| Business Plans for Artists: Going Home With a Plan

How is the business side of your creative practice going? Leave this week-long workshop with a business plan that can help you achieve your goals.

Students have called Valerie Landsburg’s classes transformative and life-changing. A director, actor, writer, and coach, Valerie has been on film sets since she was seven. Throughout her long career, she has had to balance the demands of art and business. Along the way, she discovered the key to helping you learn who you are in the middle of what you hope to achieve. Whether that’s a movie, a record, a book, a career as a lion tamer, or finding the love of your life.

Could a business plan be the essential tool that you’ve been overlooking in your life and career? Let’s hear Valerie’s insights on the significance of having one:

This is about you and your vision. A business plan begins as a map to your destination. After teaching my one-day business plan workshops for many years I felt the second step in the process would be to create a five-day workshop that would allow participants to walk away with a basic plan at the end of the week. A plan you can use to create: proposals, partnerships, strategies, and a business structure to strengthen and streamline the possibility of spending more of your time creating.  Because time has value.

The questions that we should be asking ourselves about what we want to create are… 

Why this, why me, why now?

We need to answer these first and put it all down on paper. This will lead you to the other answers: about resources, timing, about how to make it all align. Writing it out is key. If it doesn’t work on paper, it may be problematic in the execution.

The plan you make in this weeklong workshop is the first tool to explore yourself and how you interface with everything and everyone you work with. It can reveal that you have been doing things in a certain way that really doesn’t work and lead you to what you might do instead. We may discover that we do not have what we need to make the business work for a number of different reasons at this time. If so, we’ll explore how to pivot. You’ll keep working on your plan as it unfolds.

We also may discover that we’re much closer to a successful business than we thought. This gets illuminated by thoughtful questioning of ourselves and what we want to create. Beyond the practical aspects, we are surrendering a lot of fears that we are not up to the task.

Creatives will try and balance this feeling by quickly identifying people who are “experts or authorities” and getting their opinions about your business so you can move quickly into action. These people are helpful and can be contacted when you have a greater understanding of the business you are building.

Throughout the week you will be constructing a plan you can look at every day as you refine your ideas, a tool that can be applied to anything you want to create. And you’ll be reminded: as creative people you have the magic inside you. 

Schedule

 Monday through Thursday are morning sessions of four hours each. These mornings will be voyages into a process that’s exciting, inspiring, emotional, and challenging. We’ll support each other as we examine the practical dynamics of bringing our goals to reality. 

After talking about what we want to create, we’ll explore business process, how to gather the information we need to create a sustainable practice, identify resources, the dynamics of collaboration, the practical nuts and bolts of running a business, marketing, the effects of competition, constructing a biography, financial results, and much more. 

In the afternoons, you will have time to work. This homework will allow you to walk away with a plan. Homework is all self-driven. No grades, no wrong, and no right.  

On Friday, we’ll have an afternoon session of four hours. You’ll present your draft, talk about your project(s) and use the week’s work to help you answer the key questions we started with Why this, why me, why now.  We’ll wrap the week with a time to ask questions and talk about process.

The most important thing to remember about any business plan is that it’s continually evolving. These are living, breathing documents that are always being updated to reflect the movements of the goal. You may go on to create many versions of your plan for many different reasons. You’ll learn how to use your plan as a source material, to develop, refine and tailor a business plan suited to the audience that will receive it.

This workshop also includes an in-depth set of notes. You have 365 days from this workshop to send me your plan. I will provide thorough notes.

Leave the week with new confidence and a vital tool to help you achieve your goals.

Testimonials

“…I managed to get down on paper the essence of the business I had been thinking about for the previous year. The opening exercise in particular helped free me of pre-conceptions of what I wanted to do. I’ve already revised the work I did in your seminar and have a clear list of my next moves. Thank you, Valerie.” Dave Voda – Filmmaker 

“Valerie, I am 300% better off because I have the business plan that I developed as an outcome of your workshop. Even with the economy in tatters, the business plan has kept me on track and I’m achieving many of my goals. In the past, I would have spent my unemployed time freaking out about being unemployed, but this time around I’m able to look for work and get a bunch of other stuff done too. I can’t recommend your workshop more highly.” Carole Real – Writer

“I never write this, but I think it’s the thing – OMG!!!!!! Thank you, you are a true gift!!  You know how at sea we can feel as one of so many actors, as independent contractors, etc. This is so fabulous.” Tessa Auberjonois – Actress (The Affair, Shameless, Modern Family)

“This workshop is brilliantly taught by Valerie and addresses important underlying issues that are pertinent to any business or project. In fact, I feel, for me, the class was one of those life-defining moments we have from time to time that provide insights and perspectives on life’s issues outside of business. I highly recommend her class.” Paul Marks – Rodeo Realty 

“I always thought business plans were for millionaire CEOs and website startups. I always thought the value of a business plan was to have something to hand investors when you’re trying to raise money for a business. As an actor, I never saw any reason to have a business plan. I mean who’s going to invest in my acting career? Well, I realized no one if I don’t look at it as a business and since you’ve helped me do that, my acting career has gained some serious momentum. And it’s largely in part because now I have a plan.” Jon Brown – Actor, Writer, Producer 

“I’ve been a professional musician for almost twenty years. Though I’ve had success here and there, the workshop was the key that kicked my career into high gear. Valerie helped me put together a business proposal to get investors for my new album. Not only did that get me the funds I needed, but now I have people coming out of the woodwork to help me. It’s been a domino effect that has made me a believer in the law of attraction… and Valerie’s business plan.” Michael Mulder – Musician, Songwriter, Producer

“Before I took Valerie’s workshop, the thought of working through a business plan was like a huge monster on my shoulders. Valerie took me through the process in a fun and inspiring way that really took the mystery out of something I’d been in the dark about for a long time. I highly recommend this class!” Tasha Hardy – Writer/Producer