On Thursday January 26th The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship (IAE) will be teaming up with WBEZ’s new project Front & Center to host a resource fair for the self employed, small businesses, start-ups, and freelancers.

Mini seminars and presentations will run through out the evening at the fabulous Catalyst Ranch located at 656 W Randolph St # 3W in the Polka Room.

Mini Seminar Topics Include: 

Entrepreneurship 101
Presented by Institute For Arts Entrepreneurship

Receiving small loans as an independent worker
Presented Accion Micro Lending

Doing your taxes as a freelancer, small business owner, or independent
Presented by Center for Economic Progress

Create. Innovate. Repeat: featuring 4 fabulous presenters, 7 slides and just 5 minutes each to pitch their most innovative business idea to you.
Presented by Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship.

Partial List of Participants Include:

Co-Lab Evanston providers of shared office spaces.

Northside Freelancers Network  who can help you connect to the growing Chicago self-employed community. Make sure to ask them about their weekly “freelancers soup” lunch.

Accion will be on hand to discuss how to get a  micro-loans to jump start your own business.

Northside Community Bank can help you find funding for your small, local project.

IndieMade is itself a small business. They create websites for independents, artist, small businesses, and start-up projects.

Rockstar CPA offers CPA services specifically geared towards the self-employed, with a specialty in creative projects.

The Law Project offer affordable legal resources for freelancers, independents, and small businesses, such as creating contracts, negotiating pay, etc.

Chicago! Come on out and celebrate self-employment with us! We hope to see you on January 26th.

Fair begins at 6pm @ Catalyst Ranch  656 W Randolph St # 3W, in the Polka Room

Written by Art Licensing Coach J’net Smith

Rule #3 Know your skills.

Art talent isn’t enough to make it in the Art Licensing industry. Even more interesting is the fact that you may do very well in Art Licensing for any number of other reasons. For example, your art skills may be good; they may even be awesome!  But you could be incredibly successful in Art Licensing because you can market yourself better than other artists. Perhaps you have the innate ability to capture the attention of various media outlets, or you have a large following of active and demanding fans (which would be is very appealing to manufacturers).

I’ve seen artists make lots of money because they appeal to a certain niche audience (not a small niche, but one that’s large enough to warrant mass market attention) that is peaking and has a current need for art. Maybe an artist loves creating holiday themed art, for which there is always a need. Art Licensing is a commercial industry, so artists who have a distinctive style, enjoy creating a certain theme, and who also appeal to huge audiences have more potential for income than others.

Other skills that affect your Art Licensing business potential are:

Technical Skills

You definitely need computer and technical skills, or access to them. If you don’t have them, you need to get them or find a partner that does, because people will no longer put up with artists not having internet access, high resolution scans, layered files, etc.

Product Design Capabilities

If you can envision your art on products, then show your art to manufacturers on product mock-ups to help them. This is a really important skill set today and is going to help put you in the league of serious art licensors.

Trend Watching

Not everybody is going to be a trendsetter, because that takes a lot of forward thinking.You may have that, or you may just love to watch trends, and can keep up with them. Either way, don’t avoid learning about trends and seeing how your art can interpret them.

Entrepreneurial Abilities

Artists need entrepreneurial skills more than ever!  And we’ll talk more about this later…

About J’net Smith

Jeanette Smith is the consummate art licensing coach—she is passionate about helping you achieve a level of success beyond imagining and definitely knows how to do it! In just six short years, J’net turned Dilbert™ from a relatively unknown syndication-based comic strip into a 200 million dollar a year global brand. Then in 2000, J’net translated and expanded on her extensive experience to train, advise and license all types of creators. She has helped hundreds of artists, graphic designers, painters, photographers, authors, illustrators, design firms, fine artists, creative companies, non-profits and agents to maximize the power of their brands and talents.

J’net is best described by her combination of specialties—she is one of those very rare people who possess a balanced combination of creative sensibility and extraordinary business acumen. It is this combination that has served J’net over the span of a very impressive career,and has garnered her equally impressive press and testimonials!

From her early days in New York building new divisions for such corporate giants as Official Airline Guides, MacMillan Publishing, Paramount Communications, and VIACOM International, to her six years of work at United Media spearheading the astronomical growth of Dilbert, Jeanette has compiled a long list of satisfied clients and has gained an enormous amount of respect and experience in marketing, licensing, advertising, PR, agenting, negotiating, and much more.

Written by Art Licensing Coach J’net Smith

Rule #1 Learn all you can about art licensing before committing your time and efforts.

Licensing is big business. According to the 2011 annual Licensing Industry Survey released in June by the International Licensing Industry Merchandisers’ Association (LIMA), global licensed product royalty revenues reached $5.065 billion in 2010. Character licensing, from all types of entertainment venues, represents the lion’s share at 47%, while art licensing equals about 2.5%. Art licensing is by itself a $128 million dollar industry.

Licensing is the simple concept of taking your copyrighted art, and contractually arranging and agreeing to lease the rights to one or more images to manufacturers who develop product with the artwork and then sell product to retailers to market to consumers.

So, licensing is really both a business and distribution model. It’s simply one way of getting your art onto product, and out to the consumers. The licensing model is especially appealing to artists, since it doesn’t require you to invest your money up front in production, or to learn the complex in’s and out’s of manufacturing and retail distribution.

The basic players in an art licensing agreement are these:  the artist is Licensor—the owner of the copyright. The licensor may market their art through self-representationor utilize the services of an agent. The Licensee is the entity (company or individual) who licenses the rights from you.  Most often it is a manufacturer, but it could also be a retailer, or an advertising sponsor. The contract—the legal agreement between the two of you—is the Licensing Agreement.

Like any business venture you might be considering, I recommend you study the industry to see if it is right for you and learn all you can about what it will take to succeed in art licensing.  So Rule #1 is that you must learn all you can about art licensing before you commit significant time and efforts. I can’t guarantee it will be easy, but if it’s right for you and you are willing to put in the effort, it can be rewarding and lucrative. Reading this blog series is a great place to start and here are some additional resources that also may be helpful.

About J’net Smith

Jeanette Smith is the consummate art licensing coach—she is passionate about helping you achieve a level of success beyond imagining and definitely knows how to do it! In just six short years, J’net turned Dilbert™ from a relatively unknown syndication-based comic strip into a 200 million dollar a year global brand. Then in 2000, J’net translated and expanded on her extensive experience to train, advise and license all types of creators. She has helped hundreds of artists, graphic designers, painters, photographers, authors, illustrators, design firms, fine artists, creative companies, non-profits and agents to maximize the power of their brands and talents.

J’net is best described by her combination of specialties—she is one of those very rare people who possess a balanced combination of creative sensibility and extraordinary business acumen. It is this combination that has served J’net over the span of a very impressive career,and has garnered her equally impressive press and testimonials!

From her early days in New York building new divisions for such corporate giants as Official Airline Guides, MacMillan Publishing, Paramount Communications, and VIACOM International, to her six years of work at United Media spearheading the astronomical growth of Dilbert, Jeanette has compiled a long list of satisfied clients and has gained an enormous amount of respect and experience in marketing, licensing, advertising, PR, agenting, negotiating, and much more.

Written by Randy Woods, October 25th. Appeared in Entrepreneur Magazine online.

Andy Fife's mission is to provide a solid financial foundation for entrepreneurial artists.

In the drizzly Pacific Northwest, Andy Fife is a rainmaker for the region’s thriving arts community. Through Shunpike, a Seattle-based arts organization, he has helped nurture more than 2,500 creative enterprises across Washington, providing a solid financial foundation for the region’s most prominent entrepreneurial artists.

So what’s his big secret? “We mostly focus on writing a business plan, creating a marketing plan, securing funding, establishing lines of credit,” Fife says. “That, itself, could be considered innovative in the art world, where most people aren’t trained in the business fundamentals.”

“Artists always do badly with money,” admits Jennie Shortridge, a Shunpike client and co-founder of Seattle7Writers, a collective of published Pacific Northwest authors. “We just aren’t very good with spreadsheets and bank accounts and, frankly, we don’t always want to be.”

That’s where Shunpike comes in, offering two tiers of service for its financially challenged members. “Basically, we’re a service hub for all the back-office functions,” Fife explains. “Our mission is to handle all of that for them and let them spend their time doing what they do best, which is producing art.”

Shunpike’s first-tier program offers grant-writing services, tax-exempt 503(c)(3) status and consultation about fundraising, finance and advisory board development for a $100 annual fee and a 7 percent cut of revenue. The second tier, called the Partner Artist program, offers all of the above, plus assistance in bookkeeping, taxes, licensing, permitting, human resources, payroll and insurance. The same $100 annual fee applies, plus 10 percent of revenue.

Even in the shadow of the Great Recession, Shunpike appears to have no shortage of potential clients. A 2010 report by Americans for the Arts said Seattle is home to 4,370 businesses in the “creative industries”–museums, symphonies, architecture, advertising–employing more than 21,000 people.

When Fife joined as executive director in 2007, Shunpike’s annual budget was $400,000; today, it’s $1.4 million. About 55 percent of these funds come through donations by government agencies, corporations, foundations and individuals, he says. The rest comes from consulting fees and percentages of Partner Artists’ revenues. Shunpike, now in its 10th year, has about 115 Partner Artists on its roster.

Providing aid to nonprofits is Shunpike’s specialty, but the group also doles out advice to for-profit ventures. Katrina Toft, co-founder and owner of Two Ravens Studio in Tacoma, Wash., sought marketing and financial advice from Shunpike in 2010 when she and her business partners wanted to grow their metalworking business.

“Andy created a diagram for us, explaining how to get bank loans, address environmental concerns and go through the permitting process,” Toft says. “We also learned to be open to not just the standard methods of marketing. He gave us great advice on utilizing social media and venturing into Facebook.”

“It’s so important to learn business skills,” says Teresa Thuman, producing artistic director of the nonprofit Sound Theatre Company, a Shunpike Partner Artist since 2006. “We had no real structure when we started, so Shunpike essentially became our business office. They helped out tremendously with grant-writing, licensing and fundraising.”

Fife recommended that Sound Theatre eliminate overhead by renting out local theaters. He is also a champion of pooling artists into collectives and raising funds via online crowdsourcing, much the way Kickstarter works, with incremental PayPal donations.

“You might find other organizations that will help support your business, but no one else will support both your business and your artwork,” Thuman says. “There’s really no other organization like Shunpike.”

Soon that may no longer be true. Fife says he may try to export the Shunpike model. “The strength is that it’s a very local approach,” he says, “but there’s no reason it can’t be repeated in other cities.”

Appeared in Forbes, Written by Dan Schawbel, contributor

I recently caught up with Ryan Blair, who is a serial entrepreneur and author of the new book “Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain.” Ryan established his first company, 24-7 Tech when he was only twenty-one years old. Since then, he has created and actively invested in multiple start-ups and has become a self-made multimillionaire. After he sold his company ViSalus Sciences to Blyth in early 2008, the global recession took the company to the brink of failure resulting in a complete write off of the stock and near bankruptcy. Ryan as CEO went “all in” betting his last million dollars on its potential and turned the company around from the edge of failure to more than $150,000,000 a year in revenue in only 16 months winning the coveted DSN Global Turn Around Award in 2010. In this interview, Ryan talks about how he re-branded himself after being in a gang, the issues with the education system, and more.

How did you shake your criminal record and re-brand yourself?

I remember when I was working my way up in the first company that employed me, I used to have nightmares that one day they’d find out about that I had been in a gang, call me into the office, and fire me. In the beginning I didn’t talk much about what I’d been through. But eventually when I got to a point where I had established myself as a professional entrepreneur, I embraced my past, used it as part of my branding, and crossed over.

In this day and age people want authenticity. Now that the world is social, people know all about you. Assuming you decided to join humanity, that is. It turned out that as I started showing my true identity, so did the rest of the world. One of the reasons my company ViSalus is one of the fastest growing companies in the industry today is because we share our good, bad, and ugly. Like sharing a video of me playing a practical joke on one of my employees, for instance. As a result of embracing authenticity, I turned the company around from near bankruptcy to over $15 million a month today. Unlike our competitors, our distributors and customers know exactly who we are, and I’d say that corporate America has a lot of catching up to do.

What’s your take on the educational system? Will a college degree help or hurt your chances at starting a successful business?

As a product of Los Angeles’s public school system, in a state with the highest dropout rate in the nation (about 20 percent), I can tell you from personal experience that some of our brightest minds are being misidentified because of a one-size-fits-all learning environment. Because I had ADD and dyslexia I never got past the 9th grade.

I recall sitting with a career counselor in continuation high school, being told that I didn’t have the intellect or aptitude to become a doctor or a lawyer. They suggested a trade school, construction, something where I’d be working with my hands.

The irony is that today I employ plenty of doctors and lawyers. Would you rather be a doctor or a lawyer, or a guy who writes a check to doctors and lawyers?

If President Obama phoned me today and told me he was appointing me Educational Czar, I’d turn education into a business, a capitalistic, revenue driven system, creating a competitive environment where each school is trying to attract customers, based on quality of customer experience.

As an entrepreneur, having a college degree or getting classroom training won’t hurt your chances for starting a successful business, but it’s ultimately not necessary. In Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers,” he makes a point that it takes approximately 10,000 hours to master a skill set at a professional level. That means experience, over traditional education.

What three business lessons did you learn from juvenile detention?

I learned a lot about business and life from my time spent incarcerated. I like to call these pieces of wisdom my Philosophies from the Jail Cell to the Boardroom. One of the biggest lessons I learned was that in Juvenile Hall, new guys always get tested. When I went in the first time, I was just a skinny little white kid and I had to learn fast. People will be bumping into you on the basketball court, or asking you for things, testing to see if you’re tough.

And everyone knew that if a guy let someone take their milk during lunchtime, they weren’t as tough as they looked. Soon you’d be taking their milk everyday, and so would everyone else. It’s the same for business, if you give people the impression that you can be taken, you will be.

Also, adaptation is the key to survival. In jail the guy who rises to power isn’t always the strongest or the smartest. As prisoners come and go, he’s the one that adapts to the changing environment, while influencing the right people. You can use this in business, staying abreast of market trends, changing your game plan as technology shifts, and adapting our strategy around your company’s strongest competitive advantages. Darwin was absolutely right — survival is a matter of how you respond to change.

The last lesson I got from jail is that you have to learn how to read people. You don’t know who to trust. It’s the same for business because a lot of people come into my office with a front. I have to figure out quickly who is the real deal and who isn’t. Based on that fact, I developed an HR system that I use when interviewing potential new hires that I call the Connect Four Technique. Yep, you guessed it. I make my future employees — and I have hundreds of them — play me in Connect Four.

Can everyone be an entrepreneur? Can it be learned or do you have to be born with a special gene?

No. Not everyone can be an entrepreneur. There are two types of people in the world, domesticated and undomesticated. Some people are so domesticated through their social programming and belief system, so employee minded, that they could never be entrepreneurs. And they shouldn’t even bother trying. The irony is that this is coming from a guy who teaches millions of people how to become entrepreneurs. I’m literally selling a book about becoming an entrepreneur, telling you that not everyone should read it.

To be an entrepreneur, you have to have fighting instincts. Are instincts genetic? I don’t think so, but you ‘inherit’ them from your upbringing. Now, if you’re smart you can reprogram your beliefs. But there are still some people that would rather watch other people be entrepreneurs, like the people in the Forbes “richest celebrity list” than take the time to reprogram themselves, and live their lives like rock stars, too.

Is there a need for business plans these days?

When you’ve really got the entrepreneurial bug, the last thing you want to do is sit down and write a business plan. It’s the equivalent of writing a book about playing the guitar before actually knowing how to play the guitar. You don’t know what your new business is going to be like. And just like a guitar, a business will have to be tweaked and tuned multiple times, and you’ll need long practice sessions and repetition, before you can get even one successful song out of it.

In my book “Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain,” I actually included a chapter called “I Hate Business Plans” where I talk about this. Most business plans that get sent to me, I close within seconds of opening them up because they are full of fluff and hype. A business plan should be simple, something you could scribble on a scratch pad. No more than three pages of your business objectives, expected results, and the strategy to get there. But the best business plan is one built from a business that is already up and running and that matches the business’s actual results.

The point is that you should be so obsessed with your business that you can’t sleep at night because that’s all you can think about. And that’s your ultimate “business plan.”

About Dan Schawbel

Dan Schawbel is the Managing Partner of Millennial Branding, LLC, a full-service personal branding agency, and author of “Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future.”

By Sir Ronald Cohen

The views expressed are his own.

Broadly speaking, capitalism does not deal with its social consequences. Even as communities grow richer on average, so the gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” increases. For example, since the mid-1970s, both the USA and UK have actually become less equal rather than more equal. In the long post-war boom many governments did make significant headway in ameliorating the consequences of social inequality. This can be seen in levels of investment in areas such as health and in critical performance measures such as life expectancy. Nevertheless, governments, despite their best efforts and even in the best of times, have not been able to resolve all social problems.

Commentators on one side of the political spectrum attribute this failure to the lack of resources available to the state and to the state’s reluctance or inability to act appropriately. Commentators on the other side attribute government’s shortcomings to the inherent inefficiency of the state itself. The truth is that the political process, which focuses on short-term gains, does not favor long-term, preventative investment of the type required to address major social problems.

The social sector, which is also called the voluntary, non-profit or third sector, has done its best, with the support of philanthropic donations and government, to address the social problems that fall through the gaps in government provision.

Some argue that the social sector’s problem is that it is significantly under-resourced. Others argue that the insufficiency of resources is in part a consequence of the sector’s reliance upon philanthropy — from foundations and from individual donors — that can be unpredictable. Both critiques may be correct: the social sector has a problem in accessing capital, often because of a lack of a reliable revenue stream, and, as a consequence, it is inefficient, especially in respect of building sustainable organizations, securing funding and utilizing assets to support large-scale activity.

Recent moves to make the social sector more efficient, by focusing on improvements to the management of both the donors and the recipients of grants, are an important development. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation applies rigorous criteria to the assessment of the performance of organizations in receipt of its grant funding. Michael Dell’s philanthropic work is similarly rigorous. Their goal, according to Harvard professors Robert Kaplan and Allen Grossman, is, essentially, “to find and fund the Microsofts and Dells of the non-profit sector.”

In fact, such moves are more necessary than ever, as deficit-ridden governments seek to pass greater responsibility onto the shoulders of the social sector. An example of this is the UK Coalition Government’s strategic objective to foster the “Big Society.” In essence, the Big Society agenda seeks to pass a significant portion of responsibility for social cohesion back to the community via the voluntary sector, and, at the same time, to confer greater legitimacy upon such community work and to provide incentives and support for it. However, the social sector as currently constituted is unlikely to be able to address the scale of the social need; or, to put it another way, to meet the scale of the social challenge.

This is where social entrepreneurs come in. We know that entrepreneurs create jobs and foster innovation. In that sense, they already make a substantial social contribution. But entrepreneurs have special qualities that could make a significant beneficial impact were they to be applied to social issues. The entrepreneurial mindset embraces leadership, vision, the ability to attract talented people, drive, focus, perseverance, self-confidence, optimism, competitiveness and ambition. To these one might add an appetite for taking informed risks, an unwavering focus on results, a willingness to take responsibility, a grounded sense of realism, astute judgment of opportunities and people, and a fascination with the field of enterprise in question. The engagement of entrepreneurs in the social sector, bringing in their wake high expectations of performance, accountability and innovation, could lead to significantly increased social impact.

Could the social sector be transformed to allow the emergence of entrepreneurs from within its own ranks and attract social entrepreneurs and capital on a large scale? The answer is yes, provided that we can create an effective system to support social entrepreneurship, by linking the social sector to the capital markets and introducing new financial instruments that enable entrepreneurs to make beneficial social impact while also making adequate financial returns for investors. Given these conditions, it is possible that social entrepreneurs and impact investors will significantly fill the gap between social need and current government and social-sector provision. Indeed, were social enterprise to achieve significant scale, it would transform the social sector and lead to a new contract between government, the capital markets and citizens.

In this process, charitable, institutional and private investors, attracted by the combination of social as well as financial returns, would bring into being a new asset class: impact investment. In a recent report, JP Morgan came to the conclusion that impact investments already constitute an emerging asset class: “In a world where government resources and charitable donations are insufficient to address the world’s social problems, impact investing offers a new alternative for channeling large-scale private capital for social benefit. With increasing numbers of investors rejecting the notion that they face a binary choice between investing for maximum risk-adjusted returns or donating for social purpose, the impact investment market is now at a significant turning point as it enters the mainstream… We argue that impact investments are emerging as an alternative asset class.”

This new asset class requires a specific set of investment and risk-management skills; it demands organizational structures to accommodate these skills; it must be serviced by industry organizations and associations; and it must encourage the development of standardized metrics, benchmarks and even ratings. As has been observed by the impact-investment firm Bridges Ventures in the UK, such an asset class should provide welcome diversification for capital markets: at times of economic stress, price-sensitive business models appropriate to lower income neighborhoods can prove more resilient and also find wider applications in the mainstream market as both margins and consumer spending power are squeezed.

Not surprisingly, politicians as well as academics, entrepreneurs and investors are paying increasingly close attention to these developments. In the US and in the UK, and now also in Canada and Australia, steps are being taken to provide social entrepreneurs with access to the same kinds of resources as business entrepreneurs. The USA’s Social Innovation Fund ($173 million) and the Investing in Innovation Fund ($644 million) are notable examples; as is the proposed creation of the UK’s Big Society Bank. In Canada, the Federal Government recently received the report of the Canadian Task Force on Social Finance, whose recommendations include requiring public and private foundations to devote a proportion of their funds to mission-related investments; clarifying fiduciary obligations so that pension funds and others can invest in social programs; introducing new financial instruments for social enterprise; and marshalling government support for social enterprise, directly through seed investment and business support services and indirectly through fiscal engineering.

How likely is it that such steps will succeed? In answering this question, we would do well to consider that the global economy faced a similar moment of challenge and opportunity in the 1970s and 1980s, when many of the most familiar names in the post-war corporate world started to decline and shed jobs, among them General Motors, American Motors, Courtaulds, ICI, Smith Corona, Olivetti, US Steel, Bethlehem Steel, Kodak and International Harvester. The question then was: what would take their place?

What took their place was a new wave of business enterprise helped by venture investing, mostly focused on high-tech industries. This is the wave that brought us Intel, Cisco, Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, Sun Microsystems and Genentech. The hi-tech wave has since swept the world, taking us into the embrace of Google, Wikipedia and Facebook and ushering in a communications and information revolution based on global access to information from multiple sources. It has thereby profoundly changed global culture.

Just as hi-tech business enterprise and venture capital, working in tandem, have attracted increasing numbers of talented risk-takers since the 1970s, so social enterprise and impact investment are now attracting a new generation of talented and committed innovators seeking to combine new approaches to achieving social returns. Social enterprise and impact investing, in short, look like the wave of the future.

About Sir Ronald Cohen

Sir Ronald Cohen is chairman of Bridges Ventures and The Portland Trust. He chaired the UK’s Social Investment Task Force and the Commission on Unclaimed Assets and he is a founder-director of Social Finance. Until 2005, he was executive chairman of Apax Partners Worldwide LLP, which he co-founded in 1972.

Our 2010 most read posts are interestingly some oldies but goodies. From our top 25, 14 are from 2007 through 2009. Our oldest post from 2007, which also happens to be our #1 post, is about my  journey writing a book.

So for all you writers out there, this list just goes to show you that it’s important to get your writing our there because its more likely to become well read with the passage of time.

#1 Starving Artist Not
#2 The Four C’s of 21st Century Education
#3 Oh the places you’ll go by Dr Seuss
#4 Tongue twisters for actors and speakers
#5 Characteristics of successful entrepreneurs
#6 Ten steps to finding your artistic voice
#7 Best and worst marketing campaigns
#8 How to create a badge for your blog
#9 An artistic entrepreneurial case study: The story of blue man group
#10 Ben Cameron on change transformation and renewal in the arts
#11 One blank piece of paper
#12 Dinner in the sky
#13 Conservatory made me successful in business
#14 How to make your creativity explode create your own strategic implode
#15 North Africa Economic Partership announced between Aspen Institute and U.S. Department of State
#16 Top 20 arts entrepreneur blogs
#17 What does fame mean to you?
#18 I’m not an entertainer. I’m a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker
#19 Artists as social entrepreneurs
#20 Our dirty little family secret
#21 The definition of a calculated risk
#22 Innovating through artistry
#23 Paradigm shifts build innovative companies
#24 Overcoming mediocrity
#25 What is your imagination worth to you?

Lisa Canning, Founder of EntrepreneurTheArts.com, TheIAE.com and LisasClarinetShop.com

Well, today I leave for Washington for my first PNB-NAPEO (Partners for a New Beginning- North Africa Partners for Economic Opportunity) Summit. Madeline Albright will kick off our meeting and then we will spend two days in meetings that range from a PNB overview from the ground to Entrepreneurship for Women in the Middle East to clean water initiatives. Great stuff.

IAE is supported by Partners for a New Beginning’s North Africa Partnership for Economic Opportunity (PNB-NAPEO), a public-private partnership created by the U.S. Department of State.  The mission of PNB-NAPEO is to build a network of entrepreneurs and business leaders in the United States and North Africa where both communities can identify projects that will foster entrepreneurship and job creation, especially for youth.

The meeting will be loaded with a lot of business folks interested in PNB’s mission from different vantage points. Gosh, what a big help this is going to be to The IAE. And what fun it is going to be attending such a high-voltage education oriented networking meeting. This will be a great opportunity to grow my network of support for The IAE and continue the transformation process- from idea into reality. Are YOU ready to transform from a caterpillar with 16 legs into a butterfly who, with just a single pair of wings, can fly?)

At the Summit, I am looking forward to meeting Naeem Zafar. Check out this blog post he wrote about the initiative.

Check out these ebooks that Naeem has written. I can’t wait to meet him. Imagine the possibilities for art and culture, as a ‘sector’, to create innovative new businesses and job strands in the U.S. and North Africa? I am.

Market Research on a Shoestring!

Get a Reality check on your big idea for under $100. By Naeem Zafar, University of California, Berkeley

Entrepreneurs don’t like to do market research. Whether they find it unnecessary, think it takes too much time and money, or are simply terrified by the idea, they often start up their businesses without the necessary preparation or understanding of exactly what they are getting into.

But market research doesn’t have to be an expensive, unbearably time-consuming nightmare. It is an essential aspect of starting a new business that can be conducted quickly and easily if you know what to look for and where to look. Market Research on a Shoestring is full of techniques, tricks, and secrets that will help you ask the right questions and find the answers you need to better understand your business and the market it faces. If you want to raise funds for your startup or simply maximize your chances of success, you need this book!

 

Get Funded!

A Definitive Guide to Seeking the right funding at the right time and from the right source
By Naeem Zafar, University of California, Berkeley

Entrepreneurs need funding at various stages of their companies’growth. This to-the-point book is your essential guide to the funding process. Organized into three sections, this book outlines the likely sources of funding and how they operate, how to approach investors, and the 12-step process of getting funded.

As a valuable bonus, Get Funded! includes the names of several hundred angel investors and venture capital firms.

If you are serious about seeking funding for your startup or simply want to know your options, you need this book! This book is the complete guide to seeking and getting funding that all entrepreneurs look for and seldom find.

 

The Entrepreneur’s Legal Guide to Starting Up

By Naeem Zafar, University of California, Berkeley

A simple, to-the-point guide that outlines the decisions all entrepreneurs must make when setting up a legal entity. This eBook is packed with practical, time-tested tips and suggestions about incorporation, hiring the right lawyer, registering patents, and
minimizing your legal bill. The eBook includes a step-by-step guide to finding and hiring the right lawyer for your company and offers proven strategies that will save you thousands on your legal bill. There’s also an easy-to-understand chart explaining the differences between the various corporate structures and offering a quick guide to the most common legal issues plaguing entrepreneurs, as well as effective methods for overcoming them.

Knowing the ins and outs of setting up a startup and picking the right lawyer isn’t a matter of intelligence—it’s about experience and expertise. You may have a great deal of both when it comes to your industry, but most entrepreneurs don’t know much about the law. Your strengths lie elsewhere. As a result, you may find yourself intimidated by the idea of selecting legal counsel.

 

The Definitive Entrepreneur’s Guide to Lawyers:

35 Little-known facts, secrets, techniques, and tricks to making sure you get every penny’s worth of value from your lawyer By Naeem Zafar, University of California, Berkeley

Containing nearly three dozen money-saving, angst-minimizing tips, The Definitive Entrepreneur’s Guide to Lawyers is a go-to resource for the entrepreneur who wants to streamline the budget while leveraging the most effective legal services available. The guide includes a step-by-step guide to finding and hiring the right lawyer for your company, an easy-to-understand chart explaining the differences between the various corporate structures, proven communication strategies that will slash your legal bill by half each month, and a quick guide to the most common legal issues plaguing entrepreneurs, as well as effective methods for overcoming them.

Knowing the ins and outs of picking the right lawyer isn’t a matter of intelligence—it’s about experience and expertise. You may have a great deal of both when it comes to your industry, but most entrepreneurs don’t know much about the law. Your strengths lie elsewhere. As a result, you may find yourself intimidated by the idea of selecting legal counsel.

 

Finance Essentials for entrepreneurs:
A Simple Guide to Understanding and Creating Financial Statements for Your Business. By Naeem Zafar, University of California, Berkele

Finance Essentials for Entrepreneurs is a startup owner’s indispensable guide to basic finance. Zafar draws on two decades of entrepreneurial experience to create an eBook that offers a simple, proven method for understanding the most important elements of financial management for businesses. Zafar understands what entrepreneurs need to know about business finance. He also knows that their time is precious. In Finance Essentials for Entrepreneurs, he delivers that knowledge in practical, to-the-point language free of technical jargon and longwinded discourses. Spreadsheet examples
are clear and relevant.

 

About Naeem Zafar

• A member of the faculty of the Haas business school at the University of California Berkeley, Naeem teaches Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the MBA program. Naeem is the founder of Concordia Ventures and focuses on educating and advising entrepreneurs on all aspects of starting and running a company. Naeem’s entrepreneurial experience includes working directly with six startups, and he has extensive experience in mentoring and coaching founders and CEOs. Naeem is now the president and CEO of Bitzer Mobile, a company that simplifies enterprise mobility.
• Until 2007, Naeem was the president and CEO of Pyxis Technology Inc., a company specializing in advanced chip design software for nanometer technology. Naeem has also been president and CEO of two other high tech startups (Silicon Design Systems and Veridicom, a Bell Labs spin-off that invented the silicon fingerprint sensors today found on most laptops). Naeem has held senior marketing and engineering positions at several companies including Quickturn Design Systems that had an IPO in 1993 and grew to $125M in revenues.
• Naeem holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Brown University (magna cum laude), Rhode Island, and a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota.
• Naeem is a charter member of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs www.TiE.org ).He is also a charter member of OPEN (www.OPENSiliconValley.com ) where he serves as the president.

 

How do you start a movement with a marker pen? What’s the connection between the nun who invented disco, and file sharing? How did a male model messing with disco records in New York in the 1970s influence the way Boeing design airplanes? Does hip-hop really hold the secret to world peace? How did three eleven-year-olds revolutionize the video game industry by turning Nazis into Smurfs? And what’s going to happen to Nike when it’s possible for kids to download sneakers?

The Pirate’s Dilemma tells the story of how youth culture drives innovation and is changing the way the world works. It offers understanding and insight for a time when piracy is just another business model, the remix is our most powerful marketing tool and anyone with a computer is capable of reaching more people than a multi-national corporation.

Ideas that started within punk, disco, hip-hop, rave, graffiti and gaming have been combined with new technologies and taken to new heights by the generations that grew up under their influence. With a cast of characters that includes such icons as The Ramones, Andy Warhol, Madonna, Russell Simmons, Pharrell and 50 Cent, The Pirate’s Dilemmauncovers, for the first time, the trends that transformed underground scenes into burgeoning global industries and movements, ultimately changing life as we know it, unraveling some of our most basic assumptions about business, society and our collective future.

As a result people, companies and organizations are now struggling with a new dilemma in increasing numbers. As piracy continues to change the way we all use information, how should we respond? Do we fight pirates, or do we learn from them? Should piracy be treated as a problem, or a solution? To compete or not to compete – that is the question – that is the Pirate’s Dilemma, perhaps one of the most important economic and cultural conundrums of the 21st Century.

Written by Jeffrey Nytch,
Director of The Entrepreneurship Center for Music, Univ of CO- Boulder

We keep hearing reports of struggling orchestras (and opera companies): Syracuse shut down, Charleston on life support, any number of others in the “smaller, regional orchestra” class trying to figure out how to stay afloat. (For a further run-down, check out this article: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/familiar-story.html.) We blame the economy, or markets too small to support a full-time professional orchestra, or dwindling corporate and government support. We tell ourselves that the problem consists of the particulars of a given group or blame ineffective “marketing” (as if more advertising or visibility alone will make people change their mind about wanting a product). But looking at those explanations simply allows the orchestral establishment to avoid looking at the larger systemic issues. But now one of the Big Ones is in big trouble: the much venerated Philadelphia Orchestra. We don’t yet know the details, but it’s easy enough to predict what they are: high structural debt, shrinking institutional support, high fixed costs and, more likely than not, loss of audience.

The question is, will this wake us up? Commentators and advocates have been trying to raise awareness about these bigger problems for the last decade, but their work has largely been consigned to the periphery. I wonder, with the Philly being the first orchestra of this size and fame to sink under the crippling constraints of its own outmoded approach to both their business and the art it supports, if now the mainstream orchestral community will begin to ask itself if the 19^th-century business & art model that has been the basis for classical orchestras for over a century might be due for some changes. Thus far, the more forward-thinking orchestras have still only managed tweaks to the old models; perhaps now more leaders in the field will see the need for a major overhaul.

And what of the entrepreneurial perspective in all this? Well, one of the cardinal rules of entrepreneurship is that markets that are in extreme turmoil are markets ripe with opportunity – for those who are able to see the problems from a different perspective, that is. So how would an entrepreneurial approach change the way we go about solving the current orchestral crisis? If you were to re-invent the orchestra from scratch, based on the principles of entrepreneurship, what would you come up with?

About Jeffrey Nytch
Jeffrey Nytch comes to the Entrepreneurship Center for Music having built a diverse career as a composer, teacher, performer, and arts administrator. For 15 years he has continually created fresh ways to support and nurture that career, whether it be through developing commissioning opportunities, establishing residencies with community organizations, or building relationships with patrons. He has also run a small business, helped found a non-profit service organization in Houston, performed a wide range of repertoire as a vocalist, and served five years as Managing Director of The Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble (“PNME”), one of the nation’s premiere new music ensembles.

jeff.nytch@colorado.edu
http://music.colorado.edu/departments/ecm/
www.jeffreynytch.com

If you can get past the strong language, this video is well worth the time. Thanks Chip Hessenflow for passing this along!

At the March 25th, 2011 San Francisco, CreativeMornings (creativemornings.com)  monthly breakfast lecture series, Mike Monteiro, Design Director, and co-founder of Mule Design Studio (muledesign.com) presented a lecture on what creative professionals need to do to ensure they are paid for their work.

Chris Whitmore (whitmoreprod.com) recorded and edited the video below.  The San Francisco chapter of Creative Mornings is run by Greg Storey (twitter.com/​brilliantcrank).

Make sure you grab a cup of coffee and have a few minutes to watch this- it’s about 38 minutes in length.

About Mike Monteiro

Design Director, Mule Design Studio

Mike brings more than a decade of experience creating outstanding visual and interactive design. He has served as lead visual designer for ReliefWeb, Six Apart, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and for the Glaucoma Research Foundation. He excels in creating visual interface systems to aid navigation and clarify complex content. He’s also funny.

Mike founded Mule Design in 2001 along with Erika Hall.

Mike received his BA in Fine Art from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, and his MFA in Graphic Design from University of Texas, Austin.

• http://www.mikemonteiro.com
• mike@muledesign.com

The arts are in a time of enormous transition and change. Look at the severe funding cuts threatening the already incredibly diminished National Endowment for the Arts?  It certainly can come as no surprise that state art agencies are facing elimination, or severe reductions too.

A sample of images used in an Arizona Commission on the Arts campaign to raise awareness about the importance of arts education, which is in peril in most states in the U.S. as state funding and assistance dries up as a result of state budget shortfalls. (Arizona Commission on the Arts)

The Arizona Commission on the Arts recently inaugurated a campaign to raise awareness about the importance of arts education. Fittingly, it features imagery that is imaginative, provocative and disturbing, including a paint brush that morphs into the type of needles junkies use to shoot up. The caption is concise and compelling: “Kids will leave their mark, with or without the arts.”

Artists, too, will leave their mark, with or without governmental support. They’ve been sketching, dancing and making music for thousands of years, and they’re not going to stop if — as governors around the United States are currently proposing — state arts agencies are either drastically curtailed or completely dismantled.

But advocacy campaigns like the one mentioned above? They’ll likely be a thing of the past. Student matinees, training programs for teachers and administrators, efforts to bring cultural events into inner cities and rural communities — all will be severely curtailed.

Wealthy patrons will still enjoy the cultural offerings they generously support. But less-glamorous projects, and those that require coordination or cooperation between organizations, will be fewer in number and lower in quality. And smaller organizations, which rely more heavily on public support, will be more likely to close their doors.

“It’s a basic idea of our democratic society that if something is really beneficial to people, we should do our best to give everybody access to it,” said Ken May, executive director of the South Carolina Arts Commission. “That’s the reasoning behind public education, public parks, public libraries, and public support for the arts.”

State arts agencies don’t attract the attention — positive or negative — of the National Endowment for the Arts, which is once again being threatened by congressional cutbacks, but they play an underappreciated role in the nation’s arts infrastructure. Funded by a mixture of state appropriations, matching grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and some private support, these agencies provide nonprofit arts organizations with advice, guidance, information — and grant money.

“Direct support for the arts at the state level is now — and has been for some time — a more important source of direct government aid to the arts than is direct support at the federal level,” J. Mark Shuster wrote in a 2003 report published by the Cultural Policy Center of the University of Chicago. NEA grants may be larger and more prestigious, but they’re also fewer and harder to get. State support, including both money and expertise, makes a bigger day-to-day difference.

In the half century or more they’ve been in existence (most were created as conduits to receive and administer federal arts money shortly after the NEA was founded in 1965), state arts agencies have seen their appropriations grow and shrink. State budgets inevitably reflect the ups and downs of tax revenues, and during down years, the arts get hurt along with everyone else.

California famously cut its arts commission budget from $38 million to just over $1 million during a budget crisis a decade ago; it is only now inching back, thanks in part to a license-plates-for-the-arts program promoted by former governor (and actor) Arnold Schwarzenegger. Many states have cut arts funding drastically over the past two years, as tax revenues have shrunk in the current recession: 60 percent in Arizona, 50 percent in Kansas, 48 percent in Washington state, for example.

Overall, state arts agencies have seen a 19 percent cut in funding from their legislatures since the start of the recession in 2008. According to a just-released report by the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, they received a combined total of $272 million in state appropriations for fiscal year 2011. That amounts to 0.039 percent of state general fund expenditures, or 87 cents per capita on average.

Fiscally speaking, that’s small change, and arts agencies argue they provide a lot of bang — or, better, beauty — for the buck. But this year’s combination of dire fiscal conditions and newly elected, small-government-oriented politicians has left some commissions facing an existential threat. In at least four states — Texas, Kansas, Washington and South Carolina — the governor recently proposed an unprecedented action: eliminating the state arts agency entirely.

In Kansas, the administration’s proposal calls for the Arts Commission to transition into a private nonprofit organization. In Texas, the governor’s budget simply eliminates state funding for the Commission on the Arts.

In Arizona, the commission would lose all its money from the state’s general revenue fund. In Washington state, it would be shrunk dramatically and merged into the Commerce Department, its level of independence uncertain.

“So many things are affected by our small investments,” said Kris Tucker, executive director of the Washington State Arts Commission. “To not have arts education programs in the schools, free concerts in the parks, training for arts managers — all that will have an impact on our communities.”

She readily concedes that Washington state’s budget problems “are huge. They’re talking about eliminating basic health and dental care for children. Our million dollars is not going to make a big difference. But then, for $1 million, you can buy a lot of prenatal care.”

On the other hand, few states would want to lose federal funding at a time when dollars are scarce — which would be the result of the total-elimination scenarios. According to NEA bylaws, its funds are only distributed to the states through designated state agencies. In Kansas, for example, while eliminating the state agency would save $575,000, it would no longer qualify for federal matching funds of $1.2 million.

Ditto South Carolina. In her first State of the State address in January, newly elected South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley singled out two agencies for elimination: South Carolina Educational Television, and the state’s Arts Commission. The arts agency’s $2 million state appropriation this year represents “about four-one-hundredths of 1 percent of the state budget,” noted May. In exchange, the state would lose around $1 million in federal arts support.

Perhaps surprisingly, May believes Haley’s high-profile announcement was not entirely a bad thing.

“It may be she did us a favor,” he said. “We’ve known this would be a very difficult budget session. The state has an $850 million hole in its budget, and everybody knows a lot of cutting will go on. But this has made it a different cause. Cuts are one thing — elimination is another.

“We’ve had news coverage all over the state — it was on the front pages of the papers — and it has really rallied the troops. Because the battle is about elimination rather than cuts, it lets us make the case for why the state should provide some funding for the arts.”

That same battle is just getting underway in Texas, where Gov. Rick Perry proposed cutting the arts agency’s entire $5 million appropriation. “We are a bit unclear on the details of the governor’s budget proposal,” said Gaye Greever McElwain, director of marketing and communications for the

Texas Commission on the Arts. “However, it appears we would not be able to continue operations.”

McElwain noted this is one step in a long process. The Texas state House and Senate have their own budget proposals on the table, and while they include massive cuts for the agency — a 50 percent budget cut, 30 percent staff cut and elimination of funding for advertising, promotion and cultural tourism — the agency would still exist and remain eligible for $1 million in NEA matching funds.

“We simply do not know what the final resolution will be,” McElwain said. “We will continue to work with the legislature [to explain why we deserve funding].”

“State arts agencies really like to explain what they do, why they exist and what happens as the result of their work,” noted Jonathan Katz, CEO of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. “In this economic environment, we expect people to question the benefits of public support for the arts. Happily, there is really good evidence of what those benefits are.”

So what do they do?

“Our mission is to provide opportunities for the people of Kansas to experience the arts,” said Llewellyn Crain, director of the Kansas Arts Commission. “We have become expert in communications tools. We create a weekly e-blast: ‘This is stuff you need to know about,’ including funding opportunities and other information. We also do monthly e-blasts to artists and arts educators.

“We’re focused on helping artists and arts organizations understand they are part of a business community, and they need to understand business operating principles,” she added. “A nonprofit is a much more complicated business model than a for-profit business. You have to have a board. You have several different income streams. We try to help them navigate all that.”

“We have a very strong record of bringing the arts to places where they haven’t been so much before and in improving the basic curriculum for arts in the schools,” added South Carolina’s May. “We’ve gained national attention for that. That’s the kind of thing that nobody else is going to do other than a state agency that is looking strategically at important issues related to the arts.”

Couldn’t a private nonprofit organization do much of that work?

“In theory, absolutely,” said Crain. “In practical terms, it’d be very difficult. A private nonprofit would have to raise funds for its own operations. We’d be competing with our own constituents for a fairly small pool of money. There are wealthy people here who support the arts in their own communities, but what would be the compelling reason to support us?”

That raises an important point. When state arts agencies distribute grant money (some of it from state funds, the rest from the NEA), it is often for the sort of nuts-and-bolts needs that private donors find unattractive.

“The largest portion of money that goes out from a state agency, typically, is for general operating support,” noted Katz. “That’s what generally doesn’t get funded by corporations, foundations or individual donations, which are often project- or building-related.

“That’s one area where state arts agencies are distinctive in their giving. If you took them away as a funding entity, lots of organizations would notice it, but the mid-sized and smaller ones would notice it the most, because the grants make up a larger portion of their budget.”

But like her colleagues, she argues the seed money her agency distributes stimulates the state’s economy and ultimately increases tax revenues.

“A healthy arts economy, stimulated by a small bit of government investment, reaps huge rewards,” said Bob Lynch, president of the advocacy group Americans for the Arts. “We estimate the aggregate budget of the 109,000 nonprofit arts organizations in America adds up to about $66 billion. That spins off an economic impact of $166 billion, using a very conservative model.”

In an attempt to educate political leaders, Lynch and his colleagues have put together maps showing the economic impact of the arts on specific states and metropolitan areas. He reports they tend to make a strong impression on stage legislators, who, in his experience, are driven more by numbers than ideology.

“Often, arts organizations will suggest I make an argument for the inherent value of the arts,” he said. “When I am talking to legislators, about one-third of them will want to talk about that. They’ve had a moment in their lives when they saw how the arts changed their life or the life of their community. They get it.

“But that leaves the other two-thirds. They respond to a number of different arguments, depending upon their particular constituency. We are asked about things such as how the arts contribute to educational success, or how the arts could play a role in downtown revitalization. We have data on all that, but the issue we’re asked about most by state, federal and local legislators is jobs and the economic impact of the arts.”

And if budget-cutting legislators insist they’re merely responding to public opinion — well, there’s data on that topic as well.

“If we believe our polling, a large majority of the population thinks it’s a good idea for the state to invest in the arts,” said May. “The University of South Carolina conducts a general poll twice a year of the state’s population. It’s a good, reliable poll, demographically representative of the population.

“In the fall of 2009, (we arranged to have them) ask people if they were in favor of state government support of the arts. Ninety-two percent said they were. Forty percent favored increased funding. That’s pretty impressive when you consider the state was in economic freefall at that time.”

May reports that a grassroots effort to save his agency is already underway in South Carolina, as the budget moves through the legislature. “We are bringing the news to folks that it’s going to be a long fight, so get ready,” he said. “Facebook has brought in a lot of new people who are very interested in the arts and the government’s contributions to the arts. For getting a message out quickly, it’s a pretty amazing tool.”

“The dance right now is how to convince enough legislators to keep us in the game,” said Washington state’s Tucker. “We need to be far enough off the radar so that we don’t attract attention but enough on the radar so they don’t forget we need to be part of the future. It puts us in a tricky position. But I’m an optimist; I believe, at the end of the day, we’re going to survive.”

There certainly is precedent for survival. Katz notes that a number of states have considered eliminating state arts agencies in recent years, but after examining the evidence, they’ve all backed down.

“In New Jersey, they passed a new state occupancy tax, and they’re funding the arts through that,” he said. “In Massachusetts, the money for the arts comes from lottery funds. In South Dakota, they very quickly realized the arts were an asset in this economy, and they included the arts in a state sales tax increase. So in many cases, states realized they’d be doing harm by cutting or eliminating these agencies, and opted instead to find a dependable revenue source for them.”

Still, as Arizona’s Booker concedes, 2011 is going to be a very tough year. Antitax sentiment is high in many states (including his own), which suggests drastic cuts are the only way to balance the budget. The only reason his agency isn’t facing elimination is that in 1989, the legislature added $15 to the corporate filing fee and directed the money to an Arizona Arts Trust Fund.

The situation calls into his mind an image that is almost as disturbing as the syringe/paint brush mashup he proudly points to as an example of his agency’s work.

“The arts are the golden goose, and we lay some pretty great eggs for our communities: economic impact, education, tourism, cultural understanding, civic engagement,” he said. “At times I feel like our elected officials have their hands around the neck of the goose. They don’t realize they’re killing an industry that is forward-thinking, creative and helping our state recover.”

You remember that book Random Acts of Kindness, don’t you? It’s based on the idea that life is better when you pay it forward: pay someone’s toll behind you, or offer the dollar to the guy who’s just “.50 cents short” for the cookie or coffee he just ordered in front of you.

Well, I think artists are well positioned to orchestrate random acts of connectivity. We can sprout up all over and touch people INSTANTLY. All we need to know is HOW to set the table to do it and not have it leaving us broke.

When I started creating small random acts of kindness, just like in the book, a whole new world opened up to me. One that showed me INSTANTLY what a BIG impact something so small can bring to a TOTAL STRANGER. What cool energy to be able to share with someone you don’t even know. That’s what’s suppose to happen when money flows through our hands into anothers. We exchange energy. And positivity.

It doesn’t have to be so foreign to us artists. We really can embrace prosperity–if we can learn how to model a behavior that demonstrates our ability to manage it.

Joyce Thomas from University of Illinois sent me this video clip and, being the emotional one that I am, it reduced me almost instantly to tears. It made me realize how much I want to continue to push my own boundaries around the intersection between my art form and my (ad)venture. What about you?

I am taking my clarinet to Algeria with me. I never leave home without it. I wonder if I can create a connecting random creative act while I am there of my very own? As a classically trained clarinetist, I have taken to improvisation. I have never taken the time to learn jazz, I dabble at klezmer, but its simply fun to “let go” and see what kind of music I can create from my classical training. And becoming an entrepreneur requires skilled improvisation–so the words artist and entrepreneur really do fit nicely together. It takes a lot of flexibility to launch a career in the arts and you have to have the skills and the know-how.

www.CreativeMinorityReport. com( There is a good clip on Macy’s floor here. Sorry I could not find the direct link.)
In early November, shoppers at the the Macy’s in Philadelphia were surprised when over 600 choristers who were there mingling with regular shoppers suddenly burst into Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus.

The Opera Company of Philadelphia was instrumental in bringing it together to perform one of the Knight Foundation’s “1000 Random Acts of Culture” which they’ll be doing over the next three years across the country. Accompanied by the Wanamaker Organ – the world’s largest pipe organ – the singers burst into song at exactly noon.

Sharing our creativity on the web is increasingly popular to do.  But how do we get the credit we are due for our creative work? How can we identify the original source? I don’t know about you, but I am eager to know everyone out in cyberspace who cares about the stuff I do. It’s empowering to get connected!

And what about all the stuff online that is ” borrowed” with no identification? It’s a tragedy; beside the possibility of  it being a homicide. Gosh, I know how easily it can happen.  We’re simply in a rush to get something we are excited about–want to shout out– to our online audience, and credit gets overlooked or cannot be found.

I truly wish it was a little easier to give credit and learn about each creator. Don’t you?

Well now it is.

Check out this video about Creative Commons. Get the Recognition you deserve while you protect your work!

Did you get your license? I just got mine today. I made a donation too. I suggest you do to. This is good self- sufficiency- capacity-building stuff for all of you wanna be arts-entrepreneur folks. And. Frankly. It’s just really good karma to give to an organization helping creativity individuals be more easily recognized for the work we do.  So Go ahead. Make a donation.  It will come back to you 100 fold.

Here is the link to ETA’s license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Hey we want you to share us proudly!!

It is also on the right hand side of the ETA blog with this symbol.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here (I never thought a sabbatical would be so much work) so I thought it time to provide you with an update on the second bi-annual p.a.v.e. symposium on entrepreneurship and the arts: Creating Infrastructure for Creativity and Innovation to be held April 1-2 in Tempe AZ.

ETA’s own Lisa Canning will be leading a workshop on “Discovering your “WHY”” and John Cimino will lead another on building personal and creative infrastructure. Shelley Cohn, former executive director of the AZ Commission on the Arts will lead a workshop on turning your creative ideas into reality and our local chapter of Volunteer Legal Assistance for the Arts will lead one on legal issues for artists.

In additional to the workshops (pre-registration is required) there are several community forums. We’ve recently added Steve Peters, president of ATHE (Association for Theatre in Higher Education) and tubist Sam Pilafian, developer of the “Breathing Gym” to our list of forum participants.

And, if all of this isn’t enough, the highlight may very well be the keynote address by Ben Cameron of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. If you haven’t seen his recent TED talk, it should be required viewing for anyone interested in arts entrepreneurship.

It’s going to be a great event and if you can get yourself to Tempe AZ, the symposium itself is free, thanks to the generous support of the Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City. Our community partners include the Arts and Business Council of Greater Phoenix, the AZ Commission on the Arts, and the Phoenix Fringe Festival, which was launched with a p.a.v.e. seed grant three years ago.

What’s the catch? You have to register in advance. Workshop space is limited and filling up fast. To register, go to http://theatrefilm.asu.edu/initiatives/pave-symposium.php and select the “Register Now” link.

Hope to see you in April!

10.15.2010– CHICAGO–The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship™(IAE) and Gorilla Tango Capital have announced they are expanding their partnership to include funding tuition costs for students who enroll in The IAE. With capacity of up to 1 million dollars, this fund will allow for the incubation and creation of micro arts entrepreneurs and arts based businesses.

With a joint mission of fostering the growth of the creative economy, The IAE and Gorilla Tango Financial are uniquely positioned to help those in art, design, fashion, film, music, performing arts, and publishing to realize their creative vision through educational training, mentorship and access to capital.

“Increasing our startup/beta stage funding will allow us to help our students learn how to manage their money as well as start a business. By offering tuition financing in this unique way, we are making a statement to our students about our level of commitment to helping them not only develop the skills they need but learn how to prosper” says The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship founder, Lisa Canning.

“Our mission has always been to foster the growth of new and exciting productions in our theater in a sustainable and profitable manner. We are are excited by the prospects The IAE has to offer to expand our mission”, said Dan Abbate, CEO of Gorilla Tango Capital and president of Gorilla Tango Theatre.

Early bird application deadline to apply for The IAE’s 2011 academic year is January 30th, 2011. Applications for The IAE‘s two year creative enterprise certificate program can be found at www.TheIAE.com. For more information about Gorilla Tango Capital, visit www.GorillaTango.biz. For more information about the Creative Enterprise Microfinance Fund contact Lisa@TheIAE.com.

About The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship
The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship™ is a two-year program to teach artists how to earn a living. With a curriculum that combines experiential learning, mentorship and a personalized classroom environment that provides one-on-one time with the faculty of successful artist-entrepreneurs, artists are taught how to build their own arts based business while still in school.

Founded by 25-year business veteran and serial artistic entrepreneur Lisa Canning, The Institute is based on her enthusiasm for the new wave of whole-brain thinking and the firm belief that the arts –and artists—can and must be allowed to contribute to the world’s financial recovery.

Enrollment is limited to 45 students. Applications are available online to apply for the institute. There is no age limit for enrollment and the requirements to apply simply include artistic excellence and a desire to be self- sufficient. For more information about the school, go to www.TheIAE.com.

Thank you Nathan Grimm, Program Manager for SR Education Group for the shout out! Thank you for selecting ETA for your top 5 list!

Top 20 Arts Entrepreneur Blogs

The production of art and the entrepreneurial process are very similar: both involve creativity, savvy, and also know-how. In fact, almost all artists must at some time or another be entrepreneurs if they plan to make a living or any money at all from their art.

If you are hoping to do so and you do not yet have the know-how, check out the following blogs for inspiration and invaluable information.

The Top Five Artist Entrepreneur Blogs – The Rest of the Best

The Top Five Artist Entrepreneur Blogs

1. Alexandra Hedberg: This artist has been working for six years as such, and she is not afraid to write about the taboo subject of art as business. Her experiences with supporting herself through art are invaluable and her interviews with other artists on the topic are extremely informative.
2. BAKERY: Bakery is a brilliant blog written collaboratively by Jaime Derringer and Erin Loechner, who together have backgrounds in design, business, entrepreneurship, and new media. Their blog has an incredible amount of invaluable information for the artist entrepreneur, including posts about copyrights and trademarks, and posts about pricing for works of graphic design.
3. Design*Sponge Biz Ladies: Part of the below mentioned blog Design*Sponge, this particular section is worth noting because it is difficult to come across. Though not as beautiful as its host site, it offers great advice to the artistic business woman (but we see no reason why a man would not benefit from this information as well). There are articles on just about everything including legal topics, design topics, new media topics, and so much more. This is truly one of the most practical websites for an artist entrepreneur.
4. Entrepreneur the Arts: This blog has a great mix of posts on a wide array of topics, all having to do with entrepreneurship in the arts. The very reliable contributors all have different experiences that make their articles even more interesting.
5. Modish Biz Tips: “Bright ideas for your creative business” is the tagline of this handy blog, a “sister” to another blog called Modish. Here, any creative entrepreneur will find something helpful as there posts on production, taxes, business plans, interviews, and more.

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The Rest of the Best

1. Blanket Magazine: This blog, designed as an online magazine, covers emerging artists. Interviews with these artists are especially of interest to the artist entrepreneur.
2. Copyblogger: Brian Clark, founder of Copyblogger, knows how to make money as a self-published online writer and that is exactly what he writes about in his blog. The blog is award-winning and is worth your time if you hope to make money from that blog of yours!
3. Design for Mankind: Erin Loechner is an example of a writer/blogger that now has a real say in the design industry; she discovers great design from the big guys and from the industry underdogs so readers don’t have to. Make sure to check out her links, which go directly to the websites of small art sellers and artists that sell their work online.
4. Design*Sponge: Besides being visually stunning and surprisingly user-friendly, this blog is a great way to learn about trends in practical art and design. The blog is not only full of eye candy, however, as its success has allowed it to offer scholarships to art and design students.
5. Drawings, Art, Maps, and other Curiosities: Find out how Abi Daker sells her artwork as graphic design featured in books and advertisements. The blog is easy to navigate and is a great generator of ideas of places to sell artwork.
6. Earth Angels: Though a blog claiming to be primarily about contemporary folk art, Earth Angels has great posts about artists–especially female artists–who make businesses out of selling their art. Plus, the crafty women writers often share posts about their own business strategies.
7. hypebot.com: Want to learn more about the new music business, about technology as it is used by music producers, and about music news? This is the place!
8. mrs eliot books: This blog is full of interesting posts by a London artist that designs, makes, and sells books, wooden objects, ornaments, pillows, and more. Her articles are especially interesting for the artist entrepreneur because she writes about–for instance–packaging, inspiration, print-making, and the different outlets she uses to sell her art.
9. pikaland: Here an architect turned freelance illustrator, Amy Ng, documents her art, inspiration, and entrepreneurial experiences. Be sure to check out her reviews of entrepreneurial books and the very practical questions she asks other artists in her interviews.
10. ProBlogger: Are you a writer? Are you a musician? Are you an artist? Got a blog? This blog will give you tips on making money at it!
11. Rap Music Business: This blog covers news stories pertaining to the rap music business. Because it features posts on new production companies, new releases, and indie rap artists, the blog is a great look into the entrepreneurship necessary in the production of rap music.
12. sister house: This blog is about “adventures in entrepreneurship, art, technology, and information.” To be more specific, the author of sister house does a great job of guiding creative business owners through the complicated world of business technology.
13. Wisdom of the Hands: Doug Stowe does an amazing job of sharing his experiences as an artist; he has been living of his woodwork for more than thirty years. He is a firm believer in the importance of learning through creation, and his do-it-yourself style posts are evidence of that.
14. Wooster Collective: The blog of New York City’s Wooster collective, a group that brings attention to otherwise under-appreciated street art, does a stellar job of covering art and artists that are not traditionally accepted into the art world. It is this sort of media attention that makes an entrepreneurial and world-wide industry!
15. WREN Handmade: If selling handmade work is not creative and entrepreneurial, then we don’t know what is. Check out this site for information on how and where to do so!

My mom and dad at their foundry, Alpha-Cast, Thur July 8, 1976

What does experiential immersion really teach you about entrepreneurship? Well, welcome to the story of my mom and dad and the lessons I learned from watching my father and mother resuscitate a failing business, turn it into a wild success and then knowingly try and out run their foreign competition and go bankrupt again.

When I was growing up, I watched my father invest in a variety of small businesses. He was making so much money as a criminal attorney and needed somewhere to invest it. He was also very unhappy with his work and was trying to find an exit strategy.

As a result, my father frequently talked about the businesses he was investing in and what their challenges were at the family dining room table. Our dinner table was the place my family talked about business and politics when I was growing up. It became a tradition to learn over dinner. We rarely talked about our day, or routine subjects that might occupy a child’s mind like playing with friends, or some fun I had. Instead my father turned our meals together, especially those when my mother was passed out drunk at the dinner table, but also those where she was not, into an entrepreneurial-living-family-lesson-plan night after night.

But one subject matter that was strictly off limits was my fathers career as a criminal attorney. He would simply never discuss it.  I am sure he represented mobsters, murders and vicious criminals and successfully got them off the hook for their crimes. My dad simply, eventually, couldn’t take their “blood money” any longer and was seeking refuge by investing in other businesses in hopes one of them would draw him in.  This much I knew from his few sparce comments and the jokes he made about his profession. My parents always told me, albeit in a joking manner, that one of the reason my dad had to get out of criminal law was because we didn’t have any more room in our house for any more artwork; our house was filled to the gills with artwork that was sometimes offered, in part, as repayment for my fathers legal services.

My father was in search of something he truly loved to do where he could help people and feel good about it. The investments he made into machines shops, and a fastener business (nuts, bolts, screws) helped him learn that the opportunity at the foundry he named Alpha- Cast was the one where he could really make a difference. Isn’t that what we are all seeking as artists and entrepreneurs- to make a difference? It took my Harvard trained father several investments in different businesses to figure out where he best belonged.

What drove my father was his belief in the power of helping people. Through law he thought he could help others to help themselves but he was wrong. All he did was postpone their wake-up call and allow them to continue to hurt others. His experiences dabbling in entrepreneurial investments taught him where he truly belonged. His work building Alpha-Cast and supporting over 200 families doing it was the best work I ever got to see him do.

And yet while building Alpha-Cast was my parents biggest joy, and the source of my mothers money spicket for clothes and the spoils of riches, it also just about financially destroyed my family when it later went under. ( But more on that for another post in the experiential-immersion- lesson lane.)

Just a couple footnotes about this article. First, my parents were living in a deluxe high rise over looking Lincoln Park in Chicago when they were also ” living in a motel” to jump start Alpha-Cast. Seems, as journalists often do, some of the facts are not quite right. And lastly, my parents did eventually build a chapel in the foundry and a big party room. Babies were baptized and couples were married there. It was the coolest thing to see my fathers dreams for Alpha-Cast come true. And as my father’s daughter, I guess it should be no surprise, that the lessons I learned from my parents have inspired me to want to help others make their dreams come true too.

This past week I had the honor of participating in The School of The Art Institute’s career development workshop titled Power Tools. The purpose of this workshop is to expose alumni and students to the resources and tools they need to succeed in their artistry.

What struck me from my particular session was the focus students placed on asking specific questions around accounting and legal issues. All of the questions they asked were great and relevant, but I found myself increasingly wondering how many realized that while the answer to their question was certainly instructive, they almost always revealed the participants lack of entrepreneurial intuition and vision.

For example, one question revolved around whether it was worth the risk of, without a license or doing proper research with the city, setting up a public art display in an area that was part public and part private. While the legal answer is clearly no,  the question it raised for me was what kind of image and reputation are you trying to build and how best can you effectively communicate that message? And what kind of public space best will fit that message?  Will breaking the law do it and risking the dismantling or destruction of your work?  Developing entrepreneurial intuition revolves around knowing who you are first, taking a moral inventory of what principals you need to adhere to as your life as an entrepreneur unfolds, and then being able to negotiate along the path that emerges to achieve the results you are looking for.

Or what about this accounting question: I want to attend a bunch of art fairs this summer and wondered do I need to keep books and records?  Well, the bigger question for me is why are you doing this? What result are you seeking from attending these fairs and how will it help you build on the vision for your business?  This question begs a much deeper exploration than its answer.

While it is true, we as artists need an assortment of tools- attorneys, accountants, bankers and access to specific instructional answers to detailed questions ( how to?)  to accomplish the task of building our careers, these sorts of “power tools” are after all inanimate flat objects. While we certainly need to know not only which one to use and what they can each do for us,  no instructions come with them that provide the intuition and vision you need to create something meaningful simply by using them.  What good is it to know what kind of drill bit to use in concrete if you don’t know what to do with the concrete in the first place? And while artists have creative vision, entrepreneurial vision requires the insertion of a second lens to view that creativity through. And with it a new set of skills that require training.

Entrepreneurial vision cannot be found inside of any one power tool, their operating manual, or any accounting or legal issues book either. Specific answers to specific questions can be, but 90% of developing as an entrepreneur is about developing your critical decision making abilities. Knowing which way to go and when you should  turn left, right or go straight is the real challenge and is what divides failure from success. Timing, effectively communicating and knowing how much importance should be placed on what and when is critical to building success.  Developing your entrepreneurial vision requires the development of your entrepreneurial intuition first which, with practice and guidance, becomes a clear entrepreneurial vision that will guide ALL of your decision making. Once you have entrepreneurial vision, getting the answers to specific legal or accounting questions seems perfunctory in nature.

One of the reasons I decided to take on the challenge of opening a two year program for artists, instead of offering a string of workshops on a broad list of subjects, is because you can’t develop entrepreneurial vision any other way than through immersion learning that can only occur with a trusted teacher available every step of the way. Just like one’s artistry was created with the guidance of a teacher, transforming that artistry into an income stream requires the same kind of ongoing guidance and professional assistance.

So many times I have heard from those who observe artists that “we” cannot be taught how to sell, or to think like entrepreneurs because we  just are not “wired” that way.  And the truth is we can. If we are willing to make the investment of time and money required to learn MORE THAN what the power tool owners manual says about how to operate the machine.  We all know how badly written those manuals are and how much more quickly we learn how to really use them through the lens of experience…

After all, if you could learn how to be an entrepreneur from a book, don’t you think there would be a whole lot more of us?  Who doesn’t want to be in charge of your own day and make a decent living creating a life you love? But are you willing to risk financially all you have without the educational support you need to succeed? Didn’t you already do that for the love of your artistry? Isn’t it now time to finish the process by investing in the rest of the education you need to learn to have the entrepreneurial intuition and vision you need to thrive?

Check out this story that just appeared today about one (now) flourishing artist, Shawna Lake,  who was willing to invest in the development of her entrepreneurial vision. It does not matter what form of art you create. Insert you and your business idea into this article. This could be you….

Our fortune cookies and No More Starving Artist Button Board were a big hit at the Chicago Creative Expo.

On Saturday April 10th, at the 7th Chicago Creative Expo held at The Cultural Center in Chicago, The IAE was in full blooming form.

Our imagination training ensemble, The Bite-Size Arts Ensemble, performed What’s Your Imagination Worth? to a just about full house in the Claudia Cassidy theater.

During the day, Bite-Size Arts Ensemble members Shawn Bowers, Lance Hall, Dharmesh Bhagat and a helper from our PR firm, PR Chicago maned the IAE booth, fielded questions and  handed out applications for our workshops and 2 year program. We had so many different kinds of artists stop by, and every imaginable question asked about our workshops and programs, that not only were these guys talking all day but they gave almost ever brochure, button, and application we brought with us away!

Meanwhile, I spent the day in the Consult-A-Thon helping artists work through various issues with their existing business or start-up ideas.

Bite-Size Arts Ensemble member Dharmesh Bhagat signs up a potential student to our mailing list.

Shawn Bowers fields a question about The IAE curriculum

Bite-Size Director Lance Hall answers questions about our 12 week imagination training workshop that begins June 7th.

Here are some quotes from emails I received already today from some of the artists I met at the Consult-A-Thon!

“Thank you for giving me such a positive experience at the Consult-a-Thon.”

“You showed me so many different angles to look at things I would have never thought of (or it would take me a very long time).”
“I’m still decompressing from this weekend but will  regroup and take action!”

Is Your Imagination Worth Investing Into? The Bite-Size Arts Ensemble gave away over 300 fortune cookies with our special message inside.

“Just wanted to tell you thanks for the wonderful meeting on Saturday at the Expo. You may have changed my life!”

“You gave me so much to think about. I have been in a buzz with friends ever since.”

I have already signed up for the boost camp online..”

So what about you? While the Chicago Creative Expo 2010 may be officially over, the energy, enthusiasm and support for The IAE it created has just begun and we are calling YOU to action too!

Do you know what your imagination is worth? Is it worth investing into by becoming a Bite-Size Arts Ensemble member and creating your own show to build your communication skills and test your business ideas in our 12 week workshop beginning Monday June 7th?

Or what about shaping or re-shaping your business idea to create a better plan of action to move your career and ideas forward with our 2 week Boost Camp that starts Monday July 26th?

Or what about joining us and learning how to live life on your own terms  ONCE AND FOR ALL by attending The IAE’s 2 year weekend program that begins January 5th, 2011?

Early Bird registration discount of 20% for The Bite-Size Arts Ensemble Workshop or Boost Camp if you apply by May 15th. Discount code is: ICanFlourish