The Summer Break
So Formula 1 has hit its Summer break at long last which has given me a moment to reflect, work on a few other projects unrelated to F1 and plan for the next few months. I have a few big tasks I've been putting off with my business for a while now as each week I've either been trying to get my latest piece finished or to keep up with my commission pieces.
The first task I've been neglecting is email marketing. (If you're starting up your own business now's the time to take some notes!) You can't always rely on your social media posts to reach a large amount of people, and so being able to reach out to previous customers and doing it in the right way has been something I've been trying to figure out for a while now and I'm slowly getting there. I'd missed off a tick box on my store so many of my previous customers are unfortunately not subscribed to the mailing list so this is something I've also been having to consider.
The second task has been deciding how to proceed with my paintings. Do I continue to create one piece for each race before the race has taken place? Maybe when the race coming up is at an iconic circuit such as Silverstone or Monaco, Spa or Monza then it's a good idea. Maybe painting every single race isn't a good use of my time when certain tracks are not considered iconic and perhaps I'd be better creating posters for tracks like The Nürburgring and for one-off MotoGP races. Maybe I'd be best creating some for races where there has ben a shock outcome and a popular driver has won instead of guessing which I think will do well on the weekend beforehand and being totally wrong which has happened a few times. 🙃
I think my original Monaco painting was especially successful, partly because it was simply an iconic track with an iconic car and an iconic livery, but also because I was painting something purely for myself to go on my own wall and for the fun of it. It's strange how life happens like that, and my aim isn't to try and artificially recreate that scenario, but rather to focus on having the most amount of fun creating works that I would be happy to have on my wall and see what happens with each.
The past few months have been an awesome lesson in all this, and I'm really grateful for the way it's worked out so far but I've spent too much time recently doing what I started my business to avoid - sitting at a desk all day - only now I do it for much longer than when I was employed. The next few months will be an exercise in setting better boundaries regarding my working hours, making time to look after myself and generally in working smarter and not harder. Anyone can be a busy fool!
Anyway, if you made it this far, then thanks for reading and I hope you got something out of it. I look forward to speaking with you soon and take care of yourselves.