Yesterday I wrote about tactics — cold calling — and the effects such an approach might produce, but today it’s all about strategy. But there is a lot of confusion going around about differentiating tactics and strategy and to start off today’s blunder, I would like to address this issue myself.

Sun Tzu (the great Chinese general) described the difference in his ever-more popular book The Art of War like this: “All men can see the tactics I use to conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which great victory is evolved.”

What he meant is simple: Tactics isn’t just a short-term oriented approach, but one that is blind to the end goal, and as such, never made by reverse-engineering that goal and figuring out the right path that can lead us to it.

That’s why I believe cold-calling doesn’t work; in the long run a lot of the factors that build and create lasting relationships (imperative in the fine art world) are neglected or skipped because we prefer results now, rather than being content with slowly building up our momentum and leverage to the point, when the time finally becomes right.

People who win wars (and any competitions really) aren’t afraid to loose battles, and the best might even do so on purpose. That’s strategy. Think of the popular stories we hear, of all people who wanted one thing in their life and are well on their way to getting it: 

Be it Gary Vaynerchuk wanting to buy the NY Jets and predicating his whole life on the best strategy to do so. Or Thomas Bilyeu’s goal of impacting as many lives as he could, that lead him from chasing riches to creating Impact Theory and now having the ability to do so at scale. They all have one mode of operation and that’s the perspective of where they want to go and how they’re going to get there.

I know I had my goals messed-up for a long time and it reflected in what I did and even how I did it. Stupid decisions were made and I mindlessly jumped on and off trends, never taking long enough to really get to exactly where I wanted, but being content with going 60% of the way. 

It all lead to nothing to be honest, because my thinking was too messy, too frantic and much too casual and reactive, rather than thinking ahead and planing out the main steps I needed to take. Like they say, I was playing checkers, not chess.

What I did, to actually address my lack of perspective was to take a day and really focus on writing down my goals. All of them.

The important ones got stacked against each other and measured; only after staring intently for a really long time at all the things I thought I wanted, did the things that I genuinely wish to achieve and was passionate about from within — not because of what I thought my father, mother or uncle believed was best for me — fall into place and I was able to scratch a lot off the list and ended up finding my why.

The necessary ones and those that I’d like to do, but could probably live without and be absolutely content if I never got them off my bucket actually got a place on it. And that was the point; the bucket list became a separate entity from my main goals and I filled it up with things I’d like to do, but weren’t necessary for my main objective — everything that was still great, but just didn’t make the important list.

Now, whenever I move, I do so in accordance with my main goal — to rekindle the art market in my country and create a working infrastructure for artists to be able to live off their work (the art market in Slovenia was annihilated in the 90s). If I find a way to compliment it with doing something from my bucket list, I do so if I can afford it (both time-wise and money-wise).

But my priorities now stay the same and as such I have finally begun to build-up a strategy that I can follow and that will eventually get me to where I want to go. And that’s really the point: I finally know the real meaning of eventually.

So, tomorrow I’ll get into strategies, but it was incredibly important for me to address perspective and mindset first. We need a purpose, we require a big, juicy end-goal that we really want and can therefore adjust our rudders accordingly, when the winds of life blow us off course. Like Gatsby’s green light, we need to take our time and find our focus and then stick to it. Because without it we can quickly become ignorant to the fact that we’re just lost at sea.