Lennon Bone, founder of Stop the Starving Artist, breaks down three fears that tank artists' sales: seeing selling as slimy so they skip clear calls to action, perfectionism that kills output, and tying self-worth to a specific income. He argues releasing these fears lets artists sell more confidently.
There's 3 things I see artists doing that tells me they're letting fear run their art business instead of themselves running it from the heart. And the first one is that every time they show up to sell, selling feels slimy to them. They don't want to use like buy now on a button or something like that because it feels scary. But the truth is, is selling is a service. When someone has said, hey, I'd like to actually buy your stuff, tell me how to do it. And if you're not making that clear, you're really doing a disservice to them. By the way, my name is Lennon Bone. I run a company called Stop the Starving Artist. If you like content like this that helps you sell more of your work and do it from a place that feels good in your frickin' gut and in your heart, then please follow along. I'd love to have you. The second thing is you wear a perfectionist hat and you wear it very proudly. Well, I'm not gonna do this until it's just right. You know, perfectionism is just the ego's way of staying safe. And oftentimes what actually ends up happening is you have a lower output of marketing materials or things like that that would get you out there and make you more money as an artist just because you call yourself a perfectionist. The third thing that I see is that you say something like, well, if I just make X amount of money, then I'm a real artist. You don't need to make a certain amount of money. You don't need to go to a certain school. You don't need to have done this X amount of time for you to be more or less of an artist than anyone else. You are a human being that is worthy of love and respect. And the more that you can feel that yourself, the more that other people are going to feel that in your energy when you show up online, at markets, at galleries, whatever it may be.
