Artist Myth #9f: Artists are Flakes

Myth Nine: Artists are flakes
When the Capital Fringe Festival hired me to bring my 21 Hours for Artist’s series, it seemed like a solid gig. The Cap fringe has a great reputation.

When I arrived at the venue though, (a library in DC), it seemed that no one had reserved the space for me although it had been advertised in fringe programs and been on community calendars for a few months. In fact, upon closer examination at the fringe materials, in one publication my class was advertised to be happening at one address and in another, it was advertised to be happening across town.

The library wasn’t happy with me. They reluctantly gave me a few chairs and let me hold the class outside on the lawn. To give everything a twist, NPR showed up to document the entire event.

In the end, the lesson I learned. You can take the business out of the artist, but you can’t take the artist out of the business. The Cap Fringe, like most fringes, is a business run by artists. You can listen to the inspiring and flakey NPR event at: http://bit.ly/jH0Du

Artist Myth #9c: Artists Are Flakes

Myth Nine: Artists are flakes

Sociology books used to say that men couldn’t nurture children as well as women. Then, years later psychologists did an about-face and started to say that men and women provided equally, it was just that the way men nurtured children needed to be judged on a very different scale.

In my “21 Hours for Artists” classes, I make a guarantee that if you follow my plan, you’ll easily increase your creative income by 25% in 90 days. You’d think everyone would be beating down the classroom door to get in. Yet, on average, only one out of every fifty artists will take one of my classes (even if they’re free) and of those, only one out of that fifty will follow my game plan. Those who have followed my plan have increased their incomes by much more than 25% and many have even quit their day jobs.

Is it that the left brain and the right brain are just too far apart to allow any cross pollination? I don’t think so. You see, I also offer my 21 Hours classes for small business owners and non-profit organizations, and guess what? People have the same cross pollination brain issues whether their creative types or not.

A good example is my Uncle. He runs a million dollar furniture refinishing business and his desk looks like a train wreck, he’s rarely on time, and if he was an artist, well, he’d definitely fall into this somewhat flakey category. I think as a culture we tend to think of emotionally driven people as a bit flakey and that’s where I think a lot of the confusion comes in.