Planning For A Successful Year

January is a strange month for me. Full of ups and downs, paralysing fear and blind panic. I can honestly say I hate and love January in equal measure.

It's the time I sit down and wrap up the previous year, update my spreadsheets and accounts, put them into the archive folder, safely tucked away until it's time to prepare and send in my tax return. It's the time to count the number of new contacts, subscribers and clients I have added to my contact list over the past year, the time to weigh up whether or not I've met the career goals I set for myself at the start of the year. If it's been a good year then it's time to clap myself on the back, have a sip of wine (always advisable when doing this exercise), as I remind myself of some of the big sales I had or the good press coverage I managed to get or the helpful contacts I have made. At that's when the paralysing fear kicks in.

Because that's when it I know I have to start all over again, that last year's successes are gone, last year's money is almost gone!! The income column in my spreadsheet for 2011 reads NIL. And to make things worse the recession that the economy is in is just getting worse. That's when the true reality of being an independent artist of no guaranteed means sinks in. And that's a good time to take another sip of wine.

And then the planning starts. Without a plan you are giving yourself no chance to succeed, but with a plan you are putting yourself in control. The very act of building a new plan for the year is what keeps the fear at bay and allows you to stay positive and excited about the future.

The starting point is giving yourself some goals to aim for - financial, career, professional and personal goals. My financial goal is always to make at least the same as the previous year, but I will always plan to make a little more. My career goal this year will be to continue to grow my profile and attract new collectors and admirers. My professional goal will be to create a number of paintings over the course of the year that I think have moved me forward as a painter, which ensures my work is evolving and which continues to excite me. My personal goal is to make sure I can fit all that I need to do into a regular working week as much as possible and not to take on anything that will mean having to be away from home for long periods.

Once your goals are set you can begin building a plan to meet them. I have a very simple approach to making my plan for the year. In my notebook I draw 12 columns, one for each month of the year, then a number of rows, one for each of my income earning activities, such as gallery exhibitions, art fairs, painting workshops, career coaching workshops, Art Cards, online sales etc. I then start to fill in the grid, starting with my annual "main events" - these are the important ones as they are the ones that I expect to generate the most income from - Wexford FRINGE festival in October, the RDS Dublin Art Fair in November, a solo show sometime in March that I've been working towards. I then add any gallery group shows that I need to have new work for, usually summer and christmas shows and mark the month they need to be delivered in. I always put a note of the number of paintings I plan to have for each show in the grid also.

Already, I have a 12 month calender showing painting commitments for March, May, June, October, November and December. And an estimate of the number of new paintings I will need for each. From this I can start to get a rough idea of how many frames I will need, and when I will need to order them. The plan is coming together and the grid is starting to fill up.

Next, I'll start to plan my series of summer painting workshops, making sure they do not clash with any major painting commitments. Likewise with my Art Coaching workshops I will plan to run them at times that will not interfere too much with my painting schedule.

Finally I look at any new projects or opportunities I might want to take on. This year I hope to have a public gallery show on the east coast over the summer so I'll provisionally mark that in for June. This will include some of my Limited Edition Prints so I make a note that I will need to order and frame a collection of prints for this if the show goes ahead. Also this year I plan to produce a range of Art Cards which I will sell through the galleries I exhibit with, the art fairs, my painting workshops, painting demonstrations and through my website. They may not generate a huge return but they will help to promote my work and my website and hopefully help to generate some future opportunities. I mark them in the February column.

And that's my draft plan for the year, drawn up on a page in my notebook. That's all that's needed for now. I will draw up more detailed time-lines for each of the activities marked in the plan, working backwards from the end date to make sure I allow myself enough time to complete everything that needs to be done (e.g. getting invitations printed, ordering frames, getting into listings etc). If I want to go one step further I can try to estimate roughly how much I expect to sell through each of the gallery shows and art fairs, how many people I expect to sign up for the workshops, etc. With my experience of previous years I should be able to make a reasonable guess, making sure to allow for the fact that this year will probably be harder than ever because of the recession. So I can see if the activities I have planned for the year are enough to generate the income needed to meet my financial goals. If not then I can start looking now at ways to make up the shortfall. And that is the single greatest benefit of preparing a plan at the start of the year - it allows you to stay in control and to be proactive. And now the paralysing fear is gone.

Unfortunately it has been replaced by blind panic. How am I supposed to get all that work done?? But we'll leave that for another day...