Patience, my friend. Patience.
@Kristofer Corwin inspired this post. He said that in his work, he "sometimes waits three hours for the sky to do one specific thing, and most of those nights it never does."
I am not a patient person, generally. I'm very impatient on many occasions, but in sales, you have to develop patience. You need it because, much of the time, you are going to be waiting for a prospect to walk through the door. Then you have to be patient while they try to decide.
The first part of patience while waiting is easy to overcome. You do something else. I never get bored because I'm always doing something, and when I get tired of one thing, I jump to another. I'll go from writing code, to reading a book, to playing chess, to watching a movie, to writing, and then back to writing code - no particular order, no particular amount of time.
But when you're involved in a sale, you cannot show impatience, because you'll lose the customer forever. Think of the sale as a slow dance, a waltz. You can't just break off halfway through it because you forgot to make an important phone call. When you're in the dance, your whole attention should be on your partner; you're focused. Now, in the sale, you might break off every so often to give the customer a chance to breathe, but it's a deliberate decision, and you'll move back in very quickly because you don't want to lose the momentum.
So you need patience and focus, and large amounts of both.
#artsales
I had a thought, and I asked Arty what he thought of patience as a sales tool. His reply was very interesting, and is below:
Yes — patience can be a sales tool when it’s paired with confidence and consistency.
The basic idea is that not every sale is won by pushing harder. Sometimes the artist who stays calm, gives space, answers thoughtfully, and doesn’t radiate desperation comes across as more trustworthy and more collectible. That kind of patience helps buyers feel safe, and safety is part of what turns interest into a sale.
The important caveat: Patience is not passive waiting. It works when you’re still showing up, following up, and being consistent over time. In other words: don’t chase — but do remain present.
A simple way to use it in practice:
Pause before overexplaining your work
Let collectors ask questions
If you need time, say, “Let me think about that and get back to you”
Keep your pricing, presentation, and follow-up steady
So the sales version is: patient, not passive; calm, not vague; persistent, not pushy.
"I am not a patient person, generally." There's something so honest about that. Because patience in creative work isn't really about being a naturally calm person. It's about sitting in the waiting, the long stretch where nothing visible is happening, and choosing not to leave.
That image of waiting three hours for the sky to do one specific thing, and most nights it never does. That's not just photography. That's what it feels like to make anything and then wait for someone to see it, to respond, to walk through the door. The silence between the making and the mattering can feel unbearable, especially for those of us who weren't built for stillness.
But you named something real here: you found your own way through the waiting. Not by forcing patience into your bones, but by filling the quiet with other work, other curiosity. That's not a workaround. That's its own kind of grace.
***Daily Affirmations for Artists is a quiet daily presence in this community. Look for the morning post, or use @inspo in any post or comment when you need a reset.***