6 months bought me 12
Hello everyone,
I want to start this email with some clarity - my (mostly) successful 6 month experiment being a full time artists was successful enough to buy me 12 more months. Like last time, I’ll have to look back at the end of this year and work out ‘is this worth continuing in this way?’.
As I work this out there’s simply so much to learn and I have very few frames of reference or measures of success. If someone asks me ‘was 2024 a good year or an average one?’ I don’t have enough information to answer that. Which I say just to underscore that while I feel more settled I am by no means set in my ways.
Last week I promised a more in-depth look at the first quarter of this year. Broadly, January is setting things up, February is making money and March is a big step.
In January I’ve been setting up my studio, advertising new workshops, doing final book preparation and planning. Now that February is almost here I plan to spend most of February either working doing substitute teaching, or teaching workshops. In March our first book of the year will be ready and our first launch of the year will happen.
From then the year will be like a snow ball: trips, fairs, exhibitions, books, launches, workshops and collaborations. It’ll be a delightfully busy time.
Outside of that I’m also hoping to learn how to make coffee! My girlfriend and I bought some tools this week and, when they finish arriving, I’ll see if I can actually make something drinkable, and then we’ll go from there. It’s good to have things to learn about that aren’t about being productive or high achieving, it’s nice just to learn.
The time I’ve had off has allowed me to come back to this new year with some clarity and goals. By the end of 2025 I hope to have brought in enough income and learning to say ‘I can do this for two more years’ - and after that I should be good.
But there’s still a lot to learn, and a lot of experimenting to do.
I need to increase the quality, profit and sales of our books. A big experiment in 2025 will be having a firmer budget, a more specific media plan, more professional product photographs and more video-based marketing.
I need to grow the educational program. In 2025 I hope to learn which directions will be most attractive and profitable. In the first quarter of this year I’m really trying a bunch of different things - are more frequent, but cheaper, workshops more attractive, or less frequent/more in-depth/more expensive workshops a better place to stay?
Tall Poppy needs to move from a DIY brand to an established brand that is still delightfully rough and open. Now well into our third year, I see the company as being as relevant as many established players - so it’s time to have a professional website, clear visual language, consistent marketing and build on what we’ve become (open, playful, a bit weird, very fun).
I need to become a better artist. My last major output was 2022 - this year I’ve three exhibitions, each an opportunity to produce something excellent, document it properly and show people I have really grown. I have such a clear memory of being at a big exhibition at NGV Australia and feeling ‘I can make more, I can be more, I can get more great stuff across the line’ - well, I have a year. Let’s get some more great stuff across the line. This is, in many ways, my most traditionally ambitious secret hope: I’d love to be a great artist, I’d love to have a bit more acclaim, a bit more of a reputation and a few more folks noticing what I’m doing. Like most folks, I slowly just improve and increase - this year I could really showcase some great work - so it’s a priority.
I’m finding that it’s tricky to balance these things. For Tall Poppy and my own art, there’s benefits to traveling often, but for my relationships, my health and my energy levels constant traveling is nuts.
I would like to see a bit more consistency in income - but if I prioritise doing casual or part time work then I’m essentially kneecapping my efforts to improve and grow as a business person, educator and artist.
These are such some of the balancing beams that exist for me and I’m not sure quite how they’ll be resolved, or indeed if they will be. To some extent I’m building the work I’d like to do - but along the way it’s important to find good opportunities to grow and widen. What I mean by this is, in an ideal world, I’d be in Melbourne, posting orders, doing the occasional workshop. But for that to happen more folks have to know us and what we do - I need to ensure more people know about the books, the education and are impressed with us. Some of the opportunities to build that involve working in rural areas, traveling to Europe or something like that. I don’t know that I want to be traveling to book fairs 3-4x a year forever. Though maybe that’s just a necessity.
That’s another part of the experiment: can I bite off as much as I can chew, without grabbing too much?
We’ll see!