This months Inspirational Women in Business Guest Blog is brought to you by Sabrina Tacci.
My name is Sabrina Tacci and I am an artist painter since the ’90s. I live and work in Bergen, Noordholland since 2005. I’m self employed here, in The Netherlands, since 2007.
I’m very happy doing what has always been my dream.
Since I was a child I dreamt about becoming an artist painter. Now I can say that I am a successful artist painter.
My biggest challenge was taking the responsibility to transform my dream in to a profitable business activity without changing the nature of the objective of my work.
I believe that following your life dream and making it real is the easiest project to realize in life as well as the most difficult. It’s the most difficult because it is about your own world your, inner self, thus it is a much more sensitive field than a “neutral” job. It’s the easiest because if you pursue your dream, you’ll put your enthusiasm and energy in to it and it will became powerful and strong in an organic way.
If you keep trying, despite the obvious and necessary starting difficulties, you will find unexpected help and endless opportunities coming from the flowing of your enthusiasm and self-commitment.
I become a painter because I love art, but I also had a mission: I wanted to give voice to the “feminine”.
This “mission” involves not only creating painting where the “main character” is the woman, with her energy and her variety of powers; but also working with the feminine creativity, by giving painting lessons (courses and workshops) to groups made up of 99% women; and in the realisation of “interactive art projects” with women.
Painting is not always a joyful and relaxing experience if you do it professionally but I like all aspects of it. The miracle of giving birth to something out of nothing; this is for me a great journey and I meet on my path: joy, pain, conflict, frustrations, and ecstatic moments. When I’m painting, I’m totally absorbed in the moment with all my inner self.
As I said, giving lessons, is becoming another mission for me. I do it with more and more enthusiasm, it is helping women to create their own art work that gives me a lot of joy, it’s for me a kind of creative coaching.
Learning to paint, doing it in a critical and careful way also gives the opportunity to enjoy more artwork. It makes me so joyful to bring my “painting group” to an exhibition and discussing the art or simply soaking all together for a few minutes in aesthetic admiration in front of a work of art!
I can say that the biggest challenge to me was to learn to “take myself seriously”, from a business point of view. I mean to REALLY BELIEVE that selling my art could become my first source of income and giving me a certain economic stability.
We have that cliché that a profitable business should be an activity that has nothing to do with our dream, but I can confirm to you that this is the exact opposite.
What I wish I had done before starting the business was to define it more precisely, particularly its economic value (price). I needed to come a long way before I could do that. What I have learned is that if you know the true value of your work up front and you are certain about it, one big step is already done and you don’t need to adjust things afterwards, which is more difficult – never forget that women have a tendency to underestimate themselves and consequently the value of their work.
My business is a particular one because it’s a cultural enterprise, but I think the basis is the same for all the activities. I strongly recommend using your “feminine” to make your business unique and powerful – we women don’t need to imitate men to be successful in our goal; it’s actually our peculiarity that makes our project strong.
What do I mean by feminine?
Each person can find her own interpretation, for me basically it is: intuition, creativity, ability to transform, empathy, self-criticism, originality of thought.
For me a good business should be like a tree with:
- Strong roots: who you are, what you are good at, your motivations, where you come from, the place where you live, your wishes and dreams;
- Growing trunk – the way you would like to develop your job, the possibilities to promote it, in what it could consist of, the possibility of cooperation with others;
- Branches – the natural prolongations of the trunk: your target, the possible commitments and cooperation, the directions in which you would like to push your ideas;
- Leaves, flowers and fruits – economical results but also in term of self realisation, achievements.
Two short pieces of advice concerning this example:
- branches – it’s very important to cut the deadwoods otherwise you will lose time, energy and enthusiasm. Every time you cut deadwoods suddenly a new fresh branch pushes
out of your tree. Examples of deadwoods: clients – asking for a lot of attention and never buying any of your products; parallel activities – taking up too much of your energy while having a very low chance of bringing you somewhere. - Prefer the long term goals – build up the trust of you target market and wait patiently for concrete results: try not to push to sell something very quick to somebody who is not completed convinced, maybe she or he will do it, but never come back.
I would like to say that I’m still trying and maybe 30% of the possibilities of my business are now realized. I’m still busy with it and I have a lot to improve, but that also makes the job even more interesting: try to surprise yourself and start every new project as if it was the first one: to be happy and have fun while working is very healthy for you and your business!!
Good luck!!
Author bio:
Sabrinna currently has an exhibition at the ABRN-AMRO bank in Bergen until the end of June; it’s a great opportunity to see her painting live.
Address: Plein 29, 1861JX, Bergen, Noord Holland. Open from Monday (13-17) Tuesday to Friday (9-17)
This year RTVNoordholland made a nice short report about her work, 3 minutes on www.rtvnh.nl/uitzending-gemist/tv/225/36371/Noord-Hollands+Diep, the last 3 minutes, the broadcasting “Uit de kunst” with Rob Cerneus, in Dutch.
You can also make an appointment to visit her atelier:
SabrinaTacci,Breelaan, 75 a Bergen Noord Holland
via email info@sabrinatacci.net or phone +31 (0)6-155561377
To find more info about Sabrina visit her website www.sabrinatacci.net