The Artist's Boom and Bust Cycle

Hello, everyone. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. I'm so pleased to be talking to you this evening. Thursday the 8th, I think. And just be aware the puppy is somewhere that way. She has found all the squeaky toys. So if you hear background noise, that's what that is. We are anticipating a hurricane or tropical storm of some sort on Cape Cod. You could drink the air here right now. It is so, so muggy. I just convinced my mom to go for a swim after dinner with me and it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Nantucket Sound, there is not one single wave. And this is like the calm before the storm. And as I'm describing this, it kind of reminds me of the topic that I want to talk about tonight, which is the boom and bust cycle that the artist boom and bust cycle, as I call it. And, well, let's just talk about like the water and like what happens when a storm comes. I don't know the science behind it, but like, everything is still. Everything is perfectly still. Nothing is happening. And then all of a sudden things just blow up. And it rains, it's windy, trees come down, you know, the world just turns upside down. And so I want to talk tonight about the kinds of clients that I work with. Now you hear me talk a lot about my beginner clients. The ones that are just starting out. They don't know who their niche is. They don't know how to sell their service. They think it's really gross to try to promote yourself. They don't know how to market themselves, therefore, because they don't want to be seen as like braggadocious and full of themselves. But you may not know this, but I work with another subset of clients too. And I hear this very often when I get on the phone with someone is I work with clients who have built their business in a certain way. And maybe it was really good before the pandemic, or maybe they just started a few years ago and it's been like a slow but consistent growth since then. But they hit a point where they become busy enough when they do have clients that they don't continue with their lead generating activities. And so they have their clients and then their clients complete with them. And then because they haven't been doing the work to create visibility, to have sales calls to promote themselves, they don't have any clients to backfill them. And so they go from the high, high, high of tons and tons of clients to that dip of all my clients are completing. There's this panic when that happens, like, oh, my God, all my clients are going, I'm not going to have any money. And if you know this, I want you to put this in the chat. If this is you, you've gone through this, I've gone through this. Okay. This was when I first started my business. You know, I filled up my business and then I just thought, okay, cool, that's it. No, that's not it. The, the problem with this is not just. Okay, so let me back up. So you should always be promoting your business. You should always be creating awareness of what your services, what you provide, even if you are at full capacity with clients. And let me explain why. So you have. Let's assume you start from scratch, right? You start your business, you start building awareness. You're on LinkedIn, you're on social media, you're maybe speaking at events, you're going live. All the things you're telling people what you're up to. You're doing a beautiful job of it. And people are inquiring, people are seeing you out there in the world and they're like, wow, this person is talking about my problem. This person really understands me. I should probably get on the phone with them. And so then they get on the phone with you and they love you and they're so excited to work with you, and so they sign up and then this happens over and over and over again, right? And then all of a sudden your time is full because you have all these clients and congratulations, it's such a good feeling. But then if you drop, if you take the foot off the gas with your marketing, guess what happens? You have these clients, that's great, and maybe you get some referrals from them. But your marketing, the algorithms of social media don't like it when you stop. Likewise, people forget about you as a speaker if you stop speaking. Likewise, people forget to tune into you when you're not available to be tuned into. So as you're losing those clients as they're completing, you're not just picking up where you left off when you started your marketing before. No, no, no, no, no, no. You're actually having to start from almost the beginning again because you have to train people to care about you again because you dropped off the map. And they don't. People don't like that. People like consistency from the people that they follow online. Also, the algorithms, the magical al. I don't know why I said that in a single voice, but the magical algorithms, you have to retrain them to show Your stuff to people. Okay. And also, let's just talk about the fact that humans forget what worked and then start trying something different. If you drop off for a few months from creating awareness for your business in whatever way you do this, there are billions of ways to get clients. It's not just posting on social media. It's not just speaking at events. It's not just. Not just. Not just. There's a way for you to do this authentically. It's one of the things I help my clients with. Oh gosh, we're being invaded by a puppy. She's got a haircut, she looks really cute. I don't know if I can. I don't know if you guys will be able to see her anyway. I'll try to pick her up at some point. She's really heavy though. What was I talking about? Oh, yeah. So you have to train the algorithm. Oh, oh. That's what I was going to say is you may have been on an arc of like posting or saying or speaking about the thing. And that's the thing that gets clients. As humans, we have really bad memories, okay? Really bad. Unless you're documenting or you're going back to seeing like what worked and what didn't work. I'm betting you're falling into some bad habits as you get back into the game. Because you're going back into the game with a lower self esteem, with lower confidence because you're in this panic mode because you just lost a bunch of clients because they just completed with you. And that's not a good feeling. That's really not a good feeling. And if you're in that right now, my heart goes out to you and just know that it's so normal. It is so normal for that to happen. It's a pain in the ass. And the other things that it can take tolls on. So it takes a toll on your confidence. Okay. Because you think like, I was so good. What happened? I have no clients now. What happened? I don't know what to do from here. It's a ton of work, It's a ton of time investment energy, emotional energy and just, you know, physical energy to try to get all that stuff up and running again. You have to then create new habits because if you got out of the habit of doing these things, like you probably filled them in with other habits, other things that you filled your time with. So you have to really change over what your day to day is. The other thing is that it doesn't create a consistent high end brand Vibe for your business. If you're dropping one thing to do another thing, people are just going to think, oh, this person isn't that organized. It's giving this impression that you don't have your shit together. And I was talking about this with someone today, and it's like, this is not do or die. I'm not saying it's the worst thing that's ever going to happen. If you've been in the artist boomer, bust cycle in your business, don't panic. Yes, it costs you. Yes, it costs your business. But you can stop it at any point, because the thing about the artist boom or bust cycle, that you create it for yourself, okay? The artist who is generating a ton of paintings and painting, like, amazing canvases and creating tons and tons of product and not selling any of it is gonna go broke at some point because they run out of money because that stuff is expensive. Then they have to go and sell. But because they're out selling and they're not in the artist mode anymore, they let their stores kind of dry up. So then they run out of inventory and they have to go back to the studio with all this money. But then they have to create all this stuff that's on the artist. The artist is creating that dynamic. As an artist, as a business owner, it is on you, you and no one else to build inconsistent strategies to promote your business, even when you're at full capacity with clients. Okay? It is of the utmost importance for you to do this. And the beautiful thing when you do this well, when you do this really well, is you'll have a full, full practice, a full business of people. And you'll have a wait list. You'll have a wait list of people who they've signed up to work with you, but they know they can't start for a couple months because that's when one client is going to be completing with you. Okay? The key here is you have to find the way to promote yourself that feels authentic to you. Maybe it's writing, maybe it's going live. Maybe it's speaking at events. Maybe it is networking. There are a billion ways to do this. You just have to figure out which way is best for you and have someone show you if you don't know the best way. Luna, did you just unplug my computer? Excuse me. How rude. The light dims whenever she does that, and she does it all the time. Oh, my God. Does anyone have a puppy? I feel like there should be, like, a what to expect when you have a puppy. You Know how they have that for, like babies? Anyway, you're. She's giving me like this look, like you're not paying attention to me. I'm gonna keep doing stuff like that. But back to the point, back to the point of the artist boomer bust cycle is. Oh, God. Moment of panic where I forget what I'm saying. So you've created this, you can fix this? Oh, yeah. You need to find your own authentic way of doing this, of building awareness for your business consistently. And when I say that, not thinking of, like the most time consuming way to do this. Okay, that is not the point. You want something that is easy for you to do, that you can do every single day, even when you're busy. Okay? That is the best way to build a consistent lead funnel for your business. Okay? So if you really love doing YouTube videos and you're good at them and you can edit them and you can put them out fast, go ahead and do that. Have that be something you do a couple times a week. Perfect. You know, if you really enjoy putting out a podcast and you can do it consistently and you, like, have fun as part of your social life, go for it. Why not? There are a billion ways to do this. But here's the point is you need to find. If you don't know how to do this well, I don't want you to half asset. I want you to seek out help. If you want LinkedIn, that's Leah Turner. If you need a podcast help, I have my friend Austin. He's amazing. Reach out to me for that. If you, I mean, if you need Instagram help, that's Jess Bruno. She's amazing. There are so many people out there who can help you with this. There's no excuse for not building awareness for your business consistently. Okay? And let's just like take a moment to acknowledge that the world has changed dramatically over the last year and a half, two years, a year and a half, whatever. It has changed dramatically. So if you weren't in an artist boomer bust cycle, but now you are, because how you get clients is different. It's usually in person. And now we are still not really in person. That's okay. Give yourself some slack. It's normal. And there's a way to fix that. It's super easy. I mean, just if you walk away from this, live with anything, is I want you to create consistent, if I can say the word, consistency. I want you to build momentum with that consistency. I don't want you to drop the ball. I want you to continue Dribbling the ball. See, I'm making a sports reference here. Continue dribbling the ball. Don't drop it. Okay? So consistent momentum and find the way that's authentic and feels good to you. Because if you're building this business, you're building it because you want to enjoy running it. Don't build a business that you don't like running. You're going to want to run screaming from it in about three years, and you're going to walk away from a lot of money if you've done it. Well, we don't want that. We want you to be wildly successful and happy and have the dream life that you've always wanted. I don't know why I'm using the Queen's we all of a sudden, but I'm just the universal we. Okay, I think it's time for the puppy. Luna, you want to say hi to everyone? Come here. Nope, she doesn't want to say hi. Sorry, guys. Anyway, but if you're stuck in the artist boomer bust cycle and you're not sure how to get out and you're having a hard time generating leads consistently and sticking with that process when you get busy, reach out to me. This is one of the things that I work on with my clients. Yes, I help people with their niche and train them on how to do sales and train them on how to market themselves. But part of that is also this consistency, part building momentum, finding systems and strategies to make sure that how you're building awareness for your business and inviting clients in actually something that you can do consistently day over day over day. Okay. It's just different stages of the business process. But anyway, thank you all so much for watching. I hope you have a great Thursday. Wish me luck. I'm really hoping we don't lose power here on the Cape tomorrow with the hurricane or tropical storm Edna or something that's coming through Elsa, but tbd. So I may go live tomorrow, I may not. I may be running being brave from my cell phone. Who knows? It should be a wild adventure, just like running a business. But Anyway, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and coach. Thank you for joining me, and I will talk to you all soon. Bye.