Staying Legal

It costs a few dollars, but it’s really great to have a lawyer and/or an accountant who keeps track of all of the legal stuff like renewing your Merchant Certificate and your Business Entity Report. The important work for the…

The 5th Grade & How I Became an Artist

Talking to the 5th graders gave me a clear insight into how fulfilling the 5th grade was. It's when I became an artist. It's when I learned about realism & abstraction. It's when I started looking at the world with an artist's eye. Maybe it's in the 5th grade when we can clearly see who we want to be when we grow up.

Not Art Speak, Not Corporate Speak

I can throw around words like “abstract expressionism” in the semi-secret language of people who create, go to museums and understand decades and centuries by style of painting. We can speak with to each other. We have a particular language.…

Art Workers – Hiring is Hard

Hiring used to be easy I thought it would be easy to hire people to work for Avant Garb Mascots, my small, arty, mascot-making company. At first, it was easy . I was able to hire people who had grown…

Art Art Art & Money Money Money

The Museum of Modern Art helped raise me. When I was young, my friends and I would take the F train from Queens to 53rd Street and go hang out at the Museum of Modern Art -or as we called…

Flirting is Marketing / Marketing is Flirting

Putting on the lipstick & the heels! When I start complaining to my, sometimes exasperated, staff that we will have no work after we finish whatever mascot we are working on….….and we will be absolutely out of money,…..nobody will ever…

Art Biz & Hiring

When first started AvantGarb (we’re a custom, mascot making company),  I was the only employee. I did everything, designed, made the mascots, shipped them, did the marketing —everything.Quickly, I realized I was going to have to hire people. Just as…

Art Workers

Carlos & Jennifer “talking design”  “How satisfied are we with our jobs? Gallup regularly polls workers around the world to find out. Its survey last year found that almost 90 percent of workers were either “not engaged” with or “actively…

Good Exposure for Your Art? Really?

Most of us have been there. Someone has flattered us by asking if we would be willing to display our work at their business – a restaurant or a lobby, maybe a snazzy spa. When a business comes by and…

"We’re Closed" = RFRA Bill in Indiana

Yes I live in Indianapolis, My business is in Indianapolis. Right now, all businesses in Indianapolis are in shock. A Religious Freedom (RFRA) bill found it’s way to Governor Pence’s desk, and he foolishly signed it. The bill allows businesses…

Some Thoughts on Marketing an Arty Biz

At AvantGarb, we make big, dynamic, extroverted mascots. In my weaker moments, I have this delusional idea, that people will somehow find AvantGarb and recognize our talent & vision. Sometimes magical thinking works. But really, If you want your arty…

Be Generous

It is tempting in a teensy business to keep all of the cash in the business —to keep investing in the business to make it sustainable. Let me argue in favor of generosity. This has been a good year for my little…

Biz, blessings & a martini

AvantGarb has been a growing, productive business for a really long time. I started AvantGarb in my Berkeley, California garage when my youngest daughter was about 3 months old. Month after month I have made money, and those dollars have…