Hello, I'm Bonny Snowdon, ex-corporate person and mother turned successful artist entrepreneur. It wasn't that long ago though that I lacked the confidence, vision, and support network to focus on growing my dream business. Fast forward past many life curve balls, waves of self-doubt, and so many lessons learned, and you'll see Ignite my thriving online coloured pencil artist community, a community that changes members' lives for the better and gives me freedom to live abundantly whilst doing what I love and spending quality time with my beloved family and dogs,
all whilst creating my best artwork with Coloured pencils and mentoring others to do the same. But this life wasn't always how it was for me. It used to only exist in my imagination. I've created the, It's A Bonny Old Life podcast to help increase people's confidence, share mine and my community's experience, and hope through fascinating personal stories, champion the other amazing humans in my personal,
professional, and membership community and create another channel through which I can support others to realize their dreams. If you're a passionate coloured pencil artist or an aspiring one who's looking to create their best work and a joyful life you love, you are in the right place. Grab a cup and a custard cream, let's get cracking. I've been a full-time artist for seven years.
It's not all been rosy. However, I've learned a huge amount about myself about how to run a successful art business and how to keep myself motivated and being a little indulgent here and telling you some of my story. You know me, I love a good chat, so grab your cup of tea. Mine is Earl Gray with no milk in my favorite Emma Bridgewater mug.
Sit back and enjoy. I can't quite believe that I've been a full-time artist for seven years now. Honestly, it seems like yesterday when I opened my present for my darling daughter on Christmas morning, 2015 to find a colouring book and WH Smith Pencils, those pencils literally had enough magic to completely change my life. Being a full-time artist allowed me to make a living,
to pay my mortgage, to continue to be creative, which I loved, and from six months in a way to be able to cope as a single mum. I think that being an artist can seem a bit fairy tale a bit. Ooh, how lovely darling, as my mum would say, and actually when I told her I was going full time,
she, she jokingly said, well, I don't even think it was jokingly to be honest. Ooh, so you've retired then I think there can be a very stereotypical version of what an artist is and how they live. I know when I summ up a vision in my head of an artist is basically someone sitting in a studio at the top of the house,
and honestly I think I'm seeing Roger Radcliff here from the 101 Dalmatians, although he was a songwriter, but still an artist. Lots of paper around chaotic, finding amazing motivation and creativity and the we small hours paintbrush behind my ear jars of water everywhere and cups of cold tea likely with paintbrushes in them. You know, I think we do have this lovely vision of what an artist is like,
also that they're poor, you know, a starving artist that loves to create but finds it hard to sell their work. I think we all have this vision. Actually, being an artist isn't really like that. It, it's amazing, but how I found my way to being successful has led me down many paths normally looking inwards to find how I can change certain things that I do that I think will help me on my path to success.
The chaotic part of me with all of the paper around hasn't changed. You just need to have a look at my kitchen table to understand that. However, I now very much work to a schedule, which at times can be a bit suffocating, but on the whole allows me to create and work towards my goals much more easily. Let me tell you how I found being an artist and how I've been able to change my life.
I'm sure you know me by now. I'm positive. I always look on the bright side of things and although I do also like to be realistic, I really do have a belief that anything is possible, and this is why I know that if I start down the road of doom and gloom and all the negatives that I will carry on down that road,
it's amazing how our brains work, how we are so quick to pick up habits and quick to really believe things aren't great for me. How it's easy to believe things won't work, but it seems much harder to believe they will. To be honest, a belief is a belief, so I'm opting for the positive ones. Art or creativity is a force for good.
Whatever you are doing, it can bring amazing changes if you let it and I let the creativity in, I completely embraced it, and if anything, it did take over being a mom and having a full-time job back then, plus horses. I was busy. You know when people say they don't have time, well, I genuinely had a pretty full schedule.
However, I prioritized how those pencils were making me feel. I wanted more of it. They made me feel good, so I made time to use them. I'd work all day, do the horses, sort the children out, and then I would sit with my pencils and draw for hours into the small hours of the morning. Yes, I probably didn't have enough sleep,
but I don't regret the hours of solitude just drawing. In the early months. It was colouring books and then of course I started to draw my own subjects. I made the decision around October, 2016 to become a full-time artist. I did the work, I made a business plan. I went to the bank to set up a bank account. I made an 18 month forecast.
I had a vision in my head as to what my business would be like. Most importantly, I wholeheartedly believed in myself. I knew it was going to work. I had no doubts, and I started to put everything into action without action, without doing of the stuff you're not going to get very far. Now, some might think, well, that's all very well,
but of course things will happen, things will get in the way. What if you don't make a success straight away? What if you don't get clients or sell art? And yes, of course things aren't rosy all the time, but I had a good plan of action and I had the self-belief that it would work out. Of course, some things did go wrong,
not take deposits for a start. Having loads of people on my list in the early days, contacting them and them saying, I'm ready to do your portrait, and then they changed their mind. That was a lesson I only had to learn once, take deposits. I don't think I've ever worked as hard as I have since. Going full-time in 2017,
I discovered a lot of things about myself. I discovered a lot of things about other creatives around me. Some were incredibly supportive and some very sadly downright nasty. I found out how social media can be amazing. One minute and then algorithms change and everything is turned upside down. I became even more resilient, but also I became agile in my business, able to pick up on trends,
change things, and follow my intuition. This came from reading, surrounding myself with people, doing what I wanted to do and learning, always learning and then putting what I'd learned into practice. My business at first was based on my commission work, drawing people's animals in colour pencil. From very early on I started a mailing list and about a year into my business,
all my commissions were booked from a wait list. One of the most successful things I have done in my business that and the regular price increases. Did you know you now can't just buy a Rolex watch and I'm, I'm not comparing myself all to Rolex here, but you look at anyone that's successful and there is likely a wait list somewhere in their marketing plan and that's what Rolex did.
Creating a wait list increases demand. It also allows you to properly plan your time. You aren't constantly waiting for bookings to come in. You create a list and if you do it properly and effectively, you book your years working over a couple of days and yes, it is something anyone can achieve. The key to long-term success is to have a solid marketing strategy.
One that you can change if you need to, but that you know what you are working towards. I've talked about RAs a lot before. Reticular activating system, the filter in our brain if you like, it filters out all the stuff that isn't important so you keep the stuff that is, the things you focus on and think about are what your RAs sees as important,
so if you are constantly telling yourself negative things, that is what your RAs will give you. Be very careful what you feed into your mind. Let's talk about burnout for a minute. Burnout isn't something I've suffered from, I think because I've always been very happy to ask for help and I can read my own body and feelings ensuring I don't fall out of love with what I'm doing.
I do see artists in my genre burnout sadly having to take breaks and I'm sure this is due to them trying to do everything themselves. Being an artist can be lonely if you let it. I made the decision to have people help me as soon as I could afford to. This is something I'm really passionate about and I do wish more artists would see the benefit of delegating.
Doesn't mean you aren't in control. It means you have more time to do the stuff you love doing that keeps you happy and fulfilled and ultimately will earn you more money. Putting a value on yourself is so important. Putting a value on your time and the tasks you do is key. There's a great book I recommend all the time called Buy Back Your Time.
If you haven't read it and are struggling in your business, head to Amazon now and buy it. When I first started out full-time with my art, I pretty much drew all the time sharing to social media a few times a week and writing the odd newsletter, but basically my time was spent drawing. Looking back now the luxury of 10 hours a day of drawing,
I realize a couple of things. One, it's not sustainable to draw for that long every day as I get older, my body doesn't like being still for long periods of time and two, actually how blessed I was that I could spend that amount of time home and my skills. They do say it takes a thousand hours to master a skill. Well,
I put those hours in for sure. Very soon the marketing and customer service side of my business did take over my day, became one of two halves. During the day I would work on my marketing plan, social media and customer service, usually around four hours a day. Then I would start my drawing usually early evening and work into the night. This routine has stuck with me and today I still work this way,
although weekends if I can, I will get some 10 hour stints in and I've now invested in better chairs so I'm not quite so stiff when I draw for longer. Marketing really is the key to a successful business. Whether you opt for more traditional style or you are fully online. My commission business has thrived. My prices have gone from 40 pounds in 2016 to 1200 for a 10 by 12 with full books until 2026.
This isn't because I'm the best artist out there far from it. There are many who are way more skilled than I am. This is due to me really understanding the need to raise my prices in small amounts but on a regular basis and really understanding marketing and being agile enough to change things and try new things when the market on the whole changes. Going back to pricing,
can you imagine booking in 48 portraits to fill a year, four portraits a month, each portrait being 200 pounds? Say that might sound like a huge amount and sound like someone is incredibly successful, but that equates to 9,600 pounds a year. Would you work in a full-time job for that amount of money? No, of course you wouldn't. It's not sustainable and it's incredibly hard work when you first start out,
make your wait list shorter so you can take on say four months at a time, which gives you the chance of increasing your prices. This is the trap that many people fall into cellular portraits for a low price and try and pack as many as you can in, but it's just not conducive to a happy artist. What is conducive to a happy artist is creating things that make you a living,
will pay your mortgage and will help you add to your pension and then alongside those commercial pieces doing things for you, things that make you feel happy, that push you and help you develop, and that means you have to really look at your pricing so you can do fewer pieces for more money. It's not rocket science. Now, of course, you can't increase your prices from 200 to 1,001 jump.
That would be silly, but you can increase that 200 gradually over a year to make it 400 or even 500 if you're increasing your prices every couple of months and then the next year you can up your prices again. It honestly doesn't take a huge amount of time to get your work up to a price that is sustainable and will bring in a decent salary.
Three portraits a month at a thousand pounds each is 36,000 pounds. Of course, you have to factor tax, et cetera, but that is a much better salary to be on than under 10 K and yes, it takes hard work. It takes some knocks to your confidence, but if you let it, it can take your confidence completely. This is where your self-development really comes in.
Development has always been high on my agenda, developing my drawing skills, but also myself. I think when it comes to running a business and wanting to grow it, you not only need to do the work to understand marketing and business in general, you also have to do the work on yourself. You won't be the same person. You'll need different skills to cope with things you do need to change.
For me, it was about learning more about the money side of things, something I've never been good at and always shied away from. I think because there was a period of time in my life where I didn't have any money and found myself in a lot of debt that that trauma and, and it is a trauma stays with me. I've done a lot of work with my mindset to change this and it wasn't easy.
Honestly, I think the work I've done on myself is the biggest catalyst for my art business success. I've always had self-belief, but the plans I had and have the vision I have created were pretty scary. If my self-belief had wavered, then I wouldn't have done as well as I have. There isn't really a solid formula for success in business, although you could say that vision plus belief plus action equals success as a top level,
and I do believe that you then of course have to drill down into those separate areas to get your strategy, but that's basically what I had. I had a vision, I believed I could. I took action immediately and I've been successful and continue to be successful. You've heard me say before, there's nothing really special about me. I'm 50 something, single mum,
overweight, got chy joints and I love chocolate. Oh my goodness, I love chocolate and similar to so, so many other people, what have I got that has allowed me to create something that has enabled me to completely change my life around? I can only put it down to my self-belief, my love of learning and development and my inherent need to ask for help.
Anyway, back to being an artist. I started teaching alongside my commission work in 2018. It's something I had always planned on doing as it was something I'd done before, but in the leadership and coaching space, I enjoy being around people and I love sharing my knowledge. My Patreon launched in February, 2019. I had a set goal of 200 pounds a month from it,
and setting goals is so important for business success. I had unbeknownst to me, created a successful strategy before I launched. I had started to teach in my social media posts, giving tips, helping people becoming known for someone who would share and help. I started talking about my up and coming Paton about nine months before it launched, just talking about it,
what I was going to do and what I was going to be drawing. The day I launched, I couldn't believe the amount of people joining. My coaching tier sold out in minutes and the hopeful 200 pounds a month turned into 2000 as I took on over a hundred people in one day and that amount kept growing until the height of my Patreon. Before I started my own platform,
I had nearly 2000 students and was earning nearly 20,000 pounds a month. I want to share these figures with you because they are so achievable, although it is not just about putting images up on social media. It's all the other work you do in the background. It's the help you give for free. It's the keeping yourself happy. It's building new goals.
It's understanding trends in the market industry. It's about trying new things. It's about being agile and changing things if things don't work out. It's about staying positive and not getting down when things don't work out because sometimes things don't work and that's okay. It's about surrounding yourself with people who are doing what you want to do, doing it well and setting a great positive example for others.
Patreon was hard work. A platform as most of you know, is not known for its ease of use, although they have bought some changes in, it's still a far cry from a great platform. The good thing is that they deal with the customer service, the cancellations, the refunds, the missed payments. This is where your platform costs go because this is a full-time job.
As I found out when I launched my own platform, I found myself constantly on YouTube trying to figure out what equipment I needed to record my stu, my tutorials. The first camera I used, and I'm laughing because, oh my goodness, I did so much research. The first camera I used was a Logitech nine 20. It was so tricky to set up and I had to have it about four inches away from my surface and stream via QuickTime on the Mac.
Then when I finished, I had to wait flipping ages for the video to save before moving onto the next bit. It was not easy and drawing trying to peer over a camera was not enjoyable either. I kept researching and ended up finding out about proper video cameras and bought myself my little Sony a X 53 and still got it. It's fab, easy to use and gives a good clear picture.
I can attach it via HTML to my Mac so I can stream easily with it. One of the biggest challenges for me recording my work was that I don't draw flat. I never have. I just find the perspective goes out of the window and of course, drawing flat leaves leaves with awful back pain, so finding a solution to hold my camera above me was another source of many hours of research.
The first solution was floor standing tripods with a boom arm, but every time the dogs walk past everything would wobble. I ended up with a structure that has struts that fix to the floor and the ceiling so much better, and I still use that now, although I'm having my studio refitted this year with proper boom arms attached to the walls, so there'll be nothing on the floor.
I still use my phone for social media videos as it's just easy as it's in the right format. I've always chosen images that peel to me to draw and teach. I'm very conscious of understanding my limits more around motivation than skill, so there are certain subjects I just won't draw. I have to be interested and passionate about what I'm drawing. Coloured pencils take a long time and I don't wanna fall out of love with my subject halfway through.
As my business has grown, so has my team. I know my limitations and my vision and goals are big. There is no way I could reach them on my own and like I said, I want to stay motivated. It all started with my packaging. You've often heard me talk about packaging and how I've never enjoyed doing it. in fact, it stresses me out completely,
so I found someone else who would do it, and yes, they charge. Of course they charge, but it frees me up to do what I do best. More drawing, more idea, creating and keeping me stress free. I cannot put a price on keeping your mind healthy. A typical day for me now looks something like this. I get up around seven and four days a week.
I'll head off swimming. Swimming is my exercise. I've always loved swimming, so I'll do a few lengths. Head to the thermal pool where they have this amazing bubble machine that's also kind of vibrates. It's really garing then into the sauna and then a dip in the cold natural pool they have, which quietens my mind and sets me up for the day.
The Journey two and from the pool is around 25 minutes, so I managed to fit in podcast listening here or listening to messages on my Voxer accountability group. My podcast listens are always about marketing or business or something's going to help me. I get home around nine ish and this is when I start my day. My diary is usually pretty full with either meetings with the team,
finance meetings today, for example, I have a meeting about trademarks and copywriting or it might be a strategy meeting with Lucy and Amy putting together new things that are coming up, creating line arts materials, list, developing tutorial ideas and course ideas I want to do, and twice a month I have a coaching session, which is vital to keep me on the right track.
I have two coaches, a spiritual coach and a business coach. I may have a live stream to run for my members. This is usually early afternoon. Then after the live stream, there's usually another meeting or a podcast recording. Then around 3 34, I stop working. I have a break, have some tea, head outside, read a book, watch TikTok.
Who am I kidding? I stop work and then I'm on TikTok all afternoon. I then usually head back into my studio around seven and start my drawing tutorials and commissions and I tend to finish around 11, 11 30 and then it's off to bed. In between times I do the usual stuff, washing, folding clothes, sweeping up dog hair. I have numerous cups of tea and twice a week I have a yoga session,
which I love. It's helped me so much with my mobility. Fridays are my day off, my two full-time. Employees don't work on Fridays either. Taking a leaf out of Amy Porterfield's business model here and working a four day week, I think it's wonderful. I get a lovely weekend to do what I want usually if I can. I'll fit lots of drawing in Saturday evening.
My youngest son and I usually watch a film of his choice and they are always flipping amazing. The last two we have watched have been Night Crawler and The Prestige the Pres. The Prestige was, oh my goodness, oh my goodness, it was so good. Michael Kane, Hugh Jackman, David Bowie, and Christian Bale. I highly recommend you watch it.
It was really, really good as a business, I have grown from just starting out in 2016 with my drawing to now having a business with a team and a turnover of over 1 million and I'm incredibly and proud of myself. It's been really hard work, but it's been amazing learning new things, meeting new people, becoming part of an incredible circle of entrepreneurs who are so genuine and willing to share.
My goals are to do what I love and do the best, and that is to teach, to try to go live as much as I can to help as many people as possible, become creative using coloured pencils 'cause I truly want others to feel the changes that can happen when you bring creativity back into your life. I have some huge goals for the next few years.
I have the vision, I have the belief, and the action is happening as we speak. Remember, vision plus belief plus action equals success.
I really hope you enjoyed listening to this episode of my It's AB Bonny Old Life podcast. If you did, I'd be so grateful to you for emailing me or texting a link to the show or sharing it on social media with those you know who might like it too. Life podcast. If you did, I'd be so grateful to you for emailing me or texting a link to the show or sharing it on social media with those you know who might like it too.
My mission with this podcast is all about sharing mine and my community's experience and hope by telling your fascinating personal stories, championing the other amazing humans in my personal, professional, and membership community, and to create another channel through which I can support you to realize your coloured pencil and life dreams. If you haven't done so yet, please help me on my mission to spread positivity and joy throughout the Coloured Pencil world by following me on my socials at Bonny Snowdon Academy or by getting on my list at bonnie Snowdon academy.com.
And remember, I truly believe if I can live the life of my dreams doing what I love, then you can too. We just need to keep championing and supporting each other along the way in order to make it happen. Till next time.
And remember, I truly believe if I can live the life of my dreams doing what I love, then you can too. We just need to keep championing and supporting each other along the way in order to make it happen. Till next time.
