Courses
Expand your knowledge and skills to improve your business with one-on-one consulting, a course or a workshop with Cynthia Deis. On-line courses for independent retailers, restaurants and breweries who want to wake up their space and freshen up their business. Store and Space Activation
Is your store not as busy as you’d like? You know you need more customers in your store. How can you engage them and bring them to your space?
Create events and activities that give customers a memorable experience. Give them fun. Cynthia loves working with retailers, restaurants, breweries and other small businesses to create memorable events and experiences that encourage customers to come to your location. Whether via in-person consultation or through an on-line course, she can help you activate your space.
To schedule a course for your private organization or group, please use the tiny envelope at the top of this page to get in touch with Cynthia.
Currently scheduled courses open for enrollment will appear below the course descriptions.
Pricing for Profit: Abandoning the Starving Artist Myth
Are you interested in learning more about how to price your artwork? Are you selling your work but unsure why you are not earning what you expect?
Taught with Tiffany Coley, this intense virtual class helps you abandon the idea of the starving artist and make a profit with your artwork. This class will cover the details of a profit-driven pricing strategy for artists. You’ll discuss pricing for your artwork or art services, wholesale vs. retail pricing, how to identify productive hours and how to approach pricing to achieve the desired income level from your work. The class will work through pricing using a business case study and the details of pricing You will leave with a method to price your work, including a downloadable file that can be used when pricing your own work.
are you making a fair price for your work?
learn business basics (photo of artist packing up artwork for shipping)
REAL Craft Entrepreneurship
Are you a mid-career craftsperson struggling to leave your day job or a new-to-the biz creative with dollar signs in your eyes? This 8-week course is a business intensive for craftspeople and artist. From business structures to support systems, from credit cards to cash flow, this course will walk you through the process of creating a craft business that makes money. Each week you’ll work on activities and projects that lead you to a business plan. You’ll finish the class with a binder full of worksheets, ideas, contacts and checklists and be energized to make your craft business succeed.
This course is taught with Tiffany Price-Coley, jewelry artist and art entrepreneurship educator. Learn more about her work here.
This course is based on the REAL Entrepreneurship courses program and is a hands-on, activity-based experience. Course topics will include cash flow, production, costs and pricing, inventory, local resources, sales and promotions and more.
Adding Teaching To Your Resumé - a workshop for artists and crafters
Are you an artist who wants to start teaching your techniques? Are you a craftsperson who is ready to share your skills? Teaching your work, whether one-on-one or in groups, can be a wonderful way to expand your own skills, increase your name recognition and even make money doing what you love. This 4-hour course explores basic teaching techniques and learning styles and is specifically geared towards artists, crafters and creatives who want to teach their skill. We’ll discuss whether teaching is right for you, how to write an engaging course description, how to decide which techniques to teach, and even how to deal with ‘copycat’ students in your classes. Resources and teaching venues may be discussed, and we’ll even talk about how to price your classes. Making art or a craft is very different from teaching that same art or craft, but it can be rewarding. Find out if it’s the right choice for your art career.
is teaching your art or craft skill right for you?
Zero to Newsletter in Just One Day
Email marketing is inexpensive and one of the best ways to engage with a client or customer base. Emails can direct customers to event registration, show off new work and sell tickets. Email newsletters work to share information and keep clients engaged every day. Why don’t you have a newsletter? Put all your worries away and take this four-hour course to begin sending regular emails to your customer base. This course is for you if you are an small-business owner, artist, organization, independent retailer or gallery. You’ll learn about newsletter templates that will help you to create regular communication with your customers. Whether you want to improve event attendance, increase sales, communicate a show or exhibit schedule or other information, a professional email newsletter is not as intimidating as you may have thought. Each participant will need to come to the class with a wifi-enabled laptop and be ready to create their first newsletter during the workshop. We’ll discuss various free email platforms, how often to send a newsletter and how to convert your newsletter to a blog post or site update. Don’t have a mailing list? Don’t worry, we’ll talk about that as well.
