Hey, creative, let’s talk about marketing. I know you don’t like that word cuz I know you and I know most creatives are very uncomfortable marketing themselves and marketing their work. You’d rather be making your art form and producing things. However, marketing is crucial to growing your art form into a proper business. And so I want to help you with this. It’s a big obstacle for most creatives. So I want to give you some tips and I want to give you some encouragement and I want to give you a book that’s gonna help you become a better marketer without becoming a dirtbag salesperson. You can be you and be a legit, heartfelt, honest marketer and be successful at it. Okay? So here’s the thing I want you to think about when you think about marketing from forever on marketing is farming. Marketing is farming. It has all the same attributes as farming.
Okay? So let me explain. A farmer or a gardener breaks ground and then that farmer plants seeds in the ground because the farmer knows if I don’t plant a seed, I don’t get a crop. Very simple, right? If I don’t plant a seed, I don’t get a crop. But how many of you out there are somehow hoping that the universe will find you and customers will just show up that the work will market itself? It won’t. You have to plant seeds. Now, what that looks like for you is not necessarily what it looks like for me. For instance, I like to explain things. I’m a college professor, I’m a teacher. I like to read. So I like to explain things. I, I do it. My family gets to listen to me explain things all the time. My friends, if you know me, you know this is who I am.
I like to explain things and I like to write. I’m a good writer. So I, you’ll notice most of our marketing with we all films is written word and it is Kevin explaining things. Okay? That doesn’t have to be you. Your thing might be in-person meetings, your thing might be social media. Your thing might be writing. It might be a blog, it might, I don’t know what it is. But you plant the seeds that are most comfortable for you. Start there, just start there. But here’s the thing you have to remember is that farmers don’t plant just once. Do they? They plant and they plant and they plant, they plant season after season, year after year because they know if they don’t keep planting, they won’t get a crop and therefore they’ll run out of food. Consistency beats originality in marketing. I would take consistency over time, over originality any day of the week.
So you have to start planting now and you start planting consistently over time. That’s really all it takes, I promise you. Just in in marketing and advertising, they call that frequency. Frequency, okay? So keep the frequency up just like the farmers do and it will start to bear fruit. Which brings me to my second point. Marketing is farming, is that there is a time lag between when you plant that seed and when it actually sprouts, right? Sometimes it could be months. The idea that you plant a marketing seed and it sprouts and you get a customer right away doesn’t happen. That’s not real. That’s a myth. Please don’t believe that you have to market. And then there’s a time between when you plant the seed and when you actually see the result. So if you’ve been marketing yourself for months or sometimes even years and you aren’t seeing the results you want, it doesn’t mean you’re failing.
It means this takes time, it takes a long time and that’s okay. Okay, so marketing is farming, plant seeds, plant them consistently. And then the third thing is comes from this book right here. I’m gonna give you this book. It’s called Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki, art of the Start Guy Kawasaki was an early brand evangelist for Apple, okay? And he works in the tech world mostly. But this book is great for all people trying to start up a, a business of any kind. And what Kawasaki says in that book is that you will plant seeds, marketing seeds, and then sometimes something unexpected will sprout something you did not see coming. And what he says is, you must feed what sprouts feed what blooms, even if it’s not what you expected. Okay? Let me give you an example. At we all films, my company, we are have a very documentary style, very heartfelt, very cinematic.
And so when we started the company I thought we would just make documentaries. Now we do make documentaries, but what surprised me was when we started marketing, I started getting calls from corporate clients, banks tourist development councils hospital stuff I didn’t expect. That said they’ve turned in some of our best clients cuz it, it, they pay well, they’re fun to work with. They have mean it’s meaningful work and we love it. So I didn’t expect that to happen, but we pushed into it now because that is what sprouted from the seeds we planted. I have a couple of other artist friends this has happened to even recently. Ashley Feller is a friend of mine, a musician friend of mine, hey Ashley. And she is a great musician. She plays guitar and like tin flute and does all this super cool folk music and she’s great.
But Ashley, a couple years ago started a little podcast in our town called the St. Andrews Jezebel podcast. And the thing is taken off. As a matter of fact, she posted the other day that she got a paid internship with another to produce another pod podcast, which is cool. Ashley’s like blowing up in podcast world. Now, if you had asked Ashley five years ago, do you think you’ll be a podcaster? She said, no, I’m a musician and she still is a musician. But this podcast thing s sprouted and she’s running with it and good for her. Heather Clements is another friend of mine, she’s a painter. Hey Heather. Heather is this amazing watercolorist and she paints beautiful female forms with nature and it’s, it’s super duper cool. And Heather and I have been friends for a while and we were talking years ago and I was like, man, Heather, your stuff would be awesome as a mural.
I remember having this conversation with her, be huge on a wall. Be cool. And she goes, well, I don’t paint mural. I’m not a muralist. I don’t paint murals. I’m a I’m a watercolorist. And I was like, well, I don’t know. I think it’d be awesome. Fast forward, somebody in, in our town, we have a mural project and she was asked to paint a small mural on a wall and it turned out great. And then she was asked by another company to paint a bigger one. And then she was asked by another company to paint a hundred foot wide mural in our town. And then like, I don’t know, a month ago, three weeks ago, Heather painted a live mural at the IKEA global event in New York City. There’s Heather painting a live mural. Something she never thought would happen, but you know what? She planted those seeds of her artwork over time and that’s sprouted and she’s running with it and good for her. So marketing is farming. The same thing can happen for you. Plant seeds, plant them consistently and then water what blooms feed. What sprouts. Your artistic career might take a whole new direction you never thought coming. A new profitable one. I hope it does for you. You can market, I promise. Just stick with it. Plant those seeds, you can do it. I love you.