How to help my artistic entrepreneur friend
(The photos in this post are all from 2013, my first year with the camera: my first trips, my first concerts, etc. A big thank you to the people who trusted me and what I do, even when I didn't believe in myself. If you want to learn how to handle your camera, here is a little course for you, and you can apply an extra discount with the coupon code NACHODRAMIS during checkout.)
We're starting with the playlist of complete albums, and as a bonus, a full concert on YouTube for some extra variety.
Music
No Doubt in Long Beach Arena California (2002)
Focus is a free bi-weekly newsletter written by Nacho Dramis. Subscribe.
If you enjoy the content and find it useful, you can make a financial contribution to support the project through Cafecito (Argentina) or PayPal (Worldwide).
Another way to support the project is by purchasing prints and various items with my photos in my international store on RedBubble. I don't have a store for Argentina yet, but I hope to solve that soon.
The links to Notion, Domestika and Moment are affiliate links, which means that if you buy something from them, you pay the same and I earn a commission.
You can also follow me on Instagram and Behance. Sharing my articles helps a lot and is free :)
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Process
A few days ago, I announced a giveaway on Instagram to celebrate the anniversary of Argentina's victory in the FIFA World Cup and to try to attract readers to this newsletter (if you're reading this from Argentina and it's still 30/12, sign up, it's the last day!). The giveaway consists of a framed print of a photo I took during the street celebrations on the day of the final.
I don't know the guy in the photo, and he doesn't know me. I took the photo and kept walking without interacting, as street photographers often do. The thing is, when I organized the Instagram giveaway a year after the World Cup final, a girl who knows both of us contacted us. On the day of the celebrations, there were several million people in downtown Buenos Aires, and neither he nor I have more than 1000 followers; we have two really small IG accounts. This girl saw the story of my giveaway, and immediately after, she saw the story of the guy with the graffiti sharing a video of a friend doing the exact same painting I captured. The coincidence, this girl's desire to break the inertia of the everyday, and the quirks of the "algorithm" that, for once, played in favor of people who don't spend money, achieved a statistically impossible connection.
What's the point of this anecdote? Well, you might have often wondered how people around you, who have a self-managed business or artistic project, make a living and promote their work. The answer is much closer than you think. In fact, you can find it in the mirror, in situations as beautifully random as the one I just told you about. Don't believe me? Let me give you a couple of examples...
While you're reading this newsletter in the office bathroom, Romina (from Administration) and Pablo (from Sales) are kissing each other passionately in the emergency staircase, as they've been doing for months. You don't know it yet, and they almost don't either, but they're getting married at the end of next year, and soon they'll start looking for a photographer. Your cousin takes beautiful photos and has the perfect vibe to connect with them.
Matías, your high school friend, has been playing the drums in a band for 15 years, and they always perform in the same awful places. You'd love to go see him play, but they don't perform at Niceto on a Friday at 9 PM; they play in a dive bar in Villa Ojete on Tuesdays at 2 AM. But they can't afford to play at Niceto yet; first, they have to sell out the dive bar in Villa Ojete every week for two months. Why would you share the date if, besides being far away, they play a subgenre of northern post-industrial neogothic metal that no one likes? Well, it turns out that the odd guy from the IT department in your workplace loves the underground northern post-industrial neogothic metal scene, and if he knew them, he'd totally go with his quirky friends to see them.
Lau, your college mate, creates these gorgeous handmade planners. Every month, she uploads photos of the same models on Instagram, and you're a bit tired of seeing the same thing all the time. The thing is, Lau is really short on cash, and until she sells those 20 planners she made during her vacation, she can't buy the supplies to make the next 20.
Remember that cool hippie in Gesell who gave away micro-stories on the beach? You follow him on Twitter, which is like a beach 2.0 but filled with crappy people. "I wish he'd publish a book compiling all those little stories," you think, without having any idea how much it costs to publish a book. The only way he'll publish it is if he has a pre-sale of at least 200 copies, and for that, he needs a lot, a lot of exposure. Tens of thousands of people need to see what he does, thousands need to like it, and a couple of hundred must also enjoy reading on paper and be up for joining the pre-sale of a random guy.
Your girlfriend has been painting since she was little, studied with countless teachers, and she's really good. She would like to someday dedicate herself to teaching, maybe even organize a course in the evenings. However, her job at that dreadful call center drains her and leaves her with no mental energy to put something like that together or even showcase her work anywhere.
There's a timeline where you share a photo of your cousin that you like so your Instagram contacts can get to know her, and those paths cross. The same goes for the planners, the stories, the band, the paintings... the next person who falls in love with these projects might be among your contacts. And there are a thousand other timelines where it doesn't happen, the projects remain stagnant, and the people who would love them still don't know about them.
Advertising on social media is expensive, not to mention traditional advertising, and it's often ineffective unless you have a very clear strategy. The only real tool we have to make ourselves visible among corporations and the mainstream is the support of the people who love us and/or enjoy what we do.
It's not that by sharing one, you're taking opportunities away from another. It's cumulative because when one succeeds, it helps the others and facilitates collaboration. The band member, playing in more popular venues, calls the photographer for better photos of the shows. The planner creator releases a limited edition with your girlfriend's paintings on the cover. The micro-story writer teams up with the photographer, and they create a photo book, which the girl from the planners could even edit. You are the link that makes all of this happen, no one else.
Those of us with a creative profession or business don't enjoy promoting ourselves. We'd rather be doing what we love than sharing it in places that always seem to push back. In a couple of days, this article will have a recorded version in Instagram reel format. I hate doing it, but people are there. I'd rather be editing photos or drafting the next issue of Focus, but I have to do it.
Whenever someone is going through a tough situation, you say, "If you need anything, don't hesitate to ask for help." Thank you. It's now. We are going through a difficult situation, we need help, and we are not hesitating to ask you for it.
Very rarely do you have the opportunity to help someone so much with so little effort on your part. A like, a comment, a share, a subscription—these don't require money and barely cost you a few seconds of your time, a few micro-movements of your thumb, yet they make a huge difference to us. Every new follower adds up, every customer moves the needle for us, either by allowing us to make ends meet doing what we love or as an incentive that says, "this is the right path" when we're on the verge of giving up.
I invite you to think about which artist/entrepreneur you can gift some exposure to this year-end (it doesn't necessarily have to be me, but it's always appreciated). And if you're an artist, I encourage you to share this post with your loved ones if you feel it represents you and expresses what you always want to explain to them but don't know how.
Thank you for reading!
Focus is a free bi-weekly newsletter written by Nacho Dramis. Subscribe.
If you enjoy the content and find it useful, you can make a financial contribution to support the project through Cafecito (Argentina) or PayPal (Worldwide).
Another way to support the project is by purchasing prints and various items with my photos in my international store on RedBubble. I don't have a store for Argentina yet, but I hope to solve that soon.
The links to Notion, Domestika and Moment are affiliate links, which means that if you buy something from them, you pay the same and I earn a commission.
You can also follow me on Instagram and Behance. Sharing my articles helps a lot and is free :)
Este newsletter también está disponible en español.