What Goals Does An Artist Set?

As I read and learn about how to run a business, I’m often confronted with the question, “What do you want to accomplish with your business?” Usually the article or speaker will go into depth and describe lofty goals of somehow creating an empire, a money machine, a legacy.

But those kinds of questions don’t seem to apply to us as artists. Our questions need to be, “What do you want to accomplish with your art?” We artists are often driven by visions, or desires that have little to do with the money or the details of running a business. We’re, instead, driven to create both for our audiences’ enjoyment and inspiration and for our own fulfillment.

So our goals are different than those of a businessman’s goals. But we have to set them, unless we ‘re happy with the way things are, we have enough income, enough fulfillment, enough challenge (and nothing ever changes in the future).

My problem is that there just isn’t enough room for glass in my home. I need to sell glass so that I can afford more and so there is a place to put it. And I need to set goals that will let others know about us and our accomplishments so they will trust our ability to do the job that they need done. And to be practical, I do want more equipment, not for the sake of ownership but for the ability to do more work.

I can cut glass with a hand cutter from the hardware store that costs a buck or two, but then I want an oil cutter that runs from $20 to $40. It improves my cuts, and my quality goes up. Then I need a strip cutter for straight lines and a circle cutter for, you got it, circles. And a saw would be nice and an extra grinder. And so it goes, another table, more storage space, just a little more so the quality can improve.

Stained glass is a very technical art form. Just ask anyone who’s ever done sandblasted pieces. There are so many things that must work properly. You need the right sand, the right nozzle, the right air pressure, and the right resist. The proper flow is achieved and you finally get to concentrate on the art. All those other details are just things that must be right in order to perform the art. This is why art competitions are so unfair to glass artists, judges hold us to the same standards as other artists even though the same conditions don’t apply. Painters don’t have to make their own paint and weave their own canvasses. Sculptors don’t have to quarry the stone out of the ground before starting work. Welders don’t have to start from scratch, creating metal from ore they dig out of the ground.

So, I’m beginning to set goals, artistic goals. The first is for myself. I want to work more hours on my art each week. This means I have to set more rigorous hours for myself. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve worked all day, and then all week and haven’t even cut a piece of glass. So I’m holding myself to a more structured in the shop work schedule.

Second, I like doing good work, the kind you have to go campaign for. Great work rarely comes knocking on your door, you have to go out and seek it. So I’ve set goals about a structured way to contact people. I’m not going to start knocking doors from sunup to sundown as I did when I sold books door to door, but I am going to talk to a couple of people every week.

Lastly, I’ve set some financial goals, nothing big and grandiose, just simple goals. Like, put some money in savings for a rainy day and then know how much profit I really make on a job. I don’t want to be like the two truck drivers who bought watermelons for a nickel apiece in Texas, drove them to New York and sold them for a nickel apiece. When they looked at how much they had made, one said to the other, “There’s no doubt about it, we’ve got to get a bigger truck!”

Goals don’t have to be big or unattainable. I think a lot of folks get put off by the idea of setting goals because they are so close to those New Years resolutions that get put off and failed at, year after year. But like someone said, “a goal that isn’t written down, is only a dream.” Dreams are great, they help me figure what my goals ought to be…..”I want to have a studio in the mountains near a babbling brook where little woodland animals…”

For more articles on stained glass visit http://www.gommstudios.com/stained-glass-articles/articles.htm

Artists Learn To Live With Disappointment, How To Lessen The Impact Of Setbacks

One of the realities of being an artist is that we take risks with our art and often fail in the process. Sometimes things go wrong with the techniques we are using and sometimes we bring failure on ourselves. We imagine making a beautiful piece that will only take a few minutes, which we begin and it ends up taking weeks. Our studio has many projects in the half-finished stage. We had planned to finish that project right away, but it took more time and as we let time pass, the project takes even longer.

We started one project and jumped right in and cut all the glass for one third of a three panel window. It only took a couple of days. Then we got side tracked by another job with a more pressing deadline. We set the three panel project aside and worked on the new project. Then another project was ordered. It was a couple of months by the time we got back to the three panel project. We had to get it out of storage and clean off all the dust that had gathered on it. Then we started foiling it. There were a couple of pieces that needed to be fixed and we had to research what the colors were supposed to be because by that time, we’d forgotten a lot of the details of the window. We got the thing foiled and then soldered one side of the panel and ran out of time. We had to complete another project, so once again, the three panel project went back into storage. When we got back to it, it needed to be cleaned again, which used up valuable time. And something was happening to us mentally, since we had put off the project so long, we found it easy to put off again. We struggled with color choices, cleanliness issues and direction that “grain” should run through the window, all things that take care of themselves when we complete a window in a timely manner. Finally we just stayed on to the end and completed the panel. It was easy once we dedicated ourselves to the task.

When we started experimenting with hot glass and firing plates in our kiln, we struggled for a long time. We would fire a piece of glass for use on a plate and get bubbles in it and that would be a setback. We’d have to study to figure out what happened and then overcome the fear of failure enough to try another piece. Then we would fire a piece and it would be perfect except for the fact that it broke. Time after time, we experimented with temperatures and glass mixes. And with each failure, we learned more, but we had to fight to continue to try again and again.

Finally, there is the type of failure and disaster that comes in our art by just plain dumb luck, (bad luck). You’re just finishing a panel, nailing on the outer metal to a piece of glass and your hammer slips and breaks a piece of the panel. It’s really no big deal, but now you have to de-solder the piece of glass, cut a new one and solder it in, just to get back to where you were before the mistake happened. This type of accident happens occasionally and isn’t too hard to recover from. It’s the other mishaps that occur that are especially difficult to deal with. When a glass insulator or installer breaks a piece of glass for you, it’s tough to deal with, especially when you hand carried it to them, warned them of weaknesses and begged them to be careful. The worst accidental break is when you don’t tie down the load securely enough or someone trips on an install, or any number of accidents that end up with severe damage. You may just want to go to bed for a week and fins a nice comfortable job in a pillow factory.

So what do we do to fight against despair?

In the first place, determine that once you start a project, you’ll finish it right away. Plan ahead so you’ll be sure to have the time to complete the work in your schedule, then start the work and stay with it till it’s done. This will save so much time in the long run that it will become even easier to stay on schedule because you’ll be saving all that time doing steps over and over again.

Second, when you start learning a new technique or process, take a class. We could have saved ourselves a lot of time and failure by enrolling in a class with a qualified instructor and learning some of the pitfalls to avoid. Instead, we tried to learn by reading a book and doing it on our own.

Third, attack any problem head on. If you break a piece of glass, fix it immediately. If it breaks again, fix it again. Leaving it till later will only make it worse. And when the damage is really bad, try to assess which method you’ll use to repair the damage. Will you fix the broken pieces or rebuild the whole thing? We once spent a month and a half repairing a window, which only took two weeks to build in the first place. We would have been time and materials ahead to have just started over on that project, not to mention the fact that it meant we had to suffer five weeks with our mistake rather than two.

My students sometime tire from hearing me say that “the difference between an amateur and a professional is that a professional will fix their mistakes.” If that’s true, and I believe it is, a true professional will also fix their mistakes quickly.

For more articles on stained glass visit http://www.gommstudios.com/stained-glass-articles/articles.htm

How Can I Make It In The Stained Glass Business?

I wrote this entry in response to a query from a businessman who is thinking about buying an existing stained glass business. He asked if I thought it was a good idea. When a person first embarks on starting into business, there is a tendency to be overly optimistic, so I felt it important to warn of the pitfalls he may encounter. I have to admit that when I re-read this blog page, I felt it was almost too honest, that it leaves me feeling a little vulnerable, like I've told too much.

Recently, one of the best stained glass supply and teaching centers in Salt Lake City, closed their doors. They were very aggressive and well run. They had been in business for over fifteen years (I don't know how long their actual years of operation were). Why did they fail? What was new? Two years previously, the long time run business was sold by the original owner who wanted to retire to a man who had made enough money for the purchase running a janitorial business. But the stained glass business is different than any other business. I have often said that I could probably make more money and be more successful in ANY OTHER BUSINESS that I chose to run. That recent business closure illustrates the fact that the stained glass business is very competitive and labor intensive.

When we started in the stained glass business in 1983, I soon discovered that the business was a real roller-coaster. Cash flow would go from nil to a modest influx of cash about every three months. When we sold a window or commission we would have enough cash to get another order of materials together. We never really felt we were making money, it felt that we were just using up supplies and then replenishing. I found that running a stained glass only business was very tough and discovered that by changing my business into a stained glass/video rental business worked much better. Eventually we ended up with 3 video rental stores which did quite well. (that would not be the case in today's market).

We quit doing stained glass as a living in the late 80's, but continued to do commissions and personal work in our spare time. This is an avenue that I recommend to students who think it might be fun to get into the business. This way they can test the waters and find whether they really want to expand into the business of glasswork. Most find that doing a little on the side is the perfect avenue for them.

I started back into the stained glass business, full time again, 5 years ago (1999) when I moved to Utah. My son thought the market here would be better than it had been in Missouri. While it is true that I'm able to sell more glass here, I find the increased rental prices for a store location to be a barrier that equalizes things to be about the same as Missouri.

So you may ask me, why are you working at stained glass if things are so difficult and I would answer that if I weren't stricken by diabetes, I would probably be working in a different industry. Since I have health problems, I had to go into business for myself since I can't be a dependable employee. I already knew the stained glass business and had stained glass ability. So I went into it again. It is tough, and rewarding but not so much in a financial sense but on an artistic level. I beat my head against the wall trying to figure how to make a living, but simply seem to scrape by each year. So far, in five years of internet presence, we have worked and worked on our site and not yet made a single sale from the site. (We have picked up the majority of our students from our website and have met many in the business from publishing our newsletter.) We have changed our product line, rewritten pages and registered with search engines. I have finally asked a designer to help me and offer him a percentage of all sales he makes. Maybe that will pay off.

We do make a small amount of money by offering stained glass classes. But after taking all expenses and costs into account, we find that we just break even on classes. If I made enough money to support myself well in this business, I would take the extra money and expand and hire help, but so far I'm just keeping my head above water. It is my belief that the key to making it in stained glass is to offer products that will help others to enhance their stained glass experience. I would advise you, that before you make a decision to get into the business to work for at least 3 months in the business, 90 days seems to be the point where you really get an eye opening. The honeymoon ends and you see what you're really getting yourself into.

Be very cautious about the valuation of the business that you are looking to purchase. Remember that you are looking at retail values versus the wholesale values of the business. Figure that the cost of buying all materials and starting a business from scratch is 1/3 to 1/4 of the retail value of the business. It is rare to find that an existing business really has a built up value of customer good will which has much, if any, value to the potential new owner. Customers are our friends and we love them, but because most people only have a limited interest in the business, their value to future income is smaller than the seller might lead you to believe.

It is true that warm glass has more to offer in a studio setting than just flat glass work, but look at the root of the matter. The stained glass industry knows that they are working with a craft which is fleeting. The normal student has one to three projects in them and then they are done. By expanding into warm glass, we are able to offer a wider range of techniques and projects which helps to hold the students interest longer. But what we've done is change a three month customer into a 6 month customer. We still face a huge attrition rate. Being a lover of glass work, I am often shocked at the number of students who start class and then drop out without even finishing their project.

When I talk to other businesses, I often ask if they will furnish me a copy of their business plan. I hope to learn from those plans ways that I might be able to find more success in my own business. If you come up with a business plan, I'd love to see a copy of it.

One word of encouragement, people in the business are in two camps. There are those who are secretive and afraid that you might want to steal their ideas. But the vast majority of business owners in stained glass are open and willing to share their knowledge and advice. They are those who realize that there really isn't any competition in the business. That shop down the corner doesn't create competition, they increase the knowledge and appreciation of stained glass in the community, so they actually help your business rather than hurting it.

Send me contact information and I'll put you on my newsletter mailing list. I hope my comments are enlightening.

For more articles on stained glass visit http://www.gommstudios.com/stained-glass-articles/articles.htm

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