I’d love some advice on finding clients for my paintings. Selling to friends and at events has been lovely, but I’d like to find steadier clients. One idea I keep coming back to is businesses with office space. Law firms, dental and medical offices, real estate offices and coworking spaces all have lobbies and conference rooms with bare walls. Original art could make those spaces feel warmer, and the business could buy pieces outright or rotate them every few months. My problem is that I don’t know how to reach the right person. The people who decide what goes on the walls usually aren’t the ones sitting at the front desk, and I can’t picture walking in with a painting under my arm and asking for someone. I’m hosting a studio tour in early December, and part of me wonders if that’s my answer: invite office managers and business owners to come see the work in person. But I’m not sure a studio tour is the right way to reach this market. It feels more like something for collectors and friends than for someone deciding what to hang in their office. So my questions for the group are: 1. Would a studio tour actually work for reaching businesses, or is there a better way to get in front of the people who make these decisions? 2. Who’s usually the right person to talk to about art in an office: the owner, an office manager, or someone else? If you’ve ever bought art for a business, or you work in an office and know who makes these decisions, I’d love to hear from you!

Here’s something I’ve been working on for my consulting business, 1 Up Blueprint. I ran through the people I already knew pretty quickly, so I had to figure out how to find new people to reach out to every week. Honestly, prospecting isn’t my strong suit, so I turned it into a simple routine. This is what it looks like right now: I look for a signal, not just a type of business. My best clients are owner-led businesses, especially in the trades, that are stretched thin. One of the clearest signs is a job posting for a project manager or office manager, because it usually means the owner is overloaded and the new hire is about to walk into a lot of processes that only live in someone’s head. I use AI to help me source leads. Every Monday, Claude searches job boards and company websites and gives me a list of about 15 to 20 new businesses, plus a few referral partners like bookkeepers and CPAs who work with the same kind of owners. It includes who to contact and why each one might be a fit. I review the list and cut anyone who doesn’t feel right. I send short, specific emails. Each one mentions the real reason I’m reaching out (like the job they just posted) and asks one simple question. I’d much rather send an email than make a cold call, so I built the whole system around email. I track everything in one spreadsheet: who I contacted, when, whether they replied, and when to follow up. I follow up once, and then I let it go. My goal is 20 to 25 new outreach messages a week. Some weeks I hit it and some weeks I don’t, but having a list ready on Monday morning means I’m not starting from a blank page. The biggest lesson so far is that outreach gets a lot less scary when it’s a system instead of something you do when you feel brave. So I’d love to hear from you: Who is your ideal customer, and what’s one sign that they might need you right now? Where could you find people showing that sign (job boards, Facebook groups, local business listings, events)? If you’re not sure yet, share what you have and we’ll work through it together in the comments.

If you're new here, one of the things I'm building alongside this community is my YouTube channel, Morgan Digs In. It's all about gardening, DIY and life in my 100-year-old Craftsman, and I restarted it from scratch this fall. I share how it's going as I grow it, real numbers and real decisions included, so you can use it as a case study for your own business. This week I looked at my last 28 days on YouTube next to my recent LinkedIn posts. Every hour I put into content is an hour I'm not putting into something else, and I wanted to know what was actually earning its spot. The biggest surprise was a 60-second Short of my first-ever sweet potato harvest. It got 735 views and 7 comments, and people watched 71% of it on average, which is really high for a Short. Two of my long videos also made my top five for the month: my backyard garden transformation with 626 views, and the video about why I restarted the channel with 431. On the other end, the little video diary I'd been making every week for LinkedIn was my lowest-performing post, and it took me the most time to make. So I stopped making it. That gives me a few hours back every week, and I'm putting some of them toward something I haven't done much of yet, which is growing my audience through collaboration. Good videos only go so far if the same people keep seeing them, so I've started reaching out to local businesses my viewers would love. The first one is St. Nick's, a huge family-run Christmas store in Littleton. I emailed them this week to ask if I could film a holiday decor episode in the store, and whether someone from the family might want to share a little of the store's history on camera. They passed it along to one of the owners, so I'm waiting to hear back. I broke the email down in the graphic below in case you want to borrow the structure. The bigger lesson applies to almost any business: when you drop something that isn't paying you back, decide on purpose where that time goes, because it's really easy to let it fill back up with busywork. Put it toward your 20%, the things that actually bring new people in or turn them into customers. For me right now, that's collaboration.

I hope everyone had a pleasant Halloween weekend! Did anyone dress up? This week I want to look at procrastination. Not the kind where you avoid doing anything, but the sneakier kind where you continually work on the "comfortable" tasks that don't necessarily move your business forward. I find myself falling into this pattern on a regular basis. Updating my website again, coming up with a new offering, rewriting post copy that's already good... All to avoid sending out cold emails or reaching out to pitch podcast episodes. (I enjoy the creative work.) But those tasks I'm avoiding are what's going to get me closer to paid, every time. So here's my question for you. What's the comfortable task you keep picking over the uncomfortable one that would actually move your business forward? Tell me in the comments, and tell me the one uncomfortable thing you'll do instead before Friday. I'll go first in the replies.

I'm curious, and I think the answers will help all of us. If you could remove one thing that's keeping you from starting your business right now, what would it be? Money? Time? Not knowing where to start? Worrying about what people will think? Something else entirely? There's no wrong answer, and you'll probably find you're not the only one. I'll use what you share to shape our upcoming live sessions.