Focus

If you're old like me, you remember this scene.  Karate Kid 2, I believe.  Now that I'm working on turning my hobby into a small business, one of the first things I needed to do was to focus.  Over the last couple of years, dealing with some health issues, I had a lot of time with not a lot to do.  Once I made the decision to create my own job by creating my own small business, it was time to buckle down.

The first thing that went was excess TV watching.  I'm lucky in a way, I can work on my artwork while listening to TV.  But I spend a lot less time in front of it, and more time listening to interesting, educative, and motivating talks on the computer while working on my drawings.  Another thing is to spend as little time doing non-work activities.  That's why I emphasized J.K. Rowling avoiding housework in the last post.  Sure, you have to do some housework.  But if you spend all your time cooking and cleaning, there's no time to run a business.  Unfortunately, I currently live in a place where housework is the only respected type of work, everything else I do for my business is considered "playing" because I'm not making much money yet.  This creates lots of drama, but that's just the nature of things right now.

Another aspect of focus is that in creating an art business, I need to do a lot more than art.  I'm really lagging at the accounting aspect right now.  I have all my receipts and stuff, but they're not very organized yet.  So I need to focus on that for a while.  My bedroom/studio/laundry room isn't very organized yet, either.  I'm working on that, step by step.

Twenty some years ago, after making the first video for Chris Moeller's fledgling bike company, S&M Bikes, I wound up roommates with Chris and a guy named Shaggy, who looked just like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo.  Chris was one of the young entrepreneurs of the BMX world then, and I wanted to learn the secret to starting a business.  As the weeks turned into months and years, I learned there really isn't any secret.  What Chris did was have the courage to start, and then he just got up, listened to some music to get psyched, and did whatever needed to be done.  The "secret" was just to focus and work hard and work consistently.  If the frames needed to be picked up at the welding shop, Chris talked someone into giving him a ride to pick up the frames.  He didn't even have his own car at first.  Then we'd put stickers on the frames, pack them in paper in boxes, and ship them out when they were ordered.  Day after day it was a job of figuring out what needed to be done, focusing on that, and doing it.  When the work for the day was done, it was time to go ride.  After that, it was time to drink.  Then it started all over the next day, focusing on the next order of business.  That's what I'm doing now with my fledgling art business.  Figure out what needs to be done, and focus on doing it, day by day.

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