Marketing and Business Success Require Taking Risks - Lots of Them

Just think how great it would be to feel secure in your marketing and and law practice success. Not to have to worry about taking risks. Having a map of your business, a plan you can rigidly adhere to and count on no matter what. Being able to predict what will happen, like having an iron-clad insurance policy.

But what would that really mean for you if such a thing existed? Not taking risks would mean doing the same things the same old ways, over and over again. It would mean knowing all the time what is going to happen. On the one hand that sounds comforting. But on the other it would create a large problem for you. There would be no surprises, good or bad. No excitement, no challenges, no growth. How long would you find that acceptable, interesting, or stimulating?

But even if you desired this no-surprises security insurance with its drawbacks, the world outside you and your practice simply is not going to conform to your wishes for it. The fact is that while you may have considerable control over how you deal with your marketing, practice, and life, you have very little control over how life outside you deals with them. For example,

- You cannot always predict and control the behavior of others.

- You cannot ensure that the local economy will be in your favor.

- You cannot be certain of the consequences of any given action.

- You cannot guarantee that your marketing and practice will thrive and be satisfying.

Despite what some believe about your being able to attract whatever you want by simply concentrating on it, believing that you can make the world conform to your desires and expectations results in frustration, anger, futility, and depression. It takes focus, planning, and lots of action to get what you want. And even then, you still cannot guarantee you will receive it.

External security is wishful thinking. The only real security is what you generate internally. What you think and act on. This is what you control. Specifically, it is you

- Having confidence that you can do whatever is necessary to get what you want.

- Realizing and accepting that you have to choose and control what you do... or be tossed around at everyone's whim like a ragdoll in a tornado.

- Determining how you will respond to the environment and events as they occur.

- Deciding to act to make things happen the way you want.

Risk-taking is essential. In the words of Helen Keller, "Security does not exist in nature.... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."

Ask yourself what would you do if the Men in Black swooped in, snatched you, and dropped you in your birthday suit on a plain in the Sudan. Could you survive not knowing the culture, language, or climate? Could you make friends, get food, and find shelter? If you depend upon external security, you would likely perish. But if you depend upon your internal security, you would likely survive. The same is true of your marketing and practice.

Marketing and Business Tips

If we were to look at how marketing has shifted from the days of the "yellow pages", wouldn't we all wonder in awe and amazement at exactly what has happened?

Newspapers, Posters, Calling Cards, all seem to be slowly but surely disappearing and we are being totally taken over by the exciting and sometimes scary world of the internet.

In today's world of fast moving money and start-up businesses, anyone who has a true eagerness to achieve his or her goals as a business, will or should definitely realise that without marketing online, you are missing or should I say leaving out a huge and vast income potential.

It doesn't really help your business to spend vast sums of money on paper adverts, as most people don't even bother getting as far as the advertising sections in a newspaper anymore.

And what with newspapers going out of existence within the next 5-10 years, you are probably just wasting all your time and effort, or should I say "flogging a dead horse".

We only have to look at the statistics - 95% of people globally, use the internet, whether it is for local, national, or international searches.

And it doesn't stop there - as most people will search online for everything, from plumbers and electricians, to cars or holidays.

Online marketing has truly exploded over the past 4 years and include areas such as, social media, mobile, video, and even article writing.

But does marketing actually help?

Well let's look at the various phases of online marketing, and maybe you can answer this question for yourself?

Having a business online, without getting customers to it, is a pretty useless achievement.

You need traffic, and lots of it.

And online marketing, when used correctly, achieves just that.

By placing videos online for example, and well-presented videos, you can achieve a ton of traffic to your website. Videos only have to be watched and clicked on by interested parties, for them to go viral, and within the short space of 24 hours.

Writing interesting and well-constructed articles, is yet another form of online marketing, and again will achieve a high volume of traffic to your website.

Another important part of marketing a business online is to connect via social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. With the correct tools in place and well-presented business pages, you would be quite amazed at how much traffic these huge social media engines, pull to your site.

The other aspect to marketing online is SEO, or as it is called search engine optimisation.

A website, without well-constructed keywords and metatags, in place, will struggle to achieve a good online presence, no matter what or how much other marketing techniques, you may have in place.

Keyword research is an art in itself and getting it right, shows huge results.

I would like to think that after reading this article, you have come to your own conclusions, about marketing online, and that very little persuasion is needed.

Rosa Bonheur

French painter Rosa Bonheur (1822-99) was "the most internationally renowned woman painter of the mid-nineteenth century."1

Bonheur was one of the most talented and successful painters in the 19th century, she began showing her work in the Paris Salon in 1841 and quickly made a name for herself as a painter of animals with a focus on the domesticated animals of France.  In the 19th century a greater number of women were pursuing art as a career and studying in the École des Beaux-Arts.  Yet it wasn't usually possible for women to draw and paint from the nude model where students would learn anatomy as it was considered morally corrupt. Due to this, female painters of the time often turned to subjects other than figurative history paintings. Mary Cassatt famously painted mothers and children, Cecilia Beaux painted portraits, Berthe Morisot painted scenes of modern Parisian life and Rosa Bonheur focused on painting animals.

While the move away from history painting put limitations on paintings and commissions for women artists, Rosa Bonheur was so skilled at painting animals that she attracted attention at an early age.  By age 26 she received an important commission from the French government to paint her work Plowing in the Nivernais.  Bonheur traveled to the Nivernais region so that she could paint the landscape and oxen accurately.  

Ploughing in Nivernais, Rosa Bonheur, 1849, Musee D'Orsay

The work shows a typical French rural farming theme of the fields being tilled in the autumn.  While her work is part of the Realist movement of Millet, Breton and Courbet, in a sense this rural scene is rather romanticized.  There is a nobility given to both the animals and cowherds.  When she was painting this the influences of the industrial revolution were spreading throughout France and Europe, and this scene pays homage to traditional methods of labor.  

Rosa Bonheur "based the work on a description of oxen in George Sand's celebrated pastoral novel of 1846, La Mare au Diable (The Devil's Pod), on her long study of animals in nature, and on the paintings of Paulus Potter, a Dutch seventeenth-century painter of cows whose work she admired."2  Below is an example of Potter's work; The Bull, Paulus Potter, 1647, The Hague.

Bonheur's painting was widely acclaimed and after it was shown in the 1849 Salon she received numerous other commissions.  She went on to have many well known and influential patrons such as Britain's Queen Victoria and the American millionaire and philanthropist Cornelius Vanderbilt.

The Horse Fair, Rosa Bonheur, 1852-55, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Bonheur's most well known work may be her later painting, The Horse Fair, painted from 1852-55.  The painting is owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the museum website says of the painting The Horse Fair, "The artist drew inspiration from George Stubbs, Théodore Gericault, Eugène Delacroix, and ancient Greek sculpture: she referred to The Horse Fair as her own "Parthenon frieze."3

More than one version of The Horse Fair exists, after it was exhibited Bonheur painted another version and prior to the finished work she painted several smaller studies.  After exhibiting the work she traveled to England for a while where she enjoyed further success.  She was represented by gallery owner Ernest Gambart who had many of her popular paintings turned into lithographs and published.
 

Bonheur did much of her drawing and painting outdoors (rather than solely in her art studio) and preferred wearing pants to the elaborate dresses that were popular in the mid-19th century, at that time it was necessary to obtain a permit in order for a woman to wear pants in public.  Rosa Bonheur obtained one and was able to move about with ease painting her subjects in their natural setting while wearing pants to do so.  She was considered "radical in her personal life, but artistically and politically conservative, a confirmed monarchist and a realist."4

Rosa Bonheur, André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri, 1861-64, Getty Museum

Rosa Bonheur enjoyed a successful lifelong career, and lived to be 77.  Her work was popular among all classes in society and during her career she became the first woman officer in the Legion of Honor.  It would be no exaggeration to say that most artists painting animals in the 20th century would have been influenced by Bonheur's work.



1 Rosenblum, Robert and H.W. Janson. 19th Century Art. NY: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1984. p. 223.
2 Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. NY: Thames and Hudson Inc. 1990. p. 180.
3 Metropolitan Museum of Art website- http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/435702
4 Chadwick. p. 180.