6 months: what's the plan?
Hello from the road - today I am writing this in Cooma regional library. I’ve driven up from Melbourne via Omeo, Corryong and Adaminby - today was one of the most gorgeous mornings I’ve seen in a while: ice everywhere, mist rising from the Murray and the sun breaking through.
Last week I provided some context for where my day job career has been and why I’m taking a pause.
This week I wanted to look back on my publishing, art and arts education work and explore why I’m excited and where this may go in the next 6 months.
I’m going to keep mentioning that time because this is a bit of a break and a bit of a test: I’m using 6 months to see how I go. I’ve been guilty of making dramatic declarations (I’ll never eat sugar again!) only to be totally misleading in those statements. So I’m not starting a new life, I’m just trying something for 6 months.
As it stands, my capacity to make income as someone who is self-employed can be broken into three buckets: publishing, education and art-stuff.
Publishing is likely the thing many of you will be most familiar with. I own/operate Tall Poppy Press and, so far, it’s been a successful endeavour but perhaps not as successful a business as I’d like. Soon it will be 3 years old, and we’re publishing our tenth book in a few weeks.
In the first year of Tall Poppy the aim was just to try and make something work. A business that brought in some money, made good things and added something to the artistic landscape in Australia. We definitely did that. I published two books and each was well received, sold well and went well.
In the second year I wanted a big year: we published more books (5 that year), I attended my first art book fairs (including 2 international fairs) and upped the quality of my accounting. I took the business side more seriously and also had some very large learning experiences as a few projects became very intense. I think that I made some mistakes in the second year, but nothing that would sink us - broadly things went ok. Could have gone better, certainly could have gone worse. Our profile grew, and people responded to what we made. For a big swing of a year just keeping going is good enough.
In this most recent year we've continued to do ok. There’s been a few projects I wish had really taken off, and sold faster, but they haven’t. At the same time, they haven’t failed either and, broadly, even the worse case scenario has been a more-or-less break even situation. I’m not like amazingly thrilled by that, but equally so many small businesses fail that breaking even and being able to continue and learn and grow is actually a net positive in the short term.
I’ve learned a lot about profitability and where I want to see things go in the next year or two. My aim is to try and make sales from TPP books about 50% of my income. This last financial year I was hoping to sell 1000 units for an average profit of $25 per book, I think I got to about 700-725 units, and I don’t have the average profit handy, but I’m not wildly far off.
Over the next 6 months I hope to launch two books (July and October), be present at five or six book fairs and see some really good engagement.
It’s July 1st today, so we reset everything business wise in Australia - it’s a new financial year. Looking at all that, by the end of 2024, I hope to have sold 500 books for an average profit of $25 each :)
Arts education is also something that I’ve been doing more of. Broadly I teach workshops on publishing, book binding, book making, etc. These are always a lot of fun, and the feedback I get has been really positive. I basically help people who like the idea of having their own book learn how to do this and avoid some of the common pitfalls. I help people find their own language and ideas for what they want to make and provide them ways to achieve that.
Usually, I’d teach one workshop every 6 months or so, but for the next 6 months I’m working in New Zealand with Photobook New Zealand, Kalgoorlie with Arts Gold and I’m hoping to also run a workshop in Perth and another in Melbourne. Workshops are great because, if they sell out, that’s broadly 50% of the income I need for a month. So by the end of the year I hope to have taught four workshops and have 2-3 set up for the first half of 2025.
Alongside those, I’m hoping to start offering more bespoke and one-on-one/small group options where people come to my studio with their art work and leave with a handmade edition of one. I have a few things to work out in order to make that happen, and probably need to re-arrange my garage a bit more too. By the end of the year I hope to have this new venture launched and people can book in.
Finally, art work. Now art work is basically one of those things that is tricky to make money from. I don’t get hired often to take photos, but I do get hired once in a while to do some writing. Coming up, I’m writing a feature length article for Aus Geographic - which I’ll share more about as it comes. I’m also photographing for that article too.
I can also see my art practice involving more community participation. I love the idea of making exhibitions that look finished, but I work with community groups to add to and build up together. Earlier this year I was exploring hyper local ecosystems (like the plant life along one road), and I wanted to find a council space that would pay me to exhibit this work, and then get community groups to tour the area with me, collect plant life and then add to the exhibition - creating touch tables, new photographs, etc.
I’m also working on this large, insane Dingo project (hence why I’m in Cooma right now). It’s taken a long time and I have a love-hate relationship with the work. But I hope by the end of the year to have the work finished, a book in the works and some interested galleries. I have this vision of building a replica of the dingo proof fence in a gallery and then also bringing a dingo in for an afternoon for folks to meet.
So looking at these things I hope by the end of the year to have at least one exhibition teed up for 2025, some more writing gigs and the dingo work feeling finished.
If you’re savvy, you’ve probably noticed that there aren’t any huge pools of money sitting here. There’s no like ‘shoot a campaign for Prada for $30,000 in one go’. There’s not a lot of work like that in the world and I’d be really poorly placed to get it and objectively quite bad at it. So what else might I do to be safe financially?
Well I’m actually looking forward to spending less money. I think I’ve gotten a bit lazy with my discipline and have spent more money than I need to. I sort of like the reset a bit to keep myself on track.
And it’s probably worth owning that I’ve rebooted my teaching license and will be doing some casual teaching in August/September/October/December to make sure I’m not just going wild and eating up all my savings.
To me, this is a bit different from a career. It’s literally exchanging time for money in a very mercantile way, and it’s not a ‘be here 9-5, monday to friday’ situation. I literally have an app that, when I want/need to work, I can open up, select a date I want to work, find a school that needs staff and go for it. That autonomy and choice is essential for what I’m after.
If I were hopeful I’d say that I hope to do 0 days of CRT work. If I’m being realistic - it’s worth doing a few days a week during slower months this year. I can still get a lot of art, publishing, education, etc all done and still work a few days a week a few months of the year.
But it’s not just finding different ways of working that I want to test with my new found time. I also want to find more calming and fulfilling ways to spend my time. I want to try doing some exercise first thing each morning, I want to try spending some time deliberately resting each day. I want to use the new found space as something to cherish and, therefore, really hold on to the idea of slightly living differently in the hope of living better.
Work, among other things, has contributed to some nasty mental health stuff. Without going into lots of details I’ve struggled a lot with stress, depression, insomnia and anger - often exacerbated, brought on, or created how I worked my day job. I want to be clear - the job wasn’t necessarily doing all the heavy lifting, but there was a combination of my personality, mentality, modern workplaces and shitty work peers that made things tricky. And I want to try and find a 6 months that’s as full of more groundedness, more calm, more joy, more excitement.
I’ll give you one example of a small change I’d like to make: how I start the day. When I’m working, I wake up and think ‘well, why not wake up and play on my computer? I have to go to work soon and that’ll be stressful so why not relax now?’. But without that stress the question suddenly becomes ‘if I want to have a great day, what should I do in the first hour?’. That’s a bit obnoxiously morning person of me, but I really find even something like putting away last night’s cleaned dishes, doing the laundry, going for a walk, or getting some admin done - first thing - just gets a lot done quickly, and makes me feel both more productive and at ease.
I’m not going to write like long odes to the value of doing a bit of housework to start the day, but I want to be upfront: a lot of what makes me feel the way I like feeling is in front of me, I just need to get myself there.
So what’s the plan:
See where I get to with the three ways I have of making a living as a self-employed person - see if I can set up enough for 2025 that it feels like I should keep going
Prioritise doing things each day that help me feel more mentally calm and grounded
Try for six months, see where I get to, and re-evaluate - don’t add pressure or ultimatums, just experiment, be ok with the failures and enjoy the successes
Work some casual teaching work where it makes sense, just be very mercantile - do the job, just the job, nothing but the job and see if that’s possible
That’s all from me this week - another long one!
I’m off for the next stage of my roadtrip and will check in with you all in a week or so.
Till then :)