Do you run your own creative business alone?

& would you like to talk 'Shop' with me in 2025?

Dec 29, 2024

I don’t often think about my old job, supplying software to arts organisations, I was based in London, we had a quirky office between Angel and Old Street tube stations (Slow Horses country) with only one meeting room, meaning, many a meeting was held in the local pub, The Stick & Weasel or The Eagle, with some tenuous connection to the nursery rhyme ‘Pop goes the Weasel’, a rabbit hole that is not for this newsletter!

When I look back, my time was not my own, it was controlled by others, if a meeting overran, then we worked late, travel to client sites was often outside of 9-5 hours (unpaid) and even once the work day was finished, we would head to the pub and carry on those conversations. I dread to think of the number of hours of unpaid overtime that was left on the table in what was quite a dysfunctional (albeit fun) working environment. But there was always someone to talk through a problem with, especially if you were buying the drinks.

I remember reading Tim Ferris’ book The 4-Hour Work Week while I was still working in an office and thinking, now that’s something I like the sound of. Working for myself and in control of how and where I spent my time, I imagine many a solo business has been built on the basis of taking back control for oneself.

On my path to a solo career I soon discovered the only thing I really missed was the support network of people I could ask to help sort out a problem for me or for one of my clients. On my own and pre-University of YouTube, I missed having those people to mull over ideas with.

Mr. Dean is fabulous at all the IT issues, we rarely have bad Wi-Fi when travelling, and he’s a very good listener, but even I notice his eyes glaze over once I get into a bit of colour theory or the difference between ordinary print on demand printing and Giclee printing.

I have gathered quite a group of friends over the years who I hope I help as much as they help me, from fellow greeting card designers to fine artists and photographers who I turn to when I have questions about how to approach something. I also have a good library of contacts I have outsourced to in the past, branding, accounting, printing, agents, product photography and warehousing.

Nowadays the online world is over saturated with people selling you ways to make money from your art, I find it terribly distracting and at times, all too easily, drawn into thinking, well i could do that, why don’t I try and create evergreen digital products that make me money while I sleep? It’s at these times, that these people talk me down, they remind me I’d hate every minute of it and why diversify and weaken my brand, when I already have a good product and I realise they are right and I get back to focusing on my own work.

So, for 2025, as our inboxes fill with new years resolutions of others and solutions for building your business next year, this is my offer to you; free subscribers will still get all my travel postcards and artist interviews but paid subscribers will get a deep dive post into an area of my business once a month and an hour long Zoom Call with me. Bring your questions, your projects or do you just need permission to paint for an hour?

I’m neither a teacher nor a coach but I’m happy to share my experience and insights, I felt like I had a huge leg-up when I first started, in part due to my previous job working with Tate Galleries and other famous arts organisations and from some very generous peers (artists and other greeting card designers), to give back and help others with ideas or a leg-up when needed is something I feel quite strongly about and there’s nothing better than the feeling of knowing you’ve helped someone else.

My very first paid subscriber, Freda, sent me this message fairly recently, I’m pretty sure she won’t mind me sharing (will you Freda?!)

I recently signed up to do the ‘Meet the Dragons’ event run by the GCA on 27 February 2025. I would not be doing this if I had not found your email list (and on Substack). I have to travel for part of each year and could not get my head around selling wholesale if I wasn’t here. You told me about The Imaging Centre. Since then and more incredibly helpful information from you I am on a path that has made me very happy. I plan to continue my paid subscription with you. A heartfelt “Thank you!” from me to you!

I’ve popped up as a guest speaker for The Design Trust on several occasions and I’ve run many a workshop, so if this community is something you like the sound of then please consider upgrading to a paid subscription it’s £5 a month or a bit cheaper at just over £4 a month if you pay for a year upfront at £50.

Perhaps you’d like to see how my business is made up before committing to joining up and where my focus is going to be in 2025

Licensing

Licensing is where a 3rd Party company uses my artwork on their products for an agreed duration of time (often for 1 or 3 years, but it can also be forever), in return they pay me either royalties (a set amount per item sold) or a one-off fee.

Licensing has worked very well for me in the past but during the last couple of years there have been a couple of bumps. Both Moonpig and Thortful have cut their royalty rates, in my case Moonpig cut my rate by 50% and I had no say in the matter, it was quite brutal and affected my annual turnover significantly. Another company ran into their own problems and has not paid my royalties for over two years*, this is an ongoing situation so I won’t name them but I’m hopeful of a resolution in the future.

Despite these setbacks the licensing model works exceptionally well for my desire to travel. A lot of the work can be done on the move and once it’s completed and delivered, then the marketing and selling of your work is down to a third party and you, to some extent, can forget about it and wait for the royalities to arrive.

*Obviously don’t sit back and wait for too long!

Thortful in particular I intend to try and work with more in the coming year. Yes, it can be frustrating to work with them (as it can any client I hasten to add!), but I have been with them since they first launched in 2015, they do have a good relationship with their creators and I’ve had some past success with them selling over 100,000 cards. In 2025, I’ll be sharing a more in-depth post about my history on the platform, thing’s I’ve learned and what I think about when I create a design for them.

I also have a new publisher to work with, The Art File, who are producing a 2026 calendar with my dog portraits on, expect to hear more about this, especially once it comes out for sale. And, in general, this is an area of my business that I’d like to grow so I’ll be sharing some of my tactics in attracting new licensing clients.

Print Shop

I am working with the Printspace in London to produce a series of fine art Giclee prints of my ‘Conversations with my Dog’ collection of paintings. The first set of proofs are due to arrive early January, my plan is to launch online in February and hope to have more of my images printed by them in the future.

In the last year I have dabbled a little with print-on-demand, again this fits well with our travelling, but it can easily become a full time job in itself, plus I’m not really in the market to create more ‘stuff’ for people. For the time being, at least, I’m focusing on greeting card design and fine art prints.

Having said that I have created a small range of merchandise to accompany my newsletter, the quality is superb and I’m exceedingly happy with them (there’s a link at the bottom)

Commissions

I open twice a year for commissions and paint my watercolours when we are in the UK. It’s easier for shipping and navigating various other country regulations if I despatch these from the UK.

As it sounds this can be a bit limiting and over the past two years I’ve been looking at alternatives that can slot into a complimentary place next to my licensing work and print shop.

I’ve always liked working in oils and acrylics, but, they are hugely time consuming, paintings can take weeks, or months and they are both highly impractical for small spaces that are often moving (I.e our motorhome) which is why watercolour, fast became my favourite medium to work with.

Over the past two years I’ve been learning and experimenting with what’s possible using digital oil painting techniques. In fact some of my ‘Conversations with my Dog’ series have been painted with this method.

To create these I use a pressure sensitive stylus and tablet with digital oil paint brushes (some made by myself) , on high-resolution scans of a real canvas and these are all made on a computer.

Every brush stroke is made by own human hand, there is no AI being used here, but all the limitations of traditional oil paintings are removed, the mess, chemicals, the drying time and the space required, meaning I can complete an animal portrait in 1-2 weeks and I can paint them in pretty much any location.

The final piece is professionally printed as a high quality art print rich in colour and surface quality, it’s also considerably cheaper than an original oil painting of several thousand pounds. My digitally painted works generally come in at less than one thousands pounds (the bigger the printing size, the bigger the printing costs, so some can come in over a thousand).

Now that came in as quite a sales pitch! But I felt a little explanation of what digital oil painting is, was required. Whether or not this will take off in the coming year, remains to be seen but I’ll keep you posted. It would suit me very well if it did.

Dog portrait oil paintings — A selection of my digital oil dog paintings

Greeting Cards

I try to release two collections of greeting cards to my stockists every year, a Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter so they always have something new from me. BUT, since I gave up the Trade Shows I’ve struggled to hit the dates where stockists are generally looking for new stock.

In 2025 I’m intending to keep to a better schedule and again perhaps grow my customer base here. If you need some accountability or co-working sessions, this is another potential option in my paid, let’s call it a paid membership for want of a better phrase.

Which segues nicely to this newsletter…

What I’ve really enjoyed this past year is writing this newsletter, and my golden rule for running a creative business is to create things you enjoy making.

I turned on the paid option mid-way through the year and I am ever so thankful for all of the people who have chosen to support me and my work by upgrading to paid. In the next year I’m less interested in growing the newsletter, but more interested in providing great art and stories to my existing subscribers and hopefully building a great community of like-minded people in my paid membership.

For free subscribers I’ll be continuing with my Interview series with other artists and creatives, plus postcards from our travels, so no change for you.

For paid subscribers there’ll be a monthly deep dive post, here are a few I’m already working on;

Trade Shows and why I gave them up
Working with online greeting card market places, what has worked well for me
Awards, which ones to chase and the pitfalls to look out for
Alternative and accidental marketing tips that have worked for me
Retail Shows, how to find yours and my best ideas for getting the most out of them.

Plus a monthly Zoom call, the first one will be on January 15th at 15:00 (GMT), I’ll send out a link nearer the time

While I am still working full time as an artist, I’ve been careful not to over commit myself, but with an increase in paid membership then the opportunity for me to spend more time and energy here also increases.

I’ve opened the Chat in the Substack App for people to introduce themselves and I hope to see you there and on the 15th! Until then…

PS I mentioned a range of merchandise earlier, here’s the link here

PPS - Here’s a little taster