Business Ladies Club (Patreon)

Several years ago a member of my studio approached two of us about starting a monthly meet-up to talk about our developing art careers. Unlike anyone else in our studio, she had gotten a degree in business or something like it on the advisement of her parents who were… lawyers or doctors or some kind of middle-class-business-running-persons. I forget exactly, but the point is that she was raised up with the expectation that she’d be in the professional class and had gone to school in preparation for it and then, to the horror of her parents, she veered onto the comics and animation road. I mention this because most of the people you encounter in the commercial arts world are folks who pursued their creativity first, and THEN learned on the fly how to make money off their work later. …If they ever did. Artists are not well known for their business acumen. 

All of this to say, this studiomate approached her artistic career with the calculated planning that her parents wished she was applying to medicine or law or business. And one of the practices that she cross-pollinated from the professional world to ours was Business Ladies Club. 

Once a month the three of us would meet up to discuss what we had accomplished in the previous month, what had been challenging, and what our goals were for the upcoming month.  It’s such a simple format but it… 

Dude. 

Business Ladies Club is the highlight of my month. It fills up my heart and renews my soul and ties me to one of my micro-communities. 

Though our founding member has since moved away to work in one of the most famous animation studios in the world (Her parents are very proud), we have not only continued on with a new member of our crew, but I started another branch with a couple of ladies from completely different fields. The first group is still comprised of three cartoonists, so we’re all very much on the same page about the joys and hardships of our chosen field, while my second group is made up of a small business owner who sells physical products and a woman who runs a dance studio (oh, and me, still a cartoonist).

It never ceases to amaze me how much overlap there is between our businesses even though we’re in such unrelated fields. But then again, maybe it shouldn’t be so surprising because all businesses mostly need the same tools to operate. Promotion and production and distribution and bills and work space and cash flow and budgeting and customers and employees and contractors and contracts and sponsorship and charity and exhaustion and marketing and reviews and competition and outsourcing and insourcing and spreadsheets and crowdfunding and… You know. A million other things. It’s fascinating to see how much our unrelated companies share in common and to offer insight to each other on problems that the individual had assumed was a dead end. 

Ok, back to the format. 

So you start out with your accomplishments of the last month, because you wanna get the meeting going on a positive foot. When you’re spinning a hundred different plates in the air it’s so painfully easy to forget what you did manage to do successfully because the disasters are so much more visible, you know? So it gives us a chance to remember “Hey, wait, I DID do some stuff right, didn’t I?”, even if it’s as simple as “I survived another month!” It also lets us be excited for each other, to celebrate each others’ victories, however small or large. I’m so proud of these bad ass bitches and the shit they get done and they feel the same for me too. A win for one is a win for us all because we’re all in this together.

Next up we cover our challenges, which is the section that always takes the longest because “challenges” is the positive way of saying “The stuff that made me sob in the bathroom because I’m a failure and have no business being in this profession.” We support each other, we commiserate, and, surprisingly, a lot of the time we have suggestions for problems that felt unsolvable. This is also the most valuable part of the meeting, because we can be honest about our shortcomings, our insecurities, our disappointment in our performances, our failures. And we can do that with people who Get It. We curate our images online to always have our best foot forward, because who wants to give their money over to a company that looks like it doesn’t have its shit together, you know? So we fill our internet spaces up with beautiful photos of the good work we’re doing and talk about what a great experience it is to work with us and here’s a photo of us laughing while we eat our salads. And it’s not a lie! The things we share are true! It’s just that… behind the photo of the Good Work you did, there’s a story about how a crucial component of it was incredibly delayed and you had a pretty bad panic attack about it before it finally came together. And the bit you left out of your recap about that great experience your business provided is how it took two months of non-stop stress to make it happen and now you have this ulcer that won’t quite heal up right. And a second after that picture was taken of you laughing while eating salad, you snorted a leaf back over your wind pipe and had a coughing fit for five minutes to dislodge it. But you can’t share that stuff publicly, because it’ll scare away clients and invite judgmental gossip from your colleagues. So you just share the good stuff, the Instagram-able stuff, and present the image that not only do you know what you’re doing, but you’re doing it well. Which is why it’s such a relief to open up your heart with your trusted peers and know that they understand and they’re right there with you and none of us are perfect and sometimes (a lot of the times) we're just barely hanging in there by a thread. 

And then we close with our goals going forward into the next month. Sometimes this includes listing huge projects that will take months to execute and sometimes (a lot of times) it’s as simple as “survive.” 

I keep a list in my sketchbook of my accomplishments and challenges for each month, so I don’t forget them by the time Business Ladies Club rolls around. This is especially helpful for me remembering the things that went well because, like I said earlier, those are always the first things I forget. So as soon as something goes right or goes wrong, I just jot it down in the appropriate column. Though the focus of Business Ladies Club is on our work, we also include a fair amount of personal stuff too— because the personal has such an impact on the professional, you know? And also because we’re humans who care about each other too. So yeah, I’ll list having a yeast infection under my “Challenges” column and “Went to the river!!!!” under “Accomplishments”. And at the end of the month you can see whether you achieved any of your previous goals (It’s ok if you don’t!)

This is such an incredible tool for organizing your thoughts, pursuing your goals, being accountable, tracking your progress, troubleshooting, and forming bonds with your peers. This isn’t just applicable to people who are already working full-time at their own businesses, either. I see this as a format for anyone who shares a common interest. It could be a writers’ group. It could be viewers of a TV show who are working on their fan creations. It could be conspiracy theorists. It could be moms with 10-12 year olds. Just find two other folks who are invested in a similar topic and meet up once a month to share what was accomplished, what was challenging, and what your goals are going forward. 

Lemme know if any of you start up your own groups! And tell me what you name them ;)