As you can tell from this third blog title of our “4 Must-Have Skills to Boost Your Art Career” series: Budgeting is artists’ nightmare.
According to many of us, this is the most obvious statement about atists’ management skills. And as an artist who dislike finance yet pursued a business management degree, I can tell you that our poor Budgeting skills are hindering our community’s progress (especially the Hip Hop one as it is still on its pursuit of maturity).
The following blog won’t teach you how to budget because no artist wants to do this but it will redirect you to 4 useful tips to develop your budgeting skills in order for you to size more opportunities and make your dream projects come true.
As simple as it seems:
1- GOOGLE it:
Learning how to develop a budget for your project proposal through Google is similar to learning how to dance through Youtube: You can learn the basics but there will always be that added value you will get by attending real classes.
So as a first tip, we recommend Google as a research tool that will introduce you to the numbers’ dimension of our big univers that you must later on explore through our second tip which is:
2-Seek an Expert Help:
And by expert, we mean someone who has previously done this.
If you are part of the Tunisian Art/Hip Hop community then it’s really easy to have an “Expert” among your acquaintances. Get you a loop and look for that one person on your social media or other contact lists, that went through that process before you, then take the lead and ask them to share their knowledge with you: Don’t be embarrassed to ask for help and silence your inner voice telling you that you’re being bothersome as the vast majority of humans enjoy helping others. So! Ask for it.
3- Build your Business Network:
First of all, here is one lifestyle advice, never stick around the same type of people: Unbox yourself!
Second of all, meeting people with a business background is a real long term win. Not only will it help you expand your business related knowledge but also it might connect you with many interesting opportunities that will positively impact your events management or art business.
Now, let’s talk about its How To!
Of course you won’t be knocking companies’ doors asking them to become friends. Build your business network by following the suggestions below:
- Join LinkedIn
- Attend Cultural Management Workshops (Tunisian context, make sure to follow: Association Art Solution, Plateforme Jamaity, Association l’Art Rue…)
- Visit Coworking Spaces (Cogite Coworking Space, Synergy Space…)
- Join business themed webinars and online classes ( Lewis Howes, Gary Vee…)
4- Shift your Mindset:
Back again with a lifestyle advice: By shifting one’s mindset and embracing positive change, we allow positivity to invade our lives!
Same for ca$h y’all!
If you shift your mindset from “Art should be free” to “Artists should get paid” you will allow money to invade your projects!
And it’s not a magical thing as most of the funding institutions’ current hot topics are mostly about cultural/art project financial sustainability.
So before developing your budget, make sure to get the investors’ mindset and recheck your projects’ ability to be financially self-sufficient.
Think this is helpful? Share it with your friends! ❤ & Make sure to read our two previous blogs of the “4 Must-Have Skills to Boost Your Art Career” :
Design Thinking & Five DO’s to Level Up your Digital Media Fluency