A couple of weeks ago, Seth Godin (one of my favorite online personalities) was the guest on CBC Radio’s Spark. He was talking, as he does, about the the ways that the Internet is changing how business happens.

As I listened, I found many of his points were especially applicable to Artists and creative people. Here is my commentary on a few of the points he brought up, and how you can apply them to the creation of your work.

GIVE IT AWAY TO BOOST SALES

Godin cites the example of Blue Mountain Arts, a greeting card company, who allowed people to send their cards to people for free online, and then saw sales of their cards increase. Seth Godin is not the only champion of this idea. I have listened to every episode of the Webcomics Weekly podcast, re-re-re-read Chris Anderson’s Free: The Future of a Radical Price, and listened intently to every keynote speech by Gary Vaynerchuk that I can find. All of these men, plus many more, will tell you about how the new, online model is to give your content away for free, and then figure out ways to make money from it as you go.

DO WHAT YOU DON’T FEEL LIKE DOING

When we are in the idea business (Godin uses the term to describe Marketers, but it applies even more to Artists), the work that we do is emotional work that might not always be in the mood to do. That sounds like a description of creative inspiration. When we are business-minded about our Art, we need to have the ideas and do the work even when we’re not feeling inspired.

DO WHAT FEELS RISKY

Godin describes what success looks like in the 21st century, and explains that “In order to get there, there’s a huge hurdle and that’s that you have to do something that feels risky.” That’s been my whole guiding principle throughout my career, and it’s the advice I give to every artist who asks me.

It’s another way to say that you need to decide that success in your craft is more important than anything, and commit yourself to it fully even if you don’t know how you’re going to pull it off.

LEARN BY FAILING

Godin will tell you the same thing any great thinker says: you need to fail before you can succeed. Learn by failing, try everything. And the great thing about failing on the Internet, Godin says, is that it’s free and no one notices.

LIVE ONLINE

“Create a culture where the people you work with are saying, out loud & online, what they’re doing”, says Godin. This is Gary Vaynerchuk’s model of pumping out content and “Crushing it”. I describe it as Living On the Internet. This is the age of transparency, and this is the key to capturing and holding an audience’s attention.

UNDERSTAND WHAT WE DO FOR A LIVING

This is the point most directly applicable to Artists. Godin uses the example of a band to describe that what we used to do is get a label to give us a record deal, but now the job is to get 100,000 followers on social media sites. Creating content and using the Internet as your vehicle is what you do for a living now. The 20th century model of toiling away until you’re discovered is not how it happens any more.

These are just a few of the points that struck me as being directly applicable to Artists when I listened to Seth Godin on CBC Radio’s Spark.

Listen to the whole interview here, and check out Seth Godin’s blog here.

And come back each Monday for Inside the Artist’s Mind – my reflections and discoveries on the Artist and their work.