July Retrospective: Back in July 2014, I wrote a daily series exploring the realities of navigating the creative economy. Twelve years later, looking back at these entries (and my original awful hand-drawn illustrations!), I’m struck by how the core truths of a creative career remain completely timeless. Each day this month, I’m opening up the archive to share these foundational lessons—with a few modern reflections layered in.
If you’re a new creative graduate looking to find your footing in the creative economy, a Gen X looking to pivot into a creative business, a side-hustler or someone who just wants to up their creative business game, there’s something for you in this series. Just don’t judge my drawings 😉
Repeat. Repeatedly.
There’s not much more to selling really.
- Make your work available
- Ask people to view it
- Ask people to share it
- Make offers to your target audience
- Repeat
- Repeat
- Repeat
- Repeat
- Repeat
- Repeat
- Repeat
There are 7 repeats there. This number is not a coincidence. It’s there to make a point.
In advertising there is something called the Rule of 7. The rule of 7 tells us that people need to see your advertisement or sales message AT LEAST 7 times before they even register it.
That’s register it. Not take action on it.
Seven times before they even remember that they’ve seen it before.
Think about that.
If it takes seven times for people to register, how many more times is it going to take for them to actually decide to purchase?
A lot.
You have to keep making your work available. Keep asking people to view it. Keep asking them to spread the word. And keep making offers. Over and over again. Even when you think they MUST have seen it!
You must be persistent, without being annoying. Remember to serve and not sell! For every hard-sell sales message, you need several soft messages asking people to visit you or like you.
Aim for multi-touch. Use different mediums. An Instagram post, then an email, then a postcard, then a phone call, then a DM, then an invitation to read your blog. Look for multiple ways to nudge your target customer – by varying the channel it will seem less like you’re pestering them.
Go in waves. Go hard for awhile, then back off a bit and let them catch their breath. Then take another wave of attack.
The hardest part for you, the artist, is to not get bored repeating the same messages over and over again. One way to do this is to make sure your focus rests on the customer, not on yourself. You might be getting bored of your messages, but if you think about your customer, they may not even be registering them. You can only serve them by letting them know how you can help them with their problems.
Action: plot out a multi-nudge approach to your target customers. Where are all the places that you can speak to them? Figure out two or three you are most comfortable with and start to use them.
Longevity in a creative career isn’t accidental—it’s built on strategy.
While the landscape shifts, the core principles of thriving as a creative freelancer haven’t changed. For deeper, modern frameworks on building a sustainable creative practice:
- Read the Book: Looking for a step-by-step field guide to building a resilient career in the creative economy? Pick up my recent book The Thriving Creative: Successful Freelancing in the Creative Economy available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and from my publisher Routledge.
- Stay Connected: Join my community and to receive the complete 31-day hand-drawn playbook as a single PDF at the end of the month. Sign up below.
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