Guess and Go Management

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."
- Goethe

When I decided to start a card company, I had no experience running a business (unless you count renting out part of my house), and I knew nothing about the greeting card industry. I knew neither now to get my artwork printed as cards, nor how to sell them once they were printed. I had no proof even that they could be sold. I only had a vaguely remembered observation from an art fair a decade before that it was easier to sell lower priced things than higher priced things. That, and an intense desire to make a living from my artwork (hopefully), or at least get it out of the closet.

So I guessed, and I went forward. I comforted myself with my positive feedback loop theory: if I objectively evaluated the results, kept what worked, changed what didn't work, and tried again and again, eventually I could make it happen; assuming, of course, I had infinite time. The first card I printed featured the painting above, Mindscape II, a painting which has always received complements. It's still one of my best-selling cards. (More about this painting at http://claudiam.com/Paintings/DetailPages/DetailMindscape2.htm)

Guess and go management makes for many mistakes. The fact that time, and its' co-dependent: money, are not infinite, is a constant concern. I have learned the hard way about managing too much inventory and trying to break into a field populated by big established players. I've had to do more work than I could have imagined possible to accomplish the simplest thing, only to find out that it's not the right thing to do in the first place. But it's taken me places I never expected to go, and it's forced me to rely on myself instead of whatever corporation was currently employing me.

Now, I question everything. Perhaps I even question it too much, hence the green hair.

Along the way, I found that my positive feedback theory has yet another flaw in addition to the infinite time assumption - I can't ever really do an objective evaluation of anything I care about as much as my art. But I'm still ready to guess and go because it's much more interesting than staying.

- Claudia