Resonance with a Hammer

Today I had lunch with my friend and business coach/mentor Steve Franks. We were supposed to meet at the 3rd floor of Becker. After a time of playing Keystone Cops going up and down the stairs trying to catch each other, we managed to meet on a bench outside. We got caught up. He asked me how classes were going. I told him how I've enjoyed them for the most part, but at the same time the search for ideas gets tiring sometimes. Sometimes a movie is just a movie, I don't need to be thinking about hidden theology and undertones in everything. It now seems hard to turn off my brain. I like what he told me next.

"When you've got a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

I then showed him around and we went to lunch. Steve has been working on the idea of an arts incubator. You see, he works at the Northeast Indiana Innovation Center in Fort Wayne, which is a small business and technology incubator. He's used to people talking about code, and websites, and machinery. But he's willing to work with art ventures because he feels that art is an aspect of technology. He would like to go further with it though, hence the arts incubator. I get the feeling that I'm kind of a test subject for him.

Anyway, we discussed how the traditional means of selling, like you would technology, aren't cutting it. There is no target market, no key demographics, when it comes to art. You just have to put something out there and see if it resonates with people who are like you. You can't spend all of your time putting random crap on things in the hopes people will buy it. And maybe, there aren't enough people like you to make a go of it. Maybe you're just too off the beaten track to resonate with a majority. Maybe people need a few years, or decades, to catch up with you. But it's something to try and nurture any growth.