There’s a question my long-time students and clients know is coming. It’s simple: By when?
By when will you follow up with your collector?
By when will you contact your gallery to ask about payment?
When I ask, the answer is almost always “by the end of next week.” And my response, when I know what’s at stake … when I know they’re capable of more, is: Why not now?
There’s always a pause. Because the idea seemed very good right up until I suggested doing it immediately. These are tactical questions. Delaying them directly delays results.
But then there are the bigger, strategic questions that also get put off — and these are the ones that cost you more in the long run.
By when will you evaluate which income streams are earning their place?
By when will you slow down long enough to review the weakest links in your business systems?
This kind of work is fuzzier. It takes longer. It requires more pieces to pull together a clear picture. And nobody is waiting on it. No order goes unfulfilled if you skip it.
Nothing breaks today. So it waits. And it costs you.
In episode 261 of The Art Biz, I walk through five specific costs that accumulate when artists keep postponing this kind of work. None of them announce themselves. That’s what makes them so damaging.
Listen
The 5 costs of postponing strategic work
1. You’re leaving money on the table.
The income stream that kept requiring energy you never formally decided to give it. The email list that didn’t grow because you never stopped to ask why. The collectors who landed on your website, didn’t find what they needed, and left without a trace.
You’ll never know exactly what you didn’t earn, and that’s precisely what makes it so easy to ignore.
2. Unresolved questions are taking up mental real estate.
Every strategic question you’re carrying runs in the background. The platform you know isn’t working but haven’t officially walked away from. The show you signed up for again without examining whether it was worth it.
You’re paying a constant tax on your attention by carrying these things unresolved, and that’s energy that could be going into your creative work.
3. You don’t know if you’re executing on the right things.
The longer you build in a direction you haven’t examined, the more expensive it is to redirect.
This is a mostly invisible cost, because it doesn’t feel like anything is going wrong. It just feels like you’re busy. You’re executing. You’re checking things off.
But execution without direction is just activity.
4. The longer you wait, the harder it gets.
A cold email list gets colder. An out-of-date website feels like a bigger project the longer it sits. Waiting doesn’t make the work easier, it raises the cost of entry.
The longer you’ve waited, the higher the bar feels, not because the work itself changed but because you’ve been adding to it psychologically every day you didn’t begin.
5. Your confidence takes a hit.
When you know something isn’t working and you keep not addressing it, it does something to how you feel about your business. Not dramatically. There’s no crisis moment. Just a slow accumulation of knowing and not acting.
That gap, over time, affects how you show up, how you talk about your work, and whether you put yourself forward or hold back.
None of these costs announce themselves. There’s no invoice, no warning, no interruption to your day. They compound through constant execution without strategic audits, until you look up and realize your business looks very much like it did a year ago. Only with a longer to-do list.
Pick one strategic question you’ve been carrying. Something you already know needs your attention. Name the date by which you’ll address it. Not “sometime soon.” A real date. Like … today.
Alyson Quotes
“Why not now? Now seems like exactly the right time.”
“Ignoring the strategic work almost always never produces a better outcome. It just postpones the results you’re after.”
“Execution without direction is just activity.”
“You are paying a constant tax on your attention by carrying them unresolved. That’s energy — energy that could be going into your art.”
“Waiting never makes the work easier. It just raises the cost of entry.”
“Artists who do this work don’t just leave with their priorities in order. They leave with something that’s harder to manufacture: confidence.”
7 thoughts on “What are you waiting for? The real costs of postponing strategic work in your art business (261)”
Yes! I need to do this. DO IT. I have actually been unsubscribing to “Grow your business” emails and stopped reading articles (except Alyson!) because I need to put into action everything I “know”.
Thanks for sticking with me, Michelle!
This is so true! I put off submitting my work to a lot of shops I thought would be interested because I was too scared of rejection. Turns out, if I’d just emailed them a month or two ago, they would gladly have ordered from me, but now it’s too late in the season and they won’t be ready to buy until next summer.
There’s so much power in taking action!
Lesson learned the hard way, huh, Cate? You’ll do better from now on. I know it.
Ooh, yes – putting off sending emails that involve me asking for something like a book to review…I even made a list called ‘ask tasks’ but clearly I would have been better just asking than making the list!
Wonderful Alyson,
I feel like I’ve been doing many things “now”, but there are
always more brave steps I can take. Thanks for inspiring me.
Barbara
A great and very real challenge for many of us. Sometimes I give to quick a deadline to clients when Im feeling real ambitious. Then I fall short of the deadline, So I try to never give a quick deadline always give myself a few days even if I will have it to them in hours. This way I dont look as though Im not following through on what I say I will do.