Strategic Development

I have worked to assist individuals and organizations shape their businesses for many decades. What I have recently realized is something that would have amazed me when I began. I now see that the foundational elements of success for both entrepreneurial professionals and corporate organizations are essentially the same: There is a target market for their services and/or products that can be attracted, retained, and expanded. But in order for one to reach out in this direction, it means understanding one’s vision, skills, and also one’s limitations.  

For those of us schooled in arts and letters, that means that even the early phases of our careers must rest on more than indulging in a satisfying hobby. One’s family members and educators may point toward a precise methodology for launching our work. That often means turning to a financial adviser for a concise plan. Unfortunately, for those of us developing careers in art and literature, there are few specialists in our fields of endeavor...who are not paid inordinately high fees for services that may have little to do with our expected trajectory. Unlike the past, there is one other likelihood, we will pursue several careers in our mortal lifetime. For me, the movement from writing commercial and historic non-fiction to fiction did not happen until I was well past age fifty.

Regardless of when such a change may occur, there is one basic approach that anyone at any point in their life can take: shaping a business plan reflective of the financial and organizational aspects of what we face, as well as the talents we possess. I am not simply suggesting that if someone wishes to work in art, they must be capable of executing every aspect of what that field of endeavor implies. For example, in considering the path of my writing mysteries, I felt I needed to explore the total packaging of my work. As I sought an artist for the Natalie Seachrist Hawaiian Mysteries, I focused on offering readers a recognizable element...a single frame surrounding the featured picture for each book cover.

One of the first artists with whom I visited, offered me images from an English garden...hardly something that would reflect the Hawaiian Islands. This response to my initial description spurred me to move beyond my own memories to examine pictures of Hawai`i for more than one hundred years. Eventually that took me to a consideration of symbolic representation and materials used in Hawaiian jewelry. What attracted my eye were images of the Hawaiian heirloom jewelry featuring elegant carving of floral patterns in gold or silver, often with the rubbing of blackening (niello treatment). When I found the beautiful and gifted Yasamine June, I provided her with many pictures, and she presented me with a frame I have utilized in many ways...