What makes a sustainable art business that can withstand challenges like a pandemic?

A sustainable art business is built on the pyramid model: consistently working on attention, deploying all three ways of selling art, building a collector list through direct sales, and potentially adding supplementary revenue streams. This creates a business where you call the shots, you dictate growth and success levels, and external disruptions can’t destroy what you’ve built. In fact, when you have this foundation in place, challenges like a pandemic can actually become opportunities to prosper rather than threats to survival. The key is that you control all the critical components—your attention-generation efforts, your customer relationships, your collector list, and your sales channels. Nothing can be taken away from you because you own the entire system. Stay consistent with this model for years and you build an unshakable business.

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Asked by an artist seeking business stability · Answered by Patrick Shanahan · art-marketing-podcast · 2021-04-03