How to hold yourself accountable as a creative business owner, or the importance of scheduling launches and releases

This week, I got a question from someone who had just read Try It & See, and it was so key I realized it warranted a blog post of its own. Here’s what she asked: “One thing I’d like to know more about is the ‘launches and releases’ being the most important things you could ever put on your calendar. I’m not familiar with this, could you please elaborate?”

Before I dive into the answer, I want to start by talking about one of the biggest challenges (which is arguably also one of the greatest things) about being a business owner: no one is telling you what to do.

For some people, this sense of being completely in charge can be liberating. For others, it can be like staring into the abyss. And even for those, like myself, who find the blank space liberating, there are times when it can still be tough to focus or stay on track.

Not only does the openendedness of running your own business overwhelm people, it often leads to taking on a bunch of random busy work that doesn’t move the needle in your business. Or, it leads to complete and utter analysis paralysis, over-researching and overanalyzing. It’s no surprise to me that many of the artists and makers who tend to succeed the fastest are the ones who start doing shows or exhibitions early in their businesses.

There are a few reasons for this. Shows are great as OPAs, meaning they get your work in front of other people’s audiences. But they also serve as built in deadlines. When you have a show, you have a specific event on your calendar and the work has to be done by then. If it isn’t, you have nothing to show or sell. Doing shows gives structure to your time and gets you in the habit of finishing things. As stressful as prepping for a show can be, there is so much it forces you to be ready for in your business.

But I also respect that shows aren’t for everyone. I did retail shows early in my business, but now I wouldn’t touch one with a ten foot pole. (Except to go and shop, that’s fun!) And depending on your personality, your limitations, or the stage where your business is at, shows might not be in the cards now or ever. You might be in a position where you’re focused almost exclusively on trying to sell online or selling to stores through wholesale outreach. (Without doing a trade show.)

This is where scheduling launches and releases comes into play. Ultimately, the idea behind scheduling launches is to hold yourself accountable and force you to finish, or in the terms of Try It & See, to force yourself to ship. Putting launches and releases on your calendar makes them the highest priority in your business, rather than having a calendar full of random appointments and other stuff that isn’t making you money.

One of the chapters in Try It & See is focused on shipping every day. This is the idea that every day, you’re putting something out into the world. This could be an email to your list, a blog post, a show application, a press pitch, sending actual art or products to actual humans, or yes, releasing something new. But for most of us, we won’t be releasing something new every day. Most of our daily shipping revolves around our marketing efforts.

Launches and releases give specific structure and timing to the release of new products. They give you a target to aim for, and they force you out of perfectionism mode. And just because you aren’t releasing new art or products every day doesn’t mean that launch deadlines aren’t as important as the things you ship daily.

Scheduling launches and releases also forces you out of spending all your time in making mode and feeling like you can’t release anything into the world until you’ve created the “perfect” number of things.

When I first started designing the pieces in what would become my Contra Collection, I set a launch deadline a few weeks out from when I started making them. Not only did I put this on my calendar, but I shared it with my audience. When I set that deadline, I had no idea whether the release was going to have three pieces or thirty in it. But that didn’t matter. (I think I ended up with about twenty.) In the end, the most important thing was that I got my products out into the world.

Yes, launches can also create some pressure. I’ve written before about feeling like a launch isn’t “successful” if you don’t sell out right away. (Spoiler alert: that’s not true. I’ve never had a fully sold-out launch in my life.) But this is where you can also apply the logic of Try It & See. A launch is never a failure, it’s a learning opportunity. It’s a chance to see what works and what doesn’t.

I could have given myself a goal that I was only going to release the Contra Collection when I had fifty pieces made. But what if no one bought any? That’s a lot of work with no idea if people are going to be interested. By giving myself a specific deadline, I could release a few products, gauge the results, and then plan my next steps from there.

And launches don’t have to be major events. (Though they can if you want them to be.) In Artists & Profit Makers, my online mentorship program, we talk about the difference between launches and drip releases. Launches are typically bigger events, where you’re releasing many new products or a full collection at one time. By contrast, drips are when you release just one or two products to your audience at a time. For anyone who feels overwhelmed by the pressure and planning of larger style launches, drips are a great strategy for getting work out into the world.

But just like with launches, the key is scheduling. The artists and makers I know who are most effective at the drip strategy still pick key dates when they are going to release new things. These dates happen more frequently than with bigger releases, but that doesn’t make them any less important. They still get scheduled and planned for. This doesn’t mean that you have to know what you’re going to release when you put it onto your calendar. You just might know that every third Thursday, you’re releasing something new, and that gives you the motivation you need to head into the studio and start designing.

All of this talk makes it sound like you constantly have to be releasing new products for your business to be successful, so I want to be clear about something. You don’t always have to release something new to have a “launch.” The pressure to always be designing something new can lead to stress and burnout. So you can also think of launches simply as promotions. Promotions are periods where you’re, well, promoting something specific. They might involve a sale, or they might not, but the most important thing is that, just like new product launches, they go on your calendar.

When it comes to your business, launches, releases, and promotions help break up the endless abyss of time and help answer the question, “what should I be doing right now?” They take you out of your head and get your art and products into the world. They provide structure and energy to your business, which is why they should be the first things to go onto your calendar.

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If you’d like to add a little more structure to the mindset shifts in Try It & See, plus have a place to keep track of all those launches, releases, and your daily “to ship” items, be sure to check out the new Try It & See Planner. It’s available now in my online store.