January 10, 2010

 ACE Newsletter

A Tale of Two Vacuums

 

by M Theresa Brown

Hi [[firstname]] 

 
When I realized that the well dressed, polite man standing outside our front door was selling vacuum cleaners, I inwardly sighed. But I decided,  "What the heck, why not?" He would never talk us into buying something as unnecessary or as expensive as one of those door to door vacuum cleaners. But I respect people trying to make a living and cold calling has to be among the hardest in terms of challenges,  so we opened the door to him.

OK. We were impressed. The salesman was a professional wizard at his demonstration, his presentation and marketing skills. Compared to our aged model vacuum, his vacuum cleaner did everything but sing and dance.  To this day we are not sure what happened....maybe it was the ease in which  the dog hair disappeared.  Maybe it  the expected mass execution of all those  millions of " invisible to the naked eye" dust mites...whatever it was that tilted the decision in his favor, two hours later, we owned a $1200.00 vacuum cleaner. As he drove away he said to us,  "You should think about doing some art workshops as I know someone who organizes them."

A decade passed.   We continued our art careers, marketing ourselves and our art at a number of venues-the art shows all over the nation, the specialty shows, magazines, in public, on the Internet.....and added a few workshops and private lessons to the mix.

The vacuum cleaner sat enshrined in the closet and was pulled out  when necessary. We had learned a subtle but valuable lesson. No matter how much you may have paid for the most expensive vacuum cleaner in the world, in order for it to be effective, someone still has to push it.

Several years ago, we decided to follow up the salesman's suggestion. We contacted the person he had mentioned, and that person also directed us to another arena of marketing. Sure enough, within a few years, that long ago tip opened up a new, profitable stream of income for two artist entrepreneurs.

Our "Tale of Two Vacuums" is pretty typical of every artist's art marketing journey. Chance meetings, when acted upon, can open up an opportunity  a month, a year, a decade later and the artist simply has to be ready and willing to pursue it.   The key for any artist in business, is to be aware of when it is time to pursue a new or additional avenue of income.

For a time, we referred to our vacuum cleaner as one of our most expensive impulse buys.  But before long, we were referring to it as one of our better investments!
And yes, we still have it.