Wisdom Wednesday: Working Artist or Artist that just wants to Work...Which are You?
When helping fellow creatives with their marketing & career goals via Beauty Beaute Beauti, I ask clients what are their work goals. More often than not the response is “ I just want to work.” to which I follow up with “Doing What?” to which the response is laundry list f every single thing known to man in the industry... bridal, fashion, runway.. even if there in a town of 500 people! No these artist have plans of moving but think this is what is necessary to be successful in their career. I was once that artist, my business card had just about everything under the sun on it along with skills. My business card used to read like: Margina Dennis - Makeup, Hair, Grooming, Airbrush for Print, Runway, Commercials,Fashion, Editorial,TV, & Beauty. A mouthful right? I thought I was being thorough. I had experience in those all those areas so I needed to market myself to cast a wide so that I left no stone unturned. I took this same mindset into a few agency relationships and to dismay they did not work. Why, do you ask? Because there was absolutely no focus on what my career path looked like. I thought because I was versatile, that my agent would have no problems keeping me busy. It actually worked against me, since I didn’t know what I truly wanted, they focused on the artists that knew what their path was. And if there was work that no one else was interested in, I would get the call, because remember “I just wanted to work”. I realized that if I wanted to level up and expand my career and be a working artist, I needed to map out what that looked like.
(An absolutely useless “edgy” test from back in the Boston days.)
Here are some of the questions I had to ask myself:
1. What are the type of makeup jobs predominately in my market?
2. What type of makeup jobs do I enjoy?
3. Does my portfolio/website fit the kind of jobs that I am seeking?
4. How do I sustain myself full time? What do I need to make?
(the kind of image that I needed to work and book jobs)
At the time I was in Boston, which is a commercial/lifestyle/corporate market. It is not a fashion marketing, it is not a beauty market. It is also a film and bridal market. Once focused in on the time types of jobs I wanted, I started getting the type of jobs I was seeking. And then I spent almost five years travelling between Boston & New Year, strengthening my portfolio, so that I could get better images and models, which lead to better jobs and better rates. I still didn’t have the agency clarity that I have now during that time but it came once I began to understand how I wanted to define myself as an artist.
(Advertising Booked because I had images that had the same feel as this )
(Front of a Model com card from Boston, this is about as “fashion” as you would see and that strong brow I did was very ‘edgy’.this is how I was able to book commercials that they considered bringing someone in from New York for).
Even though I am still very capable of doing many areas of makeup, I think make sure to show a clear path of the word and booking as I am seeking. Just because I did a job, it doesn’t mean I will promote it on my instagram or put it on my website. If it doesn’t match the focus, it doesn’t get promoted :-).
I hope this gives you some insight into being focused in your marketing.... if you need more insight, you can find it here.