Plant Your Seeds

A person, no actually more than one person has told me, it must be great to paint paintings for a living. I usually end up saying, yes, I’m blessed to paint paintings, but I have to actually sell them for a living. Blessed is the understatement here, because for some reason my ability to paint paintings is actually fairly equally proportioned with my ability to sell them.

I have a sales background and let me share, there are many ways to sell products, but the best one is not to try and sell at all. No one wants to be sold. What we all want is to buy what we want or need, when we want or need it. We don’t want to be force fed, or manipulated to do anything. We want to choose, we want to be informed and educated, and we want to be treated truthfully and fairly.

If you treat people fairly, if you educate them freely, if you act professionally, if you don’t employ pressure tactics, your reputation becomes you and those seeking your services and products find and wish to do business with you. If you plant these seeds and build these relationships, it’s kind of hard to go wrong, but you can’t just do it. You have to mean it, and if you really mean it, you and your business will grow.

This is long term thinking. Long term thinking serves you well both in the short and long term because what you did yesterday builds your today, and what you do today builds your tomorrow and so forth.

I’m really busy and it feels good, but I know the reason I’m busy today is that I created my prosperous present with a good intentions in the past. Don’t just market yourself as an artist. Stand for something which attracts a prosperous future!

Live an artful life,

Tom