After a full month, I got zero student but I'm not defeated

In my small little town, we have a bit of a cat problem and it's citizens are required to care for them. I want to clearly state that before I tell you how many cats there are.

Alright, no judgement.

14 cats.

I have my own cat, Jinx and 3 are my in laws and the rest are my street cats. Right now, there is a grandmother, her recent little of 4 and her first litter now is having their own babies because I couldn't trap them. They are friendly now so I will be keeping this at 14 cats.

Stick with me. I'm getting to my point.

This evening I was walking around to feed all the cats in my area including a property around the corner.

I was walking, holding an empty jug of cat food thinking about my business. I had just defeated thoughts...

"People think my art education is overpriced"....."well, those people weren't artists and just saw me through IG at a glance" "Okay, so do I need to work on my wording to explain this and get a new audience?"

"I wanted to have 10 art marketing students by now and paying off our home"....."Well, I am a bit backlogged and can't market as much as I thought I would by now plus I have to look at the one year goal of 100 students. I knew it was going to be a big push to break through to artists who do have the money but need to make sure it is used for good"

Lots of back and forth between negative and positive swings. I could not figure out which is the true voice to listen to. I don't want to go too negative but I don't want to be too relaxed. When I give myself a longer timeline then it feels like I can stretch it out but that's again why I created a one year plan.

I'm not going to share the whole thing but these are my goals from July 2026-2027:

• Have 100 students actively enrolled, graduated or in microlabs.

• 6 Microlabs created

• Host at least 3 weekly workshops

I have it on my board where I can see every day, on my decorative board I got for $3.49 at Goodwill next to my whiteboard that I bought for $30 before I learned about Goodwill.

My point of this is that it's important to set goals and look at them when you are feeling discouraged. I know I did a lot of work to create this academy, I know it's good because artists have told me it was. I know that it is a good price because artists priced it.

Write down in your journal how you imagine your life using present tense and then create the goals you need to do to accomplish that. This is one of the small tips I share amongst my art marketing education here at Artist's Launch Academy.

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