Startup CEO: Role of a CEO”. June 15, 2016. YouTube.
Kerkow (Herbert) Productions. PrelingerArchives. “Supervising Women Workers”. 1944. https://archive.org/details/Supervis1944. Public Domain.
Knickerbocker Productions. Prelinger Archives. “Social Class in America”. 1957. https://archive.org/details/SocialCl1957. Public Domain.
Moss, Mark. Market Disrupters. “How to Think Like a CEO and Change Your Life”. January 9, 2019. YouTube.
Watkins, Robert J. Conquer Worldwide. “How to Think Like a CEO”. December 6, 2015. YouTube.
Bloomburg, Matt. Kauffman Founders School. “Startup CEO: Role of a CEO”. June 15, 2016. YouTube.
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John Bishop Fine Art is a weekly blog/vlog that creates a community, a conversation, between creatives in all sorts of fields at all sorts of levels. We want to discuss what we’re learning, what we’ve experienced, and whom we’ve met in our journey of running a freelance creative business. John Bishop is a visual artist living in Houston, Texas. His work is largely abstract, and explores how to turn mythic, archetypal symbols into individual experiences allowing us to see them in a new way, with fresh eyes. His work can be seen online, or at his studio at Silver Street Studios, 2000 Edwards Street, Studio 108, in Houston.
Website: http://www.johnbishopfineart.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnbishopfineart/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JohnBishopart
Buburuza Productions: http://www.Buburuzaproductions.com
Bogdan Mihai: http://www.bogdanfotoart.com
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