Luz Donahue is the artist behind Pet Portraits with Love, a service that provides custom portraits of animals for their owners. Whether creating a memorial piece or a gift for someone with a special pet, Donahue aims to provide every customer with high-quality personalized service and an overall positive experience. Her background is not typical of a professional artist, which gives her a unique perspective on her business and the challenges faced by many new creative entrepreneurs.
The Start
How did you get started with your business?
It’s kind of a funny thing. I was a virtual assistant and then from there I did some social media and branding work, and I really liked that. I built a decent-sized professional network.
I always made art, ever since I was a little kid. It’s kind of a cliché to say “ever since I could hold a pencil …” but really, ever since I could hold a pencil that was always what I wanted to do. But society at large tells you there’s a way to do it: You have to go to art school, and you have to do all of these things, and it’s a lot of money, and you have to have resources… I always thought that it was something I could work up to if I could make enough money at something else. It never occurred to me that I could actually do the thing I was really passionate about for money.
I started doing more artwork and sharing it online with my business network. I started hearing from people saying, “I actually really like that! Are you selling it?” I thought, “Are you kidding me? You want to buy it?!” It’s just not something that ever occurred to me, especially being self-taught and growing up in a household where art wasn’t really appreciated as something with a true value inherently.
Animals and nature have always inspired me. It makes me feel more connected when I’m out in the forest or at the beach. My friends started asking me, “Could you draw my dog?” I thought, “Really? You want a picture of your dog?” But I started doing it and, sure enough, I really loved it. It was a perfect combination of my love of animals and my love of art. It allowed me to give people something that will last forever.
The next thing I knew, I was building a little Squarespace website and I was booked months ahead of time.
How did you fund your business?
Part of the problem with art is that materials are pretty expensive. If you don’t have another full-time job, you have to be very careful because you could very easily spend more than you make if you’re not really planning and thinking ahead. I’ve been fortunate enough to have some freelance income from my previous business.
I’ve also been lucky enough to get some funding from friends. I decided a couple months ago I wanted to do a pet expo, and I had to ask somebody to lend me $400 to do it. It’s something that’s difficult to overcome, but it’s part of the journey of any entrepreneur to learn how to ask. I’ve had very good luck in that when you’re excited about what you’re doing, people are excited with you and want to help out. I’m learning that other people see it as an opportunity to give and to be a part of something bigger. It’s not just about the receiving.
Running the Business
How did you learn to run your business?
Trial by fire. I starting out doing virtual assistant work and made every mistake in the book: not saving for taxes, spending money on the wrong things like really expensive business cards, buying way too many training programs with no time to implement them … Making those mistakes with my previous business helped me learn how to run this one better.
Who was your first customer?
The first time I did a pet portrait for someone, I was taking my very first drawing class at Cabrillo College. It was a junior college summer class just to see …
I had decided for one of our charcoal projects to draw a cat. I had this idea, but I didn’t have a good reference photo, so I went on reddit and asked if someone was interested in giving me a photo of their pet. I had tons and tons of submissions and one of them was a photographer who had beautiful photos of these regal-looking cats. I ended up using one of those. And that’s where my first customers came from. I had so many submissions, I kept doing them for fun. About half of those were actually purchased by the people who submitted the photo.
At that point, it wasn’t really even intended as a business. I just did it for fun, but it turned out it was something valuable enough for someone to buy. So that’s when I decided to put together my website.
What’s the biggest mistake you made in the first year?
Pricing was probably my biggest error. Because I’m so connected to what I’m selling, I looked at it as something that comes easily and forgot that my skills are what people are paying for because they can’t do what I’m doing. So that made it really easy for me to sell a lot of work for not very much money when I could have been charging a lot more if I had been more careful about looking at the market and calculating the time and material costs.
What’s the smartest thing you did in the first year?
Being insanely grateful to every person who buys something, or compliments what I’ve done, or who sees my work, or who subscribes to my newsletter … I’m very careful about the way I talk to them because I think the building of personal relationships has a lot to do with people understanding that you are grateful that they’re there.
What’s the most rewarding thing about running your own business?
It’s a double-edged sword, but I like that I can work at my own pace and on my own schedule. If you’re careful, you can have a very nice life and put self-care at the forefront. You can get everything done that you need to get done, and you can work when you’re ready to work and feel like working, and when you’re needing downtime you can take it and foster your relationships. You have more freedom in your lifestyle. That’s my favorite part about running my own business, but if you’re not careful, you can really overwork yourself.
What’s the most challenging thing about running your own business?
The other side of what I just said. When you’re running your own business, you can get a little punishing about it. And then you start to work so much that you burn yourself out or you’re not as excited about what you’re doing, and that’s really dangerous.
What’s the most surprising thing about running your own business?
A lot of people look at a role model like Richard Branson or someone else who they’re learning business from, and they try to emulate that person. I think that means that they’re forgetting where they’re starting. Those people have done so much more to get to where they are. You need to worry about putting one foot in front of the other when you’re starting out, not about things like getting into the Oprah magazine.
What business owner or entrepreneur do you admire most?
My big artist role model is Amanda Palmer. In her TED talk she talks about the art of asking and giving and the value of what you bring to the table, whether it’s in art or business or whatever. She had the largest crowd funded music campaign that has ever been. She got $1.2 million from 25,000 people, which is amazing. I really look up to her in the way she does business as an artist.
And I have a life coach, her name is Jenny Mustafa-Julack. The way she runs her business is so authentic, and I think it’s really important to seem like a real person in business.
What I’ve Learned
What do you wish you had known before you had started your business?
I wish that I had known that my physical body would be challenged. When you get to a point where you are booked solid, things as simple as making sure you stretch every half hour at your desk are hard.
I wish I knew about what actual time I had to do the work, because when you think about running a business you often leave out some of the administrative things you have to do behind the scenes. If you don’t calculate that time into your pricing structure or hiring, you can really do yourself a disservice.
What advice do you have for others starting their own business?
If you’re just starting a business and you’re in the idea stage, I think it’s really important to spend 90 percent of your time doing some kind of action. You can do research and learn, but you’re also going to learn as you actually do your business. If you’re not actually out talking to people and trying to get people involved in your business by doing active marketing and having one-on-one conversations with people, it’s going to go a lot slower. Get out there and show your product or service to people and do whatever it takes to actually get people in through the door to build momentum.
About the Author — Ashley Sweren is a freelance marketing writer and editor. She owns her own small business, Firework Writing, located in San Jose, California.
This article was originally written on March 9, 2015 and updated on July 21, 2016.
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