Customer Service and You

My travels took me to Nashville last week for a family emergency and, during some down time, I visited a couple of guitar stores. I thought some of the things I noticed might be helpful to you in running your creative art business. Business, is business, as far as I’m concerned, whether you are selling [...]

4 A.M.

It’s 4 A.M. Nothing good ever happens at 4 A.M.
No news story that starts off with a timeline of 4:00 AM ends well. It’s always a car wreck, an arrest, a tragedy. People find bodies at 4:00 A.M. Tornadoes hit houses at 4:00 A.M. Love ends at 4:00 A.M.
No night of sitting up thinking, staring [...]

Goodbye Billy, We Love You

I drove to Nashville to watch a good man die.
He never was the King of Pop, never was elected to the Senate, he never got indicted, he never even got arrested. His name was Billy Lee Harris and he was a good man.
The press won’t be at his church service, helicopters won’t follow his funeral [...]

Priorities, Energy and Creativity

I get really cool letters from fellow travelers on the Affluent Artist journey, other creatives who are navigating the speed bumps that are part of driving this windy lane; life does seem to intrude on our Sunday drive doesn’t it? A few of my new friends had questions or comments that I wanted to share [...]

The Music in Your Soul

Imagine if you were able to pick up that musical instrument you played in high school, say 35 or 45 years ago, and join a band again! Well, musicians all over the world are doing that thanks to an organization called New Horizons. Part of my journey through the Affluent Artist experience has been the [...]

Nothing to Say

I was reading Hugh MacLeod’s great book, “Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity” last night and came upon his view of writer’s block: “maybe you just don’t have anything to say right now”. Isn’t that awesome? Hugh advises that you go outside and play, take a little time and eventually, you will have [...]

Inverse Paranoia

Do you know someone who comes from a place of “lack”, from fear, someone with a thoroughly broken spirit? Have you noticed that they are usually not someone we think of as “creative”?  It’s been my observation that creative people will give you the shirt off their back, that “givers get”.  Even normally creative people [...]

Orlando’s Art Advocate

My journey into this Affluent Artist thing is turning into the trip of a lifetime. As an entrepreneur and financial guy, I originally wrote a book to help creative types, many of whom were clients of my financial planning practice, understand money and investing. It turns out, many artists are a long way from needing [...]

Matt Held: Facebook Portraits

I was in Publix yesterday, my local grocery store, and found myself staring at the magazine aisle. My first thought was, “Magazines? Doesn’t everyone know they’ve been replaced by the internet?” If you know anything about a successful grocery chain like Publix, you know they would not give up valuable floor space unless it was [...]

Bad Business Ideas

I had lunch with my new best friend yesterday, an artist I drove out to see on the Atlantic Coast here in Florida. We talked a lot about promoting and selling art, the artist’s psyche and how business principals seem to sometimes evade artists. We had one of those one hour lunches that lasted two [...]

Next Page »