What's the biggest mistake artists make when starting a business?

The biggest mistake is building infrastructure—website, business entity, inventory—before validating that the product sells. Modern tools make it too easy to ‘start a business’ without actually solving the hard problem: proving people will buy your work. Artists get distracted by the easy, superficial tasks (logo, website design) and avoid the difficult, essential work of validation. Start by selling your art directly to real people. Only after consistent validation should you invest in business infrastructure.

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Asked by an artist planning to launch · Answered by Nick and Patrick Shanahan · art-marketing-podcast · 2020-09-24