Spring is here in the Northern Hemisphere and it’s the perfect time to consider the aspects of your life that are weighing you down without contributing to your happiness and success.

April is the month for cleaning out in the Art Biz Success community. In this episode of the Art Biz Podcast, I’m highlighting some of my previous interviews with artists who have discussed cleaning out in one form or another, from removing physical items to cleaning out business ideas and strategies, modes of working, and even the venues where you show and sell your art.

If you are ready to deep clean your art business, to release what isn’t serving you and banish all that is getting in the way of your productivity and creativity, then you won’t want to miss the insights and inspiration from these successful artists.

If you’re an intentional artist, you’re in the right place.

I’m wrapping up a month of talking about how systems can keep you organized and make you a more productive artist. The Art Biz Podcast episodes have been a tad more didactic than usual, and hopefully they are helping you get your art business better organized.

In episodes 79 and 80 I talked with artists Jennifer Printz and Betty Franks about how they have systematized aspects of their successful art businesses.

In episode 78, I did a broad overview of this topic and shared my definition of a system.

A system is a series of clear steps or procedures for accomplishing a specific task. It could be a task that you do regularly (weekly, monthly, or quarterly) or one that you do infrequently but know that you’ll need to repeat it in the future.

I also went through the individual steps for creating a new business (or even personal) system that you can rely on to make life easier. Now I want to focus on documenting your system.

Procedures that you have to rely on to stay productive should be written down and saved in a central location. It doesn’t count to have a general idea of what needs to be done and how it must happen. You document everything to save time and effort in the future, and I can’t think of a single artist who wouldn’t be thrilled with a little extra time in their day accompanied by a lot fewer frustrations.

So type up the procedures you’ll need and keep them in a central location.

We call this your Art Biz Handbook.You may hear it referred to by other, more corporate-y businesses as an Operations Manual or as Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). My team member Kristen O’Neill says those sound too much like manuals for a nuclear plant, so we settled on Your Art Biz Handbook.

Written procedures are used in large and small businesses. And they can be a lifesaver even if you’re a 1-person business.

Betty Franks loves her business and life as an artist. She just might have found the secret sauce—a healthy combination of passion for the work and a continuing curiosity about business and becoming a better CEO of your art business.

Betty’s art business has exploded over the last four years. By 440%!

You can’t have and sustain this kind of business growth if you don’t have solid systems in place.

As I said back in episode #78, you need reliable systems to help you run a profitable business so that you can spend more creative time in the studio.

At the time of this recording, Betty has over 120,000 Instagram followers and sells paintings almost as fast as she makes them. In this episode, we discuss the digital and analog systems that she depends on to support her growth. She generously shares her real numbers, the new postage system she just started using (update since the recording: she loves it!), and how she organizes all of the digital images of her paintings.

For the sake of her art, Jennifer Printz has been very successful tapping into that part of her that is, as she says, typical Pisces.

On the other hand, she has learned to access another part of her to stay organized—the perfectionism that comes with being an Enneagram 1.

It’s a good thing Jennifer has embraced these two sides of her because she needs them. Not only is she a practicing artist with an enviable record of exhibitions, but she’s also an assistant professor at Florida International University in Miami. She has two full-time jobs.

I’ve watched Jennifer whip her business into shape by getting organized and creating reliable systems. I’ve even had the pleasure of helping her with parts of that.

In this episode, I talk with her about how she compartmentalizes her two jobs. We also discuss the planning process she uses, the digital and paper tools she relies on to stay organized, and why writing by hand is critical for her and her students.